Читать книгу Forgive Us Our Trespasses - Lloyd C. Douglas - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Standing before the severely plain but expertly crafted walnut desk that her father had given her, last Christmas, Julia unlocked a drawer and re-read the precious document it contained.

The desk had become a symbol of the considerable difference between herself and her brothers and sisters. A source of anxiety and embarrassment at first, the desk had come to be a refuge and an inspiration.

On Christmas morning, having presented each member of the family with a fine, large orange, Ferd had made a mysterious trip through the snow to his shop, returning shortly with the desk. Julia's exclamations of delight had intensified the sullen silence. At supper, that evening, Greta's smouldering indignation blazed forth in an irascible comment to which Ferd quietly replied:

"She's the only one in this family that would have any use fer a desk. If any o' the rest o' yuh ever needs one, mebby I'll 'tend to it."

This sarcastic explanation of the gift did little to conciliate them. So much constraint was traceable to the episode that Martha told Julia she had better take her new desk upstairs and keep it out of sight. Susan added that she, for one, would never darken the door of Julia's room while it was there.

But, however painful the situation, at the outset, it developed for Julia a privacy she had never enjoyed before. By common consent, the family left her to herself, implying, a dozen times a day, that she considered the rest of them inferior, twisting her every remark into allusions to their ignorance.

"What shall I do, father?" she inquired one day, in the shop. "They're always trying to act as if they're not as smart as I am."

Ferd grinned, and blew the sawdust off his chisel-handle.

"They don't have t' put on, very much, t' play that."

"But it makes me so miserable!"

"Well—don't cry.... That's what yuh get fer a-bein' smart. Smart people's always miserable. Old man Solomon said that—er somethin' about like it."

"Was he miserable?" asked Julia, with a tearful little smile.

"Gosh, yes! He was the smartest man that ever lived!" Ferd sat down on the tool-chest, laid a dusty hand on her knee, and grinned mysteriously. "Julia, are yuh sure you've found all the drawers in that there little desk? One of 'em ain't got no handle."

Her eyes brightened.

"No," she whispered, excitedly, "I haven't found it. Will you show me?"

He had found it for her the next time the family was out of the house—a narrow drawer set in the centre of a row of six open pigeon-holes and faced by a little pilaster carved to imitate a longitudinal section of a Corinthian column.

"That there's it," pointed Ferd, hugely enjoying Julia's flutter of excitement. "No—it don't come out that way," he said, when she had unsuccessfully grappled with the ornament which defied the best efforts of her finger-tips. "Nobody could ever get it out a-doin' that."

"Do show me, father!"

He had proceeded then in leisurely fashion, immensely relishing her suspense, to demonstrate the strange magic of the secret drawer.

"Now, if you ever want to put anythin' out of sight, Julia," commented Ferd, with a comradely wink, "you'll know how to do it; and it'll take a heap o' tinkerin' with this here desk fer anybody else but you to find out how that drawer opens."

Julia was ecstatic.

Her close inspection of the desk had led to another discovery: Ferd had carved the name "Mueller" on the bevelled edge of the little receptacle for ink-bottles and pens.

"I'm so glad you did that, father. That makes the desk still more valuable, doesn't it?"

Ferd flushed with pride.

"It's the only time, Julia, since I cut the name under the wing of an eagle that holds the Bible in a big church in Philadelphia. It's the way my father cut his name—and his father—and his father's father.... It's a good name, daughter."

Standing now before the desk, Julia withdrew a document—much too long to fit into the secret drawer—bearing the impressive seal of the Great State of Indiana and signed with an affected flourish by the Noble County Superintendent of Public Instruction, authorizing her to teach an ungraded school for the term of One Year. Beside it, in the long envelope, was the covering letter containing a pressing suggestion that the recipient plan to attend a five-day Institute to be held in Albion, the county seat, in late August, chiefly for the benefit of inexperienced teachers.

"Please, God," whispered Julia, wistfully but shyly, for they were not very well acquainted, "let me have a school!"

Nobody in the Miller family exhibited any piety but Martha, who was presumed to have enough for all. Martha's conversation was sprinkled with scriptural allusions, her stock of texts featuring the punitive phrases promising the ultimate rebuke of the proud, the "froward" (whoever they were), and the stiff of neck. Julia, gifted in parody, occasionally employed these solemn exhortations herself, with ex tempore improvisations and amendments which amused her, and sometimes frightened her, too; for, she reflected, if there really was a hell, surely the fabricator of any such flippancies was reserving a warm berth.

When Martha, in her thin, flat voice, carolled from the kitchen, "I'm washed in the blood of the Lamb," Julia invariably shuddered, swallowed hard, and muttered, "Ugh!—how nasty!"

"Please let me have the Schrofe School," wheedled Julia, clutching her precious credentials tightly in one hand and with the other pressing her eyes hard to make sure they were closed firmly enough to satisfy the requirements of Deity, who was sure to be suspicious of her sincerity, "so I won't have to come home except on Sundays. But—any school will do. Please, dear God, let me hear from one of them pretty soon. It would be so nice to have word on my birthday. Please!"

Somewhat startled by the inflection of this final word of entreaty, which hinted at an intimacy with the Almighty which, she was aware, impertinently presumed upon a very sketchy relationship, Julia added, humbly "—Unless, of course, it should not be in accordance with Thy Holy Will."