As I said before, almost all I remember about going away is the leaves,
bags, dust, and peanut shells which whirled in the wind around the
station platform. A great many people came down to see me off, which was
dear of them, considering that my conduct has not always been exemplary.
And they all kissed me and said that they hoped New York would be
pleasant and that I wouldn’t be lonesome, and a few of them, women, said
that they hoped it would tame me down, which I did not entirely enjoy.
Even the minister came down, and he put me out of the choir last year
because I let mice loose in the middle of Miss Hooker’s solo, which she
finished from the top of the organ, in a squawk (Willy Jepson dared me
to), and it was especially nice of the minister to come down, I thought.
Uncle Frank coughed a lot and blamed it on the dust, but I think he was
feeling badly because I was going away. “Ho hum,” he said, “dust pretty
bad, pretty bad! I have here----” And then he pulled out a little box in
which he’d mounted a little beetle, which stays in the ground three
years and then comes out and acquires lovely shiny wings and flies,
beside making a real song with its hind legs. He said he hoped I would
understand the implied lesson, and he meant that I was to dig hard at
knowledge for three years, not that I was to attempt noises with my hind
legs. He said when things looked hard I was to look at that little
insect who so patiently waited for wings and worked so hard to get them
and to be ready to float and make attractive tunes. And I said I would
keep it on my bureau next to the china cat with a hollow back for
matches that Bradly-dear gave me.
And then there was a great deal of kissing; Uncle Frank ho-hummed some
and coughed, Bradly-dear frankly wept, Willy Jepson reminded me that I
could lean on him, _if I had to_, leaves swirled madly as the train
pulled in and made a real breeze around the station, and--I started.
I carried five bouquets which had been presented, an umbrella, a
suitcase, and a shirt-waist box which held all those things which the
trunk wouldn’t hold, beside a basket of Miss Hooker’s sheep-nose apples.
I have often eaten them, but she never _gave_ me any before. I was ever
so grateful. Her orchard is walled and guarded by a dog, and getting her
apples is really difficult. We used to do it by dropping a packing-box
over the dog and then adding bricks, to be sure that he’d stay, but that
is another story. The gift of those apples really touched me, but they
didn’t taste as good. I can understand how self-made men feel about
their fortunes. It is perfectly natural to enjoy something that you
steal under adverse circumstances. It sort of makes you feel clever,
which feeling everyone enjoys.
But to get on. I was to go to Doctor Crane’s for the night. His wife was
a great friend of my mother’s, and has always written me more or less
regularly, beside sending me things at Christmas-time. And, although it
is hard for me to meet strangers, I really looked forward to going
there. And it was lovely.
I arrived in Baltimore at eight that night, and I was never so
frightened. In the first place, I had never been in a large city before,
and the crowd was dense. And then--I am used to being near people I
know, and I hadn’t spoken a word to anyone beside the conductor all day.
I began to feel terribly lonely.
So, after I had got to the waiting-room with the help of a porter, I
stood and waited, feeling intensely miserable. And--when I heard, “Miss
Natalie Page?” in a nice man’s voice, I said, “Thank you _ever_ so much,
God----” (inside) for I was beginning to wonder what I should do if I
wasn’t met. I didn’t feel as if I could go out and take a taxi as I had
been told to. For I was sure I wouldn’t know a taxi from any other kind
of a car, although Miss Hooker said they had flags on them.
Well, it was Doctor Crane, and he has a real smile.
“Yes,” he went on, “it is Miss Natalie Page, _and_ some baggage,” and we
both laughed. Then he got a porter, had my things put in his small car,
and we started.
“I think Mrs. Crane has a little supper waiting,” he said very
cheerfully (I am sure he somehow knew that I felt timid and a little
alone), “for I heard her ordering patty-cases and French pastries this
morning. I don’t suppose you _like_ them?”
I said I was sure I would.
Then he asked about uncle and my trip, and whether I’d ever been in a
city before, and I answered him, trying ever so hard not to be
frightened by the great crowds that ran right in front of cars at the
crossings. I was quite sure we could kill someone, but we didn’t.
