PART PAYMENT
How very different it all was! And how hard, how very hard it was going
to be for Gloria! The painful separation was over. She had torn herself
literally from the arms of faithful Jane, she had waved a goodbye to her
dear friends in Barbend, she had promised so many that she would write
to them, and now she was beginning the new life at Aunt Harriet’s.
“I’m so glad Hazel’s gone,” said the delicate looking woman with the
wispy gray hair.
“Why?” asked Gloria, colorlessly.
“Oh, she’s so fussy. And besides I think you and I shall get along
better alone.”
“Alone?”
“Why, yes, Hazel won’t be back for months, I expect. You can’t imagine
how much trouble we had getting all her things ready.” A deep sigh
vouched for this.
“But doesn’t—isn’t—Uncle Charley home?”
“Oh, no.” The thin face twitched. “He doesn’t come home often.”
Gloria’s heart sank, that is it felt still heavier, but to the girl
seated in the linen covered chair in the semi-darkened room, it did not
seem possible that her heart had any more depth to sink to.
“I didn’t know Uncle Charley was away,” she faltered.
“No, Gloria, I just couldn’t tell you,” murmured her aunt. “You see—”
she hesitated, glanced up quickly, then bit an oppressed lip. “Your
uncle is rather—high-minded, you know.”
“High-minded?” repeated Gloria. “Why shouldn’t he be?”
“Well, what I mean is, he and I can’t agree on—well, on everything.”
“Do you mean you have quarrelled?”
Again that painful shifting of expression. “Well, when a thing’s done
and can’t be undone I don’t see the sense of making a fuss about it,”
said the aunt, evasively.
The new disappointment was too much for Gloria. She had no wish to press
for its details. The one solace in her misery had promised to be the
companionship of her “high-minded Uncle Charley,” her father’s boyhood
friend. And now that was to be denied her.
This new house with all its ornate furnishings—evidently the result of
Hazel’s extravagant taste—made Gloria feel just as she had felt the day
she saw Mrs. Gordon’s green plush parlor suit, bought ten days after Jim
Gordon’s funeral with his insurance money.
That was it. This all represented her dear Aunt Lottie’s money. And she,
Gloria, was being deprived of her share. It was too difficult to
understand. She could not resist the effort to fathom the mystery,
neither could she approach it without a chilling shudder.
“But dad is gone!” she kept reminding herself. “That’s the one thing
that counts, and he doesn’t know.”
“Did you—how did you manage about your mail?” her aunt asked nervously.
“It will come here,” replied Gloria.
“Oh.” Then a long pause. It was not easy for Mrs. Towers to adjust this
high-strung girl to the unpleasant situation.
“I hope—you’ll like it here, Gloria,” she felt obliged to remark, rather
awkwardly.
Gloria’s lip curled. “You needn’t worry about me, Aunt Hattie,” she said
crisply, “I can stand what I undertake. If I don’t like it here I’ll go
to Jane.”
“Oh, goodness’ sake, Gloria!” exclaimed the nervous woman. “You wouldn’t
do that!”
“Why not? Haven’t I agreed to keep your secret? You needn’t worry that
I’ll break my word,” she retorted, not in the most polite tone of voice
either.
“Oh, I know you wouldn’t do that,” her aunt returned quickly. “I know,
Gloria, you do consider a word of honor—sacred.” The thin lips
completely disappeared behind the woman’s strained expression.
“Yes, I guess I know what that means if I have been raised without a
mother,” said Gloria. She could not repress her chafing sarcasm.
“But such a father as you have! Why, I can’t imagine Ed Doane—well,
acting as Charley Towers is acting now,” said the aunt, holding on to
the chair arms as if for moral support.
“Oh, I can,” exclaimed Gloria. “If it’s anything about—high mindedness,
there isn’t any one on earth higher than dad.”
Mrs. Towers sat back in her chair and breathed in little snatchy gulps.
She was evidently surprised at Gloria’s show of spirit. Once or twice
she seemed about to speak and then turned her head away with a sharp
twist.
This was the second day after Gloria’s arrival. The first had been too
bitter to remember, yet the girl, away from home and loved ones, could
not forget it. How hard it had been to satisfy Jane’s questions? Her
suspicion that things were not to be entirely happy for her young charge
kept her until the very last train out to her sister’s at Logan Center.
And Gloria had been so eager to get her away! Mrs. Towers could hardly
speak civilly, her alarm was so great that Jane would discover the true
state of affairs. But Gloria was wise enough to talk of her home and her
absent father, thus seemingly, finally, to allay Jane’s suspicion, and
to account for her own state of depression.
Good old, loyal Jane! Gloria would go to her —she felt determined of
that just now—she would go out to the sister Mary’s house where all the
interesting children were cuddled, if things became unbearable at her
Aunt Harriet’s.
For Gloria was not to go to boarding school!
