GREENACRE LETTERS
Jean confessed her mistake to Cousin Beth after they had returned home.
There were just a few moments to spare before bedtime, after wishing
Carlota and her aunt good night, and she sat on a little stool before
the fire in the sitting-room.
“I hadn’t the least idea she was the Contessa. You know that tall woman
with the stag hound, Cousin Beth—”
Mrs. Newell laughed softly, braiding her hair down into regular
schoolgirl pigtails.
“That was Betty Goodwin. Betty loves to dress up. She plays little parts
for herself all the time. I think today she was a Russian princess
perhaps. The next time she will be a tailor-made English girl. Betty’s
people have money enough to indulge her whims, and she has just had her
portrait done by Morel as a sort of dream maiden, I believe. I caught a
glimpse of it on exhibition last week. Looks as little like Betty as I
do. Jean, child, paint if you must, but paint the thing as you see it,
and do choose apple trees and red barns rather than dream maidens who
aren’t real.”
“I don’t know what I shall paint,” Jean answered, with a little quick
sigh. “She rather frightened me, I mean the Contessa. She thinks only
real geniuses should paint.”
“Nonsense. Paint all you like. You’re seventeen, aren’t you, Jean?”
Jean nodded. “Eighteen in April.”
“You seem younger than that. If I could, I’d swamp you in paint and
study for the next two years. By that time you would have either found
out that you were tired to death of it, and wanted real life, or you
would be doing something worth while in the art line. But in any event
you would have no regrets. I mean you could trot along life’s highway
contentedly, without feeling there was something you had missed. It was
odd your meeting the Contessa as you did. She likes you very much. I
wish it could be arranged for you to go over to Italy in a year, and be
under her wing. It’s such a broadening experience for you, Jeanie.
Perhaps I’ll be going myself by then and could take you. You would love
it as I did, I know. There’s a charm and restfulness about old world
spots that all the war clamour and devastation cannot kill. Now run
along to bed. Tomorrow will be a quiet day. The Contessa likes it here
because she can relax and as she says ‘invite her soul to peace.’ Good
night, dear.”
When Jean reached her own room, she found a surprise. On the desk lay a
letter from home that Minory had laid there. Minory was Cousin Beth’s
standby, as she said. She was middle-aged, and had been “help” to the
Peabodys ever since she was a girl. Matrimony had never attracted
Minory. She had never been known to have a sweetheart. She was tall and
spare, with a broad serene face, and sandy-red hair worn parted in the
middle and combed smoothly back over her ears in old-fashioned style.
Her eyes were as placid and contented as a cat’s, and rather greenish,
too, in tint.
“Minory has reached Nirvana,” Cousin Beth would say, laughingly. “She
always has a little smile on her lips, and says nothing. I’ve never seen
her angry or discontented. She’s saved her earnings and bought property,
and supports several indigent relatives who have no earthly right to her
help. Her favorite flower, she says, is live forever, as we call it here
in New England, or the Swiss edelweiss. She’s a faithful Unitarian, and
her favorite charity is orphan asylums. All my life I have looked up to
Minory and loved her. There’s a poem called ‘The Washer of the Ford,’ I
think it is, and she has made me think of it often, for over and over at
the passing out of dear ones in the family, it has been Minory’s hand on
my shoulder that has steadied me, and her hand that has closed their
eyes. She stands and holds the candle for the rest of us.”
It was just like her, Jean thought, to lay the home letter where it
would catch her eye and make her happy before she went to sleep. One joy
of a letter from home was that it turned out to be a budget as soon as
you got it out of the envelope. The one on top was from the Motherbird,
written just before the mail wagon came up the hill.
DEAR PRINCESS ROYAL:
You have been much on my mind, but I haven’t time for a long
letter, as Mr. Ricketts may bob up over the hill any minute, and
he is like time and tide that wait for no man, you know. I am
ever so glad your visit has proved a happy one. Stay as long as
Cousin Beth wants you. Father is really quite himself these
days, and I have kept Mrs. Gorham, so the work has been very
easy for me, even without my first lieutenant.
