FALCON BOOKS
_Jean Craig In New York_
BY KAY LYTTLETON
When lovely Jean Craig moved with her family to Woodhow farm in
Connecticut, she thought she was giving up her art lessons forever. And
then suddenly the opportunity came to go to New York to study, and she
went to live with her cousin Beth in the suburbs of New York. These
months were an exciting interlude in her life. She loved seeing her old
friends again, going to parties, and meeting new people, among them
Aldo Thomas, an artist from Italy.
_Jean Craig in New York_ tells of Jean’s adventures in the city,
but it is also the story of the Craigs who meet life’s adventures with
gaiety and courage.
Other FALCON BOOKS for Girls:
JEAN CRAIG GROWS UP
JEAN CRAIG FINDS ROMANCE
PATTY AND JO, DETECTIVES
[Illustration: There sat a robust, middle-aged newcomer.]
_JEAN CRAIG
IN NEW YORK_
by KAY LYTTLETON
[Illustration: FALCON BOOKS]
THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CLEVELAND AND NEW YORK
Falcon Books
_are published by_ THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
_2231 West 110th Street · Cleveland 2 · Ohio_
W 2
COPYRIGHT 1948 BY THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
1. Jean Finds a Stranger 9
2. New York Cousins 23
3. Exhibit A 38
4. Christmas at the Ellis Place 52
5. New York Dreams Come True 61
6. Leaving Home 75
7. Aldo from Italy 82
8. Jean Meets a Contessa 94
9. Letters from Home 109
10. At the Art Academy 122
11. The Sculptured Head 136
12. From Out of the West 148
13. Spring Picnic 158
14. Billie’s Crisis 172
15. Fire! 190
16. Future Plans 205
JEAN CRAIG IN NEW YORK
1. Jean Finds a Stranger
It was just five days before Christmas when a pink express card arrived
in the noon mail. The Craigs knew there must be something unusual
in the mail, for Mr. Ricketts, the rural free delivery carrier, had
lingered at the end of the drive.
Jean, the oldest of the four children, slipped into a coat and stadium
boots and ran down the drive to see what he wanted.
“There’s something for you folks at the express office, I guess. If
it’s anything heavy I suggest you go down and get it today. Looks like
we’d have some snow before nightfall.” He waited while Jean glanced at
the card. “Know what it is?”
“Why, no, I don’t believe I do,” she answered. “We’ve gotten all our
Christmas packages. Maybe they’re books for Dad.”
“Like enough,” said Mr. Ricketts. “I didn’t know. I always feel a
little bit interested, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” laughed Jean, as he started his truck. She hurried back
to the house, her head down against the wind. The front door banged as
Kit, fifteen and two years younger than Jean, let her in, her hands
floury from baking.
“For Pete’s sake, why do you stand talking all day to that old gossip?
Any mail from the West?”
The previous spring, the Craig family had moved to Elmhurst,
Connecticut, because of Mr. Craig’s health. Due to a war injury, he
had required a complete rest. At the suggestion of his cousin Rebecca,
the family had left Long Island to live on a farm. Rural living was
far different from anything Jean, Kit, thirteen-year-old Doris, and
eleven-year-old Tommy were used to, but they grew to love it more and
more as they made new friends and discovered the never-ending surprises
that the country held for them.
As told in _Jean Craig Grows Up_, the family met their landlord,
Ralph McRae, a young good-looking boy of twenty-four, from Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, who was immediately attracted to Jean. When he returned
to his western ranch, he took Buzzy Hancock, his cousin and Kit’s best
friend, back with him. Now, Jean was finding it hard to wait for the
summer to come when Ralph and Buzzy would return.
With a letter from Ralph in her hand, Jean answered Kit’s questions
hurriedly. “Mr. Ricketts only wanted to know about an express package,
whether it was heavy or light, where it came from, and if we expected
it.” She piled the rest of the mail on the dining room table. “There is
no mail from Saskatoon for you, Kit, only for me.”
“Oh, I thought maybe Buzzy might have written to me. The mug, he
promised to send me a silver fox skin for Christmas, if he could find
one. I’m going to give up waiting for it. With Christmas five days
away, he surely would have sent it by now.”
Kit’s face was perfectly serious. Buzzy had asked her before he left
Elmhurst what she would like best, and she had told him. The others
laughed at her, but she held firmly to the idea that if it were
possible, Buzzy would get it for her.
Jean was engrossed in a five-page letter from Ralph and had paid no
attention to Kit’s remarks. She finished reading the letter, full of
Christmas wishes and regret for having to be away from her, especially
during the holiday season, and opened another from one of the students
at the Academy back in New York. The previous winter, Jean had studied
art there and had been sorry to give it up.
“Peg Moffat is taking up impressionism.” Jean turned back to the first
page of the letter she had been reading. “She says she never fully
realized before that art is only the highest form of expressing your
ideals to the world at large.”
“Tell her she’s all wrong.” Kit looked up from her seed catalogues.
“Becky told me the other day she believes schools were first invented
for the relief of distressed parents just to give them a breathing
spell, and not for kids at all.”
“Still, if Peg’s hit a new trail of interest, it will make her think
she’s really working. Things have come to her so easily, she doesn’t
appreciate them. Perhaps she can express herself now.”
“Express herself? For gosh sakes, Jeannie, tell her to come up here,
and we’ll let her express herself all over the place. Gee! Just smell
my mince pies this minute. Isn’t cooking an expression of individual
art too?” And Kit made a beeline for the oven in time to rescue four
mince pies.
