AN OLD ALBUM
"There's a great big piece of news in my letter from daddy," confided
Jeanne, who had been summoned to sit with her grandfather. He had been
alone for longer than he liked. Since his illness, indeed, he seemed to
like someone with him; and Jeanne was usually the only person available.
"What kind of news?" he asked.
"Good news, I guess. My stepgrandmother is gone forever. And I'm sort of
glad."
"What! Is she dead?"
"Oh, no! I wouldn't be glad of _that_. You see, she had a bad son named
John, who ran away from home ever so long ago. He was older than Mollie.
His mother and everybody thought he was dead--it was so long since
they'd heard anything from him. But he wasn't. He was _working_. They
never guessed he'd do that. He hadn't any children, but he had a real
good wife--a very _saving_ one. After she died he didn't have anybody,
so he thought of his poor old mother--"
"About time, I should think."
"Yes, _wasn't_ it? Well, he went to Bancroft to hunt for his mother, and
he's taken her to St. Louis to live. He gave Mollie some money for
clothes and quilts and things; but it won't do a mite of good."
"Why not?"
"Mollie would be too lazy to spend it; or to take care of the things if
she had them. Her mother spent a great deal for medicine for her
rheumatism; but Mollie just bought things to eat--if she bought
_anything_. She loved to sit outside the door, all sort of soft and
lazy, with the wind blowing her pale red hair about her soft, white
face; and a baby in her lap. I can just see her, this very minute."
"I can't see," said Mr. Huntington, testily, "why your father ever
married that woman."
"He _didn't_," said Jeanne. "She married _him_--Barney Turcott said so.
Daddy had nursed my mother through a terrible sickness--I _think_ it was
typhoid, he said--and in spite of everything he could do, she died.
Afterwards he was almost crazy about it--about losing her. He couldn't
think of anything else. And while he was like that, _he_ had a fever and
was sick for a long, long time. Before he was really well, he was
married to Mollie. Barney said the Shannons took ad--adventures--no,
that isn't it--"
"Advantage."
"Yes, that's it. Advantage of him. They thought, because his clothes
were good, that he had money. But they took very good care of me at
first, Barney said. But Mollie kept getting lazier and lazier, and
father kept getting stronger and healthier. But the better he got, the
more discouraged he was about having Mollie and all those children and
not enough money. You see, he wasn't _really_ well until after they were
living on the dock--Barney said the fresh air was all that saved him,
and that now he's a different man. Mollie's cooking is enough to
discourage anybody; but Barney says: 'By gum! He stuck by her like a
man.'"
"My child! You mustn't quote Barney quite so literally. Surely, he
didn't say all that to _you_?"
"No. Barney never talks to anybody but men, he's so bashful. He was
telling another man why he liked my father. They were reeling a net."
"Where were you?"
"Behind them, peeling potatoes. I didn't know _then_ that it wasn't
polite to listen."
"You poor little savage."
"I don't mind," assured Jeanne, "when _you_ call me a savage; but when
Harold does, I _feel_ like one."
Jeanne had been warned never to mention her mother in her grandfather's
presence; and she had meant not to. But by this time, you have surely
guessed that Jeanne, with no one else to whom she could talk freely,
was apt to unbottle herself, as it were, whenever she found her
grandfather in a listening mood. She was naturally a good deal of a
chatterbox; but, like many another little chatterbox, preferred a
sympathetic listener. Sometimes, as just now, she spoke of her mother
without remembering that she was a forbidden subject. But now, some of
the questions that she had been longing to ask, thronged to her lips.
Her grandfather was so very gentle with her--Oh, if she only dared!
"What _are_ you thinking about?" asked Mr. Huntington, after a long
silence. "That is a very valuable picture and you are looking a hole
right through it."
"I was wondering," said Jeanne, touching her grandfather's hand,
timidly, "if you wouldn't be willing to tell me something about my
mother. Nobody ever has. What she was like when she was little, I mean.
When _she_ was just thirteen and a half. Did she ever look even a tiny
little scrap like _me_?"
"Yes," replied her grandfather, quite calmly, "you _are_ like her. Not
so much in looks as in other ways. You are darker and your bones are
smaller, I think; but you move and speak like her, sometimes; and you,
too, are bright and quick. And some part of your face _is_ like hers;
but I don't know whether it's your brow or your chin. Now you may clean
my glasses for me and hunt up my book; I think James must have moved it.
It's time you were changing your dress for dinner."
After that, Jeanne learned a number of things about her mother. That she
had loved flowers when she was just a tiny baby, that pink was her
favorite color. That she had liked cats and peppermint and people. That
she was very impulsive, often doing the deed first, the thinking
afterwards. And yes, her impulses had almost always been kind. Once
(Jeanne's grandfather so far forgot his grievance against his only
daughter as to chuckle softly at the remembrance of the childish prank)
she had felt so sorry for a hungry tramp that the cook had turned away,
that the moment cook's back was turned Bessie had, at the risk of being
severely burned, pulled a huge crock of baked beans from the oven,
wrapped a thick towel about it, slipped outside, and thrust it upon the
tramp. The tramp _had_ been burned; and they had had to send for a
policeman, in order to get his bad language off the premises.