It looks like an early spring, and we expect Ralph and Honey
from the west in about a week, instead of in May. Ralph will
probably be our guest for awhile, as Father will enjoy his
company. The crocuses are up all along the garden wall, and the
daffodils and narcissus have started to send up little green
lances through the earth. I have never enjoyed the coming of a
spring so much as now. Perhaps one needs a long bleak winter in
order to appreciate spring.
Have you everything you need? Let me know otherwise. You know, I
always find some way out. A letter came for you from Bab which I
enclose. Write often to us, my eldest fledgling. I feel very
near you these days in love and thought. The petals are
unfolding so fast in your character. I want to watch each one,
and you know this, dear. There is always a curious bond between
a firstborn and a mother, to the mother specially, for you
taught me motherhood, all the dear, first motherlore, my Jean.
Some day you will understand what I mean, when you look down
into the face of your own. I must stop, for I am getting
altogether homesick for you.
Tenderly,
Mother.
Jean sat for a few minutes after reading this, without unfolding the
girls’ letters. Mothers were wonderful persons, she thought. Their
brooding wings stretched so far over one, and gave forth a love and
protectiveness such as nothing else in the world could do.
The next was from Helen, quite like her too. Brief and beautifully
penned on her very own violet tinted note paper.
DEAR JEANIE:
I do hope you have met the wonderful Contessa. I can picture her
in my mind. You know Father’s picture of Marie Stuart with the
pearl cap? Well, I’ve been wondering if she looked like that. I
know they wore pearl caps in Italy because Juliet wore one. I’d
love a pearl cap. Tell me what Carlota talks about, and what
color are her eyes!
School is very uninteresting just now, and it is cold driving
over to the car. But I have one teacher I love, Miss Simmons.
Jean, she has the face of Priscilla exactly, and she is
descended from Miles Standish, really and truly. She told me so,
and Kit said if all of his descendants could be bunched
together, they would fill a state. You know Kit. Miss Simmons
wears a low lace collar with a small cameo pin, and her voice is
beautiful. I can’t bear people with loud voices. When I see her
in the morning, it just wipes out all the cold drive and
everything that’s gone wrong. Well, Kit says it’s time to go to
bed. I forgot to tell you, unless Mother has already in her
letter, that Mr. McRae is coming from Saskatoon with Honey, and
he will stay here. Doris hopes he will bring her a tame bear
cub.
Your loving sister,
Helen Beatrice Robbins.
“Oh, Helenita, you little goose,” Jean laughed, shaking her head. The
letter was so entirely typical of Helen and her vagaries. A mental flash
of the dear old Contessa in a pearl cap came to her. She must remember
to tell Cousin Beth about that tomorrow.
Doris’s letter was hurried and full of maternal cares.
DEAR SISTER:
We miss you awfully. Shad got hurt yesterday. His foot was
jammed when a tree fell on it, but Joe is helping him, and I
think they like each other better.
We are setting all the hens that want to set. The minute I
notice one clucking I tell Mother, and we fix a nest for her.
Father has the incubator going, but it may go out if we forget
to put in oil, Shad says, and the hens don’t forget to keep on
the nests. Bless Mother Nature, Mrs. Gorham says. She made
caramel filling today the way you do, and it all ran out in the
oven, and she said the funniest thing. “Thunder and lightning.”
Just like that. And when I laughed, she told me not to because
she ought not to say such things, but when cooking things went
contrariwise, she just lost her head entirely. Isn’t that fun?
Send me a pressed pink rose. I’d love it.
Lovingly yours,
Dorrie.
Last of all was Kit’s, six sheets of pencilled scribbling, crowded
together on both sides.