“Who’s going to drive down after the package?” asked Mrs. Craig from
the doorway. “I want to send an order for groceries too and you’ll want
to be back before dark.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Mom,” called Kit from the kitchen, “but Lucy and
some of the girls are coming over and I promised them I’d go after
evergreen and Princess pine. We’re getting it for wreaths and stars to
decorate the church.”
“Tommy and I’ll go. I love the drive.” Jean handed Peg’s letter over
to Kit to read, and gave just a bit of a sigh. Nobody could possibly
have sustained any inward melancholy at Woodhow. There was too much
to be done every minute of the day. Still, Peg’s letter did bring
back vividly memories of last winter at the Art Academy. Perhaps the
students did take themselves and their aims too seriously, yet it had
all been wonderful and interesting. Even in the peaceful countryside,
Jean missed the companionship of girls her own age, with the same
tastes and interests as herself.
She called to Tommy, who was down in the basement making a model
airplane, and told him to come with her to the express office. He came
upstairs under protest, his face smeared with dirt.
“Gosh, Tommy, you look a sight. If you’re going to come with me, you’ll
have to wash first. Look at your hands.”
“Gee, whiz,” he grumbled, “what’s the use in washing all the time. A
guy only gets dirty again, anyway.” But he leisurely went upstairs and
came down again after what seemed to Jean an unnecessarily long time.
“What took you so long, anyway? Hurry up. I don’t want to be driving
after dark.”
“OK, OK, I’m coming.” And the two went out the back door to the garage.
It was only a drive of seven miles to Nantic, but the children never
tired of the ride. It was so still and dreamlike with the early winter
silence on the land. At the mill house, Lucy Peckham waved to them.
Along the riverside meadows they saw the two little Peckham boys
driving sheep with Shep, their black and white dog, barking madly at
the foot of a tall hickory tree.
“Look, Tommy, see those red berries in that thicket overhanging the
rail fence? Will you get out and pick me some?” Jean stopped the car
and Tommy jumped out. A car passed going the other way while Jean was
waiting, and she recognized the driver as the stationmaster’s son.
“Somebody is coming home for Christmas, I guess,” she remarked to Tommy
when he came back.
Jean drove on with her chin up, cheeks rosy and eyes alert. When they
drove up in front of the express office, Tommy didn’t want to wait in
the car, so they walked up the steps of the office together. Just as
they opened the door, they caught the voice of Mr. Briggs, the agent,
not pleasant and sociable as it usually was, but sharp and high-pitched.
“Well, you can’t loaf around here, son, I tell you that right now. The
minute I spied you hiding behind that stack of ties down the track,
I knew you’d run away from some place, and I’m going to find out all
about you and let your family know you’re caught.”
“I ain’t got any family,” came back a boy’s voice hopefully. “I’m my
own boss and can go where I please.”
“Did you hear that, Jean?” exclaimed Mr. Briggs, turning around at the
opening of the door. “Just size him up, will you. He says he’s his own
boss, and he’s no bigger than a pint of cider. Where did you come from?”
“Off a freight train.”
Mr. Briggs leaned his hands on his knees and bent down to get his face
on a level with the boy’s.
“Isn’t he slick, though? Can’t get a bit of real information out of
him except that he liked the looks of Nantic and dropped off the slow
freight when she was shunting back and forth up yonder. What’s your
name?”
“Jack. Jack Davis.” He didn’t look at Mr. Briggs, but off at the
hills, windswept and bare except for their patches of green pines.
There was a curious expression in his eyes, Jean thought, not
loneliness, but a dumb fatalism. As Becky might have said, it was as if
he had known nothing but trouble and didn’t expect anything better.
“How old are you?”
“’Bout nine or ten.”
“What made you drop off that freight here?”
Jack was silent and seemed embarrassed. Tommy, who had been eyeing him
curiously, responded instantly.
“Because you like it best, isn’t that why?” he suggested eagerly.
Jack’s face brightened up at that.
“I liked the looks of the hills, but when I saw all them mills, I--I
thought I’d get some work maybe.”
“You’re too little,” Mr. Briggs cut in. “I’m going to hand you right
over to the proper authorities, and you’ll land up in the State Home
for Boys if you haven’t got any folks of your own.”
Jack met the shrewd gray eyes doubtfully. His own filled with tears
that rose slowly and dropped on his worn short coat. He put his hand up
to his shirt collar and held on to it tightly as if he would have kept
back the ache there, and Jean’s heart could stand it no longer.
“I think he belongs up at Woodhow, please, Mr. Briggs,” she said
quickly. “I know Mother and Dad will take him up there if he hasn’t any
place to go, and we’ll look after him. I’m sure of it. He can drive
back with us.”
“But you don’t know where he came from nor anything about him, Jean. I
tell you he’s just a little tramp. You can see that, or he wouldn’t be
hitching on to freight trains. That’s no way to do if you’re decent
God-fearing folks, riding freights and dodging trainmen.”
“Let me take him home with me now, anyway,” pleaded Jean. “We can find
out about him, later. It’s Christmas Friday, remember, Mr. Briggs.”
There was no resisting the appeal that underlay her words, and Mr.
Briggs relented gracefully, although he maintained the county school
was the proper receptacle for all such human rubbish.
Jean laughed at him happily, as he stood with his feet wide apart, his
hands thrust into his coat pockets.
“It’s your own affair, Jean,” he returned dubiously. “I wouldn’t stand
in your way so long as you see fit to take him along. But he’s just
human rubbish. Want to go, Jack?”
And Jack rose, wiping his eyes with his coat sleeve, and glared
resentfully back at Mr. Briggs. He took the smaller package, Tommy the
other, and the three left the office.
