GETTING SETTLED
Mallowbanks, December 10th.
_Carin_, _my love_:
I hear you are to go home for Christmas and that all of your family will
be together at the Shoals. I wish I could be with you, but I must be
here, of course, and I suppose that if I were to be with you, I should be
longing to be at Mallowbanks. That isn’t because I am discontented, but
only that there are so many beautiful places in the world where I would
like to be, that I find it difficult to choose.
I often think what a lucky thing it is that a person is born in a certain
spot and is under the impression that she has to stay there. If we were
allowed to flutter around over the earth before we were born, trying to
decide whom we would have for parents and where we would live, what a
state of indecision we should be in!
But here I am, with my own grandmother, in the home of my ancestors,
making Christmas presents, and having—Oh, astonishing fact!—all the money
I want to spend on them. But I’m not buying things. I mean I’m not
buying already-done things to any great extent. I am making them. I
want my loved ones to realize that it is still love that I am sending
them, and not just a sign and token of my prosperity.
There are all the Carsons and all the McBirneys and all the Summerses and
all the Kitchells and all the Paces and all the Rowantrees, to make
things for. Of course I count Keefe in with the Rowantrees, though I’m
not sure he would like to have me.
Speaking of Keefe, I wrote him a letter and told him what I thought of
him.
“Keefe,” I wrote, “you are haughty. How have I come to fall in your
esteem? Why am I suddenly ‘Miss Knox’ instead of Azalea. Do you think I
ought to suffer a steady average of trouble, and because I have found my
people and my fortune, are you going to make me miserable by turning
against me? What harm does it do the world if I am happy?”
He wrote back at once, of course. If he hadn’t, I never should have
written to him again. Never.
He said he had no idea he had the power to make me unhappy.
I wrote back and asked him since when had he stopped telling the truth.
And I said I could see he was looking around for ways of discontinuing
our friendship, and that at first I had been rather stupid and hadn’t
seen what he was trying to do. But now I understood, and naturally, I
would protest no more.
Then I got a letter from him which—well, which changed everything. He
said he had not been sure but that I meant to enter upon a new life
altogether, and if I had, he did not mean to stand in the way. He said
we had been thrown together by accident and that he had forced his
acquaintance upon you and me, and that we had been endlessly kind to him,
but he did not mean to take advantage of that kindness, but that if I
wished to continue our friendship upon the old basis that it would make
all the difference in the world to him; that he had had no heart for work
or life since the idea had come to him that he ought to let our
friendship go in justice to me.
Well, of course I had guessed from the first that all the trouble came
from some absurd idea like that!
So I wrote him that my friendships did not depend on the state of the
money market. But I didn’t say, Carin, that I would rather talk with him
than anyone I ever met (except you, sister of my heart). Perhaps he will
never know that. He said he would love to come down and see me, but
that, to be quite frank, he couldn’t afford it just now.
That reminded me of an old idea of mine. So that night I said to
grandmother:
“Don’t you think, madam grandmother, that you ought to have a portrait
painted of yourself as you are now?”
“I?” cried my grandmother. “At my age! Why, my dear, I am hideous! A
wrinkled, white-headed, shriveled old woman! What do I want of a
portrait?”
Then she arose and said as she often does: “Your arm, Azalea, if you
please.”
So I gave her my arm, guessing that she was going once more to show me
the portraits of herself in the paneled hall. And sure enough she did.
“This,” she said, stopping before the first one, “was by the greatest
portrait painter in the South. At the time he painted me I was eighteen
and already engaged to your father—your grandfather, I mean. I should
not like to have you repeat it, but the painter fell desperately in love
with me, my dear—desperately. Painters always fall in love with one, I
fancy. That is why the picture has a slightly unfinished appearance. He
left before he had quite completed it.”
“Poor man,” said I.
“Ah, I dare say he recovered. These loves that are founded on mere
admiration amount to but little. We will proceed, if you please.”
I led her on to the next portrait of herself.
“This,” she said, quite as if she had not told me the same things half a
dozen times before, “was done by an English artist just after my Jack was
born. I wanted him to paint it with my little David sitting at my feet
and my Jack in my arms, but he was not in favor of it. He said he
preferred to paint me by myself. For one thing, he considered me too
small to paint with such fine large sons. He said it made me look
ridiculous. But I truly think, Azalea, that he did not regard me as
motherly enough. I know I was and am a vain woman. But my vanity, my
dear, is only skin deep—only skin deep. It is a manner, nothing more.
