“WHERE THERE IS A WILL”
The Shoals, November 24.
_Dear Aunt Lorena and Dear Uncle David_:
Just a line to say that I am safe here and am sending Semmy back to you
with many, many thanks. She asked to stay with me, but it was, I fancy,
more to compliment me than for any other reason. I would not keep her,
of course. She belongs to Mallowbanks, does dear good Greenville Female
Seminary Simms. May heaven bless her. I hated to part with her.
Dear me, how many kinds of homesickness one may have. When I was away
from Lee I was longing for it; now that I am here I love to dream of
Mallowbanks. Still, I am glad I am here. There is work awaiting me. In
fact, it is piled high, and someone was desperately needed to take hold
of it. Lee is bulging with nice visitors with fashionable-looking
purses, and they are wild to do things and spend money. They would
rather purchase these mountain products than anything else, because they
are such quaint souvenirs of this lovely place. But, alas, all is in
confusion in the little shop. The weavers have been lazy, the
basket-makers must have been wool gathering, the pottery makers have all
been getting married—just like Ma Kitchell—and there is, to say the
least, the dickens to pay.
Mr. and Mrs. Carson had been most eager to have me come back and take up
the work, but as you know, there was not a hint from them that they
wanted me, because, of course, they would not in any way interfere with
me, nor tempt me to return. Anyway, I do not suppose they had the
faintest idea that I would do so. But when they found that I was willing
and ready to take up the work, they were simply delighted, and now they
are doing everything in their power to help my task along. Within two or
three weeks I hope to have things running very well. I would like to
make a good showing before Christmas.
I am staying with my own Carin Carson for the present, because I am not
inclined to take the long ride up and down the mountain. It would be too
exhausting. Moreover, since I would not be able to help Mother McBirney
with the housework, I would very much object to staying there and making
her extra trouble. But of course I went up there the day after I
arrived. Things are going on quite in the old way with the McBirneys.
Except, of course, that Jim is not there, being still at school. Hi
Kitchell’s younger brother is a helper for Father McBirney, and seems a
fine, willing boy. Father McBirney is pretty well, considering his
condition of a year ago, but he will never be quite so strong and nimble
as he once was. Mother McBirney is well and happy in her quiet way, and
she sends her respects to you.
I am asking a few friends for subscriptions for the Industries. It would
not become me to place any limit on their generosity, would it?
Oh, what an impertinent one I am to badger you, when you have already
done so much for me!
How am I to thank you for everything? How, above all, am I to express my
gratitude to you for your large-minded consideration for my feelings and
preferences? I am now a worker in the world of workers, and I am very
happy, for a deep need of my being is finding expression. Try to
understand as well as to forgive.
_With abiding affection_,
_Azalea_.
* * * * *
The Shoals, December 5.
_Dearest Miss Delight_, _my own beloved twenty-seventh cousin_:
Oh, why do you not come to see me? You thought you might come along in a
week or two. It is more than a week or two and you are not here. I am
having such fun, but it would be yet more fun if you were sharing it with
me.
I am selling things!
Yes, selling them at the Mountain Industries.
They are going like hot cakes. I haven’t made up my books yet, but from
present indications I should say that the Mountain Industries would
presently be very, very rich. Of course I’m really not a good judge,
because this is the first selling I ever have done, and it may have
excited me a bit.
Let me tell you what I have been doing. As I mentioned in the little
note I wrote you, things were rather at sixes and sevens here. Mrs.
Kitchell, who has had charge of the place from the very beginning, was a
fine worker and was and is one of the dearest little things that ever
lived, but she wasn’t just the person for managing a growing business.
She was better at weaving than at negotiating the weaving of other folk,
for example. Actually, when I came to look things over I found
quantities of fine saleable stuff tucked away here and there. No one
ever had come in and demanded those particular things—not knowing of the
existence of them—and they had therefore remained unsold.
I had the whole “kit an’ bilin’” taken out in the yard and spread around
on bushes and fences and the ground and aired and _aired_ and _aired_!
Then I had the salesroom calcimined a most magnificent pumpkin color.
The decorator was as stupid as a rabbit about mixing the right color, so
Carin came over and did it. Then I had racks put around the wall. Some
of them hung from the ceiling; some stood on the floor. Also I had a few
drawers and shelves put up, and I got some show cases with black
finishings, and I furnished the room with mountain furniture stained
black. Also I have the floor covered with extra heavy rag carpeting in
pumpkin yellow and black.
