Transcriber’s note:  Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.

[Illustration: “MY BROTHER HAD PLANNED THAT THE PLACE SHOULD BE GIVEN
TO RAY.” Frontispiece]




_THE FORTUNATE CALAMITY_


BY
“PANSY”
(MRS. G. R. ALDEN)

AUTHOR OF “ESTER RIED,”
“WISE AND OTHERWISE,”
“FOUR GIRLS AT CHAUTAUQUA,” ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GRACE NORCROSS




PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1927

COPYRIGHT, 1927. BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I. THE ANNOUNCEMENT

II. PREPARATION

III. THE ARRIVAL

IV. THE “GLORIFIED” DRESS

V. A SENSE OF HONOR

VI. RAKING UP AN OLD DISGRACE

VII. THE RESCUED LIFE

VIII. DERRICK FORMAN, THIRD

IX. A DECISION, AND A STORM

X. DANGER, AND FEAR, AND ASSURANCE

XI. DIFFERENT ESTIMATES

XII. SOMETHING HAPPENED

XIII. AN ALLY

XIV. HOUSES, AND DRESSES, AND SPOONS

XV. “FOOLS”




ILLUSTRATIONS


“MY BROTHER HAD PLANNED THAT THE PLACE SHOULD BE GIVEN TO RAY.”
 Frontispiece

THE STREAM OF COMPLIMENT WAS STILL FLOWING

WITH THIS PARTING THRUST JEAN VANISHED, LAUGHING AS SHE WENT

“WHO SHOULD WEAR IT BUT HER NAMESAKE?”




_THE FORTUNATE CALAMITY_




CHAPTER I

THE ANNOUNCEMENT


THE Formans were at breakfast, at least two of them were. The others
were absorbed with the morning mail. The table was neatly spread,
the aroma of coffee was in the air, and the plate of home-made
cookies invited attention, but Jean, the youngest daughter, and
Derrick, the son, were the only ones who paid the slightest attention
to breakfast.

Jean was eating grapes, and Derrick, as he reached for the fourth
cookie, said: “I wonder if I am expected to eat all these.”

Jean giggled. “You are getting well under way, I think; keep right
on; I’m attending to the grapes myself. Only look at them!—I mean
the folks, Dickie dear, not the grapes—even mother is lost in a
letter. I wonder who it can be from? It’s an awfully long one.” Then
she raised her voice: “I think one of you might read aloud for the
benefit of Dick and me—and the cookies; mother, there won’t be
a single cookie left if you don’t attend to Dick.”

Thus roused Mrs. Forman laid down her letter with a little sigh, and
grasped the handle of the coffee pot as she said: “What is it you
want, Derrick, a cup of coffee?”

“No, mother; no coffee for me. I’ll just take a cookie or two and
be off.” Saying which he reached for his fifth and, to the sound
of Jean’s laughing protest, hastily left
the room.

Mrs. Forman did not smile; she was still preoccupied; but she tried
to rally her thoughts. “Joseph your coffee is getting cold. Girls,
will you have coffee? Have you letters from any of the relatives?”

“Mine isn’t,” said Florence, the second daughter. “It is from Nannie
Douglass; they are at Delmont, and expect to stay through the month.
Oh mother, I wish I could have Nannie spend a week with me while they
are so near.”

There was a pathetic note in her voice suggesting the hopelessness
of the wish, but the mother, usually quick to sympathize, did not
respond to it even by a glance. Ray, the observant oldest daughter,
noticed the tightening of muscles about her father’s mouth, and knew
that, although he was supposed to be absorbed in his paper, he had
heard. She telegraphed a note of warning to her sister, who, however,
did not need it. The girl had returned to her neglected muffin,
her face grave and sad; but evidently she had thought, and meant to
say no more.

“My letter,” said Ray, “was from the girls, all of them; they are
at Ocean Beach for a week together; only four of the class missing;
isn’t that doing well for so large a class?”

“Eleven girls!” Jean exclaimed. “What a babel they must make! I hope
they are not all at the same boarding house! Where are the others?”

“The others? of the class? Why, Edith and Emily Prentiss are still
in the East; Edith is studying music in Boston.”

“And the other two?” persisted the heedless Jean. Her sister turned
grave eyes upon her.

“Don’t you remember, Jean, that Celia Roberts died only a few weeks
after commencement?”

“Oh, I remember; and you are the fourth? Poor Ray! you ought to be
there this minute.”

Mr. Forman rose up suddenly, his coffee still waiting. “I must go,”
he said. Mrs. Forman protested anxiously; wouldn’t he let her give
him a cup of hot coffee? No, he wouldn’t; he murmured something
about it being later than he had realized, and hurried away.

Mrs. Forman waited until the door closed after him, then spoke in a
discouraged tone: “I wish, Jean, you could learn to be a little more
considerate of your father’s feelings; it is hard enough for him
to be compelled to deny you all sorts of pleasures, without having it
stabbed into him.”

“It was horrid of me, mommie,” said the penitent Jean. “I wish
I hadn’t such an awful forgettery; but father knows that I didn’t
mean a thing.”

“Where is Dick?” The mother had just awakened to his absence.

“He and the cookies skipped, I guess, while you were reading that
long letter,” Florence explained. “Who is it from, mother?”

Mrs. Forman looked down at the closely written pages and sighed,
as she answered: “It is from Aunt Caroline, and it is all about your
Aunt Elsie; she wants us to let her come here.”

“Aunt Elsie!” Florence exclaimed.

“Oh, mother!” from Jean.

Then Ray: “Why, mother, what is the matter?”

“It is a long story, girls, going back before you were born; but the
part that concerns us now is simple enough. The woman who has lived
with Aunt Elsie for years, and cared for her like a daughter, has
recently died, and there must be an entire change of arrangements.”

“Well,” Florence said, after an ominous silence, “why should that
make it—what about Aunt Caroline? Why doesn’t she look after her own
sister?”

“Company,” she says. “Two of her husband’s relatives to stay through
the fall, one for all winter, perhaps. Besides, she has no suitable
downstairs room; and there are half a dozen other reasons; the main
one, I imagine, being that she doesn’t want her.”

“Neither do we,” murmured Jean, but no one noticed her, and
Mrs. Forman continued.

“Those sisters have not been together, except for a few hours at long
intervals, since they were young girls, and they seem to have nothing
in common.”

Then Florence interposed: “Why doesn’t she go to Uncle Evarts? He has
a large house and servants to wait on her.”

“That, your Aunt Caroline says, is quite out of the question. It
seems that the married daughter has come home to spend the winter,
and has three little children. Your uncle says it would be very bad
for his sister to be shut into a furnace-heated house all winter
in the centre of a great city, ‘with three lively children who would
fit her for the lunatic asylum before the winter was half over.’”

Mrs. Forman had taken up her letter again and was quoting from it.
A silence that suggested consternation fell upon them, broken
presently by Jean.

“Mother, will we have to do it?”

“Do what, Jean?”

“Why—have her come here?”

Mrs. Forman’s expressive eyes rested full upon her youngest daughter,
with a shade of rebuke in them.

“Isn’t that a strange way to speak of having a visit from your aunt?”

“Well, but—” Jean hesitated, her face flushing under the rebuke, then
she hurried on: “Mother, it isn’t just an ordinary visit; you said
for all winter, didn’t you? That is what it means, anyway; and she is
only a half aunt; it isn’t as though she were father’s own sister;
he doesn’t even know her very well; it seems as though he had
enough—”

She left her sentence unfinished, but the mother answered what she
had meant to say.

“He certainly has, Jean; for that reason we must not do anything
to make it harder; he has always looked upon your Aunt Elsie as his
sister, and although he left home when he was a mere boy he remembers
her perfectly as a little child of whom he was fond; it would break
his heart to be compelled, with all the rest, to deny her any
kindnesses she may need.”

“But that’s just it; she can’t help being an added burden, and there
are her own sister and brother, both of them with plenty of money;
they could do a great deal more for her than we possibly can. Do you
really think he would want her to come if he realized that?”

Mrs. Forman made a gesture almost like despair, and Ray came to the
rescue.

“Of course, Jean, he will want to receive his sister if she wants
to come. We can manage to make her comfortable, can’t we, mother?”

“Well, I must say I don’t see how,” Florence said, without waiting
for her mother. “You say Aunt Caroline has no downstairs room, and
I’m sure we haven’t; why isn’t that an excellent reason for her
not coming? For that matter we haven’t an upstairs room, either,
that would be nice for her, unless—how could we possibly manage it?
Mother, why don’t you speak?”

“You and Jean do not give her any chance,” Ray said, trying to laugh.

Mrs. Forman spoke with evident effort: “There is only one way,
Florence; your father and I would have to take an upstairs room.”

“Father move!” Jean’s tone was expressive, and her mother answered
it.

“I know—but there is no other way; Aunt Elsie is lame, and stairs
for her are out of the question; but I am sure your father would
rather move out of the house altogether than be forced to turn down
this appeal for his help. We can manage to be comfortable upstairs,
I think, in any room that our children are-willing to give up to us.”

She attempted a smile. Ray spoke quickly: “Of course, mother, if it
comes to that you and father must have our room; Jean can go
with Florence.”

Groans followed from both of the younger girls, but Jean recovered
speech quickly and wanted to know what Ray proposed to do with
herself; did she mean to dress on the back porch, as well as sleep
there? Then, dolefully: “Oh, Ray, your lovely big room, with all
your college things in it! how can you?”

“Never mind, Jeanie,” the girl said, brightly. “Don’t you know
how often we have said that mother and father ought to have that
room? I could manage nicely with the little one back of it, but I
was thinking—will it do, mother, to leave Aunt Elsie alone on the
first floor?”

Mrs. Forman admitted that it might not be right for a lame person
to sleep so far from others, yet she did not know how else to plan;
that was certainly the only downstairs sleeping room, and there was
no other that could be converted into one. Then Ray wondered if
a couch could not be set up in the little trunk room if the trunks
were moved to the attic; she believed the room was long enough on the
south side for a cot, and, if so, she could sleep there and be within
call.

Jean exclaimed: “Why, Ray Forman! that is nothing but a closet. The
idea!”

“It has a wide window, Jean dear; I could sleep with my head out
of doors if I chose; and think what a nice roomy place I should have
upstairs, with the bed out of the way; I can do it nicely, mother,
if you want to plan it so.”

Mrs. Forman sighed again, and said that Ray was doing, once more,
what she had done ever since she was able to think and plan—
sacrificing herself for others; she, the mother, ought to be used
to it, but it did seem a pity that it must always be the same one
on whom the burden fell heaviest. She arose from the table as she
spoke, the others following her lead. Jean, as she clattered the cups
and saucers, gathering them for the little maid in the kitchen,
continued to express her mind, with no listener save herself. “All I
have to say is that I think there are a lot of awfully selfish people
in this world, and they don’t all live in this house, either. I just
detest rooming with Florence, but, of course, I’ll do it, and mother
knows I will; she needn’t think that Ray does all the sacrificing.
If I were Aunt Caroline, or Uncle Evarts—which, thank goodness,
I’m not—I should be ashamed to look any of us in the face after
this.”

Nothing had occurred for months to upheave the Forman household
as did this letter from Mr. Forman’s youngest sister. The family
had grown accustomed, at least in a degree, to straitened means and
careful economies. Mr. Forman’s failure in business had occurred
when Jean, the youngest, was a mere child; yet she distinctly
remembered the great house on Duval Circle, and especially the fine
car in which she daily rode, attended by a maid. The others,
of course, had vivid recollections of the refinements and luxuries,
as well as of many things that they used to name necessities,
that had to be given up when the crash came; but time had softened
much of the bitterness connected with the change; they were even
growing used to the small, plain house on Fourth Street and one
untrained little maid, although they still never went in the vicinity
of Duval Circle if it could be avoided; and Florence had not yet
trained herself away from occasional outbursts over the changed
conditions. These, however, were very rare in her father’s presence.
She still remembered with remorse the day when, after an especially
harrowing experience, she had burst forth with: “Oh, if father could
only have been persuaded not to trust that horrid man who is
responsible for all this” and then had heard a heavy book drop to the
floor with a thud, and a deep groan from the father whom she had
supposed was not in the house. A moment afterwards the door of the
little reading room, which now served as his library, was quietly
closed, and save for the look of unutterable reproach on her mother’s
face as she closed it, no reference was ever made to the incident.
But that groan had burned into her heart. Jean, under like
circumstances, would have rushed into her father’s arms and fairly
smothered him with kisses while she poured forth a volume of regrets
and frantic promises never to do so again; she would also be liable
to forget it all, before the day was done, and fail in exactly
the same way. Florence was different. However, they all, in their
differing ways, had for a central object in life the saving of their
father’s feelings.




CHAPTER II

PREPARATION


MRS. FORMAN and her two daughters, Ray and Florence, were in the
attic studying the possibilities of certain stowed-away pieces
of furniture; also arguing as to the merits—or possibly demerits—of a
set of old curtains.

Florence was sure that they would not do at all for Aunt Elsie’s
room, although while she said it she was oppressed by the thought
that new curtains were not even to be mentioned. Only that morning
her mother had tried to impress them with the fact that even very
small expenditures must be carefully guarded; they really must not
for the present spend an unnecessary penny. It evidently comforted
the poor lady to use that phrase “for the present,” although they
knew she had a haunting fear that the future would not make the
pennies more plentiful.

“If we had a new edge to replace this dreadfully frayed one, we might
make these curtains answer for the present,” she thought aloud,
rather than said, and the sentence closed with that much-worked word
“but,” which is capable of eloquently leaving unsaid many things.

“Oh, mother!” was Florence’s dismayed protest, but Ray intercepted
her.

“I’ll crochet an edge for them. Don’t you know that little lace edge
I made for Jean’s waist? With coarser cotton it would make a pretty
curtain trimming, and the pattern is so simple I can make it very
fast. I’ll begin it to-night; I have the cotton.”

“Florence,” said Mrs. Forman, “if I should declare that I didn’t know
how to get along another day without a new house, don’t you think Ray
would say, ‘I’ll make you one?’”

By way of answer Florence said grimly that if Ray had been one of
those old Israelites she would have had no trouble at all in making
bricks without straw.

Then the front door opened and closed with a bang, and Derrick’s
shout was heard through the hall. “Mother! Ray! where are you all?
Say, mother, don’t you think they are coming to-day, on the
two-fifty!”

“Who are?” Florence asked, appearing at the head of the stairs.

“Uncle Evarts and Aunt Elsie, and I don’t know how many more. Where’s
mother? Say, mommie, daddy had a telegram; here it is; he sent over
to our school for me to get excused and skip home with it and stay
here and help. What do you want first?”

By this time Mrs. Forman had the telegram in hand and read it aloud:
“Compelled to go East to-night; must bring Elsie. Reach Welland
afternoon train Friday. Evarts.”

“The idea!” said Florence. “Isn’t that cool? He hasn’t even given us
time to write and say that she could come.”

“That’s what he’s after,” Derrick explained. “Says he to himself:
‘I’ll rush the old lady off before they have a chance to say no, then
they’ll just have to take her in.’ See? Trust Uncle Evarts for being
sharp, every time.” But no one was heeding him. Mother and daughters
were making a rush for that downstairs room to try to accomplish in
breathless haste the dozen or more “last things” that were waiting
for a leisure hour.

Left to himself the boy, with hands thrust into his pockets, tramped
about the attic for a few minutes, curious to see what the great
unfurnished room, which he seldom visited, had, stowed away in its
keeping. He passed a number of interesting-looking packages, from
whose bulging ends he caught glimpses of things that he could utilize
in his “shop,” and mentally resolved to forage here some day and see
what he could find. But he carried a divided mind, and although he
whistled a few bars as he ran downstairs it was a rather gloomy-faced
fellow who presently appeared before his mother for orders.

Being a boy who was distinctly loyal to his father, Derrick Forman
had made very few remarks aloud about the family innovation; nobody
but himself, at least so he fondly believed, knew how utterly
he disliked the thought of it. He did not in the least remember his
Aunt Elsie, although there was a tradition in the family that once
in his very early childhood she had kissed him fervently and declared
that he “looked enough like father” to be her brother.

“I’m awfully glad that I’m not!” he told himself, savagely, as he
recalled the incident, “and I wish she were in Jericho. She isn’t
a speck like my father, I know that; none of ’em are; but that’s
something to be glad over. A fellow can afford to shout over the fact
that he isn’t a bit like any of them.”

He had a distinct boyish recollection of his Aunt Caroline and his
Uncle Evarts, and disliked them both. Aunt Caroline, as he remembered
her, was always saying: “Dear me! Why do you yell so when you talk?
None of your family is deaf.” Or: “If you were my boy I should give
you a good whipping every time you rolled down stairs in that
lubberly fashion.” Or: “For pity’s sake, Dick, don’t whistle all the
time! your family do not seem to have any nerves.” “An everlasting
nagger,” was the phrase with which he summed up her defects.

Yet after all, the real thorn in his heart was the fact that his aunt
had not confined her “nagging” to the girls and himself, but was
given to much advising his mother, and finding fault with her ways.
He had a vivid memory of Aunt Caroline’s voice, high and insistent,
as it came out to him when he stood in the hall waiting for a chance
to speak to his mother: “You really ought to insist on Joseph’s
having things fixed conveniently for you in the kitchen, at least;
you can’t expect to keep a girl unless you furnish her with some of
the modern conveniences; in these days they won’t stand it. Joseph
ought to know that there are labor-saving devices that all
respectable people use. He doesn’t understand, of course; men never
do; but you ought to be firm about it; because he chose to trust
a man that nobody else would, and so lost all his money, is no reason
why he should let his family go without ordinary comforts. I’ll risk
that he could raise some money for you if he knew he had to.” Then
his mother’s voice, too low for him to hear, and his aunt’s again,
in reply: “Oh, now, Louise, there is no use in getting on your
dignity just because I mentioned Joseph; I’m sure I didn’t say
anything against him; I said not a word more than I would of my own
husband if he had been such a fool as to place confidence in that
man. You need to remember that I knew Joseph long before you did,
and, in some respects, I think I know him better now than you do.”

How the boy waiting in the hall hated her! He wanted to burst in upon
her and say, fiercely: “You let my mother alone! She knows a great
deal more than you do about everything; and don’t you dare to say
another word about my father; he is the best father in the world,
and we all think so; and I’m awful glad that he isn’t the least
little speck like you.”

Of course, he did nothing of the kind; instead, he gave over the hope
of a word with his mother, and went noisily down the hall, whistling
very loud, and banged the door as hard as he could; these
demonstrations being for his Aunt Caroline’s benefit. But he nursed
his dislike of his aunt through the years; nothing in his after
experiences helping to change his impressions of either her or his
Uncle Evarts. He was all ready to dislike his Aunt Elsie as soon as
she appeared. Even the memory of those early kisses rankled in his
thoughts. What if she should think she could kiss him now, when he
was taller than his father?

“If she tries it on me,” he muttered, “I’m afraid I’ll shake her.
O yah! what a mess! Wish I was to be done with high school to-morrow,
and could get out of this town. Home is spoiled, anyhow.”

His sister Ray, as she watched him a few minutes later swing down
the street on an errand for his mother, had a shadow on her face
over this very fear. It had been troubling her thoughts for days.
Were they spoiling home for Derrick? If they were—ought it to be
done? Derrick, the heedless, noisy, fun-loving boy, who rarely
stopped to consider whether his fun was a pleasure or an annoyance
to even his best friends. Derrick, who was inclined to be—gay; she
had almost thought that hateful word “fast!” Already he liked
the streets at night too well, and was chafing a little even under
the very mild restraints that they had tried to throw around him.
If this unknown aunt were like her sister and brother, might she not
drive him from home altogether?

Ray Forman could not have told the precise time in her life when she
began to shoulder responsibilities and try to devise ways
for relieving the family burdens. It seemed to her that she had
always known that both father and mother had more work and care
than they ought, and that Florence and Jean, and especially Derrick,
were not old enough to realize it, but she was, and must help. Right
royally she had been doing it for years. The winning of a scholarship
had enabled her to spend two years in an institution far in advance
of the local college where she had expected to graduate. She had paid
her board during this time by teaching for two hours each day in the
preparatory department; and her incidental expenses had been so much
less than her sister’s as to call from their father the dry remark
that they ought to have sent Florence also, for economy’s sake.

It was not alone in money matters that Ray helped. To both Jean and
Derrick she had been more like a mother than a sister. Derrick
especially, since the time when she had followed him patiently
through the long, bright days of his second summer while her mother
lay ill, had seemed to be her very special charge. He had accepted
her watchful care with cheerfulness, even with satisfaction; often,
from force of habit, rushing in search of her—when in need of help—
instead of his mother.

It was only quite recently that she had begun to feel a foreshadowing
of restiveness under her suggestions. Not that he had outspokenly
rebelled; nor referred to her fretfully as the others did
occasionally. More than once Florence had been heard to exclaim:
“Oh, Ray, don’t be so awfully old maidish! What’s the harm?”
The utmost that Derrick had allowed himself was a good-humored
drawling jibe, like: “Oh, yes, grandma, I’ll be careful; I won’t even
get my feet wet when I go in swimming,” or some kindred sarcasm
intended to emphasize the folly of her solicitude; yet Ray understood
and puzzled over it all, questioning sometimes as to whether she was
helping, or hindering.

That hint of “old maidishness” touched a sorer spot in her heart
than her sister realized. There were hours when she assured herself
that there was no prospect of her being able to leave her mother
with a daily increasing burden of work and care upon her, and set up
a home of her own; the only honorable course for her was to explain
this to Kendall Forsythe and beg him to give up even hope; it was
more than a year since she had promised to be his wife, and at that
time they had hoped and believed that the way would very soon open
for them, but instead it had seemed to close even more securely
with each passing month. Kendall’s mother, who had been his
housekeeper and daily companion since the time when they two
were suddenly left alone together, front being a very efficient and
capable woman had dropped into permanent invalidism, to be cared for
by the son, who was still struggling with an insufficient salary and
the promise of a larger one when conditions permitted; and there were
no present indications of a rise.

Notwithstanding all this the young man steadily urged immediate
marriage; he had gone over the whole ground carefully, he assured
Ray, and with pencil and paper and eloquence he tried to convince her
how much better the salary could be managed if she were there
to help. When, after careful where consideration and the shedding
of some bitter tears, she reached the point where she urged upon him
honorable freedom, representing it as the only wise course, he merely
scoffed, not considering the suggestion worthy of being treated
seriously. She might talk to him about that, he said, on his
hundredth birthday; certainly before that date he should not be ready
to give it the slightest attention. Nevertheless, Ray, glad over his
unhesitating refusal to listen to her, was yet seriously considering
that she ought to take steps which would compel him to do so. In all
his rose-colored plans for their mutual spending of his salary,
Ray had given no voice to the one word that loomed before her
portentously; that fateful word—clothes. She knew that she realized,
as he could not, that Ray Forman, one of the girls in her father’s
unpretentious house, could be clothed respectably on a much smaller
sum of money than would suffice for Mrs. Kendall Forsythe, who would
enter a family that had for generations made a bride the excuse for
all manner of social functions, of which she was expected to be the
centre. The Forsythe family, at least that portion of it to which
Kendall belonged, were no longer wealthy, but they were aristocratic,
and were looked upon as one of the oldest and most honored of the
“first families”; as often as Ray tried to imagine herself making
ready to be the lady of honor at one of their dinner parties she
shivered and thought of her father’s burdens. Certainly they must not
marry yet, not for a long time, probably; and the probability grew
to certainty in her own mind as she watched the trend of
circumstances. Now here was coming Aunt Elsie to add to the household
duties and expenses! Certainly she ought to have that emphatic break
with Kendall that would mark her hereafter as one who had a right
to be “old maidish.”