“Guess we can all squeeze into the front seat,” Jean said. “We’re going
down to the store, and then home.”
2. New York Cousins
Doris caught the sound of the squeaking snow under the tires of the car
as it came up the drive about four o’clock. It was nearly dark. She
was standing in the living room lighting the Christmas candles in the
windows, and she ran to the front door.
“Hi,” called Jean when she saw Doris in the doorway, “we’re back.”
Tommy jumped out of the car at the back door and took Jack by the hand,
giving it a reassuring squeeze. He was shivering, but Tommy pulled
him into the kitchen where Kit was getting supper. Over in a corner
lay the pile of evergreens and pine that she and the other girls had
gathered that afternoon.
“Look, Kit,” Tommy cried, quite as if Jack had been some wonderful
gift instead of a dusty, tired, limp little derelict of fate and
circumstance. “This is Jack and he’s come to stay with us. Where’s Mom?”
One quick look at Jack’s face checked all mirthfulness in Kit. There
were times when it was better to say nothing. She was always intuitive,
quick to catch moods in others and understand. This case needed her
mother. Jack was fairly blue from the cold, and there was a pinched,
hungry look around his mouth and nose that made Kit leave her currant
biscuits.
“Upstairs with Dad. Beat it up there fast and call her, Tommy.” She
smiled at Jack, a radiant, comradely smile that endeared Kit to all she
met. “We’re so glad you’ve come home,” she said, drawing him over to
the stove. “You sit up on that stool and get warm.” She slipped into
the pantry and dipped out a mug of rich, creamy milk, then cut a wide
slice of warm gingerbread. “There now. See how that tastes. You know,
it’s the funniest thing how wishes come true. I was just longing for
somebody to sample my cake and tell me if it was good. Is it?”
Jack drank nearly the whole glass of milk before he spoke, looking over
the rim at her with very sleepy eyes.
“It’s awful good,” he said. “I ain’t had anything to eat since
yesterday morning.”
“Oh, dear,” cried Kit. This was beyond her. She turned with relief at
Mrs. Craig’s quick light step in the hall.
“Yes, dear, I know. Jeannie told me.” She went straight over to the
stool. And she did just the one right thing. That was the marvel of
Mrs. Craig, she always seemed to know naturally what a person needed
most and gave it to them. She took Jack in her arms, his head on her
shoulder, patting him while he began to cry chokingly.
“Never mind, child, now,” she told him. “You’re home.” She lifted him
to her lap and started to untie his worn sodden shoes. “Tommy, get your
slippers, dear, and a pair of wool socks. Warm the milk, Kit, it’s
better that way. And you cuddle down on the couch by the living room
fire, Jack, and rest.”
Mrs. Craig had gone into the living room and found a gray woolen
blanket in the wall closet off the little side hall. From the chest of
drawers she took some of Tommy’s outgrown winter underwear. Supper was
nearly ready, but Jack was to have a warm bath and be clad in clean
fresh clothing. Tucking him under one wing, as Kit said, she left the
kitchen, and Jean told the rest how she had rescued him from Mr.
Briggs’s righteous indignation and charitable intentions.
“Got a good face and looks you square in the eye,” said Doris. “I’d
take a chance on him any day, and he can help around the place a lot,
splitting kindlings and shifting stall bedding and what not. He and
Tommy seem to be good friends already.”
The telephone bell rang and Jean answered. Rambling up through the
hills from Norwich was the party line, two lone wires stretching from
telephone pole to telephone pole. Its tingling call was a welcome
sound. This time it was Rebecca at the other end. After her marriage
to Judge Ellis, they had taken the long-deferred wedding trip up to
Boston, visiting relatives there, and returning in time for a splendid
old-fashioned Thanksgiving celebration at the Ellis home. Maple Grove,
Becky’s former home, was closed for the winter but Matt, the hired
man, decided to stay on there indefinitely and work the farm on shares
for Miss Becky, as he still called her.
“And like enough,” Becky said comfortably, when she heard of his
intentions, “he’s going to marry somebody himself. I wouldn’t put it
past him a bit. I wish he’d choose Cindy Anson. There she is living
alone down in that little bit of a house, running a home bakery when
she’s born to fuss over a man. I told Matt when I left, if I were he
I’d buy all my pies and cake from Cindy, and then when I drove by
Cindy’s I just dropped a passing word about how badly I felt at leaving
such a fine man as Matt to shift for himself up at the house, so she
said she’d keep an eye on him.”
Over the telephone now came her voice, vibrant and cheery, and Jean
answered the call.
“Hello, yes, this is Jean. Mother’s right in the living room. Who?
Oh, wait till I tell the kids.” She turned her head, her brown eyes
sparkling. “New York cousins over at the Judge’s. Who did you say they
are, Becky? Yes? Beth and Elliott Newell. I’ll tell Dad right away.
Tomorrow morning early? That’s swell. ’Bye.”
Before the others could stop her, she was on her way upstairs. The
largest, sunniest room had been given over to her father. The months of
relaxation and rest up in the hills had worked wonders in Mr. Craig’s
health. As old Dr. Gallup was apt to say when Kit rebelled at the
slowness of recovery, “Can’t expect to do everything in a minute. Even
the Lord took six days to fix things the way he liked them.”
Instead of spending two-thirds of his time in bed or on the couch now,
he would sit up for hours and could walk around the wide porch, or even
along the garden paths before the cold weather set in. But there still
swept over him without warning the great fatigue and weakness, the
dizziness and exhaustion which had followed as one of the lesser ills
in his nervous breakdown.
