Читать книгу Forgive Us Our Trespasses - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 23

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Ferdinand, face downward on his bed, could hear the children's excited shouts as they took turns riding the pony about the barn-lot. ... It sounded now as if they had taken him out into the road. "Please let me next, Angela!"... "I said first, Angela!"... "These stirrups is too high!"

He heard his uncle's heavy footsteps on the stairs.

"Now, my boy, what's the trouble?" Uncle Miles was serious.

Ferdinand stifled a racking sob.

"You know I can't take anything from him!... Sure—I love the pony, and I want it awfully... but I wouldn't take anything from him—not if he gave me a million trillion dollars!"

"But you didn't have to show off like that before all our people! What do you suppose they'll think?"

"I don't care what they think," growled Ferdinand into the damp pillow. "It's none of their business, is it?"

"They'll make it their business to find out."

Uncle Miles sat down on the edge of the bed, Ferdinand moving over with a great effort to make him room.

"You are a strange child, Ferdinand, to feel this way about your father." Uncle Miles laid a hand on the twitching shoulder. "I hardly thought it possible for a child of your years to be capable of as much hatred as you—"

"But you hate him, don't you, Uncle Miles? Aunt Martha hates him!"

"Hate is an ugly word, Ferdinand. Neither your Aunt Martha nor I hate anybody in the whole wide world—not even your erring father. Whatever mistakes he may have made in letting your young mother suffer and be misunderstood and maligned... and die... it will do you no good to carry a grudge—especially now that he wants to be friendly."

At this, Ferdinand broke down completely, and cried piteously.

"He waited for ten years!... Not one word from him!... Even if you and Aunt Martha did hate him, I kept hoping he would write to me when I got big enough to read.... But I swore, last Christmas morning, I would hate him... forever!"

"On Christmas morning!" Uncle Miles was horrified. "What a day to choose for a pledge to everlasting hate!"

"Good as any," grumbled Ferdinand.

Uncle Miles took a turn or two up and down the room, tugging at his black burnsides.

"Well—if you're sure you don't want the pony"—Uncle Miles's tone was conciliatory—"we'll sell it. Perhaps that would be more prudent, anyway. You've shown pretty good judgment for a small boy. We can't afford a pony, and our people know it. You would only make the other children envious. It's out of keeping with everything else we have.... Suppose we sell the pony, and put the money in bank for your college education: how's that?"

"But—Uncle Miles!"—Ferdinand's voice rose shrilly. "That's all the same, isn't it? I don't want anything he's got! I won't have his ponies, or saddles, or colleges, or anything! He same as killed my mother! Aunt Martha said so! I'm going to write and tell him so! You see if I don't!"

"Now—now!" soothed Uncle Miles. "You wouldn't do that."

He patted Ferdinand on the head and walked slowly out of the room and down the hall to his study, where he slumped into the shabby morris chair by the window and meditatively twisted the burnsides into pencil-points.

Every three months since his marriage to Martha Miller, seven years ago, he had received a draft for two hundred and fifty dollars from his prosperous brother-in-law. It exceeded his salary.

Indeed, his decision to marry Martha Miller—which he tried later to tell himself was based on the fact that she, albeit unsightly and eccentric, was an excellent housekeeper, a paragon of piety, and singularly devoted to his motherless little Angela—had been hastened upon her confiding to him that the baby Ferdinand was something other than a liability.

"It's very sacrificial of you, Miss Miller," he had said, that April afternoon on his return to the Miller home for a brief glimpse of Angela, who, since the revival he had conducted at the Oak Grove Baptist Church in November, had been happily in Martha's care—"it's very fine of you to have assumed, so cheerfully, the burden of your unfortunate sister's child: very unselfish, indeed!"

Martha had smiled, cryptically.

"I must be honest with yuh, Brother Brumm. Of course, I would 'a' took care o' Julia's baby, like I promised, even if young Craig had disowned it.... But—he remembers."

"Indeed?... Does him credit, I must say.... Does he remember substantially, may I ask, Miss Martha?"

"Two hundred and fifty every quarter." Martha seemed satisfied with the effect of her announcement. "Reg'lar as the clock."

"A thousand dollars a year, Martha, for the keep of a baby?"

Martha nodded, smiled, folded her arms, rocked gently.

"I had a promise from Craig"—she leaned forward and lowered her voice confidentially—"shortly after our poor Julia passed away. He had wrote a-sayin' was there anything he could do, though at the minute he hadn't much to do with, he said, and I reckon that was true.... Give the devil his due, I always say—"

"I'm sure you would, Martha!"

He recalled Martha's prompt reaction to the note of tenderness in his voice. She had smiled appreciatively, puckered her lips self-deprecatingly, touched her hair, rather gingerly; for it was the first time she had done it up over a rat—not one of the larger rats, to be sure, such as the bulky Susan affected; a mere mouse, indeed, compared to Susan's—and was obviously not quite at ease with her greying foretop so heavily shadowing her eyes.

