"All that's Bright must Fade"--Departures--Preparing the House for the
Winter--Page's Portrait of Pickie--Packing up--Studious Habits of the
Domestics--The Cook and her Admirers--Adieu to Chappaqua.
_October 1_.
"All that's bright must fade."
This long, delightful summer is now over, and the time approaches for
us to return to the din and whirl of city life.
Miss Worthington left us this morning to return to her beautiful
Southern home, and Gabrielle, too, has gone back to the quiet of her
convent school, guided by the Protestant Sisters of St. Mary.
Ida is busily counting, and packing away the dainty china and silver,
suggestive of so many pleasant gatherings of friends that we have had
this summer, and Minna has brought down from the store-room large
chests to contain the heavy linen sheets with Aunt Mary's initials
beautifully embroidered in scarlet.
The guest-room and the parlors commence to wear a dismantled look, for
one by one the pretty trifles that ornamented them are being removed,
and although many of the pictures still hang upon the walls, dear
little Pickie's portrait stands in an unoccupied bedroom swathed in
linen, and ready to journey to the city when we do, for Ida prizes it
so highly that she will not box it up and send it by express, but
intends to have one of the servants carry it under her supervision,
lest some harm may befall it. I do not wonder that it is priceless to
her; I also think it of inestimable value, for not only is it a
portrait of the beautiful little cousin whom I never saw, but even one
uninterested in Pickie would, I am sure, be attracted by it as a rare
work of art. It is a full-length picture: the child holds in his hands
a cluster of lilies--a fit emblem of his spotless purity, and his
undraped limbs are perfectly moulded as those of an infant St. John.
His hair, of the line that Titian and Tintoretto loved to paint, falls
upon his shoulders like a shower of ruddy gold, and for depth of tone
and richness of color the picture more resembles the work of one of the
old Venetian Masters than a painting by modern hands.
Whilst in town the other day, I called in the Tenth Street Studio
Buildings to ask Mr. Page when he could give a few days of his time to
restoring Pickie's portrait, as it has been somewhat affected by the
dampness during the years that it has stood in the house in the woods.
Mr. Page gave me a very amusing account of the difficulty he
experienced in obtaining sittings from Pickie.
"Young children," he said, "are always averse to having their portraits
painted, and there is usually a struggle to induce them to submit to
the confinement of posing for me; but in Master Pickie's case, the
child was so full of life that I might almost as well have tried to
obtain sittings from a butterfly as from him."
Pickie's rapid illness and sudden death occurred before the picture was
completed, and although Mr. Page worked upon it for some time from
memory and from daguerrotypes of the child, a few finishing touches
remain to be added.
_October 3_.
This morning I at last realized what I have been endeavoring to banish
from my mind--that the day of our departure from dear Chappaqua is at
hand. This fact was brought home to me in a very practical manner by
the arrival of our immense French trunks from the side-hill house,
where they have been stored this summer, and the necessity of packing
them, coupled with an intimation from mamma that it would be as well to
put my books and music in the bottom, and my dresses in the top of my
trunk. I am somewhat of a novice in packing, for during the
preparations for our eight ocean voyages that duty never once fell to
my lot; however I flatter myself that such _very_ elementary
instructions were not necessary.
Quite tenderly I took down from the shelves the books that I had
brought from New York for summer reading, for mingled with every page
was some pleasant association. One chapter in Kohlrausch's "Germany"
seemed still to retain the faint perfume of the pale primroses that I
gathered in the meadow that day to mark my stopping-place, and my
little volume of Voltaire's "Charles Douze" recalled an interesting
argument upon the relative claims to greatness of that hero, and my
hero par excellence, the first Napoleon.
My ponderous volumes of Plato brought before my mind Arthur's reading,
and the life with which he invested the words of these old-time
philosophers that had so keen an interest for him; while Madame de
Staël's "Allemagne," and my little copy of Ehlert's "Letters on Music"
were associated with almost every hour of the day. They had lain upon
my writing-table the entire summer, and it was my habit whenever I laid
down my pen for a moment to take up one book or the other, and glance
at a page of Ehlert's criticisms upon opera, symphony, or song, or
Madame de Staël's profound essays upon art, morals, and politics.
This long summer has been one of great sweetness and content to us all.
A tinge of sadness has, it is true, been mingled with our daily life,
but we have felt the spiritual presence of our loved ones always near
us, urging and encouraging us to persevere and fit ourselves to join
them hereafter. With this feeling we have worked constantly and
closely, and our record of improvement has been somewhat
satisfactory--to ourselves at least. We have gone through the weighty
volumes that we had given ourselves as summer tasks; we have written
and practised; and, although Minna constantly exclaims upon our close
attention to study, a desire for improvement has extended
(unconsciously to ourselves) from the parlor to the kitchen. Going
down there one night to give some orders for the next day, I was amused
by overhearing Lina say, "It is time to go to school now." Immediately
Minna's bright-colored knitting was laid aside, and the two women drew
up to the table with their books. After studying their English lesson,
they recited it to each other, followed by a brief reciprocal lesson of
Swedish and German.