Her thoughts were hovering about matters like these when she heard
a suppressed shout from Jean: “Ray! Ray Forman! Where on earth
are you? They’ve come! Two hours before the train is due. Did you
ever! Florence says you are to come down quick and see to them;
she hasn’t got the room ready yet, and mother is in the oven.”




CHAPTER III

THE ARRIVAL


DESPITE the startling nature of that last announcement Ray answered
the summons quietly enough; she was used to Jean. As she neared
the living-room she could hear her uncle getting off smooth,
easy-flowing sentences that somehow gave the impression of thoughts
clothing themselves in words without any help from the speaker.

“Yes, the limited stopped at the junction for us; I didn’t think it
would, we were so late getting in; it is interesting to see what
diplomacy will accomplish; saved us nearly two hours, which is a good
deal of time to a busy man, not to mention having an invalid
in charge; but Elsie is a capital traveller in spite of her crutches.
I made it as easy for her as I could, of course; parlor car and all
that sort of thing; and Dick here did the honors at the station
splendidly. I say, Dick, you are almost a man, aren’t you? I was
expecting to see a little chap; I had forgotten how time flies;
I’ve reached the age, you know, when it is convenient to forget the
passing years; let me see—how old are you, anyhow?”

At this point Ray decided to open the door; there seemed to be no use
in waiting for a full period. Her entrance simply changed the current
of the flow of words.

“Hello! if here isn’t—let me see—not Jean, of course, but—oh, yes,
Ray, to be sure. I’m great on mixing names. It is a good while since
I’ve seen you, though.”

Ray helped him by reminding that she was away from home on the
occasion of his visit three years before.

“That’s so,” he said, briskly. “I remember all about it now; you are
the oldest girl, of course. Bless me! Elsie, think of Joe’s oldest
being a fresh young girl yet in her teens.”

Ray, in all the dignity of her twenty years, only laughed; Uncle
Evarts never really desired information, and she felt that he neither
knew nor cared how old she was. Words flowed on.

“It is bewildering, anyhow; here is Dick sprung up in the night like
a mushroom! I should never have known him in the world if he hadn’t
claimed me for an uncle. By the way, Dick, what is it to be? Law,
medicine or theology?”

But Derrick, every line of his pressing annoyance, muttered something
about not being absolutely driven toward any of them, and made his
escape under cover of his mother’s entrance. She had emerged from the
“oven” with her face much flushed and a dab of flour on her left
cheek. Her brother-in-law effervesced again at sight of her.

[Illustration: THE STREAM OF COMPLIMENT WAS STILL FLOWING]

“Upon my word, Louise, I can’t see that you look much older than you
did the day Joe brought you home a bride. How do you contrive
to cheat old Father Time so successfully? Look at those cheeks,
Elsie.”

“They must be reflecting the cook stove,” Mrs. Forman managed to say,
while the stream of compliment was still flowing.

Ray, in the background waiting for a chance to carry off her aunt and
minister to her comfort, felt her face rippling into laughter as she
recalled a remark of her mother’s, made several years before: “If
Evarts ever said anything he would be worth listening to, he has
so many words at his command.”

It would have been hard to find two people more unlike in every
respect than were Evarts Forman and his sister Elsie. He was above
medium height, straight as an arrow and well proportioned; he wore
his clothes with the air of one who knew they were faultless, and
gave one the impression of being always at ease, knowing to a
fraction what ought to be said or done next. His sister was much
below the average height of women, and was used to being described
by her sister Caroline as “dumpy.” She had scant gray hair
unbecomingly arranged, and although her blue eyes must once have been
bright they had faded and were growing dim. Her dress was plain
to severity, and was unmistakably the work of a country dressmaker.
As for her conversational powers, on this day at least, she seemed
to have almost no words; but, after all, that was not strange when
her brother Evarts was present to furnish volumes.

In the privacy of Jean’s room that evening her disrespectful nephew
expressed his opinion to his boon companion.

“Isn’t she just about the homeliest critter you ever looked at?
Turned-up nose, and no eyes to speak of, and the oddest little wad
of gray hair perked on top of her head. I can’t imagine how she and
Aunt Caroline ever came to be sisters.”

“She is mortally homely,” Jean agreed. “But then she isn’t the least
bit like Aunt Caroline in other ways, and I’m sure that is a comfort.
I can see why she didn’t plan to go and live with her, can’t you?
Aunt Caroline would simply crush her!”

“She would sit down on her, all right; you can bet your life on that.
If it weren’t for having her around all the time spoiling everything,
a fellow could be almost glad that she is to have mother, instead of
a woman like Aunt Caroline; mother will be lovely to her.”

Jean sighed. “Yes, and so will Ray. I don’t see why people who belong
to the same family are so different; there are regular sets of us;
mother and Ray make one set and you and Florence and I the other.”

“Father doesn’t belong to the family, I suppose!” Derrick chuckled.
Jean joined the laugh, then grew suddenly serious.

“Father doesn’t belong to the sets,” she said. “He is all by himself;
he tries, but he doesn’t rise above things as mother and Ray do.
I suppose it is because responsibilities rest heavier on him. Dick,
what is going to become of us all, anyhow? Can’t you see that things
are growing harder all while? I’m just afraid that by the time
you and I get ready to take hold there won’t be any father to help.”

“Don’t croak!” said Derrick, in a changed and as cross a tone as he
ever used to this favorite sister. He left her at once, but did not
whistle as he went down stairs, nor for a full half-hour afterwards.

Uncle Evarts, notwithstanding his joy over those two hours saved from
the train, thus enabling him to continue his journey that same
evening, changed his mind and stayed over night. His brother and
sister-in-law gave him their newly acquired room and took refuge
in Derrick’s, and that long suffering youth “slept around in any old
place” to quote his own language. Also Uncle Evarts stayed for
morning family worship and led in prayer, and the two who were sure
to talk things over together discussed him from this standpoint
on their way to school, Jean leading with:

“Do you know, Dick, I like Uncle Evarts less when he prays than at
any other time?”

Derrick laughed. “I ‘like him less’ so much on all occasions,”
he said, “that I don’t often stop to particularize. What is the
special grievance about him then?”

“Oh, I don’t know; I can’t put it into words; he has a lot of
high-sounding phrases that would mean really wonderful things if one
only meant them at all; but when he uses them, they seem like
cathedral bells tolling simply to be heard; just sound, you know,
no soul behind them. I can’t describe the feeling they give me,
but—father’s prayers never seem like that.”

Derrick’s only reply was a request that she would have the goodness
not to mention father and Uncle Evarts in the same sentence, because
he didn’t think he could stand their being brought so close together.
On the whole it was evident that their uncle’s suave efforts
at comradeship had not been successful. Ray and Florence were less
outspoken, but they, as well as the younger ones, had resented their
uncle’s attempts to be sympathetic with their mother.

“It is too bad, Louise,” he had said, a few minutes before his
departure, “to have Elsie foisted upon you in this way. I told
Caroline that I thought she ought to plan to have her for part of
the winter, at least; but I made no impression; she insisted that it
was no more than fair for Joe to take his turn first, since he was
the oldest. She doesn’t realize how hard up poor Joe is; I didn’t
myself, until I saw him this time; grows old fast, doesn’t he?
Poor old chap! Between you and me, Louise, Caroline is a bit tempted
think of her own comfort first. Well, I wish I could do something
myself, but you know how my hands are tied. Elsie is a good soul,
she won’t make any more trouble than she can help; and perhaps
by another year something will turn up. Who knows? That’s my car,
isn’t it?”

As they watched him spring briskly to the platform, and wave his hand
in graceful farewell, Florence gave vent to her pent-up feelings.

“I must say I detest that man! He talks about Aunt Elsie as though
she were a bale of cotton to be dumped down wherever it happened.
Wouldn’t I hate to be beholden to him! ‘Poor Joe’ indeed! what right
has he to speak in that way of father? Didn’t you feel like choking
him, mother?”

But Mrs. Forman’s only reply, after a moment of eloquent silence,
was:

“I am glad your father had to go down town early.”

For the next two days the Forman family struggled with the problem
of being and doing just as usual, with the consciousness always
upon them that there was an added member who made all things
different. They succeeded fairly well. Ray spent most of the time
with her aunt, unpacking and regulating, and stooping over boxes and
baskets and reaching up to hooks and shelves that were all beyond
the powers of the little lame woman. Much planning had been necessary
in order to lodge many things in a small space, for Aunt Elsie
had certainly brought many things. Jean grumbled over that fact
in her characteristic way: “Whatever Uncle Evarts and Aunt Caroline
meant, that little woman has evidently planned to spend her life
with us.” And Derrick replied, with energy:

“Humph! they did the planning. You bet your life those two know what
they are about. They mean that ‘poor Joe’ shall do his share with a
vengeance! If I were father I wouldn’t stand that sort of thing.”

However, the two who had done most of the settling were well pleased
with the result. At the Friday evening dinner table Aunt Elsie
announced that, thanks to the most efficient helper a lame woman
ever had, she was all settled, ready to begin to live. She had owned,
however, to being very tired and had gone early to her room. The
younger Formans speculated as to whether that might be her usual
habit, every one of them owning to the hope that such was the case;
though Ray did her best to keep the cheerful side of the innovation
in the forefront. Aunt Elsie, she said, had been ever so nice,
all day; not a bit fussy or overparticular. She had loads of pretty
things, but she had not been afraid to have them touched, and had been
cheery and genial throughout the weariness of unpacking and settling.
She had not lost her good nature even when none of her boxes would
fit on the shelves where she wanted them to go. But Florence was not
to be comforted.

“Why shouldn’t she be good-natured?” she had demanded, fiercely. “You
did all the work and she had only to sit and look on and give orders.
Oh, you needn’t tell me; I know as well as though I had watched the
whole performance that you worked all day like a slave, and fixed
every last thing exactly as she wanted it. I only hope she has sense
enough to realize what a downy nest she has dropped into! Father
treats her as though she were a queen, and mother—well, we all know
what mother is.”

“But think of poor Ray,” Jean interrupted. “She lives almost in the
same room, ready to be summoned any minute, day or night. The rest
of us can go on living much as usual except at meal times, and
prayers, and a few such functions, but Ray will have her all
the time. I’m glad I’m not in your shoes, Ray Forman! It’s a blessed
thing that I am not the oldest daughter; I couldn’t play the part
worth a cent; but you will do it beautifully.”

Still, on this Saturday morning things were not quite as usual
anywhere in the Forman household. Or rather they were, as Jean
expressed it, “a good deal more ‘usual’ than they usually were.”
Trouble had begun when it was admitted that Ray must go to town
to look after errands that only she could manage. Jean had complained
that the business in hand would keep Ray in town “the whole blessed
day,” and her mother had looked so grave when she acknowledged this
that it had immediately called forth another outburst.

“Mother remembers that she must get through with Saturday’s baking
and frying and all other extra-ing without the help of her efficient
eldest daughter, and only Jean to take her place. O mommie! I’m
almost sorrier for you than I am for myself.” Whereupon she flew
at her mother with kisses and caresses, petitioning her not to worry;
that she, Jean, would help all day like a tornado; see if she didn’t.

Florence’s dismay over the state of things had been too deep
for words. She felt that they all ought to know without her saying it
that she would be by far the greatest sufferer through Ray’s absence.
A function of importance in her social world was to take place
that evening. A classmate who was about to marry into aristocratic
circles had invited a very select few to meet the prospective groom,
and Florence, being one of the elect, had her best gown partially
ripped ready to undergo a severe refurbishing. Of course, there had
been a tacit understanding that Ray was to assume the lion’s share
of the work. Mrs. Forman had not for several years been able to do
much sewing, and she frankly admitted that since Ray had come to the
front she had lost what little skill in that direction she had
possessed. No wonder that Jean, having almost smothered her mother,
had turned to the trouble-faced seamstress with another doleful:

“Poor Florence! I’m awfully sorry for you; if I only knew how,
I could help you like a whirlwind.”

“I have no doubt but you would, and be almost as useful!” was
Florence’s answer.

She was too troubled to be other than sarcastic over the doubtful
offer. It was just at that moment that the thump of a crutch
was heard in the hall.




CHAPTER IV

THE “GLORIFIED” DRESS


“OH, DEAR!” Florence groaned, as her ear caught the sound; “if Aunt
Elsie is coming in here I may as well give up; I can’t sew, with her
looking on. Why can’t she stay in her room when we have given up
the best one in the house for her use!”

“Good-by,” said Jean, with a spring toward the door that led to the
kitchen. “I belong to the culinary department, thank goodness.
Poor Florrie!”

The thump of the crutch stopped and presently the door of
the dining-room swung back to admit Aunt Elsie.

“I thought likely you were sewing,” she said, cheerfully. “I brought
my thimble and spectacles, thinking there might be something
that I can do.”

Florence made haste to explain. “Oh, thank you, but this is just some
fussy sewing that I have to do myself; I’m fixing over an old dress,
and of all stupid tasks I consider that the worst.”

“It is pretty,” said her aunt, examining the goods with critical eye,
“and the color just suits you, doesn’t it? You will have to hem it
over again, won’t you? That is done by hand, of course?”

“I’m sorry to say that it is,” Florence admitted, with a sigh. “The
machine won’t do for this thin stuff; I tried a little bit and
it looked horrid.”

“Do you ever hem with ravellings? In goods of this kind they
generally do nicely; here is a scrap that would be just right
to ravel out; suppose I hem a little bit, and see if it looks well?”

Florence gave reluctant consent, with doubt in her heart; she was
what Jean called “fussy” about her work, and she had never sewed
with “ravellings”; she resolved to watch closely and be ready
with objections at the earliest possible moment. But while
the volunteer was choosing a needle Derrick came ready to do
the errand that had been asked of him, and to ask innumerable
questions. Just what was it she wanted at Wheeler’s and where was the
thing to be matched. Must he undertake to match it, or would the
clerk do it for him. Just exactly how much did she want, and what
would it probably cost. If he did not find it at Wheeler’s was he
to go elsewhere, and if so, where. Florence had to hunt through boxes
and baskets for the desired samples, then go to her mother for advice
as to measurements, then find her pocketbook for Derrick to use,
as he announced himself “dead broke.” When she at last turned
from him to give belated attention to ravellings her remarks were
all exclamatory:

“You don’t mean that you have done it! Have you been all round that
skirt already? Why it is only a few minutes since you began! Do look
at it! The stitches are not there at all! I mean I can’t find one of
them! How perfectly lovely! I just dreaded that hem! Aunt Elsie,
I believe you are a witch!”

“It doesn’t take long to hem with ravellings,” Aunt Elsie said when
she was given a chance to speak. “I saw the stitches weren’t going
to grin, and as you were busy with Derrick I pushed right on. Now
suppose you let me put in these sleeves? I’m a master hand
at sleeves; I took lessons how to do them, of a first-class
dressmaker’s.”

Florence, who was not a “master hand” and had dreaded the sleeves
almost as much as the hem, relinquished them with a relieved sigh,
and boasted of them the next time she made a dash to the kitchen
to consult her mother.

“Don’t you think, they came right the first time! and even Ray has to
rip them out once. She goes at things as though she had been
a dressmaker all her life; and she’s quick, too.”

When the garment reached the trying-on stage, and Florence was posing
before the sideboard mirror, her aunt, who had worked steadily and
skillfully on other than hems and sleeves, asked a question that was
even then puzzling the young girl:

“How are you going to finish the neck? Is it to be faced, or bound,
 or what?”

“I guess it will have to be ‘What,’” Florence said, trying to laugh.
“I don’t know how to fix it, I am sure. I suppose I shall use the old
collar again in some fashion; it is too small, and not the right
shape anyway, but it will have to do.”

Her aunt reached for the collar in question and examined it
critically.

“It could be set on with a bit of lace,” she said, presently. “Wide
lace, you know, falling below it, and a narrower bit above, of the
same pattern; you have seen them made in that way, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I have; that is the very latest style; but you see
the trouble is I haven’t the lace. Mother used to have a piece
of nice lace that she lent to us girls on occasions, but it was
in that dreadful trunk that was lost in the railroad accident.
It seems sometimes as though nearly everything we had that was worth
much was in that burned-up trunk.”

“I wonder if I haven’t a bit that would do for this dress,” the elder
lady said, thoughtfully. “I believe I have, if there is enough for
the sleeves, too. Suppose you climb up to that highest shelf in my
closet and get the little green box at the left corner, and we’ll
measure and see.”

Florence made a vigorous protest and, failing, went with a reluctance
that covered dismay. What had she done now! She heard herself trying
to argue with Aunt Elsie over a strip of cheap lace to prove, without
hurting her feelings, that it was not suitable for the dress
in question. What if she should fail and be obliged to accept it?

“I won’t do it!” she told herself, firmly, as she climbed after the
green box. “She has helped me a lot, and I’m thankful, but I simply
can’t reward her by tricking myself out in her old cotton finery;
not if she were father’s mother, instead of his half-sister. Oh,
dear! If Ray were only at home, she would help me out of this scrape.
I don’t care! We can’t sacrifice everything in order to save her
feelings. I’m just going to tell her that I can’t use it.”

But in less than half an hour from that resolute moment this same
maiden was standing before the sideboard mirror, aglow and eyes very
bright, “tricked out” in Aunt Elsie’s “finery,” and what she was
telling her was this:

“Oh, Aunt Elsie! I never saw anything so lovely in all my life! It is
as fine as a cobweb, and so wide! Dear me! I should like to have
Frances Powell see this; she thinks she has the most wonderful piece
of old lace in the world; it was her grandmother’s and it is
beautiful, but nothing like this! May I just show it to her some
time? Of course, I do not mean on the dress; I couldn’t think
of wearing it. Oh, I wouldn’t for the world! It is much too fine
for me.”

Said Aunt Elsie, stepping back to view it with a critic’s eye: “It
would look better, I believe, dropped a little lower on the shoulder;
just let me try it. There, isn’t that more graceful? Stand still,
dear, until I pin it all around, then I can sew it on in a minute.
Nonsense, child, of course you will wear it; that is what it is for;
I’m glad there is enough for the sleeves; I was a little bit afraid—
but there is plenty.”

The lace went to the party that same evening, accompanied by a
radiant girl, who, as she surveyed herself in the mirror confided
to Jean that, thanks to Aunt Elsie, she felt herself to be really
well dressed for the first time in her life.

“The idea!” Jean said, “when you have worn that same dress dozens
of times.”

“Yes, but you see it has been glorified; it never looked like this
before.”

Jean regarded her gravely, with a faraway look in her eyes; evidently
her thoughts were elsewhere. Unconsciously to herself she began
to sing softly:

“I shall rise again at morning’s dawn,
I shall put on glory then.”

“What on earth!” began Florence, wheeling about to stare at her. Jean
laughed shamefacedly.

“Evidently you don’t think my selection fits the occasion,” she said.
“It was your ‘glorified’ dress that did it. That is a song we are to
sing next week at vespers; it is a very catchy tune; I find myself
humming it half the time.” Whereupon she sang again:

“I’m travelling toward life’s sunset gate,
I’m a pilgrim going home.”

“To be sure, you are a pilgrim going away from home,” she broke off
to say, “but you have ‘put on glory’ all the same. You look too
lovely for anything, as Florry Mitchell is always saying. Aunt Elsie
ought to give you that lace; it just fits you. How queer for her to
have such a costly cobweb as that! I wonder how it feels to be near
that other home?” She was humming again:

“For the glow of eventide I wait,
I’m a pilgrim going home.”

“How dreadfully you mix things!” Florence shivered a little as she
spoke.

“Well,” said Jean, with a graver face than one often saw her wear,
“things are dreadfully mixed in this life. You know that Helen
Darroll who stayed to dinner here the night it rained so hard? She
has been planning for more than a week for that dancing party
to-night at Dr. Willard’s; couldn’t think or talk of anything else;
and just before school closed to-day she had a telegram that her
father had been thrown from his horse and killed.”

“Oh, how dreadful!” said Florence.

“Isn’t it? So sudden! She is travelling home to-night, instead of
dancing. I wonder if her father has ‘put on glory’? I hope he was
a good man.”

Florence gave her sister another quick, searching look, and after
a moment said: “You are a very strange girl, Jean, do you know it?”

“Why?” Jean asked. “What is there strange about hoping that a man
who had to exchange worlds without a moment’s warning was ready
for it? Florence, the way that lace falls back from your arms
is exquisite; I shouldn’t wonder if you would be the most becomingly
dressed girl there. Isn’t it time you were off? The moon has risen.
Oh, look! isn’t it a glorious night!”

She drew back the curtain to gaze on the shimmering glory, and
Florence went downstairs to the sound of her voice trilling:

“For the glow of eventide I wait,
I’m a pilgrim going home.”

An hour later Derrick came clattering downstairs and bounced into the
family sitting-room with an imperious question: “Where is Ray?”

When his mother explained that Kendall had taken her out for a
moonlight walk, he growled: “Oh, bother Kendall! He is always
carrying her off just when a fellow needs her most. I can’t make any
sense of this mess and I’ve gone over it fifty times, at least.
I wish there wasn’t such a language as Latin, anyhow, or else I wish
that a fellow like me had—”

At that point he stopped, and his mother took up the unfinished
sentence: “Had a mother who knew enough to help him out of trouble,
was that what you were about to say?”

“Not much it wasn’t!” with a quick little flash from expressive eyes.
“I’ve got exactly the kind of mother I like best; but I wish I had
brains enough to see through a thing, without everlasting drudgery;
I spend more time on my Latin than all the fellows do put together,
and then don’t more than half know. Ray, now, could tell in two
minutes what all this fool stuff is about. Why can’t I see it?”

Then from a voice just behind him came a surprising suggestion: “What
if you should let me have a peep at it, young man? I used to be
called a fairly good Latin scholar once; I may not have forgotten
all of it.”

Derrick turned suddenly. Up to that moment he had not noticed that
his Aunt Elsie was in the room; and he thought he would not have been
more astonished if the bronze figure supporting the droplight
had offered to help him.

“Do you know Latin?” he asked, with an emphasis on the pronoun that
marked his amazement. His aunt laughed good-naturedly.

“Try me,” she said, as she reached for the book in his hand. “I used
to be somewhat familiar with this book, which is open to the very
page over which I once puzzled, for—I believe I won’t confess
how long; but I’ll venture to guess that this second paragraph is the
one that you sit up nights with.”

