youngsters too. Fred Lonergan was as nice and obliging a lad as ever
you did see, but he always liked cider too well, and that made him lax.
I used to tell him when he couldn’t get it any other way, he’d squeeze
the dried winter apples hanging still on the wild trees. He’ll have to
pay the money damage, but the real sorrow of the heart will fall on
Emily, his wife. She used to be our minister’s daughter, and she knows
what’s right. And the Tucker boy never did have any sense or his father
before him, but his mother’s the best quilter we’ve got. If I’d been
in her shoes I’d have put Philemon Tucker right straight out of the
house just as soon as he began to squander and hang around the grocery
store swapping stories with men just like him. It’s her house from her
father, and I shall put her right up to making Philemon walk a chalk
line after this, and do his duty as a father.”
“Oh, you’re a glorious peacemaker,” exclaimed Mrs. Craig. “Hurry,
children, you’ll be late for school.” She hurriedly put the last
touches to three hearty lunches, and followed them out to the front
porch and watched them out of sight.
“Lovely morning,” said Becky, fervently. “The ice on the trees makes
the country look like fairyland.”
“And here I’ve been shivering ever since I got out of bed,” Jean cried,
laughingly. “It seemed so bleak and cheerless. You find something
beautiful in everything, Becky.”
“Well, happiness is a sort of habit, I guess, Jeannie. Come tell me,
now, how you are fixed about going away? That’s why I came down.”
“You mean--”
“I mean in clothes. Don’t mind my speaking right out, because I know
that Beth will want to take you places, and you must look right. And
don’t you say one word against it, Margaret,” as Mrs. Craig started
to speak. “The child must have her chance. Makes me think, Jean, of
my first silk dress. Nobody knew how much I wanted one, and I was
about fourteen, skinny and overgrown, with pigtails down my back. A
well-to-do aunt in Boston sent a silk dress to my little sister Susan
who died. I can see it now, just as plain as can be, a sort of dark
bottle-green with a little spray of violets here and there. Susan was
sort of pining anyway, and green made her look too pale, so the dress
was set aside for me. Mother said she’d let the hem down and face it
when she had time. But there was a picnic and my heart hungered for
that silk dress to wear. I managed somehow to squeeze into it, and slip
away with the other girls before Mother noticed me.”
“But did it fit you?” asked Jean.
“Fit me?” Becky laughed. “Fit me like an acorn cap would a bullfrog. I
let the hem down as far as I could, but didn’t stop to hem it or face
it, and there it hung, six inches below my petticoat, with the sun
shining through as nice as could be. My Sunday School teacher took me
to one side and said severely, ‘Rebecca Craig, does your mother know
that you’ve let that hem down without fixing it properly?’ Well, it did
take away my hankering for a silk dress. Now, run along upstairs and
get out all your wardrobe so we can look it over.”
Jean obeyed for somehow Becky swept away objections before her airily.
And the wardrobe was at a low ebb.
Becky dragged her chair over beside the couch now, and took inventory
of the pile of clothing Jean laid there.
“You’ll want a good knockabout sport coat like the other girls are
wearing. Then a couple of new sweaters and skirts for school. Now, what
about date dresses?”
Here Jean felt quite proud as she laid out her assortment. She and Kit
had always gone out a good deal at the Cove, and she had a number of
well-chosen, expensive dresses.
“They look all right to me, but I guess Beth will know what to do to
them, with a touch here and there. Well, if I were you, I’d just bundle
all I wanted to take along in the way of pretty things into the trunk
and let Beth tell you what to do with them. I’ll give you the money to
buy the other things you’ll need in New York. Their stores have more
selection than what we’ve got around here. Good heavens, child, you’ll
squeeze the breath out of me,” as Jean gave her a hug of thanks. “I
must be going along.”
6. Leaving Home
Thursday of that week was set for Jean’s departure. This gave very
little time for preparations, and Kit plunged into them with a zest and
vigor that made Jean laugh.
“Well, so little ever happens up here we just have to make the most of
goings and comings,” said Kit exuberantly. “And besides, I’m rather
fond of you, in an offhand sort of way.”
“Of course, we’re all glad for you,” Doris put in seriously. “It’s an
opportunity, Mom says, and I suppose we’ll all get one in time.”