“Nervous?” asked Doctor Crane as we turned up into a quieter street
which went past the Walters’ Art Gallery (Doctor Crane told me what it
was). I said I wasn’t exactly, but that I expected to see someone killed
in the mob through which we had threaded.
He laughed and replied that he didn’t have to do it with a Ford--because
he was a doctor. And then we rode quite a distance, although it didn’t
seem so, for I was interested, and at last we stopped before a lovely
old white house. A little girl of about thirteen stood on the door-step,
and as we neared I heard her call: “Mother, she’s come! They’re here!
_Mother!_” And then she stopped yelling into the house and ran down to
open the door of the car for me.
“I am Mary Elinor Crane,” she said shyly, but she smiled so genuinely
that I liked her right away.
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “the only girl we have left, and if _she_
marries there’ll be a massacre around here!”
And then Mrs. Crane came to the door, and I forgot Mary Elinor and the
Doctor. She kissed me and said, “Why, my dear little girl!” and I felt
as if I had always known her. “Just like your mother,” she went on,
“just like Nelly Randolph--the prettiest girl in the Green Spring
Valley!” And I saw that her eyes were too bright, and swimming. And then
she changed the subject abruptly and said: “Come in, dear. . . . You
must be tired. . . . Ted, have Lucky take those bags up to the blue
room”--Lucky was the darkest little coon I ever saw--“and,” she went on,
“Mary Elinor, you take Miss Natalie upstairs and see that she has clean
towels and has a nice chance to brush up, and then come down to supper.”
“Come on,” said Mary Elinor, as she slipped her arm through mine. And we
went up some splendid broad, winding stairs which led to a great
upstairs hall. It was the loveliest house I’d ever seen. I could only
gasp.
There were dark old pictures in beautifully wide, gently mellowed gilt
frames, and funny old-fashioned pieces of furniture standing here and
there. I particularly noticed one, and Mary Elinor told me it was a
frame on which people of our great-great-grandmother’s time did
embroidery. . . . And on the floor were rag rugs, in the prettiest
colours. They belonged with the old mahogany. I don’t know about periods
or anything like that, but I could feel that they fitted.
As we went along, Mary Elinor talked ever so fast. She said that they
had always been poor, since people almost never paid the Doctor unless
they were awfully sick and wanted him to come again--and most always
they were only _really_ sick once. But she said that they had an aunt
who gave them a lot of money and that now they were comfortable and had
ice-cream as often as three times a week, and two cars, one of which her
mother ran. And she has two sisters, and a brother who was visiting then
and was going to college. And that little girl is the aunt of two
children! A boy and a girl. She said her sister Barbara almost named her
baby after her, but it happened to be a boy, and of course a name like
Mary Elinor was out of the question. She told me quite a lot as I washed
up, and said she wished I would stay, as she missed her sisters and
brother and would like to have me around. I thought it was dear of her,
and then, as I was ready and awfully hungry, we went downstairs.
And there--I began to understand that it was not all history, geography,
French, English, and mathematics that I was to learn in New York. I
began to see what I never had seen--or could see--in our little village.
That is--the prettier way of living. For even Miss Hooker’s table never
looked like Mrs. Crane’s. And Miss Hooker went to the World’s Fair,
studied singing in Washington in 1895, and has been as far West as
Chicago.
It was lovely. I did wish that Uncle Frank and Bradly-dear could see it!
There was a lunch set on it, and the way the table gleamed between the
lace edges was beautiful. . . . There were candles with pink shades, and
in a high glass basket late autumn roses. . . . Then there were tiny
baskets of nuts and candies. . . . I could only look.
I said, “I think that is _beautiful_, Mrs. Crane!” and she said, “_Dear_
child!” which wasn’t exactly an answer, but which satisfied me. . . .
Then we ate, and the things were very good. I did enjoy myself.
