WITH THIS PARTING THRUST JEAN VANISHED, LAUGHING AS SHE WENT
Derrick echoed her laugh, although there was a heightened color on his face; but Florence spoke her annoyance:
“I can’t think what has happened to Jean; when Aunt Elsie first came she got on with her much better than I did, and now she is really almost rude to her sometimes. Aunt Elsie takes it so patiently, too, and is always bright and pleasant with her. I don’t know how to account for the way the child acts.”
Derrick had already departed; there was no one to reply but Ray, who said, by way of excuse, that Jean had to have her fun, and that it must be remembered that she did not mean more than half she said, when she was in one of her semi-sarcastic moods. But Ray, too, was puzzled; she had been the first to notice the change in Jean; certainly her present line of action was very unlike her.
Aunt Elsie had now been a member of the family long enough for all to get their bearings, and, with the exception of Jean, they had not only ceased to sigh over the family upheaval, but openly rejoiced in the new member’s presence. “What would we do without Aunt Elsie!” was a sentiment that in varying forms of expression was now constantly heard in the household, but never from Jean.
That young woman, as she waited at the corner for her car, on the afternoon in question, shook herself irritably, as if to shake off some annoyance. It was her way of expressing dissatisfaction with herself. As often as she was betrayed into expressions of annoyance, thinly veiled in playfulness over the present state of things in her home, she was ashamed of it.
“I need not have said that to Dick,” she told herself. “I need not have said any of it, for that matter,” and it humiliated her to think that she had again broken the resolution to “hold her tongue.”
It is doubtful if she understood herself any better than her family did. Had she realized that her uncomfortable frame of mind sprang from an ugly root named “Jealousy,” she would have been appalled; had any one told her this she would probably have indignantly denied it; yet in plain prose, she was jealous of her aunt’s influence over Dick, who had always seemed to belong almost exclusively to her. The two were so nearly of an age that they had taken their daily outings in the same baby carriage at the same time; and had been all but inseparable ever since. The fact that Jean was a few months older had seemed to give her a kind of dominance over her brother; at least he had followed her lead or fallen into line with her good-naturedly when their views crossed, nearly all his life. This, until very lately; she could not understand the change in him; within a few weeks on two or three notable occasions he had not only differed from her entirely, but persisted in carrying out his own ways, even when they ran directly athwart hers. This he did with such cheerful assurance as to exasperate his sister still further. Not knowing how else to account for it, she decided to attribute it all to the influence of the aunt of whom he had suddenly become so fond; and she resented it.
“It is so ridiculous!” she said, with an angry toss of her head, as the tardy car still kept her waiting. “He seems to be actually infatuated with that lame old woman whom he called, when she first came, ‘the homeliest critter he ever looked at!’ Ray and Florence think he is ‘so changed’; I should think he was! Of course, I am glad for some things; it is nice that he doesn’t want to stay out nights any more, nor go to places that father does not like; but—couldn’t he have done that for all our sakes, I should like to know! Just as though she was the only person in the world who cared for him! I believe I shall end by—” but here she suddenly checked herself; she had almost said she would end by hating that old woman! She did not mean that, of course; she was not even going to let herself think it for a moment; Aunt Elsie was all right enough for those who liked her; and there seemed to be plenty of them! Well, she had no objections; why should she have? But as for bowing down herself, to worship at the same shrine, she was never going to do it, and they need not expect it; not if Aunt Elsie should say, every hour in the day, that “Jean had a voice she loved to listen to.” What did she know about voices? The only thing she wanted of her was to let Dick alone.
As a matter of fact, it was altogether another influence that was dominating her brother’s life and working its inevitable change in his character. Long before this time he had received his book, and read and re-read it. The smile with which he had first received it at his aunt’s hand, after having heard its story, had in it a touch of superiority.