Jean glanced up as they sat around the last evening, planning and
talking. Out in the side hall stood her trunk, packed, locked, and
strapped, ready for the early trip in the morning. Tommy was trying his
best to nurse a frost-bitten chicken back to life out by the kitchen
stove, where Jack was mending Doris’s skates. Kit and Doris were freely
giving her advice.
“Enjoy yourself all you can, but think of us left at home and don’t
stay too long,” advised Doris.
“Yes, and learn all about designing things for people. Personally I
don’t want to make things for people,” Kit said emphatically. “I want
to soar alone. I’m going with Sally to live on the top of a mountain.
But, gosh, I do envy you, Jean, after all. You must write and tell us
every single thing that happens, for we’ll love to hear it all. Don’t
be afraid it won’t be interesting. I wish you’d even keep a diary.
Buzzy told me once that his grandmother did, every day from the time
she was fourteen, and they had a perfectly awful time getting rid of
them when she died. Imagine burning barrels full of diaries.”
Tommy came out of the kitchen to tell them to be quiet. “I’ve just this
minute got that chicken to sleep. They’re such light sleepers, but I
think it will get well. It only had its poor toes frostbitten. Jack
found it on the ground this morning, crowded off the perch. Chickens
look so civilized, and they’re not. They’re regular savages.”
There flashed across Jean’s mind a picture of the evenings ahead
without the home circle, without the familiar living room, and the
other room upstairs where at this time her mother would be brushing out
her soft hair, and listening to some choice bit of reading Mr. Craig
had run across during the day and saved for her.
“I just wish I had a chance to go West like Sally,” Kit said suddenly.
“When I’m old enough, I’m going to take up a homestead claim and live
on it with a wonderful horse and some dogs, wolf dogs. I wish Sally’d
wait till we were both old enough, and had finished school. She could
be a forest ranger and I’d raise--”
“Ginseng,” Jean suggested mischievously. “Dopey. It takes far more
courage than that just to stick it out on one of these old barren
farms, all run-down and fairly begging for somebody to take them in
hand. What do you want to hunt a western claim for? Besides, I don’t
think there are any left anymore.”
“Space,” Kit answered with feeling. “I don’t want to see my neighbors’
chimney pots sticking up all around me through the trees. I want to
gaze off at a hundred hilltops, and not see somebody’s scarecrow
waggling empty sleeves at me. Sally and I have the spirits of eagles.”
“Isn’t that nice,” said Doris pleasantly. “It’ll make such a good place
to spend our vacations, kids. While Sally and Kit are out soaring, we
can fish and ride and have really swell times.”
“Cut it out,” Jean whispered, as Kit’s ire started to rise. “It’s
getting late, really, and I have to get up while it is still night, you
know. Good night all.”
The start next morning was made at seven, before the sun was up. The
tears were wet on Jean’s cheeks as she climbed into the seat beside
Kit, and turned to wave goodbye to the group on the porch. She had not
realized before what this first trip away from home meant.
“Write us everything,” called Doris, waving both hands to her.
“Come back soon,” yelled Tommy.
But her mother went back into the house in silence, away from the
living room into the study where Jean had kept her own bookcase, desk,
and a few choice pictures. A few old paintbrushes lay beside Jean’s
worn pigskin gloves on the table. Mrs. Craig picked up both, laid her
cheek against the gloves and closed her eyes. The years were racing
by so fast, so fast, she thought, and mothers must be wide-eyed and
generous and fearless, when the children suddenly begin to top heads
with one, and feel impatient to be out on their own.
Ready to try it alone, she thought. If it had been Kit now, she would
not have felt this curious little pang. Kit was self-sufficient and
full of buoyancy that was bound to carry her over obstacles, but
Jean was sensitive and dependent on her environment for spur and
stimulation. She heard a step behind her and turned eagerly as Mr.
Craig came into the room, looking for her. He saw the brushes and the
gloves in her hand, and the look in her eyes uplifted to his own. Very
gently he folded his arms around her, his cheek pressed close to her
brown hair.
“She’s only seventeen,” whispered Mrs. Craig.
“Eighteen in April,” he answered, “and dear, she isn’t trusting to her
own strength for the flight. Don’t you know this quiet little girl of
ours is mounted on Pegasus, and riding him handily in her upward trend?”
But there was no winged horse or genius in view to Jean’s blurred sight
as she watched the road unroll before her, and looking back, saw only
the curling smoke from Woodhow’s white chimneys.