He sat before the open fire now, reading from one of his favorite news
magazines, with Miss Tilly purring on his knees. Tommy had found Miss
Tilly one day late in October, loafing along the barren stretch of road
going over to Gayhead school. She was a yellow kitten with white nose
and paws. Tommy, forever adopting stray animals, had tucked her up in
his arms and taken her home. Becky had looked at the yellow kitten with
instant recognition.
“That’s a Scarborough kitten. Sally Scarborough’s raised yellow kittens
with white paws ever since I can remember.”
“Had I better take it back?” asked Tommy anxiously.
“Land, no, child. It’s a barn-cat. You can tell that, it’s so
frisky. Ain’t got a bit of repose or common sense. Like enough Mrs.
Scarborough’d be real glad if it had a good home. Give it a name, and
feed it well, and it’ll slick right up.”
So Miss Tilly had remained, but not out in the barn. Somehow she had
found her way up to Mr. Craig’s room and its peace must have appealed
to her, for she would stay there for hours, dozing with half-closed
jade-green eyes and incurved paws.
“Dad!” Jean exclaimed, entering the quiet room like an autumn flurry of
wind. “What do you think? Becky just phoned, and she wants me to tell
you two New York cousins are there. Beth and Elliott Newell. Do you
remember them?”
“Of course,” smiled Mr. Craig. “It must be little Cousin Beth and her
boy. I used to visit at her old home when I was a little boy. She
wanted to be an artist, I know.”
“Oh, Dad, an artist? And did she study and succeed?”
“I think so. I remember she lived abroad for some time and married
there. Her maiden name was Lowell, Beth Lowell.”
“Did she marry an artist too?” Jean leaned forward from her low chair
facing him, her eyes bright with romance, but Mr. Craig laughed.
“No, indeed, she married a schoolmate from New York. He went after her,
for I suppose he tired of waiting for Beth’s career to come true. They
had a very happy life together and I think Beth misses him very much
since he died about two years ago. Listen a minute.”
Up from the lower part of the house floated strains of music. Surely
there had never issued such music from a mouth organ. The tune was a
mournful blues that had a haunting melody.
“It must be Jack,” Jean said, smiling mischievously up at her father,
for he had not yet met Jack. She ran out to the head of the stairs.
“Can Jack come up, Mom?”
Up he came, fresh from a tubbing, wearing a shirt and a pair of
overalls that belonged to Tommy. His straight blond hair fairly
glistened from its recent brushing and his face shone, but it was
Jack’s eyes that won him friends at the start. Mixed in color they
were, like a moss agate, with long dark lashes, and just now they were
filled with contentment.
“They wanted me to play for them downstairs,” he said gravely, stopping
beside Mr. Craig’s chair. “I can play lots of tunes. My mother gave me
this last Christmas.”
This was the first time he had mentioned his mother and Jean followed
up the clue gently.
“Where, Jack?”
He looked down at the floor, shifting his weight from one foot to
the other. “Over in Providence. She got sick and they took her to the
hospital and she never came back.”
“Not at all?”
He shook his head. “Then afterwards--” much was comprised in that one
word and Jack’s tone, “afterwards we started off together, my Dad and
me. He said he’d try and get a job on some farm with me, but nobody
wanted him this time of year, and with me too. And he said one morning
he wished he didn’t have me bothering around. When I woke up on the
freight yesterday morning, he wasn’t there. Guess he must have dropped
off. Maybe he can get a job now.”
So it slipped out, Jack’s personal history, and the father and
daughter wondered at his sturdy acceptance of life’s discipline. Only
nine, but already he faced the world as his own master, fearless and
optimistic. All through that first evening he sat in the kitchen on
the high stool, playing tunes he had learned from his father. Tommy was
entranced and begged him to teach him how to play.
After supper the girls and Tommy drew up their chairs around the dining
room table as usual. Here every night the three younger ones prepared
their lessons for the next day. Jean generally read or sat with her
father awhile, but tonight she answered Peg Moffat’s letter. It was
read over twice, the letter that blended in so curiously with the
coming of the cousins from New York.
Ever since Jean could remember she had drawn pictures. No one guessed
how she loved the paintings in New York’s art galleries. They had
seemed so real to her, the face of a Millet peasant lad crossing a
stubble field at dawn; a Breton girl knitting as she walked homeward
behind some straying sheep; one of Frans Hals’ Flemish boys, his chin
pressed close to his violin, his deep eyes looking at you from under
the brim of his hat.
Once she had read of Albrecht Dürer, painting his masterpieces while he
starved. How the people whispered after his death that he had used his
heart’s blood to mix with his wonderful pigments. Of course it was only
a story, but Jean remembered it. When she saw a picture that seemed to
hold one and speak its message of beauty, she would say to herself,
“There is Dürer’s secret.”
And some day, if she ever could put on canvas the dreams that came to
her, she meant to use the same secret.
“I do think Socrates was an old bore,” said Kit, yawning and stretching
her arms, after a struggle with her homework. “Always mixing in and
contradicting everybody and starting something. No wonder his wife was
cranky.”
“He died beautifully,” Doris replied. “Something about a sunset and all
his friends around him.”
“If you’ve finished your homework, why don’t you go to bed?” Jean told
them. She finished her letter alone. It was not easy to write it. Peg
wanted her to come down for the spring term. She could board with her
if she liked. Expenses were very light.
Any expense would be heavy if piled on the monthly budget of Woodhow.
Jean knew that. So she wrote back with a heartache behind the plucky
refusal, and stepped out on the moonlit porch for a minute. It was
clear and cold after the light snowfall. The stars were very faint.