I’m writing this the last thing at night, dear sister mine, when
my brain is getting calm. Any old time the poet starts singing
blithesomely of ye joys of springtide I hope he lands on this
waste spot the first weeks in March. Jean, the frost is thawing
in the roads, and that means the roads are simply falling in.
You drive over one in the morning, and at night it isn’t there
at all. There’s just a slump, understand. I’m so afraid that
Princess will break her legs falling into a Gilead quagmire, I
hardly dare drive her.
I suppose Mother has written that we have a guest coming from
Saskatoon. I feel very philosophical about it. It will do Dad
good, and I’ll be glad to see Honey again. Billie’s coming home
for Easter, thank goodness. He’s human. Do you suppose you will
be here then? What do you do all day? Gallivant lightsomely
around the adjacent landscape with Cousin Beth, or languish with
the Contessa and Carlota in some luxurious spot, making believe
you’re nobility too. Remember, Jean Robbins, the rank is but the
guinea’s stamp, “a man’s a man for a’ that.” Whatever would you
do without your next sister to keep you balanced along strict
republican lines? Don’t mind me. We’ve been studying comparisons
between forms of government at school, and I’m completely
jumbled on it all. I can’t make up my mind what sort of a
government I want to rule over. This kingship business seems to
be so uncertain. Poor old King Charles and Louis, and the rest.
I’m to be Charlotte Corday at the prison window in one of our
monthly tableaux. Like the picture?
If you do see any of the spring styles, don’t be afraid to send
them home. Even while we cannot indulge, it’s something to look
at them. I don’t want any more middies. They are just a
subterfuge. I want robes and garments. And how are the girls
wearing their hair in quaint old Boston town? Mine’s getting too
long to do anything with, and I feel Quakerish with it. It’s an
awful nuisance trying to look like everybody else. I’ll be glad
when I can live under a greenwood tree some place, with a
stunning cutty sark on of dull green doeskin. Do you know what a
cutty sark is? Read Bobby Burns, my child. I opine it’s a cross
between a squaw’s afternoon frock and a witch’s kirtle. But it
is graceful and comfortable, and I shall always wear one when I
take to the forest to stay.
I have a new chum, a dog. Shad says he’s just as much of a stray
as Joe was, but he isn’t. He’s a shepherd dog, and very
intelligent. I’ve called him Mac. He fights like sixty with
Shad, but you just ought to see him father that puppy of Doris’s
you brought up from New York. He trots him off to the woods with
him, and teaches him all sorts of dog tricks. Doris had him
cuddled and muffled up until he was a perfect little
molly-coddle. I do think she would take the natural independence
out of a kangaroo just by petting it.
I miss you in the evenings a whole lot. Helen goes around in a
sort of moon ring of romance nowadays, so it’s no fun talking to
her, and Dorrie is all fussed up over her setting hens and the
incubator natural born orphans, so I am left to my own devices.
Did you ever wish we had some boys in the family? I do now and
then. I’d like one about sixteen, just between us two, that I
could chum with. Billie comes the nearest to being a kid brother
that I’ve ever had. That boy really had a dandy sense of
fairness, Jean, do you know it? I hope being away at school
hasn’t spoilt him. And that makes me think. The Judge and Cousin
Roxy were down to dinner Sunday, and the flower of romance still
blooms for them. It’s just splendid to see the way he eyes her,
not adoringly, but with so much appreciation, Jean, and he
chuckles every time she springs one of her delicious sayings. I
don’t see how he ever let her travel her own path so many years.
Well, my dear, artistic close relative and beloved sister, it is
almost ten P. M., and Shad has wound the clock, and locked the
doors, and put wood on the fire, so it’s time for Kathleen to
turn into her lonely cot. Give my love to Cousin Beth, and write
to me personally. We can’t bear your inclusive family letters.
Fare ye well, great heart. We’re taking up Hamlet too, in
English. Wasn’t Ophelia a quitter?
Yours,
Kit.