7. Aldo from Italy
“This is truly beautiful,” Jean said, in breathless admiration, as
she laid aside her coat and hat, and stood in the big living room
in Hastings. The beautiful home not far from New York had been a
revelation to her. Overlooking the Hudson River, the view, although
totally different, reminded her a little of her former home at Sandy
Cove.
The center hall had a blazing fire in the big old rock fireplace, and
Victoria, a prize-winning Angora, opened her wide blue eyes at the
newcomer but did not stir. In the living room was another open fire.
Influence of an artist’s hand was quite evident in the details of the
room. There were flowering plants at the windows, and fresh roses on
the table in gracefully studied arrangements.
“You know, or maybe you don’t know,” said Beth, “that we have one hobby
here, raising flowers, and especially roses. We exhibit every year,
and you’ll grow to know them and love the special varieties just as I
do. You have no idea, Jean, of the thrill when you find a new bloom
different from all the rest.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out anything new and wonderful about
this place.” Jean laughed, leaning back in the deep-seated chair. Like
the rest of the room’s furniture it was slipcovered in chintz, deep
cream, cross-barred in dull green, with splashy pink roses scattered
here and there. Two large white Polar rugs lay on the polished floor.
“If those were not members of the Peabody family, old and venerated,
they never would be allowed to bask before my fire,” Beth said. “But
way back there was an Abner Peabody who sailed the northern seas, and
used to bring back trophies and bestow them on members of his family as
future heirlooms. Consequently, we fall over these bears in the dark,
and bless Abner’s precious memory.”
After she was thoroughly warmed up and had drunk a cup of scalding tea,
Jean found her way up to the room that was to be hers during her visit.
It was the sunniest kind of a retreat in daffodil yellow and rich
brown. The furniture was all in warm, deep-toned ivory, and there were
springlike bouquets of daffodils everywhere.
“Gee, I think this is just darling,” Jean gasped, standing in the
middle of the floor and gazing around happily. “It’s just as if spring
were already here.”
“I put a drawing board here for you too,” Beth told her. “Of course
you’ll use my studio any time you like, but it’s handy to have a corner
all your own at odd times. I forgot to mention it before, but we’re
going to have a guest for the weekend. A boy whose parents I knew in
Sorrento years ago. His name is Aldo Thomas. His father was an American
sculptor who married an Italian Contessa. Aldo is also studying art
here in New York this winter and lives with his aunt. He has inherited
his father’s artistic talent so I know you will find much in common.
And I also think you’ll do each other a world of good.”
“How?”
“Well, you’re thoroughly an American girl, Jean, and Aldo is half
Italian. You’ll understand what I mean when you see him. He is
high-strung and temperamental, and you are so steady-nerved and
well-balanced.”
Jean thought over this last when she was alone, and smiled to herself.
Why on earth did one have to give outward signs of temperament,
she wondered, before people believed one had sensitive feelings or
responsive emotions? Must she wear her heart on her sleeve for a sort
of personal barometer? Peg Moffat was high-strung and temperamental
too. So was Kit. They both indulged now and then in mental fireworks,
but nobody took them seriously, or considered it a mark of genius. She
felt just a shade of half-amused tolerance toward this Aldo person who
was to get any balance or poise out of her own nature.
“If Beth knew for one minute,” she told the face in the oval mirror of
the dressing table, “what kind of a person you really are, she’d never
trust you to balance anybody’s temperament.”
But the following day brought a trim car to the door, and out stepped
Aldo. And Jean, coming down the wide center staircase, saw Beth before
the fire with a tall, thin figure, whose clothes seemed to hang on him
carelessly as if he wore them as a concession to convention.
“This is my cousin Jean,” said Mrs. Newell in her pleasant way. Aldo
extended his hand diffidently. “I want you two to be very good friends.”
“But I know, surely, we shall be,” Aldo said easily. And at the sound
of his voice Jean’s prejudices melted. He had very dark eyes with lids
that drooped slightly at the outer corners. His thin face emphasized
his prominent cheekbones and his skin was fair in spite of his Italian
heritage.
“Now, you won’t be treated one bit as guests,” Beth told them. “You
must come and go as you like, and have the freedom of the house. I
keep my own study hours and like to be alone then. Do as you like and
be happy. Run along, both of you.”
