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.