“You’ve guessed right the first time,” he said, gleefully. “If you
can help a fellow out of a snarl like that, I shall conclude you are
a witch. None of the boys can make sense of it.”

As he spoke he kicked a hassock toward her and seated himself on it;
Aunt Elsie, book in hand, bent toward him, and for the next half hour
the two were absorbed. At the end of that time, Derrick gave a
triumphant whistle.

“There you are!” he stopped to say, pounding his translation for
emphasis. “Straight as preaching; never believed it could be done.
I say, Aunt Elsie, you’re a trump! Who would have thought that
old—I mean that a woman of your age would—would be interested
in Latin!”

Aunt Elsie laughed. “I used to be wonderfully interested in it,”
she said. “Very few of the girls in our neighborhood studied Latin;
it wasn’t as common then as it is now, but I wanted to do everything
that my brother did. The brother you are named for was the best Latin
scholar in our school.”

At this Derrick frowned slightly, and cast a quick look at his aunt
as he said: “I was named for my grandfather.”

“I know—and for your Uncle Derrick as well; your father’s brother;
you know of him, of course?”

By this time they were alone; Jean, after yawning over her books
for a while, had declared herself too sleepy to study, and said
good-night. A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Forman had slipped away
to see if her husband’s head was better, leaving the two absorbed
ones to their Latin. Derrick glanced around to make sure that no one
else was within hearing before admitting that he had heard of such a
person, but had never felt any great desire to claim him as an uncle.

“Then you do him very great injustice,” his aunt said, quickly. “He
was worthy of your respect, as well as your love; you didn’t know
him, of course, but I did; I knew him as a child, and he was the
dearest big brother a little girl ever had; if you knew all that I do
about him you would be proud to claim Derrick Forman as an uncle.”

Derrick, the nephew, made flourishing capital D’s all over the
blank half page in his exercise book and considered.




CHAPTER V

A SENSE OF HONOR


PRESENTLY he asked a question: “Wasn’t there something pretty shady
about him, Aunt Elsie? I never knew just how it was, only—well,
mother told us kids not to ask father any questions about his oldest
brother because it made him feel badly to even think of him, and I
know we got to feeling that he wasn’t the sort of uncle to be proud
of, to say the least.”

Then he had a new view of his aunt; her gray eyes flashed as he
had not dreamed that they could, and her voice rang: “Do you mean me
to understand that that old story is hanging around yet! Doesn’t
Joseph—doesn’t your father know that there wasn’t a word of truth
in it?”

“I don’t know much about it, Aunt Elsie, that’s a fact. Mother told
us children once, a good while ago when I was just a kid, about the
stolen money, and how they came to know that father’s brother took
it; and—” Aunt Elsie interrupted him:

“They didn’t know any such thing; it was false, Derrick, utterly
false; your Uncle Derrick did not take a penny of that money any more
than you did, and they drove him wild trying to make him confess
a thing that he had never done.”

“Well, anyhow, they thought he did; and he ran away and stayed away,
didn’t he? And isn’t that just exactly the way a thief would act?
What made him do that, if he was all right?”

His aunt spoke more quietly, she was evidently holding herself
in check, but her voice was as firm as before:

“It seems almost beyond belief that you haven’t been told all about
it. I can not think that your father doesn’t understand; it doesn’t
seem possible that Evarts and Caroline could have been so cruel
as not to—but there! I mustn’t judge them; they must have thought
they were doing right.”

Derrick’s interest was on the increase; his own opinion of Uncle
Evarts and Aunt Caroline was such that he could fancy them doing
anything they pleased which would further their own interests.
He closed his Latin reader with a slam and, leaning forward, elbows
on his knees, in the attitude of attention, said eagerly:

“Begin at the beginning, Aunt Elsie, and tell me all about it.
Honestly, I never heard much about father’s home folks and the time
when he was a boy.”

“The beginning of this,” said his aunt, “dates back to the time
your Uncle Derrick chose for a friend a boy who wasn’t worthy of his
friendship. I suppose you never heard of Horace Beach? I knew him
well, and never liked him, although he was smooth-spoken enough,
and tried to pet me; it seemed as though I always knew he was a kind
of sneak. He was several years older than Derrick, and had great
influence over him; mother used to say that Horace Beach could make
him do anything he chose. The last time the fellow was at our house
was a Christmas vacation; Derrick coaxed to be allowed to bring him
home with him, because his mother was in Europe and he was lonesome;
and he had word to go out and join her, before the vacation was over.
If she had only sent a few days sooner poor Derrick’s life would have
been very different.”

“What happened?” questioned the listener. He saw that his aunt was in
danger of losing herself among mournful memories.

“Why, father’s old college friend, Colonel Banks, was visiting us,
and one evening he showed us children a very curious leather belt
that he said he always wore when travelling; he was a great
traveller. I think he had been twice around the world, and that was
a great feat in those days. The belt was to carry his money; gold, he
always had, for his journey. He said he would be for weeks together
where there was no bank or exchange office, or any way to get money.
It is all arranged differently now, but he grew to liking that way
so much that he said he carried his money about with him even when he
was where banks were handy. He had it filled with gold that night;
he showed it to us. The bag had an opening at one end that shut with
a spring lock, and one who did not understand couldn’t have opened
it. Then he showed us how it clasped about his waist, with another
spring, that he said sometimes he couldn’t unlock, himself, without a
good deal of fussing. I guess I remember every word he said about it,
and every other thing that happened that night and the next day;
it seemed sort of burned into me; and I wasn’t quite nine years old,
either. While he was showing us this, and talking about it,
a neighbor came to call; and very soon after that the boys, Derrick
and Evarts and Horace, asked to be excused, and went up stairs.
As Derrick was passing out, Colonel Banks motioned to him and gave
him the money belt to carry to his room. He told him to open the
valise that he would find there and lay it inside—and that was the
last that was ever seen of that money belt.”

Derrick, the listener, whistled sharply to express his dismay.

“Yes,” said his aunt, as though he had spoken, “it is dreadful, but
it is true. There is no use in my trying to tell about the days that
followed; I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Poor Derrick acted so very
strangely; at least it seemed so to us at the time. He admitted that
he took the belt from Colonel Banks’ hand, but he said that he did
not take it up stairs and did not know what had become of it.”

“Rot!” said young Derrick. “How could he expect anybody to believe
 such a story?”

“I believed it,” Aunt Elsie said, firmly. “I was only a little bit
of a girl, but I never believed for a single minute that your Uncle
Derrick stole that belt; not a bit more than I believe it now.”

“And didn’t he, Aunt Elsie, honor bright?”

The boy had a flash from the gray eyes then. “Didn’t I tell you that
there wasn’t a word of truth in that wretched story? That dreadful
boy, who was three older than Derrick and ought never to have been
his companion, was the thief; and Derrick, because of a false sense
of honor, wouldn’t even explain the circumstances that would have
helped to find out the truth. Don’t you know that there are boys
trustworthy in all other ways who have a mistaken idea of friendship?
They think they must shield a friend even to the extent of doing
injustice to others, no matter what he has done.”

Derrick Forman flushed under this remark and shot a quick questioning
glance at his aunt; did she possibly surmise how sorely he was being
tempted just now in that very direction? A “false sense of honor,”
was it really that? How much did she know, anyhow? Whatever she knew
or surmised she made no sign, and continued her story:

“Well, that is just what poor Derrick did; stuck to it that he was
telling the truth, and did not know anything about that money belt.
And as he was used to being believed he was amazed to find that they
doubted him. In a moment of horror over the discovery that some
people actually thought him a thief, he did, as you said, the very
worst thing for himself that he could do—ran away.”

“Was my father at home then?” interrupted Derrick.

“Oh, no; Joseph had been gone from home for two years, when Derrick
went away.”

“But didn’t father go back home for vacations and such things?”

“Not very often, nor for long at a time; he was with your Grandfather
Stuart, you know. I don’t think he was very happy at home. He and
Evarts didn’t get on well together.”

“I don’t wonder at that!” young Derrick interrupted under his breath.
His aunt took no notice.

“And mother—mother didn’t understand boys very well; Evarts was the
only boy she ever had, you know, and Joseph and Derrick were
different from him, and so—well, I needn’t go into that; but after
I was grown up I had a feeling that perhaps mother was—was a little
hard on Derrick; I don’t know; she meant to be good.”

Aunt Elsie’s eyes had dimmed and her voice faltered. Her nephew
was watching her with keen, searching eyes. In his heart was a
thought that, given voice, would have been: “If she goes back on her
own mother I won’t have anything to do with her.” He was conscious
of a distinct feeling of relief when her voice dropped into silence.
Still he was eager for more and urged her on with a question:

“Didn’t grandfather believe what his son said? My father would take
my word in spite of all the evidence against me that could be trumped
up.”

“You have a good father, Derrick; I hope you will see to it that you
honor the trust he has in you. Your Uncle Derrick made a mistake;
I can’t deny that; he would be the last one to want me to; and
father, I suppose, was stern; he was the very soul of honor himself,
and there had never been a stain on the family name; he didn’t mean
to be oversevere, and mother didn’t but—” That last little word
was eloquent, especially when followed by silence.

Derrick shook himself impatiently and sat up straight; his heart was
beginning to insist on some one besides Aunt Elsie who would champion
his Uncle Derrick; she was not noticing him; she sat with folded
hands and eyes dropped; apparently she had gone back into the past.
After a moment she began again:

“As a matter of fact your Uncle Derrick did not run away, he simply
ran after that young man, Horace Beach. I don’t believe he ever meant
to stay away; he just thought, boy fashion, that he would find Horace
and get everything straightened out. You see, it was this way: When
they went out of the room that night Derrick remembered that he must
look after the furnace before he went upstairs, so he handed the
money belt to Horace and told him to lay it in Colonel Banks’ room,
and that was the last he ever saw of it! He wouldn’t mention that
part, because he thought it would be casting suspicion on his friend;
and Horace was to leave at daylight the next morning, so he had
a good chance, you see, to make away with it.”

“Well, didn’t he follow the sneak, and make him own up?” young
Derrick asked, in great excitement.

“Oh, yes, he followed him, all right; that was why he seemed to be
running away; he went off in a hurry, without explaining anything
to anybody. But he was too late in New York; the steamer that was
to carry Horace out to his mother in London had ready sailed. So,
then, the poor boy wrote to him, and it must have been a pitiful
letter; he begged Horace to own up to it for the sake of father—
Derrick just about worshipped his father, and he knew it was breaking
his heart to think that a son of his had become a thief!”

“But, Aunt Elsie, I don’t understand it at all! How did you find all
this out, and when?”

“I didn’t find it out until long afterwards. Horace Beach answered
the poor boy’s letter with an indignant denial of any knowledge
of the money belt, even hinting at the belief that Derrick had taken
it himself, and was trying to put the blame on him! And it wasn’t
until death came to the rescue, years and years afterwards, that we
knew the truth. Horace Beach, on his dying bed, had the whole story
written out, his confession, you know, and his terrible remorse
for the whole thing. The minister, who had been coming every day
to see him, wrote it out just as he told it, and as soon as Horace
was gone he sent it to Derrick. But by the time it reached him Horace
had been in the grave for more than a month; you see, nobody knew
just where he was, and that good minister went to all sorts
of trouble to have him traced.”

“And when did my uncle come home?”

“He never came home, Derrick; we never saw him again. You see, he was
dumbfounded over Horace’s answer to his appeal; he had fully counted
on his making everything right; up to that time he believed in his
friend, and thought that it could all be accounted for by a
confession of carelessness on his part. Then he began to realize
how his own rushing away would look; and it seemed to him that he
could not go back without any proof of his innocence, since they
had not believed his word; so he just stayed away. He was only a boy,
remember, and couldn’t realize how much better a straight-forward
course all through would have been. He got a chance to work his way
out West, about as far as he could get, in those days, and there he
stayed; all the time hoping and believing that something would happen
to make it possible for him to go home with an unstained name. But
the confession came too late for father. When at last Derrick wrote
the full account of it to mother, sending her copies of the
minister’s letters, father had been gone for a long time. Derrick
knew that; he managed somehow to get news of the family though we
never any of us heard from him. He wrote to mother several times,
after that; and sent her the $100 that was in the money belt, with
interest, to be forwarded to Colonel Banks. Horace Beach himself
had looked out for that part. He hadn’t the excuse of poverty
to plead for his theft; they had plenty of money; but it seems he had
got into some scrape and made debts that he knew his guardian would
not allow, and this money belt full of gold came to him as an easy
way out of trouble. He knew he was going abroad for a long stay, and
he knew that Colonel Banks was a rich man; it seems he thought that
there wouldn’t be much fuss made about so small a sum as a hundred
dollars, and that by the time he came home it would all have been
forgotten. The dishonesty of it did not seem to trouble him; he must
have been very strangely brought up.”

“So my grandfather died before it was straightened out,” interrupted
Derrick. “That’s too bad! But they let everybody know about it then,
of course? Why wasn’t father told?”

“That,” said Aunt Elsie, earnestly, “is a part that I can not
understand. Evarts had the business of the family to attend to, and
we supposed, of course—Derrick, are you quite sure that your father
doesn’t know about it?”

“Of course I am, dead sure; it isn’t two months since he reminded me,
one night in talk we were having, that I had my grandfather’s name,
which no breath of dishonor had ever sullied, so far as he was
concerned; and while he didn’t say anything out plain about Uncle
Derrick—he never has to me—he knew that I understood where the
dishonor came in. That wouldn’t have been one bit like father, if he
had known all this.”

“No,” said Aunt Elsie, “it wouldn’t.” Then she set her lips in a way
that made her firm chin look firmer still, as she added: “He shall
know it, though, before I am a day older.”

It was at that moment that Mrs. Forman returned to remind Derrick
that it was growing late and that he had a hard day’s work coming.

“That’s so,” the boy said, springing up: “And I’ve got a whole page
to copy into my exercise book before I sleep!” Whereupon he kissed
his mother in haste and disappeared.




CHAPTER VI

RAKING UP AN OLD DISGRACE


AUNT ELSIE was true to her word, and on the evening following her
long talk with her nephew, Derrick, came her opportunity.

Mr. Forman was on the couch in the little sitting-room resting from
a day of hard work, while his wife read the evening papers aloud.
His sister was the only other listener.

In the midst of the reading Mrs. Forman was summoned to the aid of a
neighbor who was ill, and Aunt Elsie offered to read in her stead.
This was done with such acceptance that Mr. Forman was moved
to compliment. “It isn’t often I find a reader who is as satisfactory
as Louise,” he added. “Most of the young people read too fast, and
those who don’t, mumble their words.”

“I had a long apprenticeship,” his sister said. “I used to read
to father by the hour. Through that long illness of his it seemed
as though I was always reading to him. We began reading aloud when we
were little children, you know. Don’t you know how father used to
have Derrick in to read to him every night after supper? Derrick was
a good reader for a boy, wasn’t he?”

Mr. Forman made a sound as of assent, and she went on sturdily: “You
don’t remember those evenings as well as I do, I suppose; you went
away from home so early. Derrick was naturally a stay-at-home boy;
he never seemed to care to run with the other boys, evenings,
as Evarts did, and he seemed to understand just what parts of the
paper father wanted, without being told. I have always been thankful
that father had so much comfort with his boy.”

If she hoped to awaken sympathetic response she was disappointed.
Mr. Forman remained silent, with his face shaded from view.

But Aunt Elsie’s resolve was strong within her, and although she
stood somewhat in awe of this grave brother, of whom she had seen
very little since her childhood, she went bravely on:

“Doesn’t it seem almost too bad that Derrick’s whole life should have
been shadowed and he separated from all the people he loved just
through a mistake?”

Forced to speak, Mr. Forman made his words few:

“I should have to call it by a graver name than ‘mistake.’”

“For Horace Beach, you mean? Yes, of course, his part was sin; though
I don’t think even that was premeditated; it was just a sudden
temptation that he was too flabby to resist. But I was thinking
of father, and—” There was a second’s hesitation, then she added,
bravely: “And mother. It was such a dreadful mistake on their part
not to trust a boy who had never deceived them. Of course, he was
wrong, as well as foolish, in hurrying away without confiding
in them, but even that grew out of the natural nobility of his
nature, and he never would have done it in the world if father
had shown confidence in him. I heard your Derrick say, last night:
‘My father would take my word in spite of all the evidence against me
that could be trumped up,’ and I’m sure you would. If our father
could only have seen it his duty to trust the boy in spite
of appearances, all these wasted years need not have been.”

Mr. Forman pushed aside his hand-screen and came to a sitting
posture, with a quick motion and an incisive question:

“Elsie, what in the world are you talking about?”

Despite the boy Derrick’s strongly expressed belief, that ought
to have prepared her, she was startled; what she had thought
all through the years still had her in possession. On thinking
it over after her talk with Derrick, she had decided that he was
mistaken. Joseph simply had not credited his brother’s tardy
explanation, and so had chosen to say nothing about it to his
children. She had hoped for a chance to ask him if he thought this
was fair to his dead brother; but if he really was ignorant of the
facts all that she had said must have been hard for him to hear.
Now she must do as Derrick said: “Begin at the beginning.” She gave
the story in more minute detail than she had for the boy, adding
little illuminating incidents gathered from various sources
through the years. After the first few minutes Mr. Forman asked no
more questions; he dropped back among the cushions and again shaded
his eyes from the light. When he finally spoke it was in a voice
husky with emotion:

“I would have given my life for that boy. I thought of him as my
special charge; my mother gave him into my care with almost her last
breath; I was to ‘look after him for her.’ And I tried, I tried hard,
as long as I had a chance. When the stepmother was—well, never mind
that; I did my best, and I thought he trusted me fully. When he
disappeared in that terrible way, making no sign, and giving me
no chance to help him all through the years, it broke my heart.”

The silence of years had been broken now; the rush of words
that followed, and the strong excitement under which they were
spoken, would have amazed those who knew Mr. Forman only as
a reserved, silent man, who looked much older than he really was.
His half-sister seemed to understand.

“I know—” she said, sympathetically; “it was hard; and it seems
too hard that you have never until now known the truth!”

“Why didn’t he write to me?” Mr. Forman broke out again. “Why didn’t
he confide in me? He might have known that I—” His voice broke and he
stopped abruptly. His sister’s voice was very gentle:

“He made mistakes, Joseph; it was a mistake to go away as he did,
with all the appearance of running from discovery; he realized it
all, afterwards; but he was very young; he said he was ‘young and
foolish and proud.’ I suppose it would be hard for you to imagine
just how you would feel or act if people should suddenly refuse
to believe your word! I think it sort of stunned him.”

But Mr. Forman had already dropped into silence, his face almost
entirely hidden. His sister had never felt a stronger desire
to bestow comfort than she did at that moment. Also, there struggled
within her another feeling, that of fierce indignation. Memory had
taken her suddenly back to an afternoon of long ago when she and her
brother Evarts were walking home together from Sunset Rock. A chance
word had reminded her of the lost brother, and she had said
how strange it was that he had never written to Joseph, his own
brother, who used always to be looking out for him. She could almost
hear Evarts’ words in quick response:

“It’s a mighty good thing he didn’t. Joe had a terribly soft streak
in him where Dick was concerned; the scamp would have been sure
to pull the wool over his eyes; it is a great wonder, though, that he
didn’t try it. He really did the only decent thing left for him to do
after disgracing us all. I didn’t expect it of him. I was looking
for years to see him come whining back, by letter, at least, asking
for help, and wheedling father out of more money than he spent
in searching for him.”

Every word Evarts spoke seemed to have burned into her memory. She
recalled how angry he had made her, and how eagerly she tried to say
something in Derrick’s favor.

It was years after that talk before she knew of Derrick’s letter
to his one brother, and his failure to answer it. That memory also
was connected with Evarts, speaking volubly. He was making one of his
flying visits to her at the old home and she told him of it.

“I am very glad to hear it,” he said. “If Joe ever received a letter
from Dick—which I doubt—and failed to answer it, he showed more sense
than I ever gave him credit for having. Silence was the best possible
answer. There is no use in raking up an old disgrace and trying to
smooth it over at this late day; that’s a piece of wisdom you would
do well to take to heart yourself; silence is golden in such
affairs.”

As the sentences came back to her through the years with startling
clearness, they came fraught with new significance in the light of
Mr. Forman’s words just now spoken; could it be possible that—
she must know.

“Joseph,” she broke the silence abruptly, “didn’t you once, a long
time ago, have a letter from your brother Derrick about the—his
trouble?”

“Not a line,” came huskily from behind the shielding hand. “Never a
single word or sign from him since the night he disappeared.
I believed that I should; I watched for it through years; I told
myself that if Dick were in the land of the living he would surely
write to me, some time. I kept hoping for it against all odds,
until—” His voice dropped again. His sister struggled with her dismay
and indignation, and spoke earnestly:

“Joseph, he did write you two letters at different times, long ones,
and told you everything.”

Mr. Forman sat erect again. “Where are they?” he demanded.

“That I do not know; I wish I did. Oh, I should be glad to feel
certain that they were lost in the mails!”

If he followed her thought, he made no sign, but thrust at her
another question:

“How do you know this to be so?”

“He told me, himself. No, I don’t mean that I saw him,” she added,
quickly, in response to the look on the questioner’s face. “He wrote
to me. He wrote very often; after everything was made plain by that
young man’s confession, we corresponded for years. The reason he did
not write to you during that time was because he thought you did not
credit the story of the stolen money, and did not want to have
anything to do with him. I shall have to confess, Joseph, that I
thought the same. I am afraid I have thought of you all these years
as a hard man. If I had imagined for a moment how it was, of course
you would have been told long ago all that I knew; and I should have
begged you to write to him.”

After that the stillness in the room grew oppressive to Elsie. Her
heart seemed to be beating too fast, and her head throbbed with pain.
It seemed to her that she had done no good at all and had been very
cruel. Joseph was not in any sense of the word a “hard” man, she
assured herself; she had been a member of his household long enough
to be sure of that. A reserved, silent man he might be;
a disappointed man in many ways, and one harassed by daily anxieties;
all this was plain enough; she ought to have been doing something
to help him, instead of telling him what would open old wounds and
set them to bleeding. Yet how could she avoid it? Derrick Forman’s
name ought to be cleared of reproach, and who could desire this more
than his own brother? Even while he groaned over the thought of all
that might have been had he known the truth, would he not be glad
over the fact that his brother had never forgotten him for an hour,
but had loved him to the end? Suddenly a new fear struck her, and she
spoke, abruptly:

“Joseph, you know, don’t you, that he—died?”

“Yes,” came after a moment of tense silence, “Evarts told me that.”

The emphasis on the last word was strong; it was plain that he
suspected their brother Evarts of unfair dealing; she could not blame
him for that; her own indignation was almost beyond control. It
appeared that Mr. Forman had no intention of hiding his belief.

“What possible object could Evarts have had in keeping me
in ignorance of all this?” was his next word.