From the river came the sound of the waterfall.
“You stand steady, Jean Craig,” she said, between her teeth. “Don’t you
dare be a quitter. You’ve got to see this winter straight through.”
3. Exhibit A
After her marriage to Judge Ellis, Becky had taken Ella Lou, her big
collie dog, from Maple Grove over to the large white house behind its
towering elms.
“I’ve had that dog for ten years and never saw another one like her
for intelligence,” she would say, her head held a little bit high, her
glasses halfway down her nose. “I told the Judge if he wanted me he’d
have to take Ella Lou too.”
So it was Ella Lou’s familiar black nose that poked around the door
the following morning when the New York cousins came over to get
acquainted.
Jean never forgot her introduction to Beth Newell. She was about
forty-seven then, with her son Elliott fully five inches taller than
herself, but she looked about twenty-seven. Her feathery brown hair,
her wide gray eyes, and quick, sweet laughter, endeared her to Jean
right away.
Elliott was about fifteen, not one single bit like his mother, but
broad-shouldered and blond and sturdy. It was so much fun, Kit said, to
watch him take care of his mother.
“Where’s your high school out here?” he asked. “I’m at prep school
specializing in math.”
“And how any son of mine can adore mathematics is beyond me,” Beth
laughed. “I suppose it’s reaction. Do you like math, Jean?” She put her
arm around the slender figure nearest her.
“I should say not,” Jean answered immediately, and then all at once,
out popped her heart’s desire before she could check the words.
Anybody’s heart’s desire would pop out with Beth’s eyes coaxing it.
“I--I want to be an artist.”
“Keep on wishing and working then, dear, and as Becky says, if it is to
be it will be.”
While the others talked of New England farms, these two sat together on
the couch, Jean listening eagerly and wistfully while her cousin told
of her own girlhood aims and how she carried them out.
“We didn’t have much money, so I knew I had to win out for myself.
There were two boys to help bring up, and Mother was not well, but I
used to sketch every spare moment I could, and I read everything on
art I could find, even articles from old magazines in the attic. But
most of all I sketched anything and everything, studying form and
composition. When I was eighteen, I taught school for two terms in the
country. Dad had said if I earned the money myself, I could go abroad,
and how I worked to get that first nest egg.”
“How much did you get a week?”
“Twelve dollars, but my board was only three and a half in the country,
and I saved all I could. Of course, at that time, it was cheaper to
go abroad--and easier, too. I wouldn’t recommend your trying to go to
Europe right now, but there are plenty of good schools and teachers
in this country. If you really do want work and kind of hunt a groove
you’re fitted for, you’ll always find something to do.”
Jean was leaning forward, her chin propped on her hands. “Yes, I know,”
she said. “Do go on, please.”
“Ellen Brainerd, the teacher I studied under in Boston at one time, was
one of New England’s marvelous spinsters with the far vision and cash
enough to make a few of her dreams come true. Every year she used to
take a group of art students to Europe, and with her encouragement I
went the third year, helping her with a few of the younger ones, and
paying part of my tuition that way. And oh,” Beth’s eyes were sparkling
as she recalled her student days, “we set up our easels in the fountain
square in Barcelona and hunted Dante types in Florence. We trailed
through Flanders and Holland and lived for a time in Paris.”
“And you painted all those places?” exclaimed Jean. “I’ve wanted so
much to go.”
“Well, I tried to,” Beth looked ruefully into the open fire. “Yes, I
tried to paint like all the old masters and new masters, from Rembrandt
to Degas. I did everything except try to develop a technique of my own.”
“But isn’t it important to study the techniques of the masters?”
“Yes, of course it is, but it was long after I came back home that I
realized this. After David came over and stopped my career by marrying
me I came back home. We lived out near New Rochelle and I began
painting things of everyday life just as I saw them, the things I
loved. It was our old apple tree out by the well, steeped in full May
bloom, that brought me my first prize.”
“Gee, after Paris and all the rest!”
“Yes. And the next year they accepted our red barn in a snowstorm. I
painted it from our kitchen window. Another was a water color of our
Jersey calves standing knee deep in the brook in June. That is the kind
of picture I have succeeded with. I think because, as I say, they are
part of the home life and scenes I love best and so I have put a part
of myself into them.”
Dürer’s heart’s blood, Jean thought to herself. “You’ve helped me so
much, Beth,” she said aloud. “I was just longing to go back to the art
school right now, and throw up everything here that I ought to do.”
“Keep on sketching every spare moment you can. Learn form and color and
composition. Things are only beautiful according to the measure of our
own minds. I’d like you to come to New York and study there. You could
stay with me and share my studio when you weren’t in classes.”
“I’d love to come when Mother can spare me.” Jean’s eyes sparkled at
this prospect.
“Well, do so, my dear,” Becky’s hands were laid on her shoulders from
behind. “It’s a poor family that can’t support one genius.” She laughed
in her full-hearted, joyous way. “Now, listen, all of you. I’ve come to
invite you to have Christmas dinner with us.”
“But, Becky,” began Mrs. Craig, “there are so many of us--”
“Not half enough to fill the big old house. Some day after all the
children are married and there are plenty of grandchildren, then we
can talk about there being too many, though I doubt it. There’s always
as much house room as there is heart room, if you only think so. Bring
along the little one too.” She smiled over her shoulder at Jack,
sitting in his favorite corner in the kitchen working industriously on
one of Tommy’s model airplanes, and he gave a funny little one-sided
grin back in shy return. “Billie’s going away to school after New
Year’s, did I tell you?”