“She is wonderful, isn’t she?” Aldo said as they walked out to the
cliff above the river. “She makes me feel always as if I were a ship
waiting with loose sails, and all at once--a breeze--and I am on my way
again. You have not been to Sorrento, have you? You can see the little
fisher boats from our terraces. It is all so beautiful, but now the
villa is quite shabby and parts of it are gone. It was bombed during
the war and there are no materials to rebuild it. But it is still
beautiful.”
Jean was strangely charmed by him. He was so different from anyone
she had ever known. None of the boys she knew would have talked so
poetically, even if they had known the right words and phrases to use.
That would be sissy stuff.
“I wonder if you ever knew Peg Moffat. She’s a Long Island girl from
the Cove where I used to live, and she lived abroad every year until
the war came, for two or three months with her mother. She is an
artist.”
“I don’t know her,” Aldo shook his head doubtfully. “You see over
there, while we entertained a great deal, I was away at school in Milan
or Rome and scarcely met anyone excepting in the summertime, and then
we went to my aunt’s villa up on Lake Maggiore. Ah, but that is the
most beautiful spot of all. There is one island there called Isola
Bella. I wish I could carry it right over here with me and set it down
for you to see. It is all terraces and splendid old statuary, and when
you see it at sunrise it is like a jewel, it glows so with color.”
Jean stood looking down at the river, listening. There was always a
lingering love in her heart for the beauty and romance of Europe, and
especially of Italy. “I’d love to go there,” she said, with a little
sigh.
“And that is what I was always saying when I was there, and my father
told me of this country. I wanted to see it so. He would tell me of
the great gray hills that climb to the north, and the craggy broken
shoreline up through Maine, and the little handful of amethyst isles
that lie all along it. He was born in New Hampshire, at Portsmouth.
We are going up to see the house some day, but I know just what it
looks like. It stands close down by the water’s edge in the old part
of the town, and there is a big rambling garden with flagged walks.
His grandfather was a shipbuilder and sent his ships out all over the
world. And he had just one daughter. There was an artist who came up
from the south in one of his ships, and he was taken very ill. So they
took him in as a guest, and the daughter cared for him. And when he was
well, what do you think?”
“They married.”
“But more than that,” he said warmly. “He carved the most wonderful
figureheads for my great grandfather’s ships. All over the world they
were famous. His son was my father.”
It was indescribable, the tone in which he said the last. It told more
than anything else how much he admired this sculptor father of his.
That night Jean wrote to Ralph.
Dearest Ralph,
I know you’ll want to know all about my trip. Beth met me
at Grand Central Station and we drove out here to Hastings.
Honestly, Ralph, when I saw the house, I had to blink my eyes.
It looks as if it belonged right out on the North Shore at the
Cove. The lawn sweeps down at the back to the cliffs where you
can look right down at the Hudson. And inside the house it is
summertime even now. They have flowers everywhere you look,
because they raise their own. Beth says she’ll give me slips
from her rosebushes and I can start a sunken rose garden.
A most interesting artist friend of Beth’s has come out to
spend the weekend here. His name is Aldo Thomas--the Aldo
because his mother is an Italian countess and the Thomas
because his father is an American sculptor. He has been telling
me all about Italy and his father’s statues.
Monday I begin my course at the Academy and I am so excited,
although it seems as though I have forgotten all I have
learned. I have to keep reminding myself that all of this is
really happening to me. I woke up this morning completely
bewildered for I thought I was still back in Elmhurst.
I hope to see Peg Moffat while I am here. Of course I shall
probably see her at school, but I won’t have much opportunity
to really talk to her there. She has a studio in Greenwich
Village that I am simply dying to see.
Even with all these new things to do and see and learn I still
miss you terribly. And June seems such a long way off. I wish
it were tomorrow that you were coming back so that you could
enjoy this with me. But since that is impossible I shall write
you everything that happens while I’m here.
All my love,
Jeannie
8. Jean Meets a Contessa
“I’ve just had a telephone call from your aunt, the Contessa,” Beth
said to Aldo at breakfast Saturday morning. “She sends an invitation
to us for this afternoon, a private view of paintings and sculpture at
Henri Morel’s studio. She knew him in Italy and France, and he leaves
for the west coast on Monday. There will be a small reception and tea,
nothing too formal, Jean, so dress well, hold up your chin and turn out
your toes, and behave with credit to your chaperon. It is your debut.”
