A queer silence hung over all of them in the room. Mrs. Craig looked
down at the tired face lying back on the white pillows with a startled
expression in her usually calm eyes. Instinctively both her hands
reached for his and held them fast, while Jean laid her own two down on
her mother’s shoulders as if she would have given her strength for this
new problem.
“You mean for a little visit, don’t you, Becky?” she asked eagerly.
“No, I don’t, Jeannie. I mean for good and all, or at least until your
father has time to get well, and that can’t be done in a few days.”
“But Doctor Martin says he’s gaining every day,” Mrs. Craig said. She
waited for some reassuring answer, her eyes almost begging for one, but
Rebecca held her ground.
“Tom, tell what the doctor said to us this morning. Not that I take much
stock in him, but he may be on the right track.”
“Nothing special,” said Mr. Craig as he smiled back at them, “only it
appears that I am to be laid up in dry dock for repairs for a long time,
and the sinews of war won’t stand the vacation expenses if we stay where
we are now.”
“I wouldn’t try to talk about it, dear, before the children,” began Mrs.
Craig, quick to avoid anything that sounded like trouble or anxiety. “We
must not worry. There will be some way out of it.”
“There is,” Becky went on serenely. “I say you’d better move right out
of this kind of a place where expenses are high and you can’t afford
anything at all. This is a real crisis, Margaret Ann.” She spoke with
more decision as she saw Jean pat her mother comfortingly. “It has got
to be met with common sense. When the breadwinner can’t work and there’s
a houseful of youngsters to bring up and feed and clothe, it’s time to
sit up and take notice, and count all of your resources.”
“How would it do for you to take Dad up home with you for a rest,
Becky?” Jean suggested, stepping into the awkward breach as she always
did. “Then we could let Lydia go and manage alone. And when he came back
we’d have all the moving over, and it would be the prettiest time of the
year along in late August.”
Mrs. Craig’s face brightened at the suggestion.
“Or we might even renew the lease here, Tom. The house is very pleasant
after all, and we could get along with it if it were all done over this
spring.”
Mr. Craig looked up at Rebecca’s face helplessly, and she answered the
appeal.
“Now, look here,” she said with decision and finality. “You’d better get
the idea of staying here right out of your head, Margie. Circumstances
have made it entirely out of the question. If you’re the kind of woman I
think you are, you’ll start making plans to move where it’s less
expensive. I think your way lies over the hills to Elmhurst. You can pay
all your bills here, sell off a lot of heavy furniture, and move up
there this spring. For you can’t stay here. There’s hardly enough money
to see you through as it is. I’m going to help you along a bit until you
get your new start.”
“Not money enough!” said Mrs. Craig as though she could not believe it.
“But we couldn’t think of going up there and all living with you,
Becky.”
“You’re not going to,” answered Rebecca. “Thank the Lord, I live in a
land where houses and food are comparatively cheap and there’s room for
everybody. We don’t tack a brass doorplate on a rock pile like I saw
there in New York, Margie, and call it a home at about ten dollars a
minute to breathe. I’ve been telling Tom you’d better rent a farm near
me, and settle down on it.”
“But Becky—” Mrs. Craig hesitated.
“Oh, Mom, do it, do it,” came in a quick outburst from Kit, standing
back against the wall. “It would be swell for all of us and would do
wonders for Dad!”
“We wouldn’t mind a bit. We’d love it, wouldn’t we, Tommy?” Doris
squeezed Tommy’s hand to be sure he would answer in the affirmative.
“We’d all help you.”
Tommy was silent, still too bewildered at the idea to express an
opinion.
“I shouldn’t mind for myself, but we must think of the children—their
schooling and what environment means to teen-agers. I suppose Jean could
be left at school.”
“Thought she was all through school,” interrupted Rebecca.
“I am, only I’ve been taking lessons in town this winter in a special
course, arts and crafts, you know, and next fall I was going into the
regular classes at the National Academy of Design.”
“What for, dear?” Becky’s gray eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “Going
to be an artist?”
“Not exactly pictures,” Jean answered with dignity. “Textile design.”
“Well, whatever it is, I guess it will hold over for a year while you go
up to the country and learn to keep house. Kit here can go to high
school. It’s seven miles away, but there’s a school bus that picks up
those who live too far away to walk. It’s real handy.”
Kit’s eyes signaled to Jean, and Jean’s to Doris and Tommy. A fleeting
vision of that “handy” trip to high school in the dead of winter
appeared before them.