“Oh, golly,” cried Doris, so abruptly that everyone laughed at her.
“Doesn’t it seem as if boys get all of the adventures of life just
naturally.” Billie was the Judge’s grandson and Doris’s pal. He was
two years older than Doris but they liked the same things and had been
great friends ever since Doris first found his secret hide-out.
“He’s had adventures enough, but he does need the friendship of boys
his own age. I don’t want him to be tied down with a couple of old
folks like the Judge and myself. You’re never young but once. Besides,
I always did want to go to these college football games and have a boy
of mine in the huddle.”
“Gol--lee!” Doris exclaimed after the front door had closed on the
last glimpse of Ella Lou’s plumed tail going out to the car. “Doesn’t
it seem as if Becky leaves behind her a big sort of glow? She can say
more nice things in a few minutes than anybody I ever heard. Except
about Billie’s going away. I wonder why he didn’t come down and tell me
himself.”
“Well, you know, Doris,” Kit remarked, “you haven’t a mortgage on
Billie.”
“Oh, I don’t care if he goes away. It isn’t that,” Doris answered
easily. “I wouldn’t like a boy that couldn’t hold his own with the
other guys. Jean, did you realize the full significance of Becky’s
invitation? No baking or cooking. No working our fingers to the bone
for dinner on Christmas Day. I think she’s simply wonderful.”
Jean laughed and slipped up the back stairs to her own room. She felt
around in her desk until she found her folio of sketches. The dining
room was deserted excepting for Doris watering the rows of geraniums in
the bay window, so Jean sat down to look over her old art work. Doris
went upstairs to see her father, and Kit appeared with a frown on her
face, puzzling over a knitting book.
“I hate the last days before Christmas,” she said savagely. “What on
earth can we concoct at this last minute for Beth? I think I’ll knit
her a pair of white cable-stitch gloves. If I can’t finish them in time
I’ll give her one with the promise of the other. What can I give to
Judge Ellis?”
“Something useful,” Jean answered.
“I can’t bear useful things for Christmas presents. Abby Tucker says
she never gets any winter clothes till Christmas and then all the
family unload useful things on her. I’m going to send her a bottle
of perfume in a green leather case. I’ve had it for months and never
touched it and she’ll adore it. I wish I could think of something for
Billie too, something he’s never had and always wanted.”
“He’s going away,” Jean mused. “Why don’t you fix up a book of
snapshots taken all around here. We took some marvelous ones this
summer.”
“A boy wouldn’t like that.”
“He will when he’s homesick.” Jean opened her folio and began turning
over her art school studies, mostly conventionalized designs from
her beginnings in textile design. After her talk with Beth they only
dissatisfied her. Suddenly she glanced up at the figure across the
table, Kit with rumpled short curls, her bangs in disarray, and an
utterly relaxed posture, elbows on the table, her feet sprawled in
front of her. Jean’s pencil began to move over the back of her drawing
pad. She was pleased to see how easy it was to catch Kit’s expression.
It wasn’t so hard, the ruffled hair, the half-averted face. Kit’s face
was such an odd mixture of whimsicality and determination. The rough
sketch grew and all at once Kit glanced up and caught on to what was
going on.
“Oh, it’s me, isn’t it, Jean? I wish you’d conventionalized me and
embellished me. I’d like to look glamorous and sophisticated. That’s
lovely, specially with the nose screwed up that way and my forehead
wrinkled. I like that, it’s so subtle. Anyone getting one good look at
the helpless frenzy in that downcast gaze--”
“Oh, Kit, be good,” laughed Jean. She held the sketch away from her
critically. “Looks just like you.”
“OK, hang it up as ‘Exhibit A.’ I don’t mind. There’s a look of genius
to it at that.”
“Naturally, I had to include that too,” replied Jean teasingly. Just
then Mrs. Craig came into the room.
“Mom, look what my sister has done to me,” Kit cried tragically. Jean
said nothing, only the color rose slowly in her cheeks as her mother
stood looking at it.
“It’s the first since I left school,” she said, half-ashamed of the
effort and all it implied.
“Finish it up, dear, and let me have it.”
“Oh, would you really like it, Mom?”
“Love it,” answered her mother promptly. “And don’t give up hope.
Perhaps we may be able to squeeze in the spring term after all.”
4. Christmas at the Ellis Place
It took two trips in the car to transport the Christmas guests and
gifts from Woodhow over to the Ellis place. It was one of the few
pretentious houses in Elmhurst. For seven generations it had been
in the Ellis family. The old house sat far back from the road with
a double drive curving like a big U around it. Huge elms stood
protectingly before it, and behind lay a succession of buildings from
the old forge, no longer used, to the smokehouse. One barn stood across
the road and another at the top of the lane.
Doris and Tommy were the first to run up the steps and into the center
hall, almost bumping into Billie as he ran to meet them. Behind him
came Mrs. Ellis in a soft gray suit. Her white blouse was fastened at
the throat with a cameo pin. “Come right in, all of you,” she called
happily. “Do stop jumping up and down, Tommy, you make me nervous.
Merry Christmas.”
Up the long colonial staircase she led the way into the big guest room.
Down in the library, Beth was playing softly on the big square piano,
_Oh Little Town of Bethlehem_. The air was filled with the scent
of pine and hemlock, and enticing odors of things cooking stole up the
back stairs.
Doris and Billie retreated to a corner with the latter’s book supply,
with Tommy and Jack peering over Billie’s shoulder to get a look too.
