CHAPTER IX
I
September 10, 1900.
Judith dearest: Christopher, I think, is going to sell Q 2 Ranch. It seems odd and perhaps not right that a private disaster like this should completely overshadow, for us, the terrible disaster in Galveston day before yesterday. But it has. I think that Christopher gave us credit for more altruism, and so told us yesterday when we were all so troubled over the Galveston sufferers. I think that he thought our own trouble would diminish by comparison. It has not.
When all the mortgages are paid, Christopher will have about $9,000 left over. If he and Irene take half, that will leave $4,500 for Grandfather, Father, Olympe, Uncle Phineas, Aunt Gracia, you, Greg, Neal, and me.
Christopher says that we can buy a pleasant Willamette Valley farm for less than half of that, and start free and clear. That will be much better, he says, since this place is too large for Father and Neal to handle, especially since Father’s health is so uncertain.
Indeed, Christopher declares, Father’s health is one of his chief reasons for selling. He thinks it is not fair to expect Father to carry on this struggle under a load of debt. Aside from the sentiment attached to the place, Christopher says, a smaller place, clear of debt, would be better for everyone. However, he says he will not act hastily, nor counter to our wishes in the matter. The offer is open for sixty days.
No one says anything. No one will say anything. I mean, not anything at all. I mean, not one single word. Not, “Yes, Christopher,” or, “No, Christopher.” I believe that Uncle Phineas might talk, if he were here. Uncle Phineas is lost.
Neal and I are the only ones who know this. After Christopher broke the news to us yesterday morning, Neal and I rode to Quilterville. We sent a telegram to Uncle Phineas, in care of Dr. Joe. Neal had to tell me what he was going to do because he had to borrow my pocket money, to put with his money, to send the telegram. We stayed in Quilterville several hours waiting for the reply. When it came it was from Dr. Joe. It said: “Phineas not here. Mum’s the word. No occasion for worry. He is O. K. Joe.”
We had no money to answer that telegram. Neal says he thinks that Uncle Phineas has gone on another prospecting trip. It is odd, because Olympe got a letter from him this morning, written in Portland and mailed from there. I picked up the envelope and looked to see the postmark.
Neal thinks that Uncle Phineas wrote several letters, and left them for Dr. Joe to mail in regular order. It would not be unlike Uncle Phineas. The fact that Olympe had sent him her garnet set to be cleaned, and that he did not mention it in this letter, might seem to prove Neal right. Olympe has written, now, to have him sell the set instead.
Aunt Gracia is going to sell Great-great-great-grandmother’s silver tea set. It is hers, you know. Olympe says the Turkey carpets belong to Uncle Phineas and have ever since he settled the estate in Virginia. She is going to have him sell them. The amount should keep you and Greg in comparative comfort for a long time, she thinks. Aunt Gracia is hoping for a teacher’s position. She is hunting out old books to bone up for the examinations. Neal plans to stay right here and work for his board only, if necessary. Grandfather will apply for his pension after all these years. It will be about seventeen dollars a month.
Aunt Gracia has asked me to come and help her now, so I must go. Dear, I love you and Greg very, very much.—Lucy.
II
September 21, 1900.
Dearest, dearest Judy-pudy: If you have worked out, in your philosophy for living, any special thing to say or to do to prepare you for a shock, it would be wise to say or do it right now. I have very bad news to tell you.
The stress and worry of the last several months, combined with darling Father’s ill health and the final news that Q 2 is to be sold, has unhinged his mind. Just a little bit, Judy dear. Not enough so that any of us had noticed it. Truly, truly. We had no idea of such a thing, before the blow fell. And, if the blow had not fallen, we would not know it now. He seems just the same as always. Truly he does, Judy. Perhaps a little sweeter and kinder—but really just the same. So, when you think of dear, darling Father, think of him as acting just as he acted when you and Greg left home in March. If you were to walk right into the room this minute, you would not see a bit of difference in Father’s mentality. Truly, truly you wouldn’t, Judy. But, dear, the truth is that Father is now a baptized Siloamite. But remember quickly, Judy, before this makes you ill or anything: Father is just the same wonderful man.