She found it easier to reply from this standpoint than to try to keep
up the pretence that Evarts was not in it; yet she felt the need
for caution. Nothing was to be gained by widening unnecessarily
the chasm that already separated the half-brothers. She began
timidly:

“Long ago, before Derrick’s reputation had been cleared, for others,
I know Evarts was afraid your brother would appeal to you, some time,
for help that he—that Evarts did not think he deserved; and that you,
because you were tenderhearted, would cripple yourself and injure
him, by sending him money. Then afterwards—I don’t think Evarts ever
placed as full confidence in that young man’s confession as the facts
warranted—he never wrote a line himself to Derrick; he just lived
along through the years, half distrusting him. Joseph, I hope you can
forgive me, but that is what I honestly thought you were doing,
yourself. Remember, I did not know that you had not been told the
facts. Evarts must have judged you by himself, and decided that the
less said about it the better. I don’t uphold him in it, though; and
I can hardly realize even yet that any of this is new to you.”

“If I could only tell him!” This was the cry that suddenly broke from
the man who was crushed under the feeling that he had been untrue
to the trust imposed on him by his dying mother, and he could never
explain to any of them.

Later there would undoubtedly be room for fierce indignation; later
he would think of those two letters that would have changed
everything, and that ought to have reached him. His sister felt sure
that he would try to ferret out the truth. She knew that one letter
had been directed to the old home, and that Joseph was not there, and
that Evarts had charge of the daily mail. Could he possibly have—
And then she shut her lips firmly, as if by so doing she could shut
out thought; she must not think further in that direction; she must
remember that Evarts at the time was only a head-strong,
self-sufficient boy. And yet Joseph could not be blamed for being
determined to know the truth. It was all beyond her management.

But after all, the uppermost feeling of her heart at the moment
was the longing to comfort Joseph. He was more stricken than she had
supposed he could be after all these years. That bitter cry, “If I
could only tell him!” had thrilled her soul. Wasn’t there something
she could say to help him? She began timidly:




CHAPTER VII

THE RESCUED LIFE


“JOSEPH, you must not think of your brother Derrick’s life
as spoiled; it was far from that. No outward trouble could spoil
the life of such a man as he became. The work he accomplished out
there among the miners is building a monument for him that will never
crumble. He was a Christian who in a remarkable manner lived up
to his beliefs.

“Sometime, when you feel like hearing them, I should like to read you
extracts from some of his letters; they will tell you about his work
better than I can. And then I have letters from a few of the men
whom he helped, that I know you will like to read. They will bring
the tears, but they will be tears of joy. Doesn’t it comfort you,
Joseph, to find that, after all, it was of God? I mean that
he overruled everything and made the dear boy’s short life a success
in the truest sense?”

She knew that her brother was listening, although he said no word
in response; something about him gave her the feeling that every
nerve was strained to hear; she talked on.

“He wrote a great deal about your boy Derrick; the name pleased him
very much; I don’t know how many times he referred to it. He said
that, of course, the name was chosen for father’s sake, but he was
in it, too; and he said he had decided to have that other Derrick
live his life for him, the life that he had meant to live; and he
believed he would manage it a great deal better than Derrick the
second could have done it.”

A groan from the listener made her hasten to add:

“He didn’t say such things in a gloomy way at all; in fact, he didn’t
seem ever to be gloomy. He was very happy over his daydreams. Once he
asked me if I knew that Derrick third was going to be a grand,
everyday Christian; he said the Commander had told him so. He had
a way of speaking about the Lord Jesus that was different from any
that I had ever heard. One of his choice names for him was
‘The Commander,’ and he always spoke exactly as though he were there
beside him; in person, I mean. He used to begin in the middle
of things. One Sunday evening he wrote like this: ‘We were out on the
hills together all the morning, my Commander and I, and the visit
we had refreshed my soul.’ You see he was, a great deal of the time,
far away from church services of any kind except such as he conducted
himself, and this particular Sabbath he afterward called his
‘ordination day.’ He said he was set apart that day by his Commander
for a special work. It was on that Sabbath afternoon that he held his
first service. This is the way he began telling about it: ‘“Let’s go
back,” said the Commander, “and gather the boys and talk with them
and sing with them and pray with them; of course they will let you;
I’ll take care of that part; don’t you be afraid.” So we went back,
and sure enough the boys were more than willing to listen. I told
them about the Commander, and how I followed his lead, every time,
and I read some words that he said to them out of “The Book.”’ He
always spoke of the Bible as ‘The Book,’ beginning both words with
capitals. Then he told about singing for them. Do you remember what
a singer he was, Joseph, even when he was a little boy? He said the
air out there among the mountains was grand to sing in. After a while
they sang with him, and the joy that it gave him when they began
to sing from the heart was wonderful to hear about. Oh, you must read
some of his letters! I never had anything come into my life that I
enjoyed so much; and it was more than enjoyment; they helped me
to live; seems as though I could hardly have got through with some
of the things I had to, without them.”

Her voice broke a little, and it was several minutes before she spoke
again, this time in a changed tone:

“I believe I will tell you about the book he wrote; a whole volume
in manuscript; nicely bound it is, too, and inscribed:”

“‘For Derrick Douglass Forman,
With his Uncle Derrick’s love.’”

“Written on purpose for him; a kind of diary I think, from what
he told me; he said he wrote a little or a good deal, every day
according as the mood seized him. Of course, I have never read a line
of it; you see, it was meant for no eye but the boy’s.”

“Do you mean that my boy has such a book in his possession?”

It was the first word Mr. Forman had spoken since the story began,
and the restrained eagerness in his question was almost pitiful
to hear. His sister made haste to answer:

“Oh, no; not yet; he knows nothing about it. You see, it was sent
to me after Derrick went to heaven, with the direction that I was
to keep it for his name-boy until he was seventeen, or somewhere
about that age; then, if I had come to know him well and judged that
he would care to have a book written for him alone, by his Uncle
Derrick, I was to give it to him; or if, at that time, or later,
it should seem to me that his Uncle Derrick would better not
be mentioned to him, I was just to burn the book and say no word.
It puts a great responsibility on me, doesn’t it? I was a good deal
worried about it for a while. That was the chief reason why I
persisted in wanting to come here this winter, instead of spending
the winter at some Old Ladies’ Retreat, as Evarts thought might
be best. I felt that I would have to get well acquainted with the
boy, in order to fulfill my trust; but I hadn’t been here a week
before I began to feel satisfied that he would get the book and prize
it, too. I did not mean to tell anybody about it, and I don’t hardly
know why I have done so now, only I felt moved to; but you will keep
my secret, of course.”

“I will, Elsie, God bless you.”

It was every word that the poor man felt able to utter. It seemed
to him that he could not make her understand, even if he had been
willing to try, what it would be to him to have one line of his very
own from the brother whom he had missed and mourned all his life.
Yet she understood better than he thought. When she spoke again
her voice was tremulous.

“Joseph, I think it must be hard for you to forgive me for not
telling you some of these things before. You can see how I misjudged
you when I confess that I did not think you would care to hear them,
and I shrank from the thought of trying to talk everything over
with you. I know now that I was a coward. I have a package of letters
that you will be sure to want. Every other line is about you, and you
will see how true and steady and strong was his love for you. One of
the letters was written but a few days before his death. It was sent
to me by one of his dear boys, a miner who was with him during all
that last night and who added a few misspelled lines straight from
his own sad heart. ‘The Commander was right there beside him, ma’am,
all night long’; that was the way he told it. ‘We boys couldn’t see
him, but he did; he told me so; and I knew it was so; and after a
spell he took him away; and we boys know he has got him safe, and
we’ll see him again.’”

She stopped abruptly; there were other portions of that letter
which she knew heart; but she was crying softly, and could not have
added another word.

“How much of all this does Evarts know?” Mr. Forman asked, at last.
“Why did he die? Evarts said they called it an accident, but he
had no doubt that it was a drunken spree of some sort.”

Aunt Elsie’s tears were suddenly dried; indignation came to help
steady her voice.

“Evarts had no right to say a thing like that. He knows nothing
but the bare facts, and even those it seems he has distorted. There
was an accident; a mine caved in; several of the men were injured,
but Derrick gave his life to save a boy, the young son one of the
mine owners, who had gone down with one of the workmen. Derrick went
down, after the accident, and brought the twelve-year-old boy up
in his arms. But another portion of the mine caved in just as they
reached the entrance. The boy was safe, but Derrick’s head was
struck. I suppose I am partly to blame for Evarts’ ignorance;
I could not seem to bring myself to talk over details with him,
though I thought he understood. He has been strangely prejudiced
all through the years; he could not seem to get his own consent
to believe anything but the worst of Derrick. Don’t you remember
that as children they never could agree about anything?”

But Mr. Forman could not discuss her brother with her, could not,
it seemed to him, say another word. Perhaps it was well for both
of them that they were interrupted.

Aunt Elsie, as she stooped for her crutch, said low to him one word
more that gave the final touch to the interview:

“The boy that Derrick sacrificed his life to save was named Joseph.”

Had she done good, or harm? This was the question that the poor lady
lay awake to consider. She had spoken more plainly of her brother
Evarts than she had meant to; but, after all, was it any plainer than
honesty demanded? Joseph would be very angry with Evarts. Could she
blame him for that? He would be sure to inquire why he had been kept
in ignorance of facts so vital, having to do with his own brother.
He would be sure to ask pertinent questions about those letters which
had never reached him, and Evarts would be angry, and blame her
for having “raked up the old disgrace.” Perhaps there would be an
open rupture in a family that had never been really united. Ought she
to have kept silence? But that would leave a good man to go on
thinking that his brother, whom he loved, was a disgrace and a
failure, instead of being a brother of whom he had a right to be
proud. She could never have done that. She assured herself that
people were not called upon to sacrifice the good name of one member
of the family merely for the sake of keeping peace. Joseph ought
to know the truth; if it made trouble, they had nothing to do
with that. Then she went all over the ground again, and yet again,
as people will, sometimes, even after they had resolutely settled
troubling questions. Those two letters haunted her. One she knew
was written in the very beginning of the troubles, just before
the boy Derrick had followed his guest as far as New York, and after
waiting there in feverish anxiety for word from Horace that would set
everything straight, had received the letter which overwhelmed him;
all the horror of despair which it awakened had been poured out
to this young brother whose help had never yet failed him. She had
seen a copy of the letter; Derrick had sent it to her once to prove
how earnestly he had tried, and failed. The other letter was written
years later, after the boy had given up all hope of reconciliation
with his family, and yet had yearned after this one brother.

Just what he said in that letter his sister did not know, save that
he wrote her, long afterwards, that the appeal he made, not for
material help of any kind, but for brotherliness and fellowship,
was such that “Joe wouldn’t have been able to get away from it
save for something like a vow that he must have made to cast him off
entirely.” There had been years during which this same patient,
longsuffering sister had been too angry with her brother Joseph
to have anything to do with him or his family, all on account of his
treatment of that letter, which now it appeared had been lost. But in
that phrase lay hidden the haunting question. Had it? Was it
reasonable to suppose that two letters written to the same person
several years apart had both been lost in the mails, while to that
same person other mail had come and gone through the years without
disturbance? It was possible, of course; for the honor of another she
could hope with all her heart that it was; but she could not make
herself believe it. She knew the exact date at which that second
letter was sent, and she knew that she was ill at the time, and
Evarts had made one of his flying visits to look after the property,
and had himself driven to town for the mail on the two days in which
it might have come; and Joseph at the time was at his Grandfather
Stuart’s, sixty miles away. Why had she always kept diaries of the
years to make her hopelessly certain of dates, and why must she creep
softly out of her bed at midnight to make sure that she was right
in her calculations? The watchful Ray in the little “closet” heard
the thump of the crutch and was on the alert.

“What is it, Aunt Elsie? Can I do something for you?”

“No, dear. I’m just an old fusser, and I had to know about a date
that was bothering me; I’ve found it, and I was right, all the time;
it is too bad to have waked you up. I just couldn’t get it out of
my mind.”

There was another thing that the poor lady could not get out of
her mind that night, and that was: How was she going to forgive
Evarts Forman for having helped to weave family tragedy that need
never have been?

Sometimes during the course of that restless night her thoughts
came back to the boy, Derrick. She wanted to have a little further
talk with him; she believed that the time had come when she might
at least tell him about the book, his book; and if he did not care
to possess it just yet she would offer to take care of it for him
until he did. Would he give her another opportunity to talk about his
uncle? Or had she said that to him which would make him more shy of
her in the future?

She need not have worried about that. Derrick Forman, Third,
who never did anything moderately, knew when he went to his room
that evening after their long talk that he had adopted his Aunt
Elsie. He assured himself that she was no more like Aunt Caroline
than a diamond was like a lump of mud, and he was going to make up
to her in every way that he possibly could for the loss of Uncle
Derrick.

It was only two days afterward, while Aunt Elsie in the little family
room was trying to decide whether or not to retire to her room,
ostensibly to write a letter, but in reality to give her brother
and sister a chance to talk over their daily problems without the
embarrassment of having a listener, that Derrick appeared, book in
hand.

“Hello!” he said, “I’m in luck; you are here and you’re not doing
a thing! Do you suppose you could give a fellow a lift out of another
hole?”

Both the father and mother began a protest: Aunt Elsie ought not
to be troubled with his problems; he should wait until Ray was
at liberty. But his aunt interrupted them eagerly. She would like
nothing better than to try.

“If it should happen to be one of the holes into which I tumbled
myself,” she said, gayly, “there is no telling what I might do. But
you young people of to-day have so many new-fangled ones that I’m
not sure—”

By this time she was glancing down at the page of the book
he carried, and broke off to exclaim:

“Why, dear me! here is one of our old Moral Science questions.
We argued about it all one recitation hour.”

“Moral what!” from the astonished student.

“Science. Somebody’s Moral Science, I forget his name; but that
was the name of our text book.”

“Great Caesar! Did they have an ‘Immoral Science’ that they studied?”

“Not so many as they have in these days,” she flashed back at him.
“But this book of yours is just the old questions in new dress.”

Then they bent to their work.




CHAPTER VIII

DERRICK FORMAN, THIRD


IT WAS after the lesson for the next day had been carefully gone over
and argued out, and while Aunt Elsie was debating with herself as to
the wisdom of referring to their former conversation, that Derrick
asked a question which settled the point.

“Aunt Elsie, do you mean that Uncle Derrick never came home at all,
after that time when he went away, a boy?”

“Yes, I mean that; he never saw the old home again. Before the cloud
was lifted from his name he said he didn’t want to come. You see,
he thought that nobody believed in him. Afterwards, when he might
have come, father was gone, and he felt as though he couldn’t bear
it, to come back and miss him. It was about that time that your uncle
began to write to me, regularly. Oh, dear, how I did enjoy those
letters! I want to show you some of them, some time; especially that
one he wrote about the boy who ruined his life, or at least did what
he could toward it; nobody can ruin a life that has been given to the
Lord, as his was.”

“Was he—different from other boys about that, Aunt Elsie?” questioned
the seventeen-year-old boy, with a shade of embarrassment. He did not
know just how to frame a question on such a subject. “I mean,
he always a—well, a church member?”

“Oh, no, he wasn’t; he was a good, noble-minded boy who tried about
as hard as any of them to do right; but he said it was his trouble
and the dreadful sense of loneliness which grew upon him, that led
him at last to accept the friendship of Jesus. He told me all about
it a little while afterward. I guess nobody ever before wrote to just
a sister such long, beautiful letters as he did to me; but you see
I was all he had; father and mother and all the rest of them narrowed
down to just me. It seems too bad. If your father—well, if they two
had only understood each other, it would have been a great blessing
to both. I thought it would break my heart altogether when those
letters stopped coming. It was different with me from what it is
with most girls; he was the only one who ever loved me much, except,
of course, mother and father; but I was lame from my very babyhood,
you may say, and homely, and shy; I wasn’t a bit like your
Aunt Caroline, ever; and he, being alone, and taking a homesick sort
of liking to the first real letter I wrote him, just adopted me
in place of all his other kin, except you.”

“Except me!” exclaimed the astonished boy.

“Yes, he took the most amazing interest in you from the very first
time he heard of you. Every little thing I could gather about you
from any source I had to repeat to him. It was your name
that especially interested him at first, and also one or two little
things that I wrote about you; when you were just a tiny baby
you used to remind us of your grandfather; and as you grew older
you had a quaint little way of tossing back your hair and lifting up
your chin, that was so exactly like him it was funny to see.
I described it all to your uncle, and it seemed as though he could
never hear enough. Then, of course, he was naturally interested
in Joseph’s boy; he loved your father, Derrick, with the kind of love
that brothers do not often get, and he seemed to include you in the
same feeling. He began, before you were two years old, to dream out
your life for you, and pray it out. I can show you letters that will
go straight to your heart. Since I have seen you here in your home
and have grown to feel that I really know you, I have wondered
if your Uncle Derrick didn’t understand you a little better than any
one else does.”

Her eyes had softened and taken on a dreamy, tender look. Young
Derrick, studying her face, respected the silence into which she had
dropped. When she spoke again her voice was lower and showed a
stronger effort at self-control.

“He sent me gifts, some of them very nice, and after he was gone,
there was a box sent to me of treasures that he had gathered through
the years; but I would have given them all up in a minute for the
sake of a little while with him. I was to go out to him, Derrick,
to live. The plans were all made, even to the day that I was to
start. I was to join friends of his at Chicago, and he had the route
all mapped out; the places where I would stop on the way, and every
detail arranged for my comfort. I have never told anybody about this
before. He wanted it so. That is, he advised me not to explain
anything to the others until a day or two before I was to start.
They were all gone from the old place at that time, every one but me;
I was living there alone with my good companion and friend, Hannah
Potter. I think Derrick had a feeling that some of the family would
try to persuade me out of going, if they knew it long before, but
they couldn’t have done it; I was in eager haste to go; I thought
about it day and night. He was quite a few years older than I, but he
never seemed so to me; being separated from him when he was just a
boy, he seemed to me always to stay so, while I knew that I had grown
old fast. I think I had some such feeling as a mother might have;
I looked forward to helping him; doing for him in all kinds of little
ways; I knew I could make a home for him, and that was what he had
missed. Then came the awful accident; and, after that, the end. Our
Father in heaven had ‘made home’ for him, but I was left outside.
I felt that I had lost the only one in the world who would ever
love me.”

With that last word her voice broke, and again there was silence
in the room. Derrick swallowed hard and tried to speak, but at first
no words would come. He had never been so moved in his life; the
pathetic story of his uncle’s wronged, desolate, loveless life, and
the sudden realization of his own part in the injustice done even
to his memory had made a profound impression. The boy had gone about
with it on his mind for two days; now here was this added touch
in the heart-break of a lame old woman with whitening hair, who said
that she had lost the only one in the world who would ever love her.
Not much she hadn’t! She should never have a chance to say that
again, anyhow. Suddenly he burst forth with words:

“I say, Aunt Elsie, can’t you take me for your boy? I’ll do my level
best to make up to you for—for everything; and I’ll try with all my
might to be the kind of man Uncle Derrick was, honor bright, I will.”

Said Aunt Elsie to herself as she limped to her room that night, “The
dear boy! I’ll give him the book to-morrow.”

It was left for Jean to do a little scoffing in a good-natured way.
“The entire family gone wild over Aunt Elsie,” she said, talking to
Ray, but for the special benefit of Florence and Derrick; the latter
stood with his hands in his pockets, whistling softly at intervals
while he waited for Ray to sew on a button. “You and mother adopted
her, from principle, of course, before she got here; no one expected
anything else of you two; then Florence tumbled headlong after her as
soon as it was found that she could hem invisibly, and darn, and
pucker, and do no end of wonderful things with her needle, not to
speak of her bits of choice old lace to be borrowed on occasion. And
here’s Derrick her devoted slave on account of Latin! Also because
she studied ‘Moral Science,’ whatever that was, in her girlhood;
but what am I to do? I’ve no dresses to make over, or good enough
to be adorned, and I don’t have Latin this year.”

They laughed, of course; there seemed to be no other reply for such
folly; though Florence, with a touch of indignation, protested
against being accused of self-interest; for her part, she did not see
how anybody could help loving Aunt Elsie; such a cheery, capable,
self-forgetful—

Jean interrupted: “Hear her use up the adjectives; there will be none
left for my prize essay. But there is only one thing left for me
to do in this family: I must plan something extraordinary;
an elopement would be nice if I only knew how to bring my part about;
I could be rescued at the last moment from the jaws of the tempter—
is that a good simile, Ray?—by the ubiquitous Aunt Elsie; and years
afterward, when I learned that the man was a forger, and burglar, and
several other villainous things, I should fall on my knees before her
in gratitude, and adore her forever after; that is the way they do
in books. Dick, if Aunt Elsie approves, you might call for me
at Sherwin’s about four, and we can make that promised call on the
Arden girls, about the programme you know; be sure you ask Aunt Elsie
first, though.”

With this parting thrust Jean vanished, laughing as she went, and was
presently seen hurrying down the street.

[Illustration: WITH THIS PARTING THRUST JEAN VANISHED, LAUGHING AS
SHE WENT]

Derrick echoed her laugh, although there was a heightened color
on his face; but Florence spoke her annoyance:

“I can’t think what has happened to Jean; when Aunt Elsie first came
she got on with her much better than I did, and now she is really
almost rude to her sometimes. Aunt Elsie takes it so patiently, too,
and is always bright and pleasant with her. I don’t know how
to account for the way the child acts.”

Derrick had already departed; there was no one to reply but Ray,
who said, by way of excuse, that Jean had to have her fun, and that
it must be remembered that she did not mean more than half she said,
when she was in one of her semi-sarcastic moods. But Ray, too, was
puzzled; she had been the first to notice the change in Jean;
certainly her present line of action was very unlike her.

Aunt Elsie had now been a member of the family long enough for all
to get their bearings, and, with the exception of Jean, they had not
only ceased to sigh over the family upheaval, but openly rejoiced
in the new member’s presence. “What would we do without Aunt Elsie!”
was a sentiment that in varying forms of expression was now
constantly heard in the household, but never from Jean.

That young woman, as she waited at the corner for her car, on the
afternoon in question, shook herself irritably, as if to shake off
some annoyance. It was her way of expressing dissatisfaction with
herself. As often as she was betrayed into expressions of annoyance,
thinly veiled in playfulness over the present state of things in her
home, she was ashamed of it.

“I need not have said that to Dick,” she told herself. “I need not
have said any of it, for that matter,” and it humiliated her to think
that she had again broken the resolution to “hold her tongue.”

It is doubtful if she understood herself any better than her family
did. Had she realized that her uncomfortable frame of mind sprang
from an ugly root named “Jealousy,” she would have been appalled;
had any one told her this she would probably have indignantly denied
it; yet in plain prose, she was jealous of her aunt’s influence over
Dick, who had always seemed to belong almost exclusively to her. The
two were so nearly of an age that they had taken their daily outings
in the same baby carriage at the same time; and had been all but
inseparable ever since. The fact that Jean was a few months older had
seemed to give her a kind of dominance over her brother; at least
he had followed her lead or fallen into line with her good-naturedly
when their views crossed, nearly all his life. This, until very
lately; she could not understand the change in him; within a few
weeks on two or three notable occasions he had not only differed from
her entirely, but persisted in carrying out his own ways, even when
they ran directly athwart hers. This he did with such cheerful
assurance as to exasperate his sister still further. Not knowing
how else to account for it, she decided to attribute it all to the
influence of the aunt of whom he had suddenly become so fond; and she
resented it.