In my time it was fashionable for girls in my class to act as if they
were self-indulged and vain. But in reality—” she paused, and stood out
before me, and I saw there were tears in her eyes, and her face grew
tender and quiet—“in reality, my dear granddaughter, my motherhood was
more to me than anything else.”
She drooped her head down among the laces on her gown, and I heard her
say under her breath:
“I have almost died of it!”
I put my arm around her and drew her close to me—such a tiny creature as
she is!
“Little madam grandmother,” I whispered, “come back to the fire, and I
will make some tea. Then perhaps you will tell me a story. I love your
stories very, very much.”
She straightened up again, calling on her courage and her pride.
“But there is one more portrait which I wish to show you, my dear. It
was done by a celebrated South American when I was just turned forty—my
autumnal picture, I call it. Here I am, in my spring, in my summer, in
my autumn.”
She smiled up at me suddenly.
“And now, I suppose, you wish me to round out my year, and have my winter
picture painted? Well, I can provide the snow.” She touched her silver
hair with her wrinkled hand.
“Dear grandmother,” I said right out from the heart, “you are quite
right. It needs the beautiful winter picture to complete the set.”
We went back to the fire then and she sat thinking while I made the tea.
At last she spoke.
“Do you chance to know anyone who is particularly well adapted to
painting such a portrait, Azalea? For, mind you, it will no longer be
the picture of a beautiful woman; it will be what is far harder to paint,
the record of a character. For every wrinkle tells its story, if only
one is wise enough to read, and though my eyes are old, they still have
their revelations to make, my dear. Who looks in them can read the book
of experience there.”
“I think I know such an artist, ma’am,” I said. “He has painted many
portraits recently and has had much praise for them. His name is Keefe
O’Connor.”
“Keefe O’Connor,” she said musingly. “Do you know him personally,
Azalea? But I think I have heard you say so.”
“He is the brother of my dear Mary Cecily Rowantree,” I said.
“Oh, yes, the Rowantrees of Rowantree Hall!”
She never forgets that the Rowantrees are of Rowantree Hall. You and I
love the ramshackle old place so that we forget what a grand name it has.
Grandmother, I suppose, thinks of it as a magnificent ancestral estate.
What would she say if she could see that the gallery, instead of being
supported by pillars, is held up by barked chestnut logs, and that there
never has been a second coat of paint on the place. Ugh, how the wind
can blow through those unfinished rooms! I sometimes think it is the
most uncomfortable place I ever was in. A little mountain cabin is
twenty times as warm and cosy in the winter time.
I would have liked to have told grandmother all this, but I knew it would
be fatal; that if I did, she would just set the Rowantrees down as people
I ought not to know, so I said nothing. By and by she remarked:
“Have you any idea of the prices of your friend’s portraits?”
Again I knew that I must mention a good price to make her respect him, so
I said:
“I think he would paint your portrait, grandmother, for a thousand
dollars. And we could entertain him, I suppose? That would make it so
much more agreeable, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, we would entertain him, certainly,” said grandmother. “We have a
room built especially for studio purposes. I believe you never have seen
it. It is in the west wing, and faces north. There is a bedroom
attached. It always has been the custom of the Knoxes to have their
portraits painted in the house and by someone with whom they were in
daily association. Such intercourse assists in the understanding so
necessary to the production of a good likeness.”
So I asked her if I had her permission to write to Keefe, and she said
yes. I have written him.
No more for the present, Carin.
By the way, was I rather down-in-the-mouth in my last letter? Please
forget about it. I suppose it was only a spell of homesickness. Seeing
so many strangers and being expected to like them all, and to act as if I
always had known them, rather upset me.
But as I said, no more at present.