This great disappointment was first made known to her on that rainy
afternoon, when she came out to Sandford in response to her aunt’s
request.
And that was why the world seemed to “go black” all around her, that was
why the picnic with all its merriment failed to arouse in her a
responsive echo of joy, and that was why her father had read in her face
an expression of relief when he was ordered to report earlier—she was
glad he would go before her own strength to guard her secret might
weaken, anxious that he should go before his own love would sound the
depths of her resolve: that his great expedition should not be put off
because her own plans for the year at boarding school had been
frustrated.
Yes, frustrated! That was the hateful word. But what did it mean? How
had it happened? Had not the loving Aunt Lottie been true to her promise
to provide for Gloria’s education?
Then why? What? How had the disappointment come about?
Question after question rose bitterly to her lips as she faced her aunt,
Hazel’s mother, and as she realized that Hazel was gone on to the
coveted boarding school.
But surely her own Aunt Harriet would not deliberately wrong her! She
had given some explanation, of course, but why had she not explained
clearly?
There had never been the slightest danger of Gloria telling her father
of this change, for that would have caused him to give up instantly
every thought of the foreign trip. It had only been the boarding school
opportunity for his daughter that had finally influenced him to leave
her. But the lure of a whole winter, and even early summer at a most
carefully managed seminary, the very one her own dear mother had
expressed a feeble wish for, as a place to educate the baby when she
should have grown to girlhood, this was that great opportunity for
Gloria that had induced Edward Doane to consider his own chance on the
foreign business trip.
And she had managed to get him away without discovering the truth!
Even Tom and Millie had been suspicious, but, of course, there was by no
means so great and so brave a reason for her secrecy, so far as
companions were concerned.
Well, she had managed it all this far, Jane was gone, and now she faced
the first result of her heroic sacrifice.
“Part payment,” she reflected.
Could she go through with it?
And why was her aunt so secretive?
Why did her Uncle Charley not come home from his business out in Layton?
After the shock she had experienced on the day of her arrival, when the
full weight of her loneliness descended upon her, Gloria now picked up
the stray ends of all these questions and turned them over in her mind.
But looking at the gray haired woman in the chair before her, she who
was too gray for her years and too nervous for any reasonable
discussion, Gloria could not find the courage to ask again why all this
must be so.
They had been sitting there in a strained silence. Her aunt jumped up
suddenly with a show of impatience and crossing the room to where the
cat had attempted to settle down in a comfortable cushion, shoved the
surprised little animal away, roughly.
“No place but a good chair will suit that cat,” the woman complained.
“Go ’long and snuggle in your own carpet.”
The “carpet” was out in the kitchen in a corner, Gloria remembered, and
compared with the chair chosen, was indeed hard and uninviting. But she
did not protest. Even a helpless cat was not to be considered in her
present upset state of mind.
Her aunt came back from shaking the cushion and chasing the cat, and
looked at her sharply.
“I suppose you had better register if you intend going to school,” she
said indifferently.
“Intend going to school?” repeated Gloria. “Why, Aunt Harriet! You
didn’t imagine I intended to stay from school, did you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought maybe you wouldn’t care so much about
school in Sandford—”
“I don’t. I just hate to think of it,” retorted Gloria, “but I’ve got to
go. Do you suppose dad would allow me to remain away?” She almost choked
on the words.
“Your dad’s a good many miles away now and he left you in my charge,
didn’t he?”
Indignation stung Gloria’s cheeks.
“I am sure, Aunt Harriet,” she said icily, “that I misunderstand you.”
“Now, Gloria, don’t go getting bitter,” said the other. “I certainly do
not mean to propose anything that your father would not like. I was just
only thinking, if you really couldn’t bear to go—”
“I can’t, but I’m going,” flung back Gloria. “And I suppose I had better
register today.”
“While you’re out you may as well get some things from the store,” said
her aunt, ignoring her indignation. “We won’t want much but we’ve got to
eat, I suppose,” she conceded.
For a moment Gloria held her breath, then she exclaimed impulsively:
“Oh, Aunt Harriet, why do I have to do all this!” Tears welled into her
dark, earnest eyes.
“Now, there, Glory,” soothed the woman. “It’ll be all right. You won’t
notice the time—”
“Won’t notice it—!”
“I mean, a winter isn’t long and perhaps even by next term—” she stopped
and gave her head a pathetic toss. “You see, Glory, with Hazel’s voice
and her—her ways, she just couldn’t be—put off.”
“Oh, her voice,” cried Gloria, “what difference can her voice make to
me?”
“But she’s your own cousin. You ought to be proud of her. Her teachers
say she has the finest soprano—”
“What do you want from the store?” Gloria interrupted helplessly. But
when she had made out the skimpy list, she could not forget the joy it
had always been to go up to Tom’s store at home, and shop for the things
Jane was wont to order to please Gloria, or to surprise her father.
This was indeed part payment for her unfair exchange.