DEAREST DESIRES
On the day following the meeting of the two girls on the rustic bridge
over Maiden Hair Falls, Jenny, true to her promise, drove to the seminary
ostensibly to deliver an order of honey and eggs, but a girl in brown
rode with her on the high front seat when Dobbin turned out of the school
gates. Another girl was watching them from her wide, upper window.
Turning back into the room, she remarked to two others who were trying to
study: “That Lenora Gale must belong to the bourgeoise. She is actually
going for a ride with the granddaughter of my mother’s servants.”
Patricia Sullivan turned a page in the book she was conning and remarked
without looking up: “Gwyn, how can you expect to win honors if you never
open your books?”
The girl addressed sank languidly into a comfortable chair, picked up her
novel and replied, as she found her place: “_Me_, win honors? _Why should
I_, pray? Does it make one a more winsome debutante? You must know that
this is to be my last year of confinement within the walls of a seminary.
Ma Mere has promised to give me a coming-out party when I am eighteen
which will dazzle even blasé San Francisco.”
Beulah arose, as she said rather impatiently: “Well, Gwyn, just because
_you_ do not wish to learn is no reason why Pat and I should follow in
your footsteps. I’m going to our own room where I can study
uninterrupted.”
“I’ll go with you.” Patricia arose to accompany her friend. “_Au
revoir!_”
Gwynette, having found her place, was too absorbed in her story to reply.
Meanwhile Jenny and Lenora were having the happiest kind of time riding
down the gently sloping hill, now in the sunlight and again in the shadow
of great overhanging trees.
“Has anything pleasant happened since yesterday?” Lenora asked with a
side glance at the beaming face of the driver.
“Yes, indeed,” the other girl nodded gleefully. “I passed 100 per cent in
two subjects and over 90 per cent in all the others.”
The brown eyes of her companion were questioning. “Why, I didn’t know you
were going to have examination. In fact, I didn’t know anything about
your school. Is there one near or do you have to go to Santa Barbara?”
Jenny told the story of her schooling from its beginning to a most
interested listener. “Oh, how I do envy you.” Lenora exclaimed. “If I had
had a teacher like your Miss Dearborn, I would be wiser than I am. We
always lived too far away from a school for me to attend one. Dad has
tutored me when he had time and so has Brother during his vacations.”
Then the girl’s face brightened. “But my best teachers have been books
themselves. How I have enjoyed them! Dad ordered all of the books in a
graded reading course for me, and I have shelf after shelf filled with
them around the walls of my room. I especially like nature poetry.”
Jenny flashed a bright smile at her companion. “Oh, I am so glad!” she
cried. “Miss Dearborn is teaching me to love it. She wants me to be able
to quote some poem that will describe every beautiful thing in nature
that I see. Of course, I can’t always think of one, but then I store the
scene away in my memory and ask Miss Dearborn what poem it would suggest
to her.”
“I would love to know your teacher,” Lenora said. “I believe I could
learn rapidly if I had her to teach me.”
“It’s almost the end of the school year,” Jenny commented, as she looked
up and down the Coast Highway before crossing it, “and, anyway, I suppose
it would hardly do for a pupil of the seminary to be taught by someone
outside when they have special teachers there for all subjects.”
“No, of course not,” her companion agreed. Then, as they started down the
long narrow lane leading to the farmhouse, the girl in brown exclaimed:
“Oh, Jenny, do you live in that picturesque old adobe house so near the
sea? I adore the ocean and I haven’t been real close to it since I came.
It’s so very warm today, don’t you think we might go down to the very
edge of the water and sit on the sand?”
Jenny nodded brightly: “We’ll go out on Rocky Point,” she said. “You’ll
love it, I’m sure.” Then impulsively, “Oh, Lenora Gale, you don’t know
what it means to me to have a girl friend who likes the same things that
I like.”
“Yes, I do know,” the other girl replied sincerely, “for it means the
same to me.”
Grandma Warner was delighted with Jenny’s new friend, and, as for Lenora,
she was most enthusiastic about everything around the farm. She thought
the old adobe house with its heavy beams simply fascinating, and when she
saw Jenny’s very own room with its windows opening out toward the point
of rocks and the sea, she declared that she knew, if only she could sleep
in a room like that, she would not be troubled with long hours of
wakefulness as she had been since her last illness. “The ocean sings a
lullabye to you all of the time, doesn’t it?” she turned to say.
Jenny, who was indeed pleased with her friend’s phrase, nodded, then she
laughingly confessed that sometimes, when there was a high wind or a
storm, the song of the sea was a little too wild and loud to lull one to
slumber. But her listener’s eyes glowed all the more. “How I would love
to hear it then. I would want to stay awake to listen to the crashing of
the waves.” Then she said: “I suppose you think me foolishly enthusiastic
about it, but when one has lived for years and years on an inland
prairie, the sea is very strange and wonderful.”
Jenny nodded understandingly. “I don’t believe I could live far away from
the coast,” she commented. “I would feel as though a very important part
of my life had been taken from me. I have always lived within sound of
the sea, but come, I want to take you down to the Rocky Point.” The girls
went again through the kitchen, and Jenny said to the dear little old
lady who was sitting on the vine-hung side porch, busy, as always, with
her sewing, “Grandma Sue, please let Lenora and me get the supper. We
won’t be gone more than an hour and after that will be plenty of time.”
Lenora’s face brightened. “Oh, Mrs. Warner, how I wish you would let us.