"But—and so—then—Oh, yes; then I wrote him as how poor Julia had gave me th' baby t' bring up, and that I meant t' do so, well as I could. If he ever wanted t' send me anything toward its keep, all well and good, I said, but the baby was mine. I told him as how it was Julia's last words, and it was, almost. I asked him t' promise he would never try t' take little Alexander away from me, or even write to him when he grew big enough t' understand; fer it might make him discontented and all... and he promised!"

"Alexander? I thought the child's name was Ferdinand."

"Well, you see Julia had wrote a letter, a couple o' days afore she died, and if the baby was a boy it was to be Alexander. So Craig always calls him Alexander.... We just couldn't; not after what he'd done, 'n' all.... Anyways, that's the baby's other name."

Mr. Brumm had proposed marriage to Martha, that evening, and had been accepted with a coyness he had hardly suspected her capable of in the face of her nun-like, ascetic piety.

On the day of their wedding in December—Mr. Brumm had just returned aglow over the quite brilliant success of his three weeks' revival at Partridge Crossing, Illinois—certain small items of business were under discussion. He and Martha were out walking in the snow on the highway, safe from the hostile curiosity of the family in whose opinion that slick feller Brumm was a-tryin' t' lay his miracle-workin' hands on th' baby's money, an indictment they had hinted at, in his presence, and freely discussed within easy earshot.

Martha had beamed over the prompt victory she had won in gaining his consent to look for a settled pastorate and discontinue his itinerant evangelistic career. Her solicitude over his endurance of cold beds, unwholesome food, and long journeys touched him, even if—as he suspected—there was another reason, quite as good, for her request. As the wife of a minister, Martha hoped to enjoy whatever refracted glory shone upon that office. There would be small comfort sitting at home, unrecognized, with the care of two small children—Angela was seven, Ferdinand three—while her crusading spouse spent blocks of weeks in distant parts.

With this triumph scored, Martha was prepared to be generous when Miles (it was becoming easier to call him Miles) suggested that he would deeply appreciate it if their future negotiations with Alexander Craig might be conducted by himself. It would be much more pleasant, all 'round, if he, as head of the household—and would not little Ferdinand be the same as his own son, now?—were entrusted with this business.

Pursuant to that agreement, Martha had promptly written to Seattle notifying her young brother-in-law of her marriage and stating that hereafter Mr. Brumm was to be considered custodian of the child's funds, adding that the arrangement would undoubtedly make Mr. Brumm even more interested in little Alexander. She hadn't said why.

Shortly before little Ferdinand was eight, Mr. Brumm had received a letter from Craig—they had always referred to him as Craig; not Mr. Craig, which would have denoted an unearned respect for him, or Alexander, which would have seemed more friendly than they felt—inquiring whether it would be considered a violation of his covenant if he wrote to his son on the occasion of his next birthday. The letter was typed on the expensively embossed stationery of The Puget Sound—Editorial Department.

Mr. Brumm, who enjoyed letting himself go, a bit, with a pen, had written a reply which, after many revisions, pleased him.

"We live very simply here, as becomes the family of a village clergyman, on small pay, ministering to a by no means well-to-do community composed of persons who for the most part make their own clothes and grow their own food. Your son's wants are few. As you are aware, we have thought it imprudent to inform him of your benefactions. Did he know that we are receiving generous amounts of money on his account, it would unquestionably alter his relation to our household, both in his mind and ours. It would make for constraint, and, perhaps, a breakdown of the discipline which every small boy, however tractable, requires."

There was a great deal more of it, running into all of four pages, redundantly cautioning Mr. Craig that any affectionate gesture toward his son, at this time, would make the child restless in his humble home, and reminding Mr. Craig of his promise to Mrs. Brumm "never to disturb the existing relationship while she lives."

Mr. Brumm had had no reply to that letter which, he felt, deserved adequate recognition, considering the amount of time and labour he had spent on its composition. The quarterly remittances continued to arrive unaccompanied by any personal message. On each occasion, Mr. Brumm receipted with a brief note, reporting on the boy's health and advancement in school, always optimistically. As for young Ferdinand's opinion of his father, they had tried to shape it properly by making the relationship seem as remote as possible. How else, indeed, were they to insure the child's contentment?

Reflecting on it now, in the light of this morning's dismaying episode, Mr. Brumm wondered if they had not slightly overdone their efforts to portray Craig as a selfish, cowardly scapegrace who had fled in terror from the gravest of obligations. He was aware that Martha had spared no ugly words in recounting for Ferdinand the pitiful details of a tragedy which had become an obsession in her cramped mind. Would this hot-headed boy actually write to his father, provoking an open breach, perhaps an investigation? It was a comfort to remember that Ferdinand did not know his father's address beyond the bare fact that he lived in Seattle. But was that a comfort? Mr. Brumm wondered if a letter addressed to Alexander Craig, Seattle, might not be delivered.