Wednesday those two pleasant young missionaries, Mr. Cordinger and Mr. Withmore, came to the house. Since they knew nothing about our troubles, and were jolly and interesting, it was almost a blessing to have them. If they had not unhinged dear, darling Father’s mind, it would still be better than not to have them here. They are staying on, in the attic room, for a week or so. You know they never force their religious views on anyone, or even ask anyone to join their church; so how it could have happened that they unhinged Father’s mind, I cannot understand.
To-day, when they and Aunt Gracia and darling Father started to drive to Quilter River, we had no idea that Father was not in a normal state. Judith, when they got to Quilter River, Father allowed himself to be baptized in it. They all came home and deliberately told us.
Knowing Father as we know him, and knowing his opinions of even less ornamental nonconformist religions, of course such an act can mean but one thing. I have not found courage yet to discuss the matter with anyone except Neal, not even with Grandfather.
Neal says that he thinks there is some dark, sinister meaning behind it, like blackmail. Neal says that Christopher thinks so, too. If Christopher does think this, it seems odd that he has now ridden to Quilterville to mail a letter asking Dr. Joe to come to Father.
I do not believe that it was blackmail. Those two young missionaries are the sort that Grandfather calls clean, wholesome chaps. And, if they were wicked, how could they blackmail a man like darling Father who has led a perfect life?
Judith, dear, I think I am not able to write more now. If I had found any consolation for myself, I would give it to you. But I have found none. I have nothing to give to you but my love.—Lucy.
III
September 22, 1900.
Dearest Judy dear: If only I had not sent that letter to you yesterday! Or if only I had not spent all my money with Neal’s telegraphing to Uncle Phineas, and could telegraph to you now to disregard letter, as Christopher did that time in the university when he planned to commit suicide, and wrote to us about it, and then changed his mind.
Neal and I have discovered that Father is not, and never was for one moment, insane. I can write that word now. I could not write it yesterday.
Last night Neal decided to go straight to Father and ask him why he had been baptized. I advised against it, fearing that it might make Father worse again. Neal, fortunately this time, paid no more attention to my advice than he usually does.
Neal was excited and frightened, though he denied it. He went rushing upstairs and followed his own quick knock straight into Irene and Christopher’s room. Christopher had forgotten, again, to lock their door. Irene had her hair done up in kid curlers. Neal apologized and pretended not to see. Irene had a slight heart attack. I think because she has assumed, without actually saying it, that her hair waved naturally. It was unlike Neal to tell about the kid curlers. He would not have told a month ago. Sometimes it seems as if Christopher were selling more of the Quilters than just their family estate. Yesterday, I thought, he had sold darling Father’s sanity. That is not true, because this is what Father told Neal.
He said that he liked to pay his debts. He said that the accident had frightened Aunt Gracia and had started her to worrying, again, about his immortal soul. She thought that if he had died not in a state of grace, as she calls it, he would have been doomed to whatever Avernus the Siloamites had manufactured. He did not have their conception of it clearly in his mind, but he was sure that it was shockingly unpleasant. He said that Aunt Gracia had been a mother to us children, and had stood with him, shoulder to shoulder, all his life. He said she had enough to trouble her, just now, without being troubled about him. And for him to allow himself to be dipped, once, into Quilter River seemed to him a very small payment to make to her.
Neal told Father that he could not go with him in that argument. Neal said that he thought hypocrisy was never justified. Father said he had tried to foil his conscience with the same casuistry, but that he could not. Father said kindness was its own justification. He said that the sacrifice he had made to please Gracia and to set her mind at ease was so genuine that it cancelled hypocrisy. Neal said that he did not believe in sacrifice. Father said, “Neither does Christopher.”