It was hard to realize that this was really Billie, the Huckleberry
Finn of the summer before. All of the old self-consciousness and
shy abstraction had gone. Even the easy comradely manner in which he
leaned over the Judge’s chair showed the good understanding and sure
confidence between the two.
“Yes, he does show up real proud,” Becky agreed warmly with Mrs. Craig
when they were all downstairs before the glowing fire. “Of course,
we’re going to miss him when he goes away to school, but he’s getting
along splendidly. I want him to go where he’ll associate with plenty of
other boys. He’s lived alone with the ants and bees and rabbits long
enough.”
As the others went in to dinner Jean lingered behind a minute to glance
about the pleasant room. The fire crackled down in the deep old rock
hearth. In each of the windows a white candle was burning brightly.
Festoons of ground pine and evergreen draped the mantelpiece. Jean
gazed out at the somber, frost-touched garden. There wasn’t one bit of
peace in her heart, even while she fairly ached with the longing to be
like the others.
“You’re a coward, Jean Craig, a deliberate coward,” she told herself.
“You don’t like the country one bit. You love the city where
everybody’s doing something, and it’s just a rat race for all. You’re
longing for everything you can’t have, and you’re afraid to face the
winter up here. You might just as well tell yourself the truth. You
hate to be poor.”
There came a burst of laughter from the dining room and Kit calling to
her to hurry up. It appeared that Doris, the tender-hearted, had said
pathetically when Mrs. Gorham, the housekeeper, brought in the great
roast turkey, “Poor old General Putnam!”
“That isn’t the General,” Billie called from his place. “The General
ran away yesterday. First off, he lit up in the apple trees. Then as
soon as he saw Ben was high enough, off he flopped and made for the
corncrib. Just as he caught up with him there, he chose the wagon sheds
and perched on the rafters, and when he’d almost got hold of his tail
feathers, if he didn’t try the barn and all his flock after him, mind
you. So he thought he’d let him roost till dark, and when he stole in
after supper, the old codger had gone, bag and baggage. He’ll come back
as soon as he knows our minds aren’t set on wishbones.”
“Then who is this?” asked Kit, quite as if it were some personage who
rested in state on the big willow platter.
“That is some unnamed patriot who died for his country’s good,” said
the Judge solemnly. “Who says white meat and who says dark?”
“For pity’s sake, child, what are you crying about?” exclaimed Becky
after dinner while they were all sitting around the table talking
leisurely.
Jack sobbed sleepily, “I--I don’t know.”
“He’s lonely for his own family,” Doris spoke up.
“I ain’t neither,” groaned Jack, “it’s too much mince pie.”
So under Becky’s directions, Billie took him up to his room, and
administered “good hot water and soda.”
“Too bad, ’cause he missed seeing all the things taken off the tree,”
said Becky, laying aside Jack’s presents for him, a long warm knit
muffler from herself, a fine knife from the Judge with a pocket chain
on it, a package of Billie’s books that he had had as a child, and ice
skates from the Craigs. After much figuring over the balance left from
their Christmas money they had gone together on the skates for him,
knowing he would have more fun and exercise out of them than anything,
and he needed something to bring back the sparkle to his eyes and the
color to his cheeks.
“Put them all up on the bed beside him, and he’ll find them in the
morning,” Billie suggested. “If you’ll let him stay, Mrs. Craig, I’ll
bring him over.”
Tommy was the most excited over his Christmas presents. Kit and Jean
had given him a hockey stick and puck to use on the river when it was
frozen over, his mother and father a ping pong set that he was bursting
to set up in the basement, a model airplane kit from Doris, and a pair
of argyle socks and Norwegian sweater from the Judge and Becky. But
Billie had given him his most coveted present, his own tame crow, Moki.
“Where’d you get the name from, Billie?” he asked.
Billie stroked the smooth glossy back of the crow fondly. “I found
him one day over in the pine woods on the hill. He was just a little
thing then. The nest was in a dead pine, and somebody’d shot it all to
pieces. The rest of the family had gone, but I found him fluttering
around on the ground, scared to death with a broken wing. Ben helped me
fix it, and he told me to call him Moki. You know he’s read everything,
and he can talk some Indian, Pequod mostly, he says. He isn’t sure but
what there may be some Pequod in him way back, he can talk it so well,
and Moki means ‘watch out’ in Pequod. I call him that because I used to
put him on my shoulder and he’d go anywhere with me through the woods,
and call out when he thought I was in danger.”
“How do you know what he thought?”
“After you get acquainted with him, you’ll know what he thinks too,”
answered Billie.
Always living in a little world of make-believe all her own, Doris
received mostly fairy tales and what Kit called “princess stories.”
Saved from the old home at Sandy Cove, her mother and father gave her
two glass lamps for her bureau and Jean had made the shades herself,
out of starched white dotted swiss. Becky had knit each of the girls
soft angora socks and mittens in matching pastels, and Beth gave them
old silver spoons that had been part of their great great-grandmother
Peabody’s wedding silver.
“When you come to New York,” she told Jean, “I’ll show you many of her
things.”
Jean nodded, remembering her longing to go away earlier in the evening.
But the look in her father’s face made her realize more than anything
that had happened in the long months of trial in the country, how
worthwhile was the sacrifice that had brought him back into his home
country for healing and happiness.
5. New York Dreams Come True
Christmas week had already passed when the surprise came. As Kit said
the charm of the unexpected was always catching you unaware when you
lived on the edge of nowhere.
Beth and Elliott had departed two days after Christmas for New York.
Somehow even Tommy could not get really acquainted with this new boy
cousin. Billie, once won, was a friend forever, but Elliott was a
smiling, confident boy, quiet and resourceful, with little to say.
