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?”