Jeanne had heard this story the night that she had had her dinner with
her grandfather. She was supposed to be eating in the breakfast-room
with her cousins; but when Maggie had cleared Mr. Huntington's little
table, that evening, preparatory to bringing in his tray, Jeanne had
said: "Bring enough for me, too, Maggie. I'm going to stay right here.
You'll let me, won't you, grand-daddy?"
"I'll _invite_ you," was the response. "I don't know why I didn't think
of doing it long ago."
You see, whenever the Huntingtons entertained at dinner, as they
frequently did, the children were banished to the breakfast-room.
Between Pearl's snippishness, Clara's snubbing, and Harold's teasing,
these were usually unhappy occasions for Jeanne. And generally the three
young Huntingtons quarreled with one another. Besides, with no elders to
restrain him, Harold was decidedly rude and "grabby."
"I think," said Jeanne, after one particularly uproarious meal during
which Harold had plastered Pearl's face with mashed potato and poured
water down Jeanne's back, "that I've learned more good manners from
Harold than from anybody else--his are so very bad that it makes me want
nice ones."
After the meal with her grandfather was finished, he showed her where to
find an old photograph album, hidden behind the books in his bookcase.
"There," said he, opening it at a page containing four small pictures.
"This is your mother when she was six months old. She was three or four
years old in this next one, and here is one at the age of twelve. She
was seventeen when this last one was taken."
"Is this all there are?" asked Jeanne, who had studied the four little
pictures earnestly. "Of her, I mean?"
"Yes, only those four. Young people didn't have cameras in those days,
you know."
"Keep the place for me," said Jeanne, returning the book to her
grandfather's knee. "I'll be back in just a second."
She returned very quickly with the miniature of Elizabeth Huntington
Duval that she had been longing to show to her grandfather.
"My father had a friend who was an artist," said Jeanne, breathlessly.
"He painted that soon after they were married. For a _present_, father
said. Wasn't it a nice one?"
"Why, I'm delighted to see this, my dear," said her grandfather, gazing
eagerly at the lovely face. "It's by far the best picture of Bessie I've
ever seen. It is very like her and her face is full of happiness--I'm
very glad of that. I had no idea of its existence. I am very glad
indeed that you thought of showing it to me."
"So am I," said Jeanne. "You're always so good to me that I'm glad I
could give _you_ a pleasure for once."
"You must take very good care of this," said Mr. Huntington. "It's a
very fine miniature."
"I always do," returned Jeanne. "I thought it was ever so good of my
father to give it to me--the only one he had."
"It was, indeed," said Mr. Huntington, appreciatively. "Now, put it
away, my dear, and keep it safe."
In the dining-room, to which the guests had just been ushered by James
in his very grandest manner, a lady had leaned forward to say,
gushingly, to her hostess:
"What a _lovely_ child your youngest daughter is, Mrs. Huntington. I saw
her at dancing school last week and simply fell in love with her. So
graceful and _such_ a charming face. She came in with your son."
"Clara _is_ a lovely child," returned Mrs. Huntington, complacently.
"I think," said the guest, "my little son said that her name was
Jeannette."
"That," said Mrs. Huntington, coldly (people were always singing that
wretched child's praises), "was merely my husband's niece, who has been
placed in our care for a short time. That time, I am happy to say, is
almost half over. She is a great trial. Fortunately, _my_ children have
been too well brought up to be influenced by her incomprehensible
behavior; her hoidenish manners."
At this moment there came the sound of a sudden crash, followed by
shrieks faintly audible in the dining-room. Although Mrs. Huntington
guessed that Harold had at last succeeded in upsetting the
breakfast-room table; and that either Pearl or Clara had been burned
with the resultant flood of soup, she turned, without blinking an
eyelash, to the guest of honor on her right to speak politely of the
weather.
It was Jeanne who rushed to the breakfast-room to find the table
overturned and all three of her cousins gazing with consternation at a
wide scalded area on Clara's white wrist. It was Jeanne, too, who
remembered that lard and cornstarch would stop the pain. Also, it was
Jeanne whom Mrs. Huntington afterwards blamed for the accident. Her bad
example, her wicked influence was simply ruining Harold's disposition.
"Sure," said Maggie, telling Bridget about it later, "that lad was
_born_ with a ruined disposition. As for Miss Jeannette, there's more of
a mother's kindness in one touch of that little tyke's hand than there
is in Mrs. H.'s whole body. And think of her knowing enough to use lard
and cornstarch. The doctor said she did exactly the right thing."