By this time, Jean had settled down contentedly to the winter regime.
She was giving Doris piano lessons, and taking over more of the
household duties with Kit back at school. School had been one of
the problems to be solved that first year. Doris and Tommy went to
the District schoolhouse at the crossroads, a one-story, red frame
building. Doris had despised it thoroughly until she heard that her
father had gone there in his boyhood, and she had found his old desk
with his initials carved on it.
Kit was in high school, and the nearest one was over the hills six
miles away. Every morning, she caught the school bus at the end of the
drive. Mrs. Craig would often stand out on the wide porch in the early
morning and watch the three go off.
“I think they’re wonderfully plucky,” she said one morning to Jean. “If
they had been country girls, born and bred, it would be different, but
stepping right out of Long Island shore life into these hills, you
have all managed splendidly.”
“We’d have been a fine lot of quitters if we hadn’t,” Jean answered. “I
think it’s been much harder for you than for us, Mom.”
And then the oddest, most unexpected thing had happened, something that
strengthened the bond between them and made Jean’s way easier. Her
mother had turned and had met Jean’s glance with a telltale flush on
her cheeks and a certain whimsical glint in her eyes.
“Jean, do you never suspect me?” she had asked, half laughingly. “I
know just exactly what a struggle you have gone through, and how you
miss all that lies back in New York. I do too. If we could just divide
up the time, and live part of the year here and the other part back at
the Cove. I wouldn’t dare tell Becky that I had ever regretted, but
there are days when the silence and the loneliness up here seem to
crush so strongly in on one.”
“Oh, Mom! I never knew you felt like that.” Jean leaned her head
against her shoulder. “I’ve been horribly selfish, just thinking of
myself. But now that Dad’s getting strong again, you can go away, can’t
you, for a little visit anyway?”
“Not without him,” Mrs. Craig said decidedly. “Perhaps by next summer
we can, I don’t know. I don’t want to suggest it until he feels the
need of a change too. But I’ve been thinking about you, Jean, and I
want you to go to school in New York for a little while anyway. Beth
and I had a talk together before she left, and I felt proud of you,
when I heard her speak of your work. She says the greatest worry on her
mind is that Elliott has no definite ambition, no aim. He has always
had everything that they could give him, and she begins now to realize
it was all wrong.”
“But, Mother, how can I go and leave you?”
“I want you to, Jean. You have been a great help to me. Don’t think I
haven’t noticed everything you have done to save me worry, because I
have.”
“Well, you had Dad to care for--”
“I know, and he’s so much better now that I haven’t any dread left.”
Peg Moffat wrote after receiving her Christmas box from Jean. Jean had
gathered pine cones, ground pine, sprays of red berries, and little
winter ferns. It was one of several she had sent to friends in the city
for whom she felt she could not afford expensive presents.
Peg had caught the real spirit of it, and had written back urgently.
“You must run down if only for a few days, Jean. I put the pines and
other greens around the studio for decorations at Christmas and they
just talk at me about you all the time. Never mind about new clothes.
Come along.”
It was these same new clothes that secretly worried Jean all the same,
but with some new ribbon for two of her formals, her brown wool suit
cleaned, and a new feather for her hat, she felt she could make the
trip if it were only possible.
It was the letter that arrived the following day that really caused a
stir in the family. Beth wrote to Jean that there was a special course
beginning the following week at the Academy in textile designing. It
was only a two-months’ course so it wouldn’t be very expensive and Jean
could stay with her, eliminating the problem of board. “I really think
if you can possibly be spared from home at this time, it would be a
wise thing for you to enroll in the course. It is in the field you’re
interested in and you will learn both valuable and practical things
from it. Please write me immediately and say you’ll come.”
When Jean showed the letter to her mother, her answer was swift and
decisive. “An opportunity such as this cannot be ignored. Of course you
will go.”
The winter sunshine had barely clambered to the crests of the hills the
following morning when Becky drove up with Ella Lou.
“Thought I’d get an early start so I could sit awhile with you,” she
called breezily. “The Judge had to go to court at Putnam. Real sad
case, too. Some of our neighborhood boys in trouble. I told him not to
dare send them up to any State homes or reformatories, but to put them
on probation and make their families pay the fines.”
Kit was just putting on her stadium boots. “Oh, what is it, Becky?” she
called from the kitchen. “What’s the news?”
“Well, I guess it’s pretty exciting for the poor mothers.” Mrs. Ellis
put her feet up on the stool. “There’s been considerable things stolen
lately, just odds and ends of harness and bicycle supplies from the
store, and three hams from Miss Bugbee’s cellar, and so on; a little
here and a little there, hardly no more’n a real smart magpie could
make away with. But the men set out to catch whoever it might be, and
if they didn’t land three of our own boys. It makes every mother in
town shiver.”
“None that we know, are there?” asked Doris, with wide eyes.
“I guess not, unless maybe Abby Tucker’s brother Martin. There his
poor mother scrimped and saved for weeks to buy him a bicycle out of
her butter-and-egg money, and it just landed him in mischief. Off he
kited, first here and then there with the two Lonergan boys, and they
had a camp up toward Cynthy Allan’s place, where they played they were
cave robbers or something. I had the Judge up and promise he’d let them
off on probation. There isn’t one of them over fifteen, and Elmhurst
can’t afford to let her boys go to prison. And I shall drive over this
afternoon and give their mothers some good advice.”
“Why not the fathers too?” asked Jean. “Seems as if mothers get all the
blame when boys go wrong.”