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.