They laughed and talked a lot, and we had such a good time. Mrs. Crane
and Mr. Crane seem to talk by looking, too, which is queer--and yet, I
suppose if you’ve been in the same house with a person for a great many
years, and loved them lots, you would understand every little flicker
that makes a change in expression, just as I understand what sort of a
fly fish will want--from a look at the light and the depth of the water,
and the sort of wings the insects have that hover above. . . . Sometimes
I think that everything in the world is observation, that that is the
only education. And that education perhaps, after all, only tries to
make you do that.
I was deeply impressed by the French pastries. Of course, I had never
had them before, because almost everyone in Queensburg does their own
baking, and there isn’t any bakery nearer than Parsons, and that deals
in nothing more involved than macaroons. I asked Mrs. Crane whether she
thought that I could get them in New York, and she said I could. I was
ever so glad, for I think that if you are very homesick you can be
diverted as well by cheerful things to go inside as by cheerful
surroundings. I told them so.
Mary Elinor agreed with me.
“Eating,” she said, “is underrated. It has a great deal to do with the
set of your spirits (mother, I would _love_ having another pastry--the
brown one was a _complete_ disappointment, and I _only_ ate it to save
it), and when I grow up and am a doctor I am going to advocate complete
freedom in gratifying appetite.”
“Better advocate complete freedom in engulfing soda mints,” advised
Doctor Crane. “Most people need ’em, even while eating with care.”
Mary Elinor didn’t answer. She was too much occupied with the pink
pastry. When she did speak, she announced something which excited me.
“Natalie,” she said, “mother’s going to give you a present to-night,
something that is really yours and ever so valuable because of historic
association, and I am so anxious to see you get it. For it is really
yours, your moth----”
But her mother interrupted with “That’ll do, Chicky,” and she didn’t
finish. And then an old coloured woman came in with little cups of
coffee for Doctor and Mrs. Crane, and chocolate with whipped cream on
top for Mary Elinor and me. We walked a little longer, went in a yellow
room and played the victrola, and then I said good-night, and Mary
Elinor and I went up.
After I had got undressed and was in bed, Mrs. Crane tapped on my door.
“Dearie,” she said, “may I come in?”
I sat up and said, “Oh, _please_ do,” just as Mary Elinor, from way down
the corridor, screamed a request to come over too.
Mrs. Crane asked if she might, and I said I’d love having her, so she
did. When she came along, Mrs. Crane said: “Get in with Natalie--if she
doesn’t mind. Daddy hasn’t any time to fuss with colds now, and this is
a long story----” And then, as Mary Elinor got under the covers, Mrs.
Crane opened a square box which was covered in yellow satin (a satin
which had once been white), and held it so I could see a beautiful
bracelet inside.
“This, my dear,” she said, “was your mother’s, and her father gave it to
me a short time after she died. . . . Isn’t it lovely?” She held out the
box, and very carefully I picked it up. . . . It was a wonderful thing
of soft, dull gold, and the sort that they wore at that time--broad and
firm looking. . . . I had a queer feeling to think that it had been
around my mother’s arm, and I ran my fingers around the inside of
it. . . . Then Mrs. Crane leaned over and clasped it on my arm and
kissed me. And I was awfully afraid I was going to cry, but I didn’t. I
find if you swallow two or three times, very hard, when tears are near,
that you can divert them.
“Well,” said Mrs. Crane as she sat down on a little rocking-chair that
stood near the bed, “that has a history. A great history. It belonged to
Madam Jumel. . . . She married Aaron Burr, you know, when she was an old
woman and he was seventy-eight. Nice rosy age for romance, wasn’t it?”
I was glad to have something at which to laugh.
“Yes,” she went on, “that was her bracelet. It happened that one of your
great-great-grandmothers sailed for Bordeaux on the same ship in which
Madam Jumel took passage. Madam Jumel was then travelling under the name
of the widow of the Vice-President of the United States (although she
divorced Aaron Burr after they had been married for less than a year),
and a very grand lady indeed she thought herself to be. She had letters
to write to French nobility, letters which she wished to send from
Bordeaux, announcing her arrival; but her French was faulty, and she
found the task of writing them extreme, and the result far from her
personal satisfaction. So--your great-great-grandmother, being a person
of education and the nicest sort of French, helped her.