I do wish you could see the room I call my Christmas room. It used to be
a sort of morning room, but no one sits in it any more, so I have a work
table in there, and my sewing machine and embroidery frame and my
pyrography outfit, and my photographic stuff, and I am working early and
late. Of course I interrupt myself to do whatever Aunt Lorena or
grandmother wish me to. And people call, and I return calls, and there
are little parties. But I like best to be working. Outside the window
are honey locust trees, and they are very lovely even when stripped of
their leaves. In the distance, on a hill, is a group of dark hemlock,
and now that the sky is gray, they look particularly solemn. I have a
fireplace in my Christmas room, and young James keeps it so that I need
never be without a blazing hearth. My wood box is simply heaped. There
are apples on my table, and a funny old writing desk stands in the
corner. It is a terribly messed up room, and I love it. Not that I’m
really disorderly. You wouldn’t say I was disorderly, would you, Carin?
Come, now! No, I believe I like it because I have made it myself. I
have in it what I can use. I am _living_ in it. In the other rooms I
only look on; and that, emphatically, is not living.
_No more for the present_! _I mean it_!
_Azalea_.
* * * * *
Glidden Siding, December 24th.
Merry, merry Christmas, dear Carin. Dear old friend, _such_ a merry
Christmas to you!
I am sitting here in the station, having come from Bethal Springs on the
queerest little train ever you saw, and I am waiting for the train that
is to take me home. It is cold, and I think it is going to rain. Seeing
that I do not expect to reach home till after dark, this sounds a bit
dismal. Semmy is with me. I wrote you about Greenville Female Seminary
Simms, didn’t I? I wanted to travel alone, of course, but neither Aunt
Lorena nor grandmother would hear of it.
I have just asked Semmy where she got her name, and she tells me that her
mother was a “pore misfortunate so’t of a woman who nevah did git on in
de worl’ nohow. An’ jes’ befo’ Ah was bo’n, she went fo’ to wuk in de
Greenville Female Sem’nary. An’ theah dey was dat good to heh, dat she
neveh did see! Yassum, dey jes’ cheered heh along and heartened heh up,
an’ nussed heh, and when de baby come—that was me—dey gave heh a whole
set of clo’s. An’ ma she jes’ had a change of heart. Yassum. She jes’
made up heh mind dat she wa’n’t goin’ to be downcas’ no moah. She might
’a’ been misfortunate, but dat didn’t keep de worl’ f’om havin’ any
numbah o’ good, kind folk in it. No’um. So she named heh baby fo’ the
Sem’nary, she did, sho’ ’nough, and she was glad of it to de las’ day of
heh life. And Ah was glad of it too. Greenville Female Sem’nary Simms
shore am a fine name.”
* * * * * * * * *
Well, I’ve been down to see Father and Mother McBirney. I couldn’t let
Christmas go by without visiting them, could I, Carin? I went down on
the twentieth, and had three whole days with them, and a Christmas
celebration of the happiest sort.
The two dears were down to meet me at the train, and they took me up to
their little cottage, which is in the pine woods, with a very pleasant
vista which shows them the river and the river road, and though they are
far enough from the road to be quiet, they can see the people coming and
going. Mother wheels Father to the springs twice every day, and that
gives them little excursions and helps to pass the time. Father McBirney
says the waters are benefiting him, so that he has hardly any pain at all
now. I can see for myself that the swelling is going down in his joints.
The only thing is he can not walk steadily yet, and then only a short
distance.
Oh, Carin, maybe it wasn’t fun to go to them with a big trunkful of
things they needed! I had a suit for Father McBirney, and a suit for
Jim, and a fine Scotch wool dress for dear Mother, and a knitted jacket
for her for common, and a fine soft black coat for best, and gloves and
stockings and warm underwear, and pretty curtains for the windows, and a
turkey which Aunt Lorena sent, and a barrel of flour and one of apples
from Uncle David, and some foot warmers and a coffee percolator from
grandmother, and various small things too numerous to mention from all of
us.
Then along in the afternoon of the day that I got there, Jim came over
from Rutherford College, and so we four were all together again. Yes,
Carin dear, there we sat in the little strange room and looked at each
other, and thought of all we had gone through together, and how we loved
each other, and yet—
And yet, we knew, each and every one of us, that my path and theirs had
begun to part. Yes, we knew it. They felt a little differently toward
me, and I felt a little differently toward them. But that didn’t keep me
from loving my McBirneys.
Jim had a thousand things to tell me. He has been studying terribly
hard, and he has made some good friends, and is full of noble, loving
ideas. He wants me to be a missionary to foreign lands, and I’m afraid I
hurt Mother McBirney’s feelings a little when I laughed at him.