Fancy, if you please, how beautiful my blue hand-woven coverlets and my
brown-and-orange and black-and-red counterpanes look against this wall.
Fancy how attractive is the snarl of fine hand-woven baskets that I have
tied up on one side of the room.
What is more, we are now opening a regular tea room. Mrs. Kitchell had
had one at the beginning, but it had fallen into nothingness. Now I have
one—the darlingest room—all in golden brown and white. It complements
the other room in the nicest way, and yet is very different indeed. I
have some curious Japanese dishes, sort of crackled in effect, white and
brown, and odd serving dishes in dull yellow majolica. And we use the
mountain-made trays of willow and some of the mountain pottery. I have
three neat, sweet, fleet mountain girls in here helping with the tea
room, and people simply throng to it. I write out the little menu every
morning before I get out of bed, and one of these girls, who really has a
head on her, prepares the things in the most appetizing manner.
“People,” I said to her, “don’t come in here because they are hungry.
They come because they want to be amused. And they won’t be amused
unless everything looks beautiful.”
Carin is doing a lot of the cooking. She is doing it because she wants
to know how to cook. She is going to be married before spring, and there
is simply no use in her trying to do anything in her own kitchen. The
servants won’t let her; or if they do consent they all stand around and
watch till she is so nervous she can’t do a thing. But over in our
kitchen she can do just what she pleases. She makes those delicious
little cakes called “hermits” and “marguerites” and “rocks” and her
sandwiches are as good to look at as they are to taste. She has a new
kind every day.
I am terribly stern with her about keeping books, however, and she has to
put down every cent she spends. The tea room must make money for us or
we’ll not run it. I have become fiercely practical.
Oh, how light my heart is! There is so much to do each day that I can
hardly get through, and I fall asleep as soon as I touch the bed, and am
oblivious to the whole world until my alarm goes off. But I set my alarm
pretty early because each day I must think out my work before I get up.
I write out my program for the day and insist on following it.
Of course quantities and quantities of people come in the shop who do not
purchase, but I do not waste much time with them. I have a little sign
on the wall telling our patrons to look around as much as they please,
and when they have made their selection to let us know. I add that they
are most welcome; whether they purchase or no, they are to make
themselves at home.
Meantime, I have a pleasant young girl at hand ready to wait on them when
they wish her to, and I, though I appear to be busy with other matters,
keep an ear cocked, and if she seems to need reinforcing, I come to her
assistance. By the way, who do you suppose that girl is? Why, she is
Liza Wixon, from Mount Hebron, the girl whose soup I sampled so
generously without invitation. I have persuaded both her mother and her
to come down and help me. So they have put their sadness behind them and
are working like good fellows. Of course they have a secret of some
kind, but I shall never ask what it is.
I am sending off letters to our workers, begging them to hasten their
wares to us, telling them the demand for their work is here. All we need
is the goods.
No, I don’t go anywhere. Do you wish I would? When I first came home
people began giving me teas and all that, but I begged them not to.
“Come and see me Sunday afternoons,” I told them. “I mustn’t indulge in
a social life. I wouldn’t have time and strength for that along with all
my work.”
I knew the people who really cared for me would come, and as for the
others, it would be better for them to visit their chosen friends and not
bother with me.
Well, why don’t you come to visit me and to help me with the Christmas
trade? Wouldn’t it be the joy of the world to see the exclusive Miss
Delight Ravanel waiting on people and wearing a pleasant saleslady’s
smile? It would fill me with great glee. Please come down here and let
me see you doing it.
Do you miss me? I miss you very, very much. Evenings, when I leave the
drawing-room and go up to my own quiet room, I think of you sitting by
yourself, so lady-fine and peaceful beside your lamp, your busy needles
and thoughts going, and outside the trees sighing and the wind whistling.
How still you can be, dear friend. Is it hard to learn to be as still as
that?
I have been telling Barbara Summers all about you. Of course she had met
you at the time of my coming-out party, but she couldn’t possibly know
you—or even guess you—until she had sat with you evening after evening as
I have, in so pleasant a “solitude of two” and mined for your treasures
of brain and heart. For you hide your virtues as other people do their
faults.