“It is so ridiculous!” she said, with an angry toss of her head,
as the tardy car still kept her waiting. “He seems to be actually
infatuated with that lame old woman whom he called, when she first
came, ‘the homeliest critter he ever looked at!’ Ray and Florence
think he is ‘so changed’; I should think he was! Of course, I am glad
for some things; it is nice that he doesn’t want to stay out nights
any more, nor go to places that father does not like; but—couldn’t he
have done that for all our sakes, I should like to know! Just as
though she was the only person in the world who cared for him!
I believe I shall end by—” but here she suddenly checked herself;
she had almost said she would end by hating that old woman! She did
not mean that, of course; she was not even going to let herself think
it for a moment; Aunt Elsie was all right enough for those who liked
her; and there seemed to be plenty of them! Well, she had no
objections; why should she have? But as for bowing down herself,
to worship at the same shrine, she was never going to do it, and they
need not expect it; not if Aunt Elsie should say, every hour in the
day, that “Jean had a voice she loved to listen to.” What did she
know about voices? The only thing she wanted of her was to let Dick
alone.

As a matter of fact, it was altogether another influence that was
dominating her brother’s life and working its inevitable change
in his character. Long before this time he had received his book,
and read and re-read it. The smile with which he had first received
it at his aunt’s hand, after having heard its story, had in it
a touch of superiority.

It was pathetic to see how much she thought of that diary of Uncle
Derrick’s; he would take the greatest possible care never to let her
see that it couldn’t by any possibility mean so much to him. It was
fine, of course, to have a whole book written solely for one’s self,
and if his uncle had known how to write half so well as Aunt Elsie
thought he did, there would be interesting things in it about the new
country and the pioneer times in which he lived; but as for its being
so very wonderful, why, of course—Here he shrugged his shoulders and
laughed a little. All the same, trust him for helping Aunt Elsie
to think that he considered it the most wonderful book that was ever
written.

This, before he had read a line of it. Before he had read half a
dozen pages he had begun to realize that at least it was different
from any book of which he had ever heard.




CHAPTER IX

A DECISION, AND A STORM


IT WAS a book that laid bare a heart; the heart of one who loved him
with a love such as he had not imagined a man ever gave to any boy
but his very own. “If he had been my father,” Derrick thought, as he
read with bated breath, “he could not say more than that!” And the
very next sentence seemed to voice his thought.

“You think that is extreme for just an uncle? Ah, but you don’t know,
dear boy Dick—I am sure they call you Dick, they did me—that you are
my boy, my very own; I have adopted you with my soul; there can not
be any stronger tie than that. You see, you are all I have; you take
the place to me of father, mother and brother; I have lost them all.
There were reasons why I never had wife and children, so, my soul’s
son, I have adopted you. I could wish that your name were Timothy,
for I know I have the feeling for you that Paul had for his son. You
read the Bible, don’t you, my boy? You will find what I mean if you
study the love of those two. My boy, I want you to live my life for
me, do my work in the world, be myself as I meant to be, and missed.
Oh, I meant to do so much for father! I had such glorious plans
to enrich his life! I failed him utterly; I made a mistake, but you
will not; you will carry out for your father and your mother and your
home all that I meant to do for mine, and didn’t; and you will do
infinitely more; I feel in my very soul that you will be a better
Derrick Forman than I could ever have been; don’t you dare
to disappoint me, Dick; it would kill me.”

Derrick, the boy, drew an amazed, almost a frightened, breath. What a
strange idea as though he could take another boy’s life and live it
for him!

“It’s a lot more than I can do to live my own in the way it ought
to be lived!” he muttered; but he read on, like one fascinated.
Very soon he came to understand that the life of the man he was asked
to represent had been hidden in another life.

“The fact is, Dick,” the record ran, “that I am dead; did you realize
it? I have known it in a vague sort of way for a long time, but I
don’t believe I ever realized it fully until this morning when I read
it in the Book: ‘Ye are dead; and your life is hid with Christ
in God.’ I stopped and laughed. ‘Why, of course!’ I said. ‘What a
dolt I am not to have known that before! It was told me plainly
enough, only I didn’t take it in.’ Ever since I was a youngster
learning to read out of father’s big Bible at home I have known the
verse: ‘If any man be in Christ he is a new creature.’ Well, I am
‘in Christ.’ I am as sure of that as I am that I breathe;
I surrendered to him, body, soul and spirit; all I was, all I am,
all that I ever will be are his. Then, of course, the old Dick Forman
is dead! Good! He wasn’t worth much; I am glad he is gone. I’m ‘a new
creature,’ I live, ‘yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ ‘That sounds
egotistical,’ do I hear you say? Yes, but I didn’t say it—that’s
Bible, a blessed fact guaranteed by Christ himself. Now, you see,
if you are to live my life for me the part that I missed must have
this same experience; you must be a ‘new creature,’ Dick; the old one
isn’t worth shucks! I don’t want to live his life; don’t you be
persuaded into trying it; hide your life, hide it ‘with Christ
in God’; only then will you begin to live. Oh, Dick Forman, my boy,
my very self, given another chance! You will do this for me, won’t
you?”

Derrick closed the book with a bang and laid it as far away from him
as he could; was strangely moved, he was half awed, half indignant.
“The man was insane!” he muttered. Yet he knew better. He had been
a good Bible scholar in Sabbath school; those quoted verses were
familiar to him; intellectually, at least, he understood something
of their meaning but he had never thought of such a thing as applying
them to himself. After a little he opened the book again; he re-read
those same pages; he put the book from him several times, declaring
that he would read no more; the most of it was simply the ravings
of a lunatic. After a while he said he would wait until he was older;
boys like him could not be expected to be interested in such queer
notions; his Uncle Derrick lived so much alone that evidently his
ideas had become misty, unreal, unintelligible. There were days
together when the boy did not open the book, but passed it hurriedly,
with a wish that he could forget it; there were hours when he hid it,
and told himself that he would never touch it again, and always he
went back to it and read again the very portions that had disturbed
him. At times he was genuinely angry over the appeals in that uncanny
book. He said that Uncle Derrick had no right to die and leave such
a book to him; it was like trying to steal a fellow’s individuality.
“A new creature,” quoted his memory, and he sneered; he didn’t want
to be a new creature; he was well enough satisfied as he was.
“Ye must be born again,” said a voice to his inner consciousness;
said it plainly, solemnly. He looked about him, startled; there had
been no real voice, he knew that; but it had seemed very real; and
those were not the words of his dead uncle, it was Jesus who said
that!

There came an evening when Derrick Forman, in the privacy of his
locked room, got to his knees, with the written book spread open
before him, and solemnly gave himself, body, soul, and spirit, to his
uncle’s God for time and for eternity. It had been a hard struggle,
unusually hard, for one so young and so well taught. Yet, perhaps,
it was on account of the teaching that he was so slow in reaching
a decision. Already temptations had assailed him which he knew must
be overcome if he was to become the kind of man that his uncle’s
Commander called for.

“But I’m glad of it,” he told himself on the night when he made his
great decision; “I’m glad it means out-and-out, downright,
everlasting business; I hate a half-and-half anything.”

Very soon he made the surprising discovery that he was happy in his
new life. He had not looked for that; at least, not yet, not for
years and years, probably. He had expected to make sacrifices and
meet crosses; he considered himself prepared for those, but the glow
of new and genuine joy was unexpected and took hold of him with
power. He began to understand some of the sentences in his book that
had seemed like the extravagances of a diseased brain; he spent much
time reading that book, studying the Bible quotations in it, hunting
in the public library for other books from which his uncle had quoted
as though they were familiar friends; he locked his manuscript book
with his Bible in his private drawer and took them out together;
he began to see that the life portrayed in the one had been lived as
a commentary on the directions of the other. Still, he was chary of
his new experience; it was not a matter to be talked of; at least,
not yet. He told his mother a little about it one evening when they
two were alone, and was astonished and touched to note that she
cried; she told him they were tears of joy; and that she felt as
though it didn’t matter much now how many troubles they had. He had
not supposed that his mother would care so very much. The next
morning when they walked down town together he managed to make his
father understand what had come to him as a result of a step that he
had taken, and he knew that he would never forget the words his
father spoke in reply; nor the look on his face, a little later, when
he straightened himself and threw back the shoulders that had begun
to droop, as he said:

“My boy, I feel ten years younger than I did when we started.”

Ray did not have to be told; she seemed to know by intuition what
great event had taken place. She lingered in the hall a moment after
the others had passed into the sitting-room—they had all just come
in from Sabbath evening service—and reaching up to her tall young
brother kissed a lingering, tender kiss, as she said: “My soldier
brother enlisted for life; I know I shall always be proud of him.”
Yet nothing had occurred at church, nor during the walk home, to tell
her that he had chosen a new Commander.

But with Jean, his heretofore confidante all occasions, Derrick
played shy. He could not decide how to tell her about this momentous
change which had come to him. A “new creature?” Yes, the phrase
described it singularly well, but to feel it, know it, was one thing,
and to describe it or account for it in terms that Jean would
understand was quite another. He had a feeling that Jean would not
want to understand; he and she had stood on the same plane as regards
these matters; they had exchanged witticisms over the weaknesses of
many professing Christians, especially among young people; they had
agreed that Ray was not like any of the others, but was
“unnecessarily good,” and, in short, had made the entire subject an
embarrassment when one came to talk about it from a standpoint that
the other had not seen. He decided finally not to say anything to her
about it; if his life did not tell her, without words, he assured
himself that it would not be much of a life; anyhow, he must wait and
see.

And so, Jean did not understand; she only felt in her brother
a subtle change difficult to define; she was not even sure that she
approved it; Dick had always suited her well enough just as he was;
she was able to see in it only the influence of the new member of the
family, and this she instinctively resented.

“It is simply ridiculous,” she told herself, half angrily, “for him
to be infatuated with that lame old woman, whom he called the
homeliest person he ever looked at! That’s nothing against her,
of course; I don’t think myself that she is so terribly homely, and
she is kind, and unselfish, and all that, but then—I don’t see what
has made the change in him! Of course, I am glad that he doesn’t want
to stay out nights as he used to, nor go to places that father
doesn’t quite like, but why couldn’t he have stopped all that long
ago for all our sakes instead of waiting until that old woman—” Even
unspoken words failed her, and she stopped abruptly; then, after a
moment, added, aloud: “I believe I shall end by—” But she had to stop
again; she had almost said she would end by hating that old woman;
of course, she was not going to say, or do, any such thing; but as
for falling down to worship her as the others were almost doing she
never should, and they need not expect it; she was sure of one thing;
she did wish Aunt Elsie would let Dick alone.

It might have been a restless dissatisfaction, born of the feeling
that in some undefined way she had lost her boon companion, which
made the usually sweet-spirited Jean appear at great disadvantage
during this period of her life. She seemed suddenly to have grown
self-assertive and obstinate. What she would and would not do grew
daily more pronounced, and culminated, one afternoon when she must
make a journey across town for her music lesson, in a fixed resolve
to wear neither rubbers nor raincoat; no, nor carry any umbrella;
though Florence assured her earnestly that even the cat could see
that it was going to rain.

“I’m not a cat,” was Jean’s reply. “I don’t know why you should quote
her to me; and I’m not going to bundle up like a rheumatic old maid
when it doesn’t rain a drop.”

“Jean, dear,” came gently from Ray, “do wear your sandals, won’t you?
Because you know those shoes you have on are really very thin, and if
you should get caught in a shower—”

It is possible that but for Aunt Elsie’s eager second to this
suggestion the young girl’s reply might have been different. As it
was, she ignored her aunt entirely, and said in charming mimicry of
her sister’s tone and manner: “Ray, dear, I won’t do any such thing.
I hate rubbers to walk in, and I have nearly a mile to walk. I do
wish we had cross-town cars somewhere near this point.”

There followed for those left at home an uncomfortable afternoon. Ray
watched the swift-moving clouds with poorly concealed anxiety, and
Florence openly worried. Jean was by no means strong; she took cold
easily, and a cold with her always meant a more or less serious
illness. Florence, at the window watching the growing evidences of
storm, lamented that “mother” had not been at home to issue positive
orders to that reckless child. Why hadn’t Ray asserted authority as
the oldest sister and insisted on her taking at least an umbrella?

“She will ruin her hat, and it is the one with a plume, of course; it
will serve her right, too. There! it’s begun! do hear the pour down!
and there’s mother! she ran in at the basement door just in time
to escape dash!”

Mrs. Forman’s first word was about Jean. Had she gone prepared
for the storm? It had been gathering for several hours; why hadn’t
they insisted on at least an umbrella?

It proved to be no passing shower; the rain fell in torrents until
the streets were flooded, and then, after a while, settled into a
steady downpour. The Formans comforted one another as well as they
could; they said that it was a good thing it had rained so terribly
hard; Jean would, of course, wait until the storm was over, or until
some one came for her; she would never think of starting out in so
wild a storm without even an umbrella. As soon as Derrick arrived
he was laden with raincoat, rubbers, and injunctions, and started
forth again. But Jean, her reckless mood continuing, had grown tired
of waiting, and started out during a lull in the storm, making
herself believe that she could get home before it began again, or at
least get across town to a car line that would take her home by a
circuitous route. In this way Derrick missed her. Before she was a
block from the music school the rain was upon her again in full
force. Even then she persisted; it was of no use to turn back, she
assured herself; she was wet to the skin already, she might better
keep on than sit in wet clothes waiting. But she had not gone much
farther when she regretted that decision; the wind seemed to her
to be rising every moment; it was all she could do to keep from being
blown quite into the road. She had now reached a street lined on
either side with wholesale houses, whose closed and gloomy fronts
told her that the day was done, and furnished her with not so much as
an awning under which to hide. She struggled on, feeling the water
soak into her thin-soled, cloth-top boots; yonder, two blocks away,
was the high school; if she could only reach it, Derrick might still
be there and he could do something. She had only a carfare with her,
and this she believed made it impossible for her to call a taxi. All
her hopes centred in Dick, and he, poor fellow, was making all
possible speed homeward in the hope of finding his sister safely
arrived there. Alas for Jean, the high school was as closed and
silent and aloof as though hundreds of eager feet had not but an hour
or two before raced down its many steps and sped away from the storm.
She could not find even the janitor, and it seemed to her that she
could never walk those long, long blocks facing that dreadful wind,
and being pelted by the merciless rain.




CHAPTER X

DANGER, AND FEAR, AND ASSURANCE


BUT she accomplished it; drenched to the skin and too much exhausted
to give an account of her adventures or to answer the eager questions
of Derrick and Florence. The mother cut the questionings short, and
herself undressed and wrapped in blankets the shivering girl, while
Ray ran for hot water and Aunt Elsie herself limped to the kitchen
to prepare a hot drink. They all worked swiftly and skillfully
to avert what they feared, and did not succeed. Before morning it had
become evident that Jean was seriously ill. With the first
glimmerings of dawn the family physician’s machine waited at the
door, while its owner made an unusually long call. In spite of all
that skill and prayer could do, Jean grew steadily worse; there were
three dreadful days in which, without words passing between them,
it was understood in the family that a life hung in the balance;
followed by an awful one in which friends from outside went about the
still house on tiptoe, and explained in whispers to anxious inquirers
in only three words: “She is sinking.” Then, suddenly, all
unexpectedly she rallied, and in a few hours the word went forth that
she had come back as by a miracle from the verge.

During all this time and in the anxious weeks that followed Aunt
Elsie was the very embodiment of rest and hope to every member of the
family. Her face remained calm even during those first terrible days;
she was able to smile a “good-morning,” and to say in cheerful tones,
“She isn’t a bit worse than she was last night; the doctor says so;
and that is real encouraging, you know.”

Through those early, fateful days Aunt Elsie had chiefly busied
herself for the comfort of those who watched, leaving to them the
chance to wait on the trained nurse, and do the little that they
could under her direction for their darling, and then to wait and
hover about, and interview the doctor, and know to the minutest
detail from minute to minute what was being done; while downstairs,
rooms got themselves put in order in unobtrusive ways, the open grate
fire was fed at just the right moment, Mr. Forman’s big easy chair
was always standing invitingly near in case he should be able to use
it, and the couch near it, with fresh pillows and a light cover, was
waiting to entice Mrs. Forman to drop down on it for a few minutes
of rest. When Ray, conscience-smitten over the heavy burdens of the
little maid in the kitchen, would rush down to help, she would find
everything serene and Rebecca voluble: “There ain’t a thing for you
to ’tend to, Miss Ray, not a blessed thing; you just run back and
stay with her all you can, poor dear! and you needn’t to worry about
anything down here; your aunt peeled the potatoes, fixed a salad and
done all the extras, and she is coming to season the soup the way you
like it; she’s a comfort, Miss Ray, she is that!”

Ray, as she sped back to the sick room, echoed Rebecca’s conclusion
with a full heart. In this time of stress what could they do without
Aunt Elsie! They had reason to emphasize this as the days passed; the
slow thump of the lame woman’s crutch was heard from all parts of the
house, and evidences of her thoughtful ministrations were everywhere.
When the immediate danger was past, and all that the sick one needed
was skillful care, Aunt Elsie rose up in a new capacity, joyfully
installing herself as “head nurse,” and insisting that the worn-out
mother and elder sister should take much-needed rest. She had
discovered a way, she declared, by which she could get up and down
stairs once a day without hurting her a bit; indeed, she believed
that the exercise would do her good; hadn’t she been trying it since
Jean was sick? One day she went up and down three times; and she was
alive yet and good for any amount of nursing. She proved it in the
weeks that followed. Outside of Jean’s room the house assumed normal
conditions. Mr. Forman returned to the desk where he spent his days,
Florence took up her work again in the city library, Derrick got the
consent of himself to go back to school, and Jean was left very
largely in Aunt Elsie’s care. Her mother was so manifestly exhausted
by the heavy strain that had been upon her, following as it had years
of undue strain and anxiety, that Jean was among the first to urge
strenuously for her complete freedom from care. Ray was installed
head of the culinary department, and by common consent Aunt Elsie
reigned in the sick room. And contrary to Ray’s fears, Jean not only
made no objection to this arrangement, but seemed to like it; she had
evidently lost the strange aversion she had shown for her aunt.
Certainly there could never have been a more satisfying attendant
upon a convalescent; Aunt Elsie was alert, and cheerful, and
competent; ready to read aloud in any book desired, or tell bright
stories of the long ago, or gossip about the daily doings and sayings
of the neighborhood, or be entirely silent, according to the whim of
the moment. It was during one of those periods of silence that Jean,
who had been quiet for a longer time than usual, suddenly asked:

“Aunt Elsie, that day when I was the worst, did you think I was going
to die?”

It was a very unexpected question; up to that time she had not spoken
of her illness except in the most general terms, and by common
consent the family had avoided any reference to those dreadful days
when her life seemed slipping away. Her aunt hesitated a moment
uncertain just how she should reply, but at last said frankly:

“No, dearie, I didn’t.”

“Why not? Every one else did. They thought I did not understand, but
I did; I knew all about it. I heard the doctor tell father, out there
in the hall, that I couldn’t live until morning.”

“I know, dear; and at first I feared so, too; but the feeling passed,
and I looked to see you better in the morning.”

“And I was; Aunt Elsie, I wish I knew why you looked for it, when all
the rest—didn’t.” There was the half-fretful insistence of the still
irresponsible invalid in her tone, and her aunt reached a swift
conclusion as to what would be best for her.

“If you won’t toss about and keep the covers flying,” she said
cheerily, “I’ll try to explain the way I felt. You have known of
answers to prayer, haven’t you? I had one that night. I had been
praying for you for, oh, a long time; I had a definite hope—I might
almost say plan—for your future, and your going away so early would
have overturned it all; so I asked the Great Physician to take your
case into his own hands, as he did so often when he was on earth, you
know. I prayed that prayer about all the time during those three
days; always, of course, meaning that if it was not his way I didn’t
want it; but I asked him to make it plain to me if I was not to pray
for that any more; and so, that night when you were at the worst he
told me.”

“Told you what? I don’t understand; you don’t mean he said real words
to you, and you heard him? Of course you don’t! I don’t understand it
at all!”

“Jean, dear, do you sometimes pray?”

“No,” she said, irritably. “I say words of course; I say ‘Our Father’
sometimes, and I used to say, ‘Now I lay me’—But I never felt as
though any of it amounted to anything, or was really heard.”

“Then I don’t believe I can make it plain to you. I did not hear any
voice, nor expect to; that does not seem to be his way; at least, not
now; but my anxiety left me, and in its place came a quiet sense of
assurance. I had not the least desire to pray that prayer any more;
instead, I said, ‘Oh, Father, thank you!’ When I heard that the
doctor had said you would not live until morning, I said, softly,
‘Yes, she will; the Physician who never loses a case has taken charge
of this one.’ I was so sure that I went to Derrick’s room and told
him to go to bed and to sleep, that you would be better in the
morning. But I can’t explain the experience to you any better than
that; and I really don’t expect you to understand it; some things
have to be lived, before we can understand them. You must just learn
how to pray, dearie, and see for yourself how he answers his
children.”

“What would you have thought if I had died that night?” asked
skeptical Jean; but her aunt only smiled quietly and asked:

“What would you have thought if the sun hadn’t risen this morning?”

“And you mean that you were just as sure as that? Well, anyhow,
I didn’t, it seems.” She was already ashamed of her cavil, but she
could think of no better way of saying so.

It was nearly a week afterwards that Jean, with her Aunt Elsie on
guard, was supposed to be settled for her afternoon nap. Instead, she
fidgeted, and declared herself not one bit sleepy. At last her aunt
proposed to read her to sleep.

“No,” she said, promptly, “I don’t want to be read to; I want
to talk; there is a question I want to ask. Do you think people
who are really going to die—right away, I mean—ever feel any other
way than afraid?”

“Oh, yes, indeed,” was the prompt reply. “Why, your grandfather was
no more afraid than you would be of going into your father’s room;
and I have been with others who felt in the same way; old people and
young, even little children who were afraid of the dark. One who
loved the Lord would not be afraid to go to him, you know.”

