Derrick took a long breath. “I will,” he said.
CHAPTER IX
THE ESCAPE
IT HAD been a cold night, and frost still sparkled on the dank grass when Derrick neared the Millicents’. He had spent sleepless hours picturing this meeting, recounting all there was to be said, and casting about as to how the story might be put so as to revive as little as possible the poignant memories of two years ago. It was a strange mission that carried him now to his girl, but she greeted him with a calm suggesting that she was not altogether unprepared. Mrs. Millicent, unmistakably agitated, pressed his hand with a nervous tremor.
“You have more news for us, Mr. Derrick? Jean has told me what you told her yesterday. It is all utterly puzzling, and I wish I could help, but I can’t.”
Derrick nodded sympathetically. There was no such fiber of courage here as had been transmitted to her daughter. She was gentle and patient, and her heart centered on Jean, but she was not the woman to grasp a situation like the present one. He wondered how much Millicent had taken her into his confidence, how much she actually comprehended of the real man who sometimes seemed to look out of those painted eyes, then concluded that this could only have been fractional. She might have soothed his secret fears, but she could never understand them. Her mind was too ordered, her horizon too defined. She loved as a mother, and mourned as a wife. That was her existence. There could be no object gained in probing this gentle breast.
But, with Jean, Derrick knew it was different. Hers were eyes that saw, and a brain that pierced beyond the obvious. She had her mother’s charm but her father’s imagination. Derrick knew, and it fortified him to know it, that she could follow, pace by pace, wherever he led, and that her vision might even be keener than his. She, like himself, responded to whispers from the unknown and was also undismayed. So when he told his story it was to her rather than her mother that the tale was recited.
Both listened in rapt attention, Mrs. Millicent in sheer wonder, Jean with a keen and fascinated absorption. When he came to the finding of the creese, the older woman shivered, but Jean, her eyes cloudy with thought, did not stir. When he concluded, he felt that while Mrs. Millicent’s heart was lacerated afresh, Jean was possessed of more profound and vital emotions. And it was she who spoke first.
“It is very strange that the peddler should tell you something I meant to tell you but forgot.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about the study. You remember, mother, how it always was?”