A LETTER FROM ALASKA
Cousin Marcia Vintner, who was Aunt Eunice's cousin, and stood to
Jacqueline in some obscure relationship that Caroline never was able to
work out, had thoughtfully gone away for the summer to the Bosphorus.
The cottage that she left at the disposal of her friends was what
Caroline, only five weeks removed from Cousin Delia's crowded quarters,
would have called a house, and a very nice one.
The cottage, since Cousin Marcia wished to call it so, was of gray,
weathered shingles, with latticed casements and a craftily contrived sag
in the ridgepole, and it stood in a little tangle of old-fashioned
flowers, on the side of a hill that sloped down to the rocks and the
sea. Inside there was a living room, with a great brick fireplace and
walls sheathed in dark wood. The piano held the place of honor, with its
gleaming keyboard turned toward the windows.
There was a wee dining room, with cottage furniture of black and yellow,
and dishes black and yellow, too. In the kitchen, all white and blue
tiles, was Cousin Marcia's Jenny, a black woman who went with the house
and made beaten biscuit and sugar jumbles, such as Caroline had never
tasted before. Upstairs were darling bedrooms, with casements that
looked to the sea. Caroline's room was all in delft blue and orange,
like the sea in some lights and the smooth western clouds when the sun
has just set.
There were books in the house, and magazines, and there were pretty
things to sew, which Aunt Eunice had brought along. Out of doors were
the downs, where Caroline went walking with a Cousin Penelope who seemed
younger and gayer and lovinger than she had been in Longmeadow. There
were the rocks, with their treasure-pools of seaweed and shells and
strange live things that stayed rooted or moved so sluggishly they
barely seemed to move. There were the white sands, where Caroline played
with a basket of new toys, fluted dishes, flower-shapes, fish-shapes
that molded the moist sand into forms of beauty. There were the waves,
where Caroline paddled or sometimes, with little gasps at the cold shock
of them, ventured to bathe, and bathed most willingly, when Cousin
Penelope was near.
People came and went. Children from the near-by cottages, all on the
lordly scale of Cousin Marcia's dwelling, played with Caroline on the
beach and among the rocks. Lovely ladies, mothers and sisters of the
children, and all young alike, came to tea with Aunt Eunice and Cousin
Penelope, and Caroline wore one of Jacqueline's pretty frocks, the
corn-colored net or the hemstitched white crêpe de chine with the old
rose pipings, and passed the Dresden plate of cakes or the silver dish
of plump bonbons.
Madame Woleski came, not for a week, but for three full days of
enchantment, and made music for them evenings in the soft light of the
candles. She kissed Caroline when she went away, and told her she was
mastering some of her faults of technique. Let her work hard and not be
discouraged! From Madame Woleski that was much more than gushing praises
from another, and so the music-loving soul in Caroline, that her mother
had fostered, knew and understood.
Wonderful days by the sea--days in which Jacqueline in the Meadows was
almost forgotten, as Jacqueline herself had told Caroline to
forget--days indeed when Caroline almost believed that she was
Jacqueline, and that all this happiness and love and the singing piano
were to be hers forever.
There in Longmeadow, Jacqueline, helpless and little, hadn't known how
to trace Caroline and the Gildersleeves. But the postmaster had their
new address all the time! If Jacqueline had thought to ask him, no doubt
he would have told it to her, but he would have told every one that she
had asked him, for he was the greatest old gossip in all the village.
No, she wouldn't have dared to ask him, because he was such a gossip,
even if she had known that he had the address.
The William Gildersleeves, The Sheiling, Monk's Bay, Mass. That was the
address, written in a crabbed hand on a page in the postmaster's
notebook, and to The Sheiling, Cousin Marcia's cottage at Monk's Bay,
came every now and then the letters that he forwarded.
One day there was a letter for Jacqueline Gildersleeve.
Cousin Penelope handed it to Caroline, when she came up from the beach
to tea. Caroline was bare-legged, in her sandals, with her brown pongee
knickerbockers, beneath her pongee smock, a little dampened at the edges
where she had been wading, not wisely but too well. Under her
broad-brimmed straw hat with its tawny orange ribbons that matched the
orange stitching of her smock her face was glowing and her eyes were
wells of tranquil joy.
"Here's a letter from your aunt," said Cousin Penelope, in a vexed tone.
"I really believe it's the first letter she has written you in all these
weeks."
Aunt Eunice, in her basket chair by the open casement, shook her head
never so slightly.
"They've sent her a great many post-cards, Penelope," she said, like one
who makes an effort to be just. "When you're traveling all the time from
place to place, it isn't always easy to write regular letters, and
besides you must remember that mail often goes astray."
"I--I didn't ask for letters," Caroline broke out, in a trembling voice.
"Oh, dear! You read it for me, Aunt Eunice, please!"