She had determined to make her reply as lengthy as she reasonably
could, in order that Jean might not weary herself with much talking.
Her hope was, also, that if she kept her voice low and evenly
modulated her charge would presently grow drowsy, but Jean spoke
in her most wide-awake tone:

“Well, I was afraid; I was awfully afraid! I don’t mean that day when
I was at the worst; I didn’t seem to care then what became of me;
I suppose I was too sick to think; but that first night I knew I was
going to be very sick; I could feel it all through me; I thought,
too, that I should probably die, and I was never so frightened in my
life! Mother said I was burning with fever, but it seemed to me that
I could feel the drops of perspiration inside of me, made of fear.
Aunt Elsie, it was awful! It frightens me now whenever I think of it.
Now, this is what I want to say.” She hurried on realizing that her
aunt was about to interrupt and urge her not to talk any more. “I’ve
got to say it; I never shall get to sleep if I don’t. I know I am
getting well now, real fast, but then, of course, I shall have to
die, some day, and it might be very soon, you can’t ever tell; and I
keep wondering if it really is possible, I mean when one is well and
not in any danger, to get hold of something that would keep one from
having that awful fear.”

“It certainly is, dearie.” Aunt Elsie’s voice was as calm and her
manner as assured as it might have been over an assurance of the next
morning’s sunrise. “One who loves the Lord Jesus Christ has no call
to be afraid over being sent for to go to live with him in the place
he promised to prepare.” Jean interrupted:

“But that is just it; I don’t love him; you can’t make yourself love
a person! I might say I did a thousand times over, in words, but that
wouldn’t alter anything.”

Aunt Elsie regarded the pale-faced large-eyed girl on the bed with a
kind of wistful tenderness in her eyes; the child had come so near,
so very near, to changing worlds, and had evidently not understood
how to take the first steps toward making a safe journey! She must
make it plain to her now, even though there had to be more talking.

“That is true,” she said, quietly. “You cannot make yourself love
anybody, but you can tell the rightful Ruler of this world that you
have decided to serve him, and him only, all the days of your life;
and if you do this with an honest determination to carry out your
resolve he will attend to the rest. You see, it is different from any
human love; he agrees, just as soon as you make deliberate choice of
him as King, to make such instant changes in your feelings that you
will never again be able to say you do not love him.”

Jean made an impatient movement among the pillows and spoke quickly:
“Aunt Elsie, that doesn’t seem possible! How could just deciding to
obey somebody make one all over new?”

“It doesn’t, dearie, it doesn’t at all; the deciding is only the part
which the Lord gives to you; he does the rest. How he does it I can’t
explain; we don’t have to understand how things are done, you know,
before we can believe that they are done. Jesus Christ said if we
were ever to belong to his kingdom we must be born again; and he also
said that if we would attend to our part he would see that that great
thing was done. Why not do your little part, dearie, and leave him to
attend to his?”

There was silence in the room for several minutes, then Jean drew a
long sigh, as she said:

“It seems small and mean to think of doing a thing that you don’t
want to, merely because you are scared at the thought of dying.
I don’t think I could be such a coward as that. I don’t want to be a
church member, and I don’t want to read the Bible; not regularly;
it doesn’t interest me; and I would lots rather read real good
stories and such things; and—oh, well, there are lots of things that
Christian people think they must do that I don’t want to do, and a
perfect jam of things that they think they mustn’t do that I want to;
now, how could it make me any better to pretend that I didn’t think
and feel just that way?”

While she talked, Aunt Elsie took swift counsel of her Lord. Here was
a lamb who clearly needed instruction in order to safely make the
fold, but she was growing tired and nervous; she ought not to argue,
she ought to be sleeping.

“Don’t pretend anything, dear,” she said. “We mustn’t talk much
longer now, but I want to ask you just two questions. Have you always
wanted to do just exactly the thing that your father wanted you to
do, and to leave undone what he wanted left?”

“No,” said Jean, promptly, “I haven’t; not by a good deal! But that—”
Her aunt interrupted:

“Wait, dearie, here is the other question: Did your not wanting to
follow his directions release you from the duty of obeying?”

“No,” said Jean again, and she laughed, a little shamefaced laugh;
even in her weakness she was quick-witted; she could not help seeing
just where her admission placed her.




CHAPTER XI

DIFFERENT ESTIMATES


“THEN,” said Aunt Elsie, pushing her advantage, “you see there is no
pretence nor cowardice about it; there is just a plain common-sense
decision called for, and if he shouldn’t do the rest, according to
promise, why—he would be the one to blame. Now, perhaps, we have
talked as long as we ought, for this time; if we keep real still
I think you can drop to sleep.”

Quiet reigned in the room for several minutes, during which the
watcher prayed, with all her soul, for the lamb outside the fold.
Then came Jean’s voice again:

“Aunt Elsie, I want to ask one more question. Do you honestly think
that people—young people, I mean, with life all before them—could
have really good times in the world if they had agreed to think
always first about pleasing God? I know Ray is happy, but there is no
use in pointing her out to me because she is different from other
people; she always was; I couldn’t be like her if I tried for a
hundred years; I don’t know another girl like her anywhere. She never
seems to fuss over things, and be almost cross because she is
trammelled by her professions; but that is the way Lucile Watson is,
and several others that I know, who seem to be trying at it, and
making poor headway. I don’t believe that I—” Here Aunt Elsie
interrupted:

“What about Derrick?”

“Derrick?” repeated Jean, in wonder. “Dick, do you mean? Why, does
he—is Dick—what do you mean?”

“He is the happiest boy I know anything about,” said Aunt Elsie.
“Just bubbling over with joy from morning till night—since you began
to get well.”

“But is Dick—do you mean that he is—that he has done—what you said
must be done?”

“He has given himself to Jesus Christ, enlisted for life, and I don’t
think I ever knew a more decided soldier, nor a happier one.”

“Dick!” Jean said, in wonder, and at the same time enlightenment
in her tone; this then was what had wrought that mysterious change
in him which had half vexed and wholly puzzled her. It was not Aunt
Elsie with whom he was in love, but—Jesus Christ! “Dick!” she said
again, softly, this time with awe in her tone; and she asked no more
questions, said not another word, although it was long before
she fell asleep.

Neither she nor her aunt referred to that particular conversation
again; at least not for many a day. As a matter of fact it was months
afterwards, when Jean, in radiant health and in love with life,
recalled a sentence that she had used that afternoon, and asked:

“What could you have thought of me, Aunt Elsie, didn’t you think
I talked like a lunatic, or an idiot?”

“I thought,” said her aunt, with a quiet smile, “that you talked like
a person who was not acquainted with Jesus Christ.”

“Well, I wasn’t,” said Jean. “I didn’t know anything about him nor
about religion, either; but I thought I did; I considered myself
very wise, and I had drawn my conclusions from looking on at those
who professed to know him, too. I think, after all, that the blame
for such mistaken ideas rests very largely with Christians, don’t
you? They don’t act as though they believed that the Christian life
was the best and happiest life to live, even in this world; honestly,
now, do you think they do?”

“A great many do not,” her aunt admitted, thoughtfully. “And a great
many others of us are false witnesses part of the time. I’ll tell you
what I think is the only thing that you and I can do about it; that
is, try each day to live in such a way that people looking on can not
truthfully say that of us.”

“I know it,” said Jean, humbly. “That is truly the way I want
to live. You see, I was so mistaken about it! I thought I must be
a Christian in order to get ready to die; after the awful warning
I had had, I realized that I simply must not risk having another such
experience; but I could not make myself understand that there would
be anything along the way but a lot of crosses for me to tug at.
I just long to live so that the girls will understand how much they
are missing in not choosing the same road.”

She stooped to kiss her aunt’s homely radiant face, and give her the
winsomest of smiles as she flitted away, and presently they heard her
clear voice sounding though the upper hall:

“I’m travelling toward life’s sunset gate,
I’m a pilgrim going home.”

“How much you love that hymn, don’t you?” Florence said, looking out
from her room to smile on the bright-faced girl.

“Yes,” said Jean, “I do; it gives me a kind of thrill to sing it.
I used to be afraid it; I liked the tune and could not help humming
it, but the words seemed impossible. Do you remember that night you
were going to a party in your glorified gown, and I kept singing,”

“‘I shall wake again at morning’s dawn,
I shall put on glory then.’”

“You said I was mixing things? That is the way I felt about it,
although I could not keep from humming it; but that was because I was
in love with the tune; the words repelled me; I thought it must be
awful to have to live with the thought of dying right before one all
the time; that is what I thought religion ought to be!” She laughed
gleefully. “It’s anything but that, isn’t it? Dying is just an
experience, somewhere along the road, that isn’t pleasant, in itself,
because it is associated with sickness and pain; but, after all,
it is only for a minute, compared with all the days and years; and
the living part all along is glorious, isn’t it?”

“It ought to be,” Florence admitted, gravely; and her eyes, as they
followed her young sister, had a wistful look. As she closed her door
she said within herself: “She has a different religion from mine,
some way; I wonder why it is?”

Following hard upon the joy and gratitude of the Forman family over
Jean’s complete recovery came the burden of bills, and bills, and
bills! so although nothing could take away that joy, it was tempered
with anxiety. Straining every nerve as they had been doing before
in order to meet their daily expenses and have a margin left to apply
toward that fateful mortgage, it was not possible to get through
the days, and especially the nights, without being stared at by that
insistent question: “How are we to manage those extra expenses
entailed by sickness?” It was good for Jean that she was still a
young girl upon whom responsibilities of any sort had never pressed,
else it might have been hard for her to live up to the radiant joy
that seemed to enfold her. It would have been so easy for the Jean
whom they had known, to sink into gloom over the thought that her
unusual attack of obstinacy was in part responsible for these extra
burdens. Fearing something of this kind, the entire family had
earnestly enjoined one another not to talk over financial anxieties
before Jean. Neither did they, of course, say anything intentionally
about such burdens before Aunt Elsie. One who had nothing of her own,
but was dependent upon relatives for her daily living, was the last
person before whom to talk of the cost of living. By common consent
the responsible members of the family had agreed that she should
never hear a word which might make her think that her coming to them
had added a feather’s weight to their daily budget.

“Mother, hasn’t she any money?” Florence had asked one day, after
they had been cautioning one another about letting their guest know
of their financial stress.

“Very little, I think, dear; your father never knew much about the
settling up of the estate, but your Uncle Evarts told him that there
was only a paltry sum left for Elsie; not enough to clothe her
decently, he said, to say nothing of her board.”

“Well,” Florence had said, after a thoughtful silence, “Uncle Evarts
needn’t worry his precious self; as long as this family has any
crusts to eat she is more than welcome to her share, isn’t she,
mother?”

Mrs. Forman’s response had been hearty, closing, as it so often did,
with the refrain: “It really doesn’t seem as though we could ever
again get along without her.”

Yet the anxieties pressed; the wrinkles on Mr. Forman’s forehead grew
deeper; he spent fewer evenings with his family, but sat apart
working over columns of figures or gravely staring at them, evidently
lost in troubled thought. His sister, from the farther end of the
living-room, often watched him furtively, wondering how she could
learn, without seeming officious, just what was the pressure that
they were evidently trying to keep from her. Without having been
consciously enlightened by any of them, she was beginning to have a
strong conviction that it had to do with money matters. They did not
talk economy, at least before her, but they practiced it; and she,
being quick of eye and keen of hearing, had seen and heard enough
since she had been a member of the family to convince her that
careful economy even in the smallest matters was the rule of the
house. Of course, she could understand that sickness, with its
endless train of expenses, had greatly increased the regular budget,
but still there seemed to her an added distress that these
long-foreseen bills did not account for.

It was Derrick, the heedless, who finally enlightened her without
in the least intending to do so. He tapped at her door one afternoon,
pushed it open in response to her invitation, and with a quick glance
around announced, in a disappointed tone, “She isn’t here!”

“Not yet,” his aunt said, smiling, “but she will be, before long.
That is, if you are looking for Ray? You generally are, you know.
Come in and wait for her; she has gone with Kendall to look at the
negatives for those class pictures.”

Derrick dropped into the chair indicated as he said, with a
discontented air, that Kendall was a good deal of a nuisance;
he seemed to be always wanting Ray at the very same minute that he
wanted her himself.

“I suppose, though, instead of growling, I ought to be counting
my mercies because he hasn’t carried her off bodily to some other
house. I can’t always be properly sorry over their numerous delays,
for being glad he hasn’t got her yet.”

Here surely was an opportunity for Aunt Elsie. “What is it that is
delaying them now?” she asked, with the air of one who was simply
keeping up her end of the conversation.

“Oh, the everlasting hindrance, of course; money, or the lack of it.
When I get really to work in this world, if I can’t earn money enough
to do the things that ought to be done, I’ll go—” He stopped suddenly
and laughed. His aunt smiled appreciatively.

“You can’t ‘go hang yourself,’ after your favorite method,” she said,
cheerfully, “because you don’t belong to yourself any more. What is
to be done in such case?”

“I’ll go earn more,” he finished, gayly. He was trying to live up to
the spirit of the hint she had once given him, that “random speeches
partaking of the character of slang could easily be given too much
license, if one were not careful.”

Up to that time he had not realized that he habitually talked
in metaphors more or less related to the slang family. He had begun
to watch himself, with a view to breaking the habit, but he
considered it “awfully nice” in Aunt Elsie not to be always preaching
at a fellow.

“Good!” she said, heartily. “But do Ray and Kendall need a great deal
of money before they can marry?”

“I don’t know how much, not being a marrying man, myself; but,
anyhow, it takes more than Kendall has; or at least Ray thinks it
does. It isn’t Ken’s fault; he would get married to-morrow if he
could coax Ray into it; it isn’t the fault of either, I suppose;
I guess it is just plain common-sense prudence. Sometimes I think
I hate common sense, and prudence, too.”

“Don’t; they are too rare not to be treated with respect.”

“But they are so awfully unhandy,” he said, whimsically. “You see,
it’s this way with Ken; he’s got a mother that he wants to do
everything for, and then some; I like him for that. She is jolly,
too, and good pluck; things were sailing along pretty smoothly until
she got sick, all of a sudden, and stayed sick. Oh, she got better,
you know, but not well; and she won’t ever be well again; and they
have a little house, comfortable and nice for well people, but not
large enough for three when one of them is sick; see? That is what
Ray thinks; Kendall doesn’t agree with her; he is tired of doing
without Ray, you know; and he has planned everything out dozens
of times, he told me so; but Ray won’t. It isn’t that she wants a big
house and all that, for herself; not she! you know Ray—but she says
if they get married, his mother will insist on giving up her own nice
big room to them, and going into a little, tucked-up one, and doing
without dozens of things that she ought to have, and all that. I just
believe she is right; sickness costs a lot of money, you know, and
she doesn’t think Ken ought to have any more expense than
is necessary.”

“Oh, no, the house isn’t his, they rent; but it is as large as Ken
can afford at present. He gets a pretty good salary, and they think
the world of him; everybody says he is bound to rise, and in time
he will be a partner; but he has had an awfully hard time. He took
care of that sick brother of his; you know about him? Well, he did
everything for him for years and years; just at the time when he
might be expected to have his hands full doing for his mother and
himself. It has taken him three years to get the bills paid up;
hospital, you know, and the funeral, and all the rest of it; Ken has
been splendid. Besides all that, I guess Ray feels that father
couldn’t—” Just here the loyal Derrick came to a full stop. It would
never do to tell Aunt Elsie that Ray didn’t think father ought to
have another cent added to his present burden. “Gee whiz!” he said
to himself, “I almost told her that father couldn’t afford a wedding;
I ought to be muzzled! But it can’t do any harm to talk to her about
Ken’s puzzles.” Suddenly he launched forth again:

“I tell you what, Aunt Elsie, s’pose, just for the fun of it, that I
had money to toss about wherever I liked; couldn’t I do a big thing
right now! It makes my mouth water to think what fun I should have.
I know a house where Ray would rather live than in a palace. You’ve
heard about our old home on Dupont Circle? But you’ve never been out
there, have you? It’s a dandy place, all right; trees, you know, and
a big lawn, right in town! The house is nice; lots of rooms, and it’s
for sale, don’t you think! Dirt cheap, too, they say, for anybody who
can pay money down; the man who owns it has lost his wife, and has a
sick daughter, and is going to break up and go to England, where his
son lives; so he wants to get rid of the house—turn it into money,
because he doesn’t want the bother of looking after it. Jimmie Breese
told me all about it; I was out there with him to-day; went through
the house; I don’t remember it from living there; I was just a little
kid, you know, when we moved. Jimmie’s aunt wants to buy it; Jimmie
says if she could raise the money she would take it; but she can’t;
and it’s only to be had for cash down. I asked Ken why he didn’t buy
it, and he laughed and said he was thinking of buying up the moon,
instead. Now, you see, what I would do if I were rich. I should plank
down the whole big lump, and say to Ray and Kendall, ‘Bless you,
my children; sail right in and get married next week if you want to;
there’s your house waiting for you.’ Wouldn’t that be jolly fun?”

He had talked on rapidly, with a touch of recklessness, eager,
especially, to make his aunt forget his blundering reference to his
father. But he did not succeed; as soon as he paused for breath
she asked a direct question:

“Is it Ray’s delayed marriage that is making your father look so
grave and troubled, just now?”

The boy flushed and hesitated. In his mind was the question: “How is
a fellow who means to be always on the square to answer that?”




CHAPTER XII

SOMETHING HAPPENED


“Y-YES’M,” he said at last, “or—well, some; and then—father has
worries of his own. Mortgages are kind of worrisome things, I guess;
a man has to keep thinking about them.”

“Is there a mortgage?”

Derrick caught his breath in dismay; his instant thought was:

“Now you have put your foot in it, old blunderbuss; the idea of Aunt
Elsie not knowing that there was a mortgage on the house!” It seemed
to the boy that he had known it ever since he was born.

“Oh, yes,” he said, trying to speak carelessly, “there’s a mortgage,
of course; there always is I guess, on houses; they’re there when you
buy ’em, aren’t they?”

But Aunt Elsie declined to be drawn into a discussion on real estate
transfers; she quietly asked another question:

“Do you know how large the mortgage is, Derrick?”

Oh, didn’t he! Why, he was sure he had known that ever since he began
to read, and write, “units, tens, hundreds, thousands”; of course
he must reply.

“I’ve heard it mentioned—it is eight thousand I believe—but—” No, he
wouldn’t say that. Catch him telling that the great trouble was the
old thing was due, and had passed into other hands, and the mean
skinflint who held it now wanted every penny of it at once.

He sprang up with an excellent appearance of haste as he exclaimed:
“Why, dear me, is that clock striking three? I shall be late at the
gym, and it will be Ray’s fault, won’t it?”

She let him go without further questioning; she had learned almost
all that she needed to know.

All of which will explain why, on the third evening after this talk,
Aunt Elsie, instead of following Mrs. Forman and the girls to the
family sitting-room after dinner, boldly halted in front of the
little room at the end of the hall which, by courtesy, was called the
library, but was in reality the place where the head of the house hid
himself when he was too busy or too sad to join the family circle.
Mrs. Forman noted with dismay the stopping of the crutch before that
already closed door—Mr. Forman had excused himself before dinner was
quite over.

“I’m sorry your aunt stopped there,” she said, “your father will not
feel equal to sitting with her to-night.”

“Perhaps she will cheer him up,” was Jean’s hopeful reply. “I’m sure
she can, if any one can.”

Mrs. Forman’s only reply was a sigh; she understood so much better
than Jean how hard a thing that would be to do on this night of all
others. It had been her plan to slip away from the family as soon as
she could do so unnoticed, to sit beside the stricken man for a
while, in silence, just to let him feel her sympathy. There were no
words that she could speak until he had time to adjust himself to his
burden. She was as yet the only one in the family who knew that
Mr. Forman’s last effort to raise money had failed, and that in a
very few days they would be homeless. What words were there to speak
to a man so stricken? His wife knew what a brave struggle he had
made, even to appealing once more, because of her urging, to his
brother Evarts, a thing that he had said he would not do; and the
result had been that as he read the reply with set lips and a face
so white it frightened her, he looked up to say: “Louise, remember,
if the alternative is the poorhouse for us both, we will take that;
we must never appeal to him again.”

Mrs. Forman, as she sat waiting, wished that she had explained the
present situation to Aunt Elsie, who must know very soon now, and she
would have left the poor man to this one hour of needed solitude, if
she had understood.

The caller did not wait to knock but opened the door and advanced
quickly, not apparently noticing the haggard face turned to see who
the intruder was; he arose at once with the instincts of a gentleman
pushed forward an easy chair for her use.

“I thought it was Louise,” he said, because it seemed necessary
to say something.

“No, Louise and the others went to the living-room and I thumped
on down here because I wanted to talk to you a minute. I won’t hinder
you long, but I can’t help seeing that something is troubling you,
and I wondered if I couldn’t be of some help.”

He smiled faintly. “Yes,” he said, “I am troubled, there is no use
in denying it; I am in great trouble, but there is nothing you can do
to help; yet it is a comfort to realize how quickly you would help,
if you could.”

“Well, now, don’t be so very sure that I can’t help a little;
you haven’t tried me. I don’t really know anything about it, but I
would be willing to make a big guess that money is at the bottom
of your present trouble; I think it is, about half the time, with
men. Now, I want to say that I have a little of my own saved up, and
I would like nothing better than to spend it in helping you out.
If you will just tell me I am right, and how much you need just now,
I’ll go at once and give you a chance to rest a while; you look as
though you needed it.”

He was very pale and almost mortally tired; he had slept but little
for the past two nights, and it had seemed to him but a few moments
before that he could never smile again; yet a smile hovered over his
face at thought of this dear old woman coming with her bits of
savings that she probably had tucked away in some locked upper
drawer, to help him out of trouble! It was a tender smile and warmed
his heart; he had not known that she had any money at all, and one of
his bitter sorrows had been that he could no longer do for her the
little that he had been able to do. His grateful acknowledgment came
promptly.

“It does my very soul good, Elsie, to feel how true is your sympathy,
and how willingly you would help me; but I am only too glad if you
have been able to save a little for yourself; hold every penny of it
for your personal use; my money troubles are much too large to be
helped by it.”

“Is it the mortgage, Joseph, that is pressing just now?”

He looked his surprise; he thought they had all been careful not to
talk “mortgage” before her; still, what could it matter now? “Yes,”
he said, “that is the climax. The mortgage on this house is overdue;
it has recently come into the possession of a man who will not wait,
for even a few days. But I could not do anything if he would; I have
tried all the possibilities and have failed. Two years from now there
will be a little money coming to me that, if I had it now, would save
our home; but I can’t get it. The fact is the man wants the house,
he would rather have it on the terms he can arrange than the money;
it has doubled in value since I bought it, and the street has
improved very greatly; it is worth his while to get hold of the
property, and he knows it.”

“Well,” Aunt Elsie said briskly, “I should tell him he couldn’t have
it; my advice is that you take the money to him to-morrow morning
when you go to the store; if he is afraid of checks you might stop
at the Metropolitan Exchange and get it for him in gold.”

Mr. Forman gazed at his sister with a dazed, half-frightened look.
Had she suddenly become insane, or was this a miserable attempt
at pleasantry?

“Just what do you mean?” he managed to get out, and she answered
briskly:

“Just what I say; if you want this house, pay him the money you owe
on it to-morrow morning; whether you want to keep it or not, I should
think you would take up the mortgage and get rid of him.”

He rose up and came over to her, his pale face growing even paler
yet with a new anxiety.