It would be such a treat to me. I love to cook, but it has been perfect
ages since I have been allowed in a kitchen, and yours is so homey and
different.”
Susan Warner nodded a pleased consent. “I reckon you may, if it’s what
you’re wantin’ to do,” she said. Then she dropped her sewing in her lap,
pushed her spectacles up among the lavender ribbons of her cap and gazed
after the two girls as they went hand in hand down the path that led
toward the Rocky Point. “It’s a pleasant sight,” the old woman thought,
“Jenny having a friend of her own kind at last, and her, being a farmer’s
gal, makes our darlin’ feel right at home wi’ her. Not one of the
upstandin’ sort like Gwynette Poindexter-Jones.” There was seldom a hard
expression on the loving old face, but there was one at that moment. The
spectacles had been replaced and Susan Warner began to stab her needle
into the blue patch she was putting on a pair of overalls in a manner
that suggested that her thoughts were of no gentle nature.
“What _right_ has _one_ of ’em to be puttin’ on airs over the other of
’em? That’s what I’d like to be told. They bein’ flesh and blood sisters
even if one of ’em has been fetched up grand. But I reckon there’s a
justice in this world, an’ I can trust it to take keer o’ things.”
Having reached this more satisfactory state of mind, the old woman again
glanced toward the point and saw the two girls climbing out on the
highest rock. Jenny was carefully holding her friend’s hand and leading
her to a wide boulder against which the waves had crashed in many a storm
until they had cut out a hollow resembling a canopy-covered chair wide
enough for two to sit comfortably.
It was low tide at that hour, and, when they were seated, Lenora
exclaimed joyfully: “Oh, isn’t this the nicest place for confidences?
Let’s tell each other a secret, shall we? That will make us intimate
friends.”
Jenny smiled happily. “I don’t believe I have any secrets, that is, none
of my own that I could share.” Miss Dearborn’s secret was the only one
she knew.
“Then let’s tell our dearest desires,” Lenora suggested, “and I will
begin.”
Then she laughingly confessed: “It will not take long to tell, however. I
want to grow strong and well that I may become father’s housekeeper. It
is desperately lonely for him with both Mother and me away, and yet,
since his interests are all bound up in our Dakota farm, he cannot leave
it, and so, you see, I must get well as soon as ever I can.”
Jenny nodded understandingly. “My dearest desire is to find a way by
which I can help Grandpa Si buy Rocky Point farm. I have thought and
thought, but, of course, just thinking doesn’t help much. There are ten
acres in it, from the sea back to the highway, and then to the tall hedge
you can see over there. That is where the Poindexter-Jones’ grounds
begin, and in the other direction to where the canyon brook runs into the
ocean.”
“It is a beautiful little farm. I wish you could buy it. How much do you
suppose it will sell for?” Lenora asked, but Jenny did not know. Then she
sighed as she added that she supposed they would know soon, for the
daughter of Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had said that it was to be sold in the
summer when her mother returned from France. But, as it was not natural
for Jenny to be long depressed, she smilingly announced that she had two
other desires that were very dear. One was that she did so want her
wonderful teacher to remain in California another winter. “If she
doesn’t, if Miss Dearborn goes back East, I will have to go to the Santa
Barbara High School next year, and no one knows how I would dread that. I
even dread going there for a few days next month to take the written
examinations.”
Jenny had one more desire, which she did not mention, but, as she glanced
across the green field and saw the turrets of the deserted
Poindexter-Jones home, she thought of Harold and wondered when he would
come again. He had said that he would run down some time soon and have
dinner with them. Then, surely, she would have an opportunity to be alone
with him long enough to ask about the farm.
Arousing herself from her thoughts, Jenny glanced at her companion and
saw, on the sweet face, an expression of infinite sadness. Impulsively
she reached out a strong brown hand and placed it lovingly over the frail
one near her.
“Lenora, aren’t you happy, dear?”
The brown eyes that were lifted were filled with tears. “There is
something sad about the ocean and Tennyson’s poem makes me think of my
dear mother. No one can ever know how I miss her. We were more like two
sisters, even though I was so very young. Mother died when I was twelve.”
“What poem is it, dear? Shall you mind repeating it to me? I haven’t had
any of Tennyson’s poetry yet.” Then Jenny added hastily, “but don’t, if
you would rather not.”
“I would like to.” In a voice that was almost tearful, Lenora began:
“Break, break, break
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea.
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman’s boy
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill!
But O for the touch of a vanished hand
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”
Then, before Jenny could comment on the poem, Lenora said, smiling
through her tears, “That is what the poets do for us: they express our
emotions better than we could ourselves.” Not wishing to depress her
friend, she arose, held out a hand as she entreated: “Please help me down
to that shining white sand.”
Such a happy half hour as they spent and when at last they started back
toward the house, Jenny, in the shelter of the rocky point, impulsively
kissed her companion. “I love you,” she whispered. “I have always wished
that I had a sister. I’d like to adopt you if you will let me.”
“Of course I will let you. I would rather have you for a sister than
anyone I ever knew.” Then, mischievously, Lenora inquired, “Now, what
relation is my brother Charles to you?” “We’ll let _him_ decide when he
comes,” was Jenny’s practical answer. “He may not want to be adopted.”
Then, as the house had been reached, she added impulsively, “but Grandma
Sue and Grandpa Si would love to be, so I will let you share them. Now,
Sister Lenora, it’s time for us to get supper.”