She had worn Jacqueline's clothes, and borne Jacqueline's name, and
taken Jacqueline's place, but there was something in her that she
couldn't overcome--something that Mother and Father both had
trained--that cried out at the mere thought of opening a sealed letter
addressed to some one else.
But Aunt Eunice had apparently the same feeling.
"Certainly not, my dear," she said, gently enough, but in a tone that
left no chance of appeal. "You must read your own letter. It is meant
for you, and for nobody else."
The glow had all gone out of Caroline's face and her eyes had filled.
Now frankly she began to cry.
It was Cousin Penelope who caught her in her arms.
"There, there, precious!" she soothed. Think of it! Cousin Penelope, of
all people, soothing and understanding. "I know how it is. Letters from
outside--they break things up----"
"Oh, it's been so lovely here with you," wept Caroline, "just too lovely
to last."
Cousin Penelope held her tight--tight enough almost to hurt her. Cousin
Penelope kissed her, almost passionately.
"Penelope!" That was Aunt Eunice speaking, but in a voice unlike her own
voice--stern and hard. "It is tea time. Jacqueline must wash her face
and hands. Jacqueline, my dear! Run upstairs and make yourself tidy.
Take your aunt's letter with you, and read it before you come down to
tea."
Caroline obeyed, and no wonder, but Penelope--that was the real
wonder!--let her obey without a word of protest.
Up in her room Caroline washed her face and hands and feet, and brushed
her hair. Then she opened the envelope, because she was afraid to
disobey Aunt Eunice when she spoke in that stern voice. The letter
inside the envelope was thick, but not very long, for Jacqueline's Aunt
Edith wrote a big, sprawling hand. Caroline read it, and to her relief
found that it wasn't so private as to make her feel absolutely a horrid
Paul Pry. Aunt Edith wrote about some of the places she had seen, and
spoke of some gifts she was bringing to Jacqueline, and hoped she had
had a pleasant visit in Longmeadow, and was glad that she and Uncle
Jimmie were to see her in another month, and that was all. Just all!
Caroline had been silly for nothing. She was to have another month of
happiness in beautiful places with Cousin Penelope and Aunt Eunice, and
if the future could be judged by the past, probably in all that blissful
month Jacqueline's Aunt Edith wouldn't write again! Caroline began to
hum to herself, like a drenched bee when the sun comes out, while she
put on her sand-colored socks and chose a fresh ribbon for her hair.
But Caroline at that moment (if you except Jenny, who was buttering hot
little tea-biscuits in the kitchen) was the only tranquil person in
Cousin Marcia Vintner's cottage.
In the brown-sheathed living room Cousin Penelope and Aunt Eunice
exchanged distressed glances, as soon as Caroline had fled from their
presence.
"Penelope!" Aunt Eunice spoke as chidingly as if Cousin Penelope were
just a little girl again.
"I can't help it, Mother," whispered Penelope. "Jack's child--the poor
little thing--so happy with us--like a different being since she came to
us. You can see it yourself."
"I know," Aunt Eunice sighed pitifully.
"What right has this Delane woman to take her away from us?" Penelope
asked fiercely. "She's starved her all these years--oh, of course I
don't mean food, though her diet hasn't been properly regulated, and her
teeth are in shocking condition. But I mean the things a child needs
more than food--books and pictures and the music that's more to that
little thing than the air she breathes. That Delane woman doesn't
understand her as we do--she doesn't love her as we do----"
"Hush, hush, Penelope!"
"And the child doesn't like her----"
"You've no right to say that."
"I'm going to say it, Mother. You've seen it yourself. Jacqueline never
speaks of California or her mother's people. She wants to forget them.
She's never written to them in all these weeks. She's barely glanced at
the post-cards that woman has sent--and you saw her just now when she
got that letter."
"What's the use of all this, Penelope? Edith is her aunt, and one of her
guardians. And the child hasn't been abused. Don't conjure up horrors."
Penelope bowed her white forehead into her long slender hands.
"I can't bear it!" she whispered.
"We'll have to bear it," said Aunt Eunice in a steady, calm voice. There
were no tears in her old eyes, but their patient look was very weary.
"At least we'll get all the comfort we can out of the weeks that are
left. Four weeks at least she'll be with us."
"No, we haven't even that," Penelope cried bitterly. "They've changed
their plans. I had a letter from that woman in this same mail. They
don't want to unsettle the child--as if they really cared! We're not to
tell her. As if I would, under any circumstances. Their dates are
uncertain--it's like their selfishness to leave us in such cruel doubt.
They've cut their Alaskan trip short--fickle, stupid people!"
"Penelope! Don't!"
"I can't help it. I loathe them both. They'll wire us--oh, they're so
considerate! And they may turn up in Longmeadow any day after next
week--and then they'll take Jack's little girl away from us!"