“Elsie,” he said, speaking low and soothingly as he might to an
excited child, “I wish you would not bother about this; you do not
understand mortgages, and you do not need to think of it any more;
I shall manage, somehow.”

“But the best way to manage it is to pay off the mortgage, Joseph;
surely that is simple enough, a child could understand it.”

Then in desperation he proclaimed the awful fact:

“Elsie, the mortgage is for eight thousand dollars.”

“Very well, get rid of it.” Then, suddenly, her manner changed. She
began to realize that he was actually frightened. Instead of the
crisp business-like tone hers became gentle.

“Sit down, Joseph, and don’t get to worrying about me; I’m neither
crazy nor ‘gone daft,’ as our Scotch grandmother used to say. It is
all very simple. I happen to have this money lying by, waiting to be
used, and here is a chance to use it. I wish I had known about the
mortgage a good while ago, it might have saved you some anxious
hours; and the sooner we fix it up now the better. If you will tell
me just how to make out the check I’ll hobble away and give you a
chance to rest a bit; I can see that you are all tuckered out.”

He was not to be disposed of so easily.

“Elsie,” he said in strong excitement, “I cannot take your money—I
can’t! Why should you think for a moment that I could do such a
thing? I did not dream that you had any money; but if I had, I would
not have borrowed it for the world! I don’t know when I could pay
you; the hope that I have for two years ahead may fail; all my hopes
and plans have, for years; I cannot depend on anything financial, and
to risk all that you have in that way would be folly in you, and
infamous in me.”

He had walked back towards his desk as he began to speak; now he
dropped into his chair and laid his head, face downward, on the desk.
His sister reached for her crutch and came over and laid her hand
on his head in a way his father used to have.

“Joseph,” she said gently, “you don’t understand; let me tell you.
This money that I offer is really yours; I did not earn it nor save
it; it is trust money, Joseph, for me to use as I think the one who
made it would like to have it used; and that was our brother Derrick;
you have read the letters he wrote to me about you; can you think of
any one in the world he would rather give it to than you? I have some
money of my own, as I said, but this I am offering has nothing to do
with mine; but suppose that it had, and that it took my last penny,
don’t you think I would be glad to have you take it for such a
purpose? Think of the home that you have made for me! Think of what
you and Louise and the children have done for me all these months.
Do you remember that I have been here about nine months, cared for
and watched over with thoughtful loving kindness, never for a single
moment allowed to fancy myself in the way—made to feel as though
I were your very own? Joseph, for the first time since father went
away I have had a real home. What is money compared with that?”

They talked longer, they went over all the ground again and again,
down to minute details. They lingered so long that Mrs. Forman’s
anxiety reached the point where she had resolved to break in upon
them at once and compel her husband to rest, when they suddenly
appeared.

It had been for years the custom of the Forman family to gather
in the living-room immediately after early dinner for family worship,
unless circumstances prevented. But many were the circumstances that
prevented. Especially had this been the case of late years, as the
social duties and engagements of the young people increased, and the
daily cares of life began to press more and more heavily upon the
heads of the house, until for nearly a year the passing over of this
service had been more common than its observance. But they still had
a habit of loitering about for a while, to see, as Derrick once
expressed it, “whether this is the night that we have prayers.” They
had done so on this evening, waiting much longer than usual, because
each felt an unspoken anxiety for the absent father, and, to the
young people, there was an indescribable tenseness in the air
as though something, they did not imagine what, was about to happen.
Something had happened! One look at their father’s face revealed it.
The moment he had established Aunt Elsie in the armchair that Derrick
sprang to offer her, he turned toward them, his face shining,
his voice gladly solemn:

“Louise, and children, a wonderful deliverance has come to us this
night; to me it seems nothing less than a miracle. Our home that
I believed only an hour ago was gone from us forever is saved.
The Father in heaven has looked down in pity upon this blundering
earthly father of yours and has sent us deliverance at the hand of
this dear sister; God bless her! Let us pray.” He knelt beside
Aunt Elsie’s chair with her hand clasped in his, and there was not
a member of his family who ever forgot that prayer.

It was a wonderful evening they had together after that. There were
many things to be talked over, and many plans to make for the
immediate future. Matters that by tacit consent had been held
in abeyance because if they were to move, somewhere, all would be
different, now came to the front and insisted on being considered.
Most of them Aunt Elsie heard for the first time, and enjoyed to the
full this being taken into the real and intimate family circle, never
to be, kindly and graciously, even tenderly, shut out from it any
more.

Yet it was, of course, the “deliverance” that was uppermost in their
thoughts.

“It is wonderful, isn’t it,” Jean said, lingering at the door of
Derrick’s room for their last words together. “It does seem like
a miracle, as father said; and to think that it should have come
through Aunt Elsie! Professor Norton announced to-day that the age
of miracles was long past; I guess if he had been through what we
have, and then been here to-night, he would know better.”

“Especially if he had seen father’s face,” added Derrick. “Do you
know what I thought of when I looked at him: ‘And all that sat
looking steadfastly on him saw his face as it had been the face
of an angel.’”




CHAPTER XIII

AN ALLY


AUNT ELSIE had become a woman of affairs; on the day following the
“miracle,” while the family were adjusting themselves anew to the
delights of the home which so nearly went from them, she stayed
in her room writing a letter of some length, the details of which she
went over most carefully. When it was finished, she made a journey
to the kitchen and pared apples for the little maid, while she, most
happy to serve her helper, sped with the letter to the nearest
post-box. On the Friday following, Aunt Elsie interviewed Kendall
Forsythe, while he waited in the little reception room for Ray,
who was going out with him for the evening. Long before this, Kendall
had adopted her; she was “Aunt Elsie” to him as entirely as she was
to Ray; although, owing to his busy life and home responsibilities,
they saw but little of each other.

“Is nobody here?” she asked, looking carefully down the room. “What a
piece of good fortune! I wanted to see you alone to ask a favor.”

“Of me? How delightful! Please consider it granted if it comes within
my limited powers.”

“That wasn’t the way I ought to have begun; I meant first to discover
whether you ever had any daytime to bestow on commonplace people
who have nothing to do with regular business.”

“Occasionally I do,” he said, genially. “For instance, to-morrow
afternoon I happen to have some unoccupied hours, and I have just
been bemoaning the sadness of my fate that they should fall on a day
when Ray is especially occupied every minute. Can I use them in your
service? If so, command me.”

“That depends; I wonder if you have enough courage to take care of an
old woman with a crutch, who has to be helped in and out of street
cars and up and down steps, and is a nuisance generally?”

“Try me,” he said, gayly. “My mother considers me a very careful
escort, and I should like exceedingly to give you a proof of her
excellent judgment.”

“Then I will confess that I have a childish desire to go on a secret
expedition. I’ve heard so much about the house where Jean and Derrick
were born that I want to see it with my own eyes. They say it is
vacant and for sale, so one could get permission to look at it;
Ray has told me a good deal about the rose gardens and the outlook
from her room; I just want to see it all, myself; but I can’t ask
my brother, or even the girls, to take me out there, because, besides
seeming foolish, it would be hard on them.”

Her amused listener hastened to assure her that it would be
a pleasure to him to take her through the fine old place, and the
views, especially from the east and west windows, were worth seeing;
they would go to-morrow.

“But how could we manage it, I wonder?” she said, with the eagerness
of a child. “I can’t tell you how careful they all are not to talk
about that place to one another; even Derrick and Jean, who were too
young when they left it to have much personal recollection, hardly
ever speak of it before the others, because they do not want
to recall old times to them. It seems my brother had planned that the
place should at some time be given to Ray, and it makes it especially
hard on that account. I should feel real mean to seem to be going
there just out of idle curiosity.”

“I understand,” he said. “We must manage it; let me think. How would
you like to take a trip to the park to view the new Lincoln Monument?
That is in the same general direction, and it is quite a fad just now
to ride out there to see the statue.”

She had only time to assure him that she would be delighted, and to
receive his promise to attend himself to all the details, when Ray
came flying down stairs, with apologies for delays.

The house was mildly excited, next day, by the departure of
Aunt Elsie on a sightseeing expedition, escorted by Kendall Forsythe.
They made a noticeable couple; Mr. Forsythe, who had descended from a
long line of ancestors belonging to the privileged and cultured
class, and who, to all outward appearances, belonged himself to the
fashionable world, accompanied by Aunt Elsie, in her severely plain
and unmistakably not tailor-made suit. She might, however, have
passed very well for a favorite servant grown old in the employ
of his family.

Florence Forman looked after them, with a frown of annoyance on her
pretty face as she said: “Aunt Elsie ought to have a new suit; that
queer woman who lived near them and made all her clothes because she
needed the work did not know how to fit a coat any more than I do!
and Kendall is such a gentleman! Mother, do you suppose she has left
herself money enough for clothes?”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Forman said. “She assured your father that she had
plenty for all her needs; although it must be confessed that her idea
of what she needs might differ from yours; but I wouldn’t worry about
the set of her coat to-day; Kendall is a gentleman in every respect.”

Ray, who was just starting out to her afternoon pupils, was troubled
from a different standpoint:

“Doesn’t it seem almost pitiful that Aunt Elsie had to appeal
to Kendall for her little outing? I confess it has never occurred
to me that she might like to go through the business streets and out
to the park; I wonder if we are all selfishly busy with our own
affairs; we younger ones, I mean,” she made haste to add.

“Don’t worry,” said Jean, the cheerful; “Kendall can do it lots
better than we could; he’ll give her a good time.”

But it was Aunt Elsie who took the initiative, and gave her escort
surprises. She was thoroughly interested in all the sights she saw
and sounds she heard; she examined the new statue critically, and
compared the features with those in the best prints she had seen; and
she remarked that she was glad the man was made of bronze and did not
mind standing there forever to be gazed at. Then she asked if Henry
Westlake’s office wasn’t somewhere near this park entrance. She would
like very much to stop at his office for a minute, if Kendall didn’t
mind. She used to know Henry when he was a boy and came to the farm
for the week-end; and she hadn’t seen him since.

Kendall was a trifle embarrassed; he knew Henry Westlake, certainly;
at least by reputation; he was a very great lawyer, perhaps the
greatest one in the city, and a man of remarkable ability in other
than legal matters; his opinion was very much sought after
by business men, even when no legal question was involved. So, of
course, he was a very busy man; Mr. Forsythe doubted if he was ever
seen in business hours, except by special appointment.

“Perhaps not,” Aunt Elsie said, serenely, “but it would do no harm
to try, would it?” Whereupon Mr. Forsythe resolved at all hazards
to try. The youth who received them in the great man’s outer office
was patronizing.

“Appointment, I suppose?” he said, inquiringly, to Mr. Forsythe,
who looked at Aunt Elsie.

“Oh, no,” she said, “no appointment; I just want to see him a minute,
if I can.” Then the clerk smiled a very wise smile and volunteered
that his chief was extremely busy, even more so than usual, as a very
important case was called for the next day.

“Very well,” said Aunt Elsie, cheerfully; “Just ask him if he can see
me, will you? If he can’t, no harm will be done.” Whereupon the
amused clerk coughed to conceal a laugh.

“Cards?” he questioned of Mr. Forsythe, who was aware that at least
two of the half-dozen clerks at work beyond the alcove had stopped
their pens to gaze and listen. Aunt Elsie answered:

“No, I haven’t any cards; I don’t make calls, as a rule. Kendall,
have you a bit of paper that I could write my name on?” And that
young man, too thoroughly the gentleman to show outward discomposure,
yet conscious of feeling that it would be a relief to kick the now
grinning youth down the outside stairs, offered the reverse side of
his business card to Aunt Elsie who wrote her name and address in a
bold, firm hand. Had they followed the grinning youth to the presence
of his chief they would have found him grave and respectful.

“I beg pardon, sir,” he said, speaking as one who knew he must not
waste time. “A persistent old woman from the country insisted on my
bringing in her name; I told her it was useless, but—”

He had not time for more. The busy man glared at the intruder
from under heavy eyebrows, glanced at the name on the card and
exploded his surprising order: “Show Miss Forman in immediately.”

“I won’t hinder you but a minute, Kendall,” Aunt Elsie said, as she
limped away to obey the summons; but it was many minutes before she
reappeared; so many indeed, that her perplexed escort had time
to imagine all sorts of uncomfortable situations, among them the
possibility that Aunt Elsie, in her ignorance of business had made
a serious mistake, and the amazing eight-thousand-dollar check was
involving her and the Formans in more trouble; perhaps Mr. Westlake
had written to her about it, and she had determined to see him
in person. But when she at last appeared her composed manner was
reassuring, though all she said was: “I’ve tried your patience,
I’m afraid; he kept me longer than I had any idea he would.” And when
they were at last beyond the gaze of the now thoroughly puzzled clerk
she had only this to add: “Henry looks older than a man of his age
ought to; I’m afraid he is working too hard, and for this world
only.”

She was as eager as a child about going over the fine old house on
Dupont Circle; limping bravely up and down stairs and peeping into
every nook and corner. She was much more at home in the house than
was Kendall, although he had been a guest there in his childhood.

“This is Ray’s room,” she said, seating herself comfortably on the
wide window seat. “I don’t wonder that they talk yet about the view!
It is fine, isn’t it? She likes this room better than any she ever
had, and one can see why; it is like her, some way. Down there is the
rose garden she told me about; it needs a lot of work done in it.
She loves to work over flowers, doesn’t she?”

“I think so,” Kendall said, absent-mindedly; he was thinking about
a very different house and trying to decide whether or not to confide
in Aunt Elsie and claim her as an ally. Suddenly he decided: “I’m
especially interested in houses just now, Aunt Elsie; I am thinking
of moving.”

She turned suddenly from the rose garden and fixed her keen gray eyes
upon him, as she exclaimed: “You are?”

“Yes,” he said. “My mother and I.” Then he explained in detail how
an exceptional opportunity had presented itself; they were feeling
somewhat cramped for room, and had been for some time trying to plan
for a change; but he was paying all the rent it seemed to him
he ought to afford; and now had come this chance. A friend of his,
who owned several houses, had one on a pleasant street, more
convenient to his place of business, more desirable in several ways
than his present home, and with two more rooms in it, that he offered
to him for the same rent that he was now paying; it had been
unexpectedly vacated after the usual season for renting was past,
hence this unusual offer. Then he went on to explain that in addition
to Ray’s reluctance to leave home while her father and mother were so
burdened, there had been with her the fear that his invalid mother,
though more than willing, even eager to claim her as a daughter,
would suffer because of the smallness of his house, and the need she
would feel for taking less room than an invalid ought to have. The
two additional rooms in this prospective house, and all the rooms
larger and pleasanter, would remove that difficulty, and as Aunt
Elsie had graciously lifted the burden from the father, and had
promised to continue to belong to the family, thereby relieving
Mrs. Forman’s cares, did she not agree with him that the time
had come at last for their marriage, and would she not use her
almost unbounded influence with Ray to that effect?

Aunt Elsie gave him undivided attention, not once turning her eyes
to the west window to watch the glory of a sky getting ready
for sunset; her face was alive with interest and sympathy.

“I understand all about it, Kendall,” she said, when at last he came
to a period and waited for her word. “I don’t in the least wonder
that you are in a hurry to get Ray to yourself, and I think you have
been patient and unselfish and like a son, in waiting. I do think
that Ray can leave her mother better than she could have done a few
months ago; and as for my brother, I may as well tell you now that I
see a way to fix things so that he need not be burdened about money
matters, as he has been all these later years. I did not understand
it before, or I—well, never mind that now. But don’t move just yet,
Kendall; wait a few months; and don’t take that house.”

He was bitterly disappointed; his hopes that had been mounting higher
with every word she spoke, until that last sentence, now dropped
to zero. He had been over the ground so often and so carefully
with Ray, and her ideas he had been compelled to admit were so
reasonable, that he felt sure the house where he now lived would be
an insurmountable obstacle with her. What possible objection could
her aunt have to the plan he proposed? Could she imagine that he was
being deceived, and that once settled in the new house he would be
called upon to pay a higher rent than he could manage? If she had any
such idea he could convince her of her mistake in five seconds;
the name of the man who had made him the offer would be sufficient
answer in itself to any such fears. Moreover, he was himself
a business man, and would, of course, have a lease duly signed.
Perhaps she thought it beneath his dignity to accept an offer of that
kind, as though he were an object of charity; but he could make that
plain to her. The house would in all probability stand idle until
another season unless some such offer was made; and the owner would
rather have it rented at a lower figure than to stand vacant. It was
all perfectly reasonable from a business standpoint, even though,
at the same time, it was an exceptionally kind offer that he
appreciated. Why did not she tell him what her objections were,
so that he could, perhaps, remove them? Should he act upon those
imaginary ones and proceed to enlighten her? Or must he let it
all go? Not only Ray but the entire Forman family were in the mood
to be greatly influenced by what Aunt Elsie might say.

She was watching his face with keen interest; suddenly she said:
“I believe, after all, I shall have to tell you something, though I
didn’t want to.”




CHAPTER XIV

HOUSES, AND DRESSES, AND SPOONS


“You see, I wanted to wait a while and talk to both of you together,
but I don’t believe it can be managed. Instead, I think you and I
will plan a nice little secret, and keep her out of it for a while.
How will that do?”

Aunt Elsie laughed at his bewildered face, and hastened on:

“The fact is, Kendall, I want Ray to live here; this house just fits
her; she belongs, and I can’t think of her as anywhere else. Besides,
those communicating rooms over there will be perfection for your
mother. I can see just how she could be established in them in peace
and comfort. Then that rose garden needs Ray, if anything ever did;
the whole house needs her, in fact; can’t you see for yourself that
she belongs here?”

“But, Aunt Elsie—” began the troubled listener; she anticipated him:

“Yes, I know; you are bristling with exclamation points; you think
the old woman doesn’t know what she is talking about, but I do, and
I’m having some of the good times that I missed in my girlhood. Now,
listen: This house is mine, or will be as soon Henry Westlake can
manage the business, and he promised to be quick about it. I bought
the place as an investment; he says it is a finer bargain than any
he knows of in this city; that the price it is offered for is less
than it would bring at a forced sale, and property in this locality
is steadily increasing in value, and I guess Henry knows as much
about values—for this world, anyway—as any man living; so you see
I’m safe enough; and if I choose to give the use of it free of rent
for—well, we will say three years, to you and Ray as a wedding
present, why shouldn’t I have that pleasure?”

Mr. Forsythe began another sentence, but she waved his words away
with her hand: “No, don’t talk just yet; wait until I have finished.
I have imagined all the things you could say about this house being
too large and fine for young people who have their way to make, but
that is nonsense; you needn’t use any more rooms than you want, and
the size of the grounds won’t hurt you; if at the end of three years
you are tired of the place, and want to leave it, not a bit of harm
will be done; it can be easily sold at any time; and in case you
should want to stay I am sure that arrangements could be made. Then,
you will proceed to saying that it costs money to keep up such a
place as this, and you can not afford it; you see, I have thought all
your objections out, and none of them will stand. Let me tell you,
I know a middle-aged man living out near the farm who inherited
gardening, as a passion, and who would like nothing better for this
life than to come here and look after this place, and who would do it
for much less a month than you are paying now, for rent. I want you
to agree to it, Kendall. I am an old woman, and I never had any one
of my very own to do for, except father; Ray seems more like what
a daughter of mine might have been than any one I ever saw; I would
like so very much to make a present of this kind to her.”

“I have bewildered you, I know, by suddenly paying mortgages and
buying property, when you thought I was very poor. There is a story
connected with all that, which I may tell, some day; meantime, let me
explain about the recent happenings. There is a sense in which the
money is not mine; it is trust money. You must have heard of Derrick
Forman, young Derrick’s uncle? It is his money that I am using;
he wanted it used, some of it, for his brother Joseph’s children,
but he chose to work through me, and left me to decide just who,
and what, and when; only he had me wait until Derrick, his namesake
was a certain age. I need not take your time to tell you more,
just now; but haven’t I answered the most pressing of your questions
and objections, and convinced you that I know what I am about?
Oh, and there is one thing more; if you will let me have the pleasure
of giving you a wedding present after this queer fashion, will you
keep the location and size of the place and all the other details
a secret from Ray until she is ‘Mrs. Forsythe?’”

“What I thought was this: You could explain to her that an
old friend, not only of yours, but of her father and mother as well,
had offered you a house, rent free for a term of years, as a wedding
gift, but that for certain probably whimsical reasons had stipulated
that your bride was to take the gift on trust, not knowing even the
street on which the house was to be found until she was ready to take
possession. Some such way, you know; you could fix it up, couldn’t
you? And every word would be true; if I am not an old friend of all
of you, what am I? With some such arrangement, you could establish
your mother here before you were married, using your furniture for
the necessary rooms, and that would give Ray the chance that every
married woman likes, to select and arrange her own furnishings.
I believe I’ll have to tell you, though, right here, that the
furniture she chooses is to be part of my wedding present. Can’t we
do it, Kendall?”

There was the strangest wistfulness in her voice; like a girl
pleading for a rare and longed-for pleasure. Under ordinary
circumstances her evident, almost childish, delight in her plan would
have appealed to the young man before her; but just then he had been
rendered almost incapable of calmly considering anything by the
composed way in which this bewildering woman referred to his marriage
as something definitely settled for the near future; and talked as
glibly of their home together as though they were already husband and
wife!

They talked longer, much longer; they went over wonderful details
in a perfectly entrancing manner; they stayed so late on their
strange outing that the entire Forman household had begun to be
somewhat anxious before they appeared. The spirit in which they
arrived and the impression that they made upon the group of
questioners will be best explained by listening to Jean:

“Mother, do let us leave them to themselves and have dinner; they are
so entirely satisfied with their proceedings, and so indifferent
concerning the agonies we have been enduring on their behalf, that
they are positively exasperating. As for finding out what they saw,
or heard, or did, the famous Sphinx couldn’t compare with them!
I’m hopeless.”

But it was very soon after that momentous excursion that preparations
for the Forman-Forsythe wedding began in earnest; notwithstanding the
fact that a portion of Mr. Forsythe’s plans sounded so much like what
Jean called a “chapter from a three-volume novel” that, had they been
presented by any other, the elect lady might have hesitated. Interest
and excitement ran high in the family concerning that mysterious
“friend,” who chose to be so eccentric in his offerings. Innumerable
were the discussions and endless the surmisings concerning him.
Aunt Elsie, who had lain awake nights to perfect her plan, was
continually being appealed to as to what she thought of it.

“Why couldn’t he at least have let us know where the house is?” Jean
demanded. “I don’t believe I would promise to live in a house that I
had never seen, nor heard described!” But to all such objections
Ray had one answer that abundantly satisfied her:

“Kendall has seen the house, he knows all about it, why isn’t that
enough?” The fact was that Ray Forman, during those weeks
of preparation, thought very little about that house, or any other.
She had watched her father rise up from the incubus of that hateful
mortgage and take hold of life and hope with fresh energy; she had
received from Aunt Elsie the assurance that she had not the least
desire to go away from “Joseph’s” household, but would be only
too glad to belong to it as long as they would keep her; she had
realized with a thankful heart that both Jean and Derrick had passed
beyond the period when they needed an older sister’s constant
watching care, having chosen for daily companionship One whose
unerring guidance could be trusted; and now that a strange providence
had offered Kendall a home suited to the needs of his mother, thus
enabling them to get well started in life before heavy added expense
would be necessary, she gave herself up to the joy of believing that
now the time had come when she might conscientiously leave the dear
old home and help make a new one; and the joy and hope of it passed
away beyond and above such commonplaces as the kind of house they
were to live in.