“What do you think of it, dear?” asked Mr. Craig, looking longingly up
at the face of his wife. “It would be a great comfort and relief to me
to get back to those old hills, but it doesn’t seem fair to you or the
children. The sacrifice is too great. They do need the right kind of
environment, as you say. Suppose we left Jean where she could keep up
her studies, and perhaps put Kit into a private school. Then I might go
up home with Becky, and you and the two younger ones could go out to
California to Benita Ranch—”
But Mrs. Craig laid her fingers on his lips.
“You’re not going to banish us to Benita Ranch. If you think it is the
best thing to do, Tom, we’ll all go with you. Wherever you go, I’m
going.”
Doris laid her hand over Jean’s, and they stepped out softly. Their
mother, they saw, needed to be alone with their father. They fled
downstairs to the study back of the living room and were followed by Kit
and Tommy who were already deep in an argument about the entire
situation.
“I don’t think it’s right to move up there,” Doris said, judicially. “We
may not like it at all, and there we’d be just the same, stuck in a rut,
and maybe we never could get out of it, and we’d grow old and look just
like Becky and talk like her and everything.”
“Take it easy, kid, be careful of what you say,” Kit said sharply.
“Becky is odd in some ways but she influences a lot of people in her
home town. And here too. I wish I had half her common sense.”
“I hate common sense,” Jean cried passionately. “I suppose it’s the only
thing to do but did you see Mom’s face? It was utterly tragic. Dad’s
been a country boy, and he’s going back home where he knows all about
everything and loves it, but Mother’s so different.”
“I think Mom’s a darling, but she’s adaptable too, and she’ll go, you
see if she doesn’t. And it won’t kill any of us. The really great mind
should rise superior to its environment.”
“Let’s tell Kit that the first time she gripes about dishwashing,” Doris
said. “I didn’t hear anything about Lydia going along, did you, Jean?”
“You’ll do your share all right, Kathleen, and when the gray dawn is
breaking at that,” laughed Jean. “Farm life’s no snap and really, while
I wouldn’t disagree with Dad and Becky about it, I think that those who
have special gifts—”
“Meaning you?” asked Kit.
“Meaning me—should not waste their time doing what is not their forte.
It takes away the work from those who can’t do the other things.”
Jean’s eyes twinkled and she smiled slightly, but Kit took her seriously
and shook her head.
“You’re going to walk the straight and narrow path up at Elmhurst under
Becky’s eagle eye just the same, Jean. It’s no use kicking. I don’t mind
so much leaving this place, but we’ll miss the kids like crazy.”
“And the roller skating,” added Doris, who went to the neighborhood
skating rink with a gang of boys and girls every Friday night. “I’m
going to miss that. I wonder if there is a roller rink up there.”
“I see where Kit steps off the basketball team and learns how to run a
lawn mower,” Kit remarked. “Also there will be no Wednesday evening
dancing class, Doris, where you can polish your jitterbug steps.”
“I wish we could all move back to town and see if we couldn’t do
something to earn money,” Jean said. “One of the girls in the art class
found a job designing wallpaper the other day, and another one is making
ceramics. When the fortunes of the Victorian family suddenly crashed,
the humble but still genteel family usually took in paying guests,
didn’t they?”
“Yes, but it went out of style ages ago, Jeannie,” Kit kicked off her
shoes and stared at her blue angora socks. “We’ll not take in any
boarders at all. I see myself waiting on table this summer at some
hillside farm retreat for aged and respectable females. If we’ve got to
work, let’s pitch in and help at home first.”
“And if it has to be, let’s not fuss and make things harder for Mom,”
Doris put in.
“How about Dad?” Kit demanded. “Seems to me that he’s got the hardest
part to bear. It’s bad enough lying there sick all the time, without
feeling that you’re dragging the whole family after you and exiling them
to Elmhurst.”
“It’s a riot, kids,” Jean said all at once, her eyes softening and her
dimples showing again. “Just the minute any one of us takes Dad’s part,
someone springs up and gives a yell for Mother, and vice versa. We won’t
be lonesome up there so long as we have ourselves—you know we won’t—and
if things are slow, then we’ll start something.”
“Will we? Oh, won’t we?” Kit cried. She got up, walked across the study,
and put a stack of records on the phonograph. In a few seconds _Begin
the Beguine_ blared out and Kit did a few dance steps back to her seat.
“That’s better,” Jean said with a sigh of relief. “We’ve got to pull all
together, and make the best of things. Dad’s sick, and Mother’s worried
to death. Let’s promise ourselves to be as much help as possible and
otherwise not get in the way.”