Aldo looked at her quite seriously, but Jean caught the flutter of fun
in her eyes, and knew it would not be as ceremonious as it sounded.
When she was ready that afternoon she slipped into Beth’s own bedroom,
at the south end of the house. Here were three rooms, all so different,
and each showing a distinct phase of character. One was her winter
studio. This was a large sunny room, paneled in soft-toned pine, with a
wood-brown rug on the floor, and all the treasures accumulated abroad
during her years there of study and travel. In this room Jean used to
find the girl Beth, who had ventured forth after the laurels of genius,
and found success awaiting her with love back in Hastings.
The second room was a private sitting room, comfortable furniture,
and window boxes filled with blooming hyacinths. Here were framed
photographs of family and friends, a portrait of Elliott over the desk,
his class colors on the wall, and intimate snapshots he had sent her.
This was the mother’s and wife’s room. And the last was her bedroom.
Here Jean found her dressing. All in black, with a bunch of violets
pinned to her waist. She turned and looked at Jean critically.
“I only had this new green suit,” said Jean. “I thought with a sort of
feminine blouse it would look all right.”
The blouse was white handkerchief linen with folded-back cuffs that
were edged with Irish crochet lace. Above it Jean’s eager face framed
in brown hair, her brown eyes, small imperative chin with its deep
cleft, and look of interest that Kit called “questioning curiosity,”
all seemed accentuated.
“It’s just right, dear,” said Beth. “Go get a yellow jonquil to wear.”
There was a clean smell of fresh snow in the air as they drove along
the highway to New York that afternoon. Once Aldo called out in
surprise. A pair of sparrows teetered on a fence rail, bickering with
each other.
“Ah, there they are,” he cried. “And in Italy now there would be no
snow. My father told me of the sparrows here. He said they were such
quarrelsome and saucy birds that he really didn’t like them when he
lived here. But now, not seeing them, he misses their chirping.”
“How queer it is,” Jean said, “I mean the way one remembers and loves
all the little things about one’s own country.”
“Not so much all the country. Just the spot of earth you spring from.
He loves New England.”
“And I love Long Island. I was born there, not at the Cove, but farther
down the coast near Montauk Point, and the smell of salt water and the
marshes always stirs me. I love the long green rolling stretches, and
the little low hills in the background like you see in paintings of
the Channel Islands and some of the ones along the Scotch coast. Just
a few straggly scrub pines, you know, and the willows and wild cherry
trees and beach plums.”
“Somewhere I’ve read about that--the earth’s hold upon her people. I’m
afraid I only respond to New York’s rolling country, too. I’ve been so
homesick abroad just to look at a crooked apple tree in bloom that I
didn’t know what to do. Where were you born, Aldo?”
“At the Villa Marina. Ah, but you should see it.” Aldo’s dark eyes
glowed with pride. “It is dull terra cotta color, and then dull green
too, the mold of ages, I think, like the under side of an olive leaf,
and flowers everywhere, and poplars in long avenues. My father laughs
at our love for it, and says it is just a moldy old ruin, but every
summer we used to spend there. Some day perhaps you could come to see
us, Jean. Would they lend her to us for a while, do you think, Mrs.
Newell?”
“I should love to. Isn’t it fun dreaming of impossible things like
this?”
“Sometimes they turn out to be very possible,” Beth returned,
whimsically. “Hopes to me are so tangible. We just set ahead of us the
big hope, and the very thought gives us incentive and endeavor and
punch. Plan from now on, Jean, for one spring in Italy. Then, maybe,
some spring you’ll find yourself there.”
They arrived just a little late at the Morel studio. Jean had expected
it to be more of the usual workshop, where canvases heaped against the
walls seemed to have collected the dust of ages, and a broom would have
been a desecration. Here, you ascended in an elevator, from an entrance
hall that Beth declared always made her think of an Egyptian tomb.
When they reached the ninth floor, they found themselves in the long
foyer of the Morel studio. Jean had rather a confused idea of what
followed. There was the meeting with Morel himself, stoop-shouldered
and thin, with his vivid foreign face, half-closed eyes, and sparse
gray hair. Near him stood Madame Morel, with a wealth of auburn hair
and big dark eyes. Aldo said to Jean just before they were separated,
“He loves to paint red hair, and Aunt Signa says she has the most
wonderful hair you ever saw.”