Standing out conspicuously among her causes for gratitude during
those busy days was Aunt Elsie’s pledge not to go away from “mother.”
So used was Ray to thinking of her aunt as a blessing and only that,
especially to mother, that she had all but forgotten the days when
they had looked forward with apprehension to her coming. Not so Jean,
whose love of contrast was strong.

“Just think how we fussed about it!” she said, one day. “Does it seem
possible that we could ever have groaned and growled so much over
‘sacrificing’ ourselves for the sake of Aunt Elsie! I mean us,
Ray dear, never you, though you did the sacrificing, you blessed
darling! I hope that mysterious house will have a decent room in it
for your very own. Just think, you really haven’t had a room
to yourself—large enough to be called a room—for a whole year.”

“I’ve never for an hour been sorry that Aunt Elsie had mine,”
Ray answered, “and it wasn’t half so much of a sacrifice to give
it up as you girls imagined. You don’t remember my room at
1200 Dupont Circle very well, do you, Jean? but Florence does.
I loved that room, really loved it, and I resolved when I tore myself
away from it never to let another room take hold of my heart as
that did.”

It happened that Aunt Elsie on her way to the dining-room where the
girls were at work, overheard this last sentence. With her hand
on the door knob she turned suddenly and limped back to her own room
in order to enjoy a gleeful laugh, as she thought of the room that
was “really loved.” It was on that evening that she told Kendall
Forsythe she was having “the time of her life, these days.” Also she
was having a new gown for the wedding day; a pearl gray silk, with
trimmings of her own old lace. Nor was the dress being made by that
“poor girl” who had served her in such capacity for nearly half
a century, because she would not for the world have hurt her feelings
by employing any other. It is not certain that she would have done so
even yet, save for the fact that the “poor girl” had gone home to her
Father’s house where all her shortcomings were forever covered, and
her feelings could be hurt no more.

The dress of the prospective bride was a study of beauty. It was
quiet, of course, or it would not have fitted Ray, but “so soft, and
clinging, and rich and fine!” These and other adjectives were tossed
about by the rapturous Jean, as she witnessed the “trying on,” for
family inspection. “It just matches Ray!” she declared, “I was so
afraid she would have to wear some common, cheap thing! Aunt Elsie,
you are a jewel; and that lace is simply ravishing! It is the very
prettiest piece you have. Did you save it for Ray’s wedding dress?”

[Illustration: “WHO SHOULD WEAR IT BUT HER NAMESAKE?”]

“It saved itself,” said the smiling aunt. “It trimmed Ray Shepard’s
wedding gown a hundred years ago, and Ray Shepard was your
great-grandmother’s younger sister; who should wear it but her
namesake?”

Through all these absorbing interests and excitements, moved Father
Time with steady feet, bringing the marriage day to its very eve.
When the date for the wedding was being chosen, it was discovered
that the day selected as probable came within one week of marking
the year that Aunt Elsie had spent with them; whereupon Ray promptly
moved forward the date for a week, thus making the event
an anniversary of her coming.

The wedding gifts were in Jean’s special care, to receive and arrange
for Ray to examine when she could. They were numerous, for Ray had
many friends among the young people of her circle, and most of them
remembered her with some choice token. There were no costly articles
for the gift table. Uncle Evarts, in response to his invitation,
had written a letter voluminous with regrets that a most important
business engagement falling on the date of the wedding would prevent
his coming, and his wife was detained by the illness of a grandchild.
They sent their love and blessing, and hoped that Ray would be as
happy as she deserved. They also sent six pretty silver coffee
spoons, so tiny that Jean thought they might get lost even in
after-dinner coffee cups! Aunt Caroline was reported as in the throes
of one of her terrible sick headache sieges, the effects of which
often made her unfit for travelling for several weeks. She caused
to be sent a five-dollar gold-piece, with instructions to Ray to buy
something she wanted, and mark it with her Aunt Caroline’s name.
Jean managed to refrain from comment concerning these gifts from
their wealthy relatives, but she permitted herself the comfort of a
curling lip, as she placed them on the table, and made the apparently
irrelevant remark that she wished she could rip the lace from the
wedding dress and lay it beside them for a few minutes. Aunt Elsie
understood, but answered her only with a tender smile. Aunt Elsie was
being very glad over those same tiny spoons; she knew better than did
any of the others that it was a proof of grace triumphant that they
were there at all. She had feared that Uncle Evarts and his family
would not be invited to the wedding nor could she blame her brother
Joseph if he considered himself excused from such invitations to his
house; feeling miserably sure, as he now did, of Evarts’ unfair
dealings in the past. But, lo, it was Joseph who gave the final
decision. “Invite him by all means, daughter; we can not right any
past wrongs by hurting his feelings now.” It was simply an added
proof that Joseph Forman, struggling as he had for days, even for
weeks, with a resentment so bitter and a hurt so deep that he thought
he could never meet his brother Evarts again and speak quietly to him
as friend to friend, had risen victoriously above it. Aunt Elsie,
looking on, knowing much about it all from the dead brother, shrewdly
surmising what she did not already know, waited and feared and prayed
and hoped, and now was glad. But she knew that she was glad, not so
much for Evarts’ sake, as for Joseph’s.

It was not until the marriage ceremony had been performed, and the
bride’s cake duly cut and passed, and the bride in travelling attire
was beginning to think of the good-bys that must come before she and
Kendall went out from the dear home together, that there appeared on
the gift table up stairs a new package, a large, heavy envelope that
filled Jean with astonishment.

“Where in the world—” she began; then Derrick, whose quick glance had
followed her’s; “Hello! what is this? It wasn’t here an hour ago,
where did it come from?”

“I can’t imagine; I never saw it before. There hasn’t been a mail
since three o’clock, and I looked after that.”

Derrick fingered the package curiously.

“It hasn’t been mailed,” he said. “It must have come by a messenger;
it is a legal document of some sort; look at the seal; and it is
addressed to ‘Mrs. Kendall Forsythe’; there wasn’t such a person
an hour ago. I wonder if it can be a joke? Who put it here?”

“How should I know? All I know is that it wasn’t on the table when I
went downstairs, just before the ceremony. Dick, what if it should be
something hateful, a kind of joke that would annoy her. Wouldn’t that
be horrid?”

“If it is, she won’t see it nor hear of it,” Derrick said,
resolutely. “We’ll show it to Kendall and—see here, the thing isn’t
 sealed; I’ll look at it myself, and if—Oh, hello! Why Jean Forman!”




CHAPTER XV

“FOOLS”


“WHAT is it?” Jean asked, coming to look over his shoulder.

“It is a deed transfer,” said the excited boy. “Yes, sir, it is! The
whole rigmarole is here; the same thing said over half a dozen times,
you know; and it’s for ‘Ray Forman Forsythe, her heirs and’—all the
of it, and—Jean, it’s our house on Dupont Circle!”

“Nonsense!” from Jean. “How could it be? You are crazy, Dick Forman!
‘Much wedding cake has made you mad.’”

“Crazy or not I should hope I could still read! This is a deed of
transfer, if I ever heard of one; and I heard of nothing else for a
week; we had ’em in class; why, I even had to write—oh! I say—this is
the greatest! Jean, this is from Aunt Elsie!”

After that, excitement in the gift room ran so high that Florence,
who was helping to pack the bride’s travelling bag, came to see what
was the matter. Brother and sister both talked at once, trying to
explain, and finally pointed out the lines, that she might read for
herself. As she read, her face grew white with excitement.

“What can it mean?” she cried. “What can it mean? It is our old
home—and Ray’s name is here, and Aunt Elsie’s! I can’t understand
it!”

Then all three went in haste for the bride and groom, almost
literally carrying them by force to the gift room; talking the while
so incoherently and so much in concert that not a suspicion of what
they could mean reached Ray’s mind.

“Why, Jean, dear,” she said, laughing, “what is the matter? Have you
all three gone daft?”

But when she read on the envelope her newly acquired name, and
flushed over it, and laughed, a happy little laugh, and bent over the
formidable document trying to make some sense from its
strange-sounding legal phrases, and began to catch a glimmer of its
possible meaning, and looked with startled eyes at her husband,
and found him almost as amazed as herself, Aunt Elsie’s satisfaction
in her carefully planned surprise ought to have been complete.

It is of no use to try to tell how that last hour, which had been
more or less dreaded by all concerned, was spent. They could not have
told, if they had tried. Almost the wedding itself, and the going out
from the old home not to return, were forgotten in this new
bewilderment and delight.

Perhaps it was well for all parties concerned that the clock moved
steadily on without regard to legal transfers, or any such thing, and
presently called out sharply the hour of ten; and the 10:40 train was
the one that the bridal party were to take! After that, they left all
the gifts and scurried about in haste.

According to Jean, on the following morning “before they had had a
chance to discover that Ray was really married, it was all over and
they were gone!”

The house had by no means settled into regular routine, nor grown
in the least accustomed to the new order of things, when a diversion
was caused by the appearance of Uncle Evarts; all unexpected,
as usual, he came for one of his flying visits.

The missing of a train at a junction had compelled him to lie over,
and he had found by taking a rather circuitous route he could run
down and spend a few hours with them, and hear all about the bride.
He was “so sorry” that he could not come in time for the wedding;
but business was a terrible tyrant and a man who had a family
to think about had to get up and hustle these days. Joe was at it,
he supposed. Poor Joe! He wished he could make him understand
how sorry he was not to be able to help him through this last scrape.
Would he really have to lose the house? Mortgages were dangerous
tools for poor people to play with; he himself had steered clear
of them; it was always the best way. Uncle Evarts never waited
for replies to his questions; in this case his sister-in-law was glad
that he hadn’t; she was finding herself unwilling to talk over family
matters with him. Next, he attacked the bride:

“So Ray is really married at last? Put it off a number of times,
didn’t she? Well, marriage is a kind of lottery; the best we can do
is hope that she will never have cause to regret hers. What is the
plan? You and Joe going to take them in and look after them until
they can stand on their own feet? Forsythe has nothing but his
salary, has he? Not even a home of his own. Pretty precarious
business to marry under such circumstances.”

When he paused for breath, Mrs. Forman decided that she must give him
a crumb of information; it started him afresh:

“Oh, indeed! Going to housekeeping. Well, that’s sensible. A little
place of their own, no matter how humble, is better than living
on other people. But, didn’t I hear that he had a relative of some
sort to support? Oh, a mother; and is she going to live with them?
They will need several rooms, then. Where have they found a desirable
place? Or haven’t they got so far as that yet?”

Mrs. Forman arose suddenly, ostensibly to close a window where the
wind was blowing in; really, to decide just how to answer him.
It gave Jean the opportunity for which she longed:

“They are to be at 1200 Dupont Circle, Uncle Evarts.”

“Eh, what?” he said. “I beg your pardon, Jean, I didn’t hear
distinctly, 1200 what?”

“Dupont Circle.”

“Why! Oh, caretakers for some nabob, are they? Well, that isn’t bad,
for a while. How long can they have that arrangement?”

“You don’t understand,” said Mrs. Forman, with a look of rebuke
for Jean, who was laughing hysterically. “It is to be a permanent
arrangement. Kendall has already settled two or three rooms and
installed his mother there, with a maid to look after her comfort and
Derrick to stay nights. Their wish was to get to housekeeping as soon
as they returned, and Ray is going to select her own furniture
by degrees.”

“But, Louise, you are talking in riddles! If I remember anything
about this town, Dupont Circle is one of the finest residence
districts. Isn’t it where you lived when Joe signed his name once too
often, and went to pieces?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Forman said, with quiet voice, though the flush on her
face betokened strong self-control. “You are quite right; it is our
dear old home. We are so thankful to have it as one of Ray’s wedding
gifts; we planned it for her long ago.”

“But what in the world? I beg your pardon, Louise, but this is most
extraordinary! What relatives have we who could make such an amazing
present as this? You don’t mean that the place is given to her
out and out!”

Then the telephone summoned Mrs. Forman, and Jean’s lost opportunity
returned:

“Yes, it is, Uncle Evarts; a regular deed, with whole yards of legal
phrases, and her name, ‘Ray Kendall Forsythe,’ written out in full;
the first time her new name was used. And it wasn’t Aunt Elsie’s only
gift, either; you ought to see the perfectly lovely wedding dress
trimmed with lace a hundred years old. Aunt Elsie gave the whole
outfit, and she is going to furnish the house from attic to basement,
she says, as a present to Kendall!”

“Aunt Elsie!” If written language could ever describe exclamation
points one might try to tell how Uncle Evarts exploded those two
words. Just those two, and then was silent; it being the first time
on record that language failed him. Mrs. Forman made an earnest
effort to explain. She did not wonder at his astonishment, they had
all been simply overwhelmed by Elsie’s wonderful gifts; of course,
they had not dreamed of such a possibility, and had not yet grown
used to the thought; they knew that there was nothing too big for her
heart, but that she could do things was almost unbelievable. But she
might as well have saved her breath. Evarts Forman could not
understand. He questioned and cross-questioned, and, after repeated
assertions and attempts at explanations, Mrs. Forman felt tempted
to say that he would not understand.

“Elsie!” he kept repeating, as one dazed. Why, that is absurd! It is
impossible! Elsie has no money; a paltry sum, perhaps, not enough
to dress her decently in a house where they pay any attention to such
matters. Didn’t he know! Who settled up everything after father died,
and paid all the bills, if he didn’t himself? Elsie buy a house
on Dupont Circle! There was some strange mistake. Elsie knew nothing
of business; she was the dupe of somebody who wanted to get the whole
tribe of Formans into trouble. Where was Elsie? He must see to this
at once. Joe ought to have known that all this was folly!

With Aunt Elsie herself he was decidedly sharp; he began by treating
her like an audacious child, who had been meddling with what she did
not understand and brought trouble upon them all. When he found that
he could not frighten her into “common sense,” and that, instead,
she composedly assured him that it was all quite true, she had
advanced the money to pay off the mortgage, and had bought the old
place on Dupont Circle for a wedding gift, he grew white with anger.

What did she mean by such talk? Had she any idea what a house
on Dupont Circle cost? If she had had money hidden away all these
years, what had she meant by deceiving them all and coming here
to live on charity! But here a chorus of voices interrupted.

“Mother!” from Florence; “must we sit here and let Aunt Elsie
be spoken to in that way?”

And Jean in the same breath: “‘Charity!’ Oh, mother, will you let him
say that?”

Then Mrs. Forman’s voice, cold and dignified: “Evarts, you must not
speak in that way to Elsie in our house. No greater blessing ever
came to a home than came to ours with her; if she had not a penny
in the world, as we thought she had not, we should be grateful
for the privilege of sharing our last crust with her. You shall not
insult us by speaking of charity.”

Then Uncle Evarts had some slight realization of what he had said.

“Oh, well,” he interrupted, impatiently, “I am not after heroics;
and I am not saying anything against her; she knows she is welcome
to a home with any of us, of course; what I want to get at is this
miserable business; she has been duped by somebody, made the victim
of a huge imposition that involves the Forman name and honor; and I
want to rescue us all, if you will give me a chance. When will Joe
be home? He ought to have a little common sense left, and be able
to help us out of this mix.”

Then Aunt Elsie’s quiet voice: “Really, Evarts, there is no occasion
for all this excitement. I can explain whatever needs explaining
in five minutes, if you will listen. You took it for granted that I
had no money, without asking me any questions; I never told you so.
As a matter of fact, I had a few thousand dollars that father
invested for me years ago, the interest of which has always been more
than I needed. Then Derrick sent me some money, from time to time,
and I invested that, and was fortunate; it has grown a good deal.”

“Derrick!” he said. “You mean—”

“I mean our brother Derrick.” His amazement was increasing. He was
bristling with questions, but she hurried on:

“So, you see, I had money enough for what I wanted to do, and some
left over. I came here to get acquainted with Joseph’s family; I will
not deny that I had a purpose in doing so, and I have discovered what
I wanted to know. But I did not know until a very short time ago that
Joseph was in serious financial trouble; if I had, I should have
moved before. They were so careful not to let the poor relation
who had thrown herself upon their ‘charity’ feel herself a burden
that they never even hinted to me the danger they were in of losing
their home; I found it out by eavesdropping and accident. But about
the business matters that trouble you, instead of waiting for Joseph
let me make a suggestion. Go and talk with Henry Westlake about it
all; he has had charge of my affairs for some time, and he is enough
of a business man, I suppose, to suit even you.”

Which was precisely what Uncle Evarts did. He let the train at the
junction go its way without him, and went as soon as he could
to Judge Westlake’s office; only to find him in court for the day.
But this business was much too serious to be put aside for small
matter like that; so he lunched at restaurant, took a motor ride
out to the park and around Dupont Circle, and in other ways got rid
of time until court adjourned. Then he sent in his card; he knew the
great man by reputation, but he used to know him as a boy. For that,
or some other reason, he was promptly admitted. Preliminaries over,
he poured out questions, and Judge Westlake answered as many of them
as he chose.

Yes, it was true that Miss Elsie Forman had bought 1200 Dupont
Circle; yes, she had paid cash down, it was not to be had on any
other terms.

Oh, yes, it was as fine an investment as the city afforded. It was
a whim on the part of the owner to get it off his hands at once
for cash.

Yes, that was true, too; she had deeded it to her niece, Mrs. Ray
Forman Forsythe, as a wedding gift.

It was then that Uncle Evarts lost his studied self-control and waxed
eloquent and indignant. He wanted to know what kind of a man
Judge Westlake thought himself to be, to take advantage of a woman
utterly ignorant of business matters and of values and allow her
to spend all she had—money which she had raked and scraped and
hoarded through the years in order to have something for her crippled
old age—on a wedding present! He went on, and on, and on, as Uncle
Evarts had a lifelong habit of doing; he said the same things over
again, and yet again, in more forceful ways, and added other thoughts
as they came to him; many of them not especially complimentary to the
judge, with whose composed listening he grew more angry every minute.

Up to this point in the interview Judge Westlake, as his custom was,
had used as few words as circumstances would permit. Then he
listened, sitting in silence for a moment even after the flow
of words had ceased, and his caller sat glaring at him, waiting for
what excuse he could possibly offer for his folly. Then the Judge
stopped fingering the business papers on his desk, squared himself
for a full view of his guest, and began:

“If you are quite through, Forman, there are a few things that I have
decided to say to you. I knew you when we were boys together, you
remember, and I knew your sister Elsie. I know her now. I also knew
her brother Derrick, and believed in him even after you had entirely
cast him off. So did your sister Elsie. I knew when she came to this
city that she had a purpose in coming. She had certain suspicions
which she wanted to have either removed or confirmed. She wanted
to make the intimate acquaintance of your brother Joseph’s family,
which was her chief reason for choosing his house as a place of
residence, instead of an Old Ladies’ Home, which, I believe, you
suggested to her. She has been able to carry out her desires, and has
proved that her suspicions were founded on fact. She was for a term
of years the sole regular correspondent of your brother Derrick; and
through him she learned a number of things that helped her in
reaching conclusions. I believe you are fully aware of your brother
Joseph’s financial straits, which you also know, of course, were
brought about through no fault of his own, but under circumstances
that reflect honor upon his strict integrity. Your sister did not
know about these matters, and the family did not enlighten her;
they made sacrifices, as you have already hinted, in order to receive
her, and they opened not only their home but their hearts to her.
In view of this it is not surprising that she has adopted them all
as her very own. Now it happens that she had certain trust monies
which she was to bestow upon this particular family, if it should
come to pass that they could—without knowing anything about them—meet
the conditions. Those conditions have been abundantly met.”

“The mortgage, which, of course, you know has been a weight about
your brother Joseph’s neck for years, was disposed of with a portion
of that trust money; the house on Dupont Circle was bought with some
of it, and will be furnished from the same fund; it is very large;
I may possibly be overstepping the bounds of a business interview,
yet I feel moved to relieve your natural anxiety for your brother’s
welfare by assuring you that I am reasonably certain, because of that
trust fund, that money matters will not be likely to trouble his
future; and that young man, your nephew, who is also, of course you
remember, the nephew and namesake of your brother Derrick—I may as
well tell you that when he is through with university and theological
seminary, and ready to enter upon his life work, he will not need to
worry about salaries; the fact is he would be able to live a
reasonably long life without any salary at all. This last statement
I am making in strict confidence, young man himself has, as yet,
no idea of any such thing.

“But I wanted to relieve your anxiety about all these relatives, and
to convince you also that your sister Elsie has not reduced herself
to beggary by these financial transactions. In fact, a note from her
received this morning instructed me to give you proof that you had no
need to worry about her. For reasons which, after what you have been
saying to me, I am sure you will appreciate, I have determined to go
beyond the letter of my instructions and tell you that Miss Elsie
Forman is a very wealthy woman. The brother, Derrick Forman, to whom
I have several times referred, had a remarkably well-developed
business faculty; in that new country, to which he went after his
family had lost confidence in him, he set to work with the energy
that had characterized his early boyhood, and won the confidence
of those who employed him. He bought a piece of land that doubled
in value before he had owned it for six months, and from that point
he went steadily forward. He seemed to have ability to foresee the
future from a business standpoint in a way that was really
remarkable. I was very early taken into his confidence in a
business way, and it chanced that I was able to aid him occasionally
in making investments. Then he became interested in miners, and
through them in mines. The results, so far as the miners were
concerned, were tremendous, and are not to be measured by any
estimates that we know how to make in this world—your sister can tell
you much about them; but with the financial part I am very well
acquainted, as I had the honor of being his business adviser; he had
heavy interests in more than one of the paying mines, and was himself
the owner of one of the best. In short, Mr. Forman, your sister
Elsie, entirely apart from this trust fund, of which I have told you,
is by far the wealthiest woman in this city. There is no reason why
she could not buy a whole block of houses on Dupont Circle, if they
were for sale, and have plenty of money left to pay taxes.”

The man of affairs had talked on steadily, waving away at first,
with an imperative hand, an occasional attempt at interruption;
he was not a man to be interrupted when he chose to talk. As the
story progressed his listener ceased to attempt even a question;
he sat like one spellbound. He listened to the end. He said very
little afterwards. He got himself away as soon as he could; he walked
the length of three blocks in the opposite direction from that which
he should have taken, lost in bewildering, whirling thought.

Then, as he looked about him and, realizing his mistake, began to
retrace his steps, he drew a long breath, like one awakening from a
dream, and said, aloud “What a consummate fool!” But whether he meant
Judge Westlake, or his sister Elsie, or himself, this record does not
state, in words.


THE END