“One noon, Madam Jumel waited for her at the entrance to the
dining-saloon, and as your relative approached said: ‘Pardon, madam, but
I heard you conversing in the most elegant and genteel French (I could
not help but overhear it), and I wondered whether you would be so good
as to offer me your assistance. My letters to royalty’--and history says
she waved a hand most airily--‘are things that must be just so, as you
can understand. . . . I am proud that crowned heads bow to me, but laws,
my dear, it is a pest!’
“And the long and the short of it is that she was helped, and by your
great-great-grandmother, Natalie. . . . After the letters had been
corrected and little niceties were added, Madam Jumel expressed deep
gratitude. . . . ‘Thank you a million times, dear friend,’ she said, in
very quaintly broken French. And then, taking this bracelet from her
arm, added: ‘No doubt one day, when I am dead (but not forgotten), the
bracelet which I retain, the companion to this, will be displayed. . . .
They will say it belonged to the widow of Burr (my dear, he was a
wretch!), but this one, which I give you, and you must accept (I will
have no noes!) your descendants will display as having belonged to your
friend--a friend who was helped by a friend. Let me clasp it, please.
Ah, there we are, and well it looks upon your arm, although it has not
the round fairness of _mine_.’ And--that is the story.”
I looked down at the bracelet.
“Did my mother wear it?” I asked.
Mrs. Crane’s face changed curiously, and then she said she had--but not
often.
“But she did?” I questioned further. “Really did?”
“Yes, dear,” she responded.
“There’s a picture in the Jumel mansion,” she went on, after a few
moments, “which you will doubtless see. It shows Madam Jumel wearing the
companion to this bracelet. The painting was done in Rome, the last time
she went abroad, which was the time your great-great-grandmamma met her.
In it she is sitting between her niece and nephew--the nephew who
afterward, angered at her, threw an ink-well at his aunt’s face in the
painting, missed it, and left a scar above his own head.”
“Wasn’t that frightful!” I said. (I was thinking of the aim, more than
the motive.) “He must have been a rotten pitch.” But Mrs. Crane thought
I meant his anger was wrong.
“It was,” she said, “and yet--old Madam Jumel was a queer piece. She
adopted children who, one by one, all left her. She was a lonely old
woman and one pities her--but, Natalie--the world gives back what you
put in it. And usually when people are lonely, they have been cruel.”
“I suppose so,” I said. “What was the matter with him? Didn’t he ever
play ball?”
Mrs. Crane didn’t know, but went on with:
“You’ll be interested in the Jumel Mansion, because of your
bracelet. . . . And in Madam Jumel. Her husband, Aaron Burr, killed
Alexander Hamilton in a duel; and Alexander Hamilton’s son, who was
Alexander Hamilton, Junior, was her lawyer, even during the time when
she was Mrs. Burr. . . . Wasn’t that strange? . . . There are lots of
queer things about her, and more about her influence----” Again Mrs.
Crane’s face changed (I wondered what made it), and she looked at the
bracelet.
Then, after a little more talk, she kissed me, ordered Mary Elinor off,
and put out the light. . . . When I was alone I put the bracelet under
my pillow and kept my hand on it. I loved feeling it. It was nice to
think that my mother had worn it, if only for a few times. . . . I lay
awake thinking of it for a long time; and I am sure it must have been
away past eleven when I at last slept. Before I did I thought of Uncle
Frank and Mrs. Bradly. I wasn’t worried about Uncle Frank, for he always
has bugs. But I did hope that Bradly-dear wasn’t crying. . . . When I
thought she might be, I was miserable again--and then I found the
bracelet to be a comfort. I put my hand on the inside of it, for Mrs.
Crane did say my mother wore it sometimes. And it seems queer, but it
helped lots--lots!