Neal had to admit, of course, that it always depended upon the sacrifice and who made it. Neal could not understand why Aunt Gracia should have worried about Father, in particular. Neal said he had never heard of her worrying about any other Quilter’s immortal soul.
Father told him why. Father said that we children were old enough to know, and that he had meant, for some time, to tell us.
Judy, a few months before Neal was born, a man who lived in these parts then was courting Aunt Gracia. Aunt Gracia was infatuated with him. Mother never did like him, and she had once complained to Father that the man stared at her. But Father said Mother was so very beautiful that he could not blame anyone for looking at her. Still, Father kept an eye on the man; but he soon succeeded in convincing Father that he was interested only in Aunt Gracia.
One evening, when Father knew that the man was on our place, Father stopped work a bit early. He did not distrust the man in the least, or he would not have allowed him to be courting Aunt Gracia. So he doesn’t know why he stopped work early that evening—he just did so. And, as he was coming through the oak grove, he heard Mother scream. Father spurred his Cayuse, and got there just in time to shoot and kill the man before he had harmed Mother.
Father went straight to the sheriff. In a few days they had a trial. The jury acquitted Father without leaving the courtroom. And the judge apologized to Father for having bothered him with the affair.
None of this has ever troubled Father’s conscience at all. He said there was but one thing to do, and he did it. But he says that, since Aunt Gracia deep in her own heart has never truly forgiven him, she thinks the Lord has not forgiven him either. She even thinks that the Lord would not forgive Father, unless Father made some special kowtow in his direction. So Father made the kowtow to gratify Aunt Gracia.
Not long after the trouble, Father said, the missionaries of the Siloamites came to the house, and Aunt Gracia became a convert to their faith. The religion turned Aunt Gracia from a hard, bitter, broken person into a useful, serene, lovable woman again. Because of this, Father said, he felt that he also owed a certain debt to the Siloamites—a debt that he was glad to pay.
Father said he told Aunt Gracia that he could not say her religious beliefs were true, because he did not know. He could not say that they were false, because he did not know. He knew nothing. But, since her religion was a beautiful, kind, and just religion, he hoped that it might be true. And that, if with nothing stronger for a foundation than hope, his baptism would mean anything to her, he was willing to go through with the ceremony. She told him that it would mean everything to her. He was baptized.
Neal asked Father why Aunt Gracia’s foolish happiness meant more to him than the humiliation of the rest of the family, particularly yours, Judy, and Neal’s and mine.
Father answered that if an act, which was both kind and useful, could humiliate his children, then he was sorry.
Since you have asked for it twice, I will send you my poem about God. Grandfather says that it has a thought in it; but he says that he thinks my medium will prove to be the stately splendour of English prose. He named my poem for me.
Omnipotence
God was sad, and he sighed,
“How little the earth men know,
They think I am satisfied
With my work down there below.
So they blame me for blunders of hand,
And they scorn me for tasks ill done.
Why can’t they understand
That I have only begun?
Do they think I am unaware
That much I have wrought has been wrong?
My burdens are heavy to bear.
Why won’t they help me along?”
IV
A knock, demand nicely moderated by deference, tapped on the glass of Lynn MacDonald’s office door.
Her secretary said, “Shall I have your car brought around, Miss MacDonald, or shall I order your dinner sent up to you?”
Lynn MacDonald added the last page of Lucy’s final letter to the pile of pages in front of her and smoothed it flat with her palms. Near the telephone were Neal Quilter’s letters, a package of neatly taped temptation.
“Neither just now, Miss Kingsbury. I think I shall stay here for half an hour or so longer. But you must go straight home. I thought you had gone some time ago.”
“I can’t help you?”
“Not now, thank you.”
The tape untied easily. From the envelope with the blue figure 1 on it she took Neal Quilter’s first letter, and shook the thick folded pages free from their creases.