“Do I look like a missionary, Jim?” I asked him. But he insisted on
being serious.
“If you have the heart of a missionary,” he said, “that will be all that
is necessary. Your looks don’t matter a particle, Zalie.”
The way he said it, you would have thought I was something frightful to
look at, but that it might be lived down.
“I want very much to help my neighbors along,” I said, “and to be helped
by them, I hope, but to go to a foreign country and set up my ideas
against theirs doesn’t appeal to me personally. You’ll have to excuse
me, Jim.”
After a little while he got off his religious themes and was just good
old jolly Jim, and then we had a fine time. For I confess that I felt a
little strange with him when he talked religion. We made candy
together—nut candy—and we popped corn, and got the supper, and played
chess, and had prayers and went to bed. And the next two days were like
unto this day.
Only, of course, we had our Christmas feast. They insisted on cooking
the turkey and all the other good things while I was there, so that took
a good deal of work, as you may imagine. But it was great fun, too. The
little cottage reeked with delicious odors, and it was charming to see
with its new curtains and the walls all trimmed with bittersweet and
holly, and the pine knots burning in the fireplace.
Then, this morning, Semmy and I left.
“Don’t forget us, Zalie, don’t forget us,” dear Ma McBirney said when I
kissed her good-bye.
“Never while life lasts, dear,” I told her. “Never while I have any
brain to remember with.”
“I’m grateful to you, Zalie,” Pa told me, shaking my hand till it ached.
“You’ve given me comfort and peace, girl, and there ain’t a day or a
night I don’t thank you.”
“Pa,” said I, “it’s hard getting even with you and Ma, but I’m going to
do it if I can.”
Jim took me down to the station and told me he hoped to be a credit to
me, and that he never forgot that he owed his education to me, and he
hoped I wouldn’t become worldly.
“Jim, you old silly,” I said to him, “I’m just as worldly as I can be. I
simply love the old world.”
“That, Zalie, is not what I mean, and you know it.”
“Don’t lecture me, Jim,” I warned him, “or it will make me more and more
frivolous. Just leave me alone and I’ll work out my own salvation.”
But he said he would pray for me. He looked so dignified that I didn’t
dare remind him of those little green snakes he used to put in my closet.
There’s no doubt about it; Jim is getting ministerial already. Growing
up is a queer thing, isn’t it, Carin? Little freckled Jim trying to make
a foreign missionary out of me!
To-morrow we shall have a great celebration at Mallowbanks. There are to
be some “kin” present, of course, and we are to have a tree and a great
dinner and in the evening a sing around the fire. I am to sing for them,
alone, at grandmother’s request, and I have been rehearsing. I wish I
had a voice like Annie Laurie, rich and full like a robin, or a
thrush-like voice such as your mother has. I don’t think much of my
voice, and I wish they wouldn’t ask me to sing. But I’ll do my best, and
I have some lovely songs. Aunt Lorena plays my accompaniments.
There, I hear the train coming!
How good it will be to get out of this stuffy little station. The light
is so dim I can hardly see. But why should I fret? In two hours I shall
be in Mallowbanks, my own home. My own! And I know now, Carin, that it
will be a pretty fine thing to go up to my own room and feel that I
possess it, and to sit at supper with my own people. Yes, Carin, I
realize it more to-night than ever before.
And, dear me, I shan’t get in bed till after midnight, I know, with so
many Christmas presents to do up and label and all. I’m tying everything
with corn-colored ribbon and it looks very pretty. The little
presentation cards have daffodils on them. Don’t you like dainty things
like that?
“It is all very silly,” said Preacher Jim to me. “This money should have
gone to the poor.”
“Jim,” said I, “it is going to the poor. For everybody in the world is
poor. Everybody needs help. Some need money, but more need love, and
all this silliness is just a girl’s way of showing love.”
“Humph!” said Jim.
Isn’t he funny, Carin? Who would have dreamed he would be so solemn?
I do hope you’ll like what I’ve sent you; and I’m wild to get home and
find your package for me.
And Oh, Oh, if there isn’t one, what an Indignant Person I shall be! But
there will be, for when have you or your darling parents forgotten me?
A thousand Christmas greetings to you all. There is no joy I do not wish
you. Salute your hearthstone for me.
_Lovingly_,
_Azalea_.