Bernard also had his book, and was studying with great apparent
industry, although in what foreign tongue he was accomplishing himself
I do not know. Perhaps he was trying to master the intricacies of the
German language, that he might offer himself to Minna through the
medium of her own tongue. I was amused to see that he occupied what
might be called the neutral ground, at a table lighted by a flickering
candle, and at an equal distance from his sweetheart and his foe; for
since Bernard has commenced to take moonlight strolls with Minna, Lina
has taken deadly umbrage, which she manifests by giving him
candle-ends, cutting off his supply of coffee, and reducing his
comforts generally.
At first I felt quite sorry for Lina, so completely excluded as she was
at one time from the society of the other two, especially as she was
much older than Minna, and not at all prepossessing in appearance; but
since I have learned that she has in the village four Swedish admirers
who make her weekly visits, I have ceased to waste any sympathy upon
her. We were quite amazed one Sunday afternoon to see four stalwart
blond men wending their way kitchen-wards, and inquiring in broken
English for "Swedish girl;" for of all places our quiet little
Chappaqua is the last one where we would have thought of seeing any of
Lina's compatriots. These men, it seems, are employed in repairing the
railroad track; and learning that they had a countrywoman in the
village, called to make her acquaintance; so Lina can now triumph over
Minna. I have heard from Minna that each one of the four men has
already offered himself to Lina, and that she refused them, remarking,
however, that she knew a girl in New York who would like to marry one
of them. The men thanked her, but thought the distance rather too
great to go for a wife.
Despite their little difference over Bernard, the two women have lived
together quite amicably this summer; and it has been a great relief to
dear Ida, while so gracefully presiding as mistress of the house, to
feel that harmony reigned in the kitchen.
_October 5_.
Our last day in dear Chappaqua; we go down to the city to-morrow
morning. How dread is the thought of leaving the poetic quiet of our
country home, to return to the confusion and excitement of city life;
that city, too, that will be fraught with such sad memories for us
during the last days of October and November.
How quickly it has gone, this long, sweet summer. I cannot realize
that near five months have passed since that bright May morning that we
arrived here, and found dear Chappaqua in all her tender spring
freshness. Imperceptibly the days have flown; the delicate hues of
leafy May have deepened and gone; the summer is over, and autumn with
her glowing tints has stolen upon us. Now in vain do we hunt for
daisies to pull apart petal by petal with the old French rhyme that
every schoolgirl knows,
"Il m'aime un peu--beaucoup,
Passionément,--pas du tout!"
The daisies have gone with the sweet double violets and roses, and the
fragrant heliotrope and mignonette, of which we used to make bouquets
to dress the table and adorn the rooms; whilst brilliant, scentless
flowers now fill our garden beds, and the maples with their aureolas of
flame color and molten cold tell the same sad story--summer has fled.
For the last time I have walked up to the pine grove, and have taken
leave of that spot where dear uncle's feet have so often trodden, and
said farewell, too, to the forest trees whose trunks still bear the
impress of the axe once wielded by that hand now forever at rest; I
have drunk once more from the spring that Aunt Mary so dearly loved,
and which is far sweeter to me than the vaunted waters of Trevi, and
entered for the last time her loved home in the woods over whose
threshold her weary feet will never pass again.
"Tempo passato, perche non ritorni a me?"
Adieu to Chappaqua and to my journal. My daintily bound volume, so
large that I feared not easily to fill its pages, is closely covered,
and only a few blank lines remain whereon to take leave of it forever.
Adieus are always saddening, and I close it with the words unspoken.
And for dear, dear Chappaqua, I can find no words more fitting to
express my love than those verses written, it is true, in honor of
another Westchester Home, but so appropriate that I will insert them
here, trusting their author, Mr. JOHN SAVAGE, will pardon me for so
doing.
OUR DEAR WESTCHESTER HOME.
Where'er my hopeful fancy dares,
Or toiling footstep falls--
Through ancient cities' thoroughfares
Or Fortune's festal halls;
O'er mountains grand, through forests deep,
Or crest the yielding foam,
I find no spot
Like that dear cot,
My own Westchester Home!
* * * *
Bedecked with every sylvan charm,
By loving Nature blest,
Embraced between the ocean's arm
And Hudson's bounteous breast,
Westchester, in her beauty smiles
To Heaven's protecting dome,
For all the good.
By field or flood
That crowns our happy home!
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of a Summer, by Cecilia Cleveland