If it had not been too late, Jean felt she could have sat down then and
there, and answered every one of them. They took her straight back to
Greenacres and all the daily round of fun there. In the morning she read
them all to Carlota, sitting on their favorite old Roman seat out in the
big central greenhouse. Here were only ferns and plants like orchids,
begonias, and delicate cyclamen. There was a little fountain in the
center, and several frogs and gold fish down among the lily pads.
“Ah, but you are lucky,” Carlota cried in her quick way. “I am just
myself, and it’s so monotonous. I wish I could go back with you, even
for just a few days, and know them all. Kit must be so funny and
clever.”
“Why couldn’t you? Mother’d love to have you, and the girls are longing
to know what you look like. I’d love to capture you and carry you into
our old hills. Perhaps by Easter you could go. Would the Contessa let
you, do you think?”
Carlota laughed merrily, and laid her arm around Jean’s shoulder.
“I think she would let me do anything you wished. Let us go now and ask
her.”
The Contessa had not joined them at breakfast. She preferred her tray in
Continental fashion, brought up by Minory, and they found her lying in
the flood of sunshine from the south window, on the big comfy chintz
covered couch drawn up before the open fireplace. Over a faded old rose
silk dressing gown she wore a little filmy lace shawl the tint of old
ivory that matched her skin exactly. Jean never saw her then or in after
years without marvelling at the perpetual youth of her eyes and smile.
She held out both hands to her with an exclamation of pleasure, and
kissed her on her cheeks.
“Ah, Giovanna mia,” she cried. “Good morning. Carlota has already
visited me, and see, the flowers, so beautiful and dear, which your
cousin sent up—roses and roses. They are my favorites. Other flowers we
hold sentiment for, not for their own sakes, but because there are
associations or memories connected with them, but roses bring forth
homage. At my little villa in Tuscany which you must see some time, it
is very old, very poor in many ways, but we have roses everywhere. Now,
tell me, what is it you two have thought up. I see it in your eyes.”
“Could I take Carlota home with me for a little visit when I go?” asked
Jean. “It isn’t so very far from here, just over in the corner of
Connecticut where Rhode Island and Massachusetts meet, and by Easter it
will be beautiful in the hills. And it’s perfectly safe for her up
there. Nothing ever happens.”
The Contessa laughed at her earnestness.
“We must consult with your cousin first,” she said. “If we can have you
with us in Italy then we must let Carlota go with you surely. We sail in
June. I have word from my sister. Would you like to go, child?”
Jean sat down on the chair by the bedside and clasped her hands.
“Oh, it just couldn’t happen,” she said in almost a hushed tone. “I’m
sure it couldn’t, Contessa. Perhaps in another year, Cousin Beth said
she might be going over, and then I could be with her. But not yet.”
The Contessa lifted her eyebrows and smiled whimsically.
“But what if there is a conspiracy of happiness afoot? Then you have
nothing to say, and I have talked with your cousin, and she has written
to another cousin, Roxy, I think she calls her. Ah, you have such
wonderful women cousins, Giovanna, they are all fairy godmothers I
think.”
Jean liked to be called Giovanna. It gave her a curious feeling of
belonging to that life Carlota told her of, in the terra cotta colored
villa among the old terraces and rose gardens overlooking the sea. She
remembered some of Browning’s short poems that she had always liked, the
little fragment beginning,
“Your ghost should walk, you lover of trees,
In a wind swept gap of the Pyrenees.”
“If you keep on day dreaming over possibilities, Jean Robbins,” she told
herself in her mirror, “you’ll be quite as bad as Helen. You keep your
two feet on the ground, and stop fluttering wings.”
Whereupon for the remainder of the stay at Cousin Beth’s, she bent to
study with a will, until Easter week loomed near, and it was time to
think of starting for the hills once more. Carlota was going with her,
and so excited and expectant over the trip that the Contessa declared
she almost felt like accompanying them, just to discover this marvelous
charm that seemed to enfold Greenacres and its girls.