Dear Delight R., I have had occasion whenever I went to Mother
McBirney’s, to go by the place I used to call mine. I mean that little,
out-looking bench on the mountain-side where the tulip trees rustle and
the spring of cold water whispers. I have already told you that a house
is going up there. Well, it is beginning really to look like a house
now, and I cannot resist dismounting every time I pass it, and looking it
over.
It is going to be a bewitching house, nothing less. There is a covered
porch which in winter is to be made into a sun room, that literally hangs
over the blue abyss, but so firmly is it supported with its foundations
of cement and its huge beams of oak, that it is as firm and enduring as
the mountain-side itself. There is a long, fine living room; the mantel
is to be of blue tile—yes, and the chimney piece, too. It will be
curious, will it not? But I think I shall like it. There are two
bedrooms on the first floor, and there is, of course, the kitchen and a
small dining room. The wood is chestnut, which takes on a beautiful
color when it is oiled.
Upstairs there is a bedroom which reminds me of my dear little loft at
Mother McBirney’s only that it is, of course, to be very nicely finished
off. It looks up the mountain-side, too, and it opens on a sleeping
porch. Then there is a long room beside it, the use of which I do not
know. Perhaps it is being left undivided merely because it is not needed
for present use. I have asked a number of persons who is building this
house, but no one seems to know. The contractor is a friend of mine, but
even he professes to know nothing. He says that a man at Rutherford is
doing all the business with him, but that he understands it is for some
gentleman who wishes to have a quiet spot to come to now and then, and
who once visited Lee and saw this beautiful building site.
Well, if he had taken any other spot in the whole county except the
particular one that he did, he would be welcome. But as it is, he annoys
me.
Haven’t I chattered about enough? Mind, I am looking for you. I want
you to come down and play at being a “rich merchant” with me.
If you see the good people at Mallowbanks, give them my love, please.
_Fondly_,
_Azalea_.
* * * * *
The Shoals, November 21.
_Dear Aunt Lorena_:
I have just come home from the wedding of my dear Annie Laurie Pace to
Samuel Disbrow. It was quite a sudden affair at the last. Of course
they have been in love with each other for years, and it must be a year
and a half since they became engaged. But they were both so busy
superintending the dairy which Annie Laurie’s father left her, and
following up their university extension course, that we had about
decided, Carin and I, that they had forgotten all about getting married.
But it seems that we were mistaken. They were thinking about it all of
the time.
The wedding was held in the Baptist church, and there were three
ministers to make it what it should be. There was the Baptist minister,
who belonged there, and the Methodist minister—Mr. Summers—who helped
because Annie Laurie loved him, and there was old Mr. Mills, who came
back from Florida to put on the finishing touches, because Annie Laurie
had known him ever since she was a baby.
She looked glorious, did Annie Laurie, so tall and strong and fine, with
her dark red hair burnished like a bird’s breast, all in her white, with
her floating veil. Instead of bride’s roses she carried a bouquet of
great tawny chrysanthemums the color of her hair. Sam has grown to be a
magnificent fellow and everyone likes him. When I remember what a
pale-faced, anxious boy he was once, and see what a strong, capable,
independent fellow he has become, I feel tremendously proud, not only of
him, but of Lee, which helped him to make himself what he is. There was
a time when everybody thought him the son of a thief, and when he was
broken-hearted with grief and shame, when he might have gone down and
become worse than nothing. But he wanted to be good and fine, and
everybody in Lee turned in and gave him a boost. Annie Laurie helped
most of all, of course.
Now she has her reward.
They have gone away on a wedding trip, and I am so glad. Never before
has either of them gone outside of the state they were born in. But now
she and Sam are off to the North, and will visit New York and Boston,
Washington and Baltimore, and a number of other places. Fortunately,
they have a good superintendent, and the dairy will get on very well
without them. I am going to stay in the house with Annie Laurie’s two
aunts until she returns. Aunt Adnah is very restless, and Aunt Zillah
cannot manage her very well, but when I am there I can, I think, keep
them amused. I move over to-morrow, and shall stay in Annie Laurie’s own
room, which is as clean, if not as bare, as in the old days when I knew
it first.
How Annie Laurie did want dear old Haystack Thompson to play at the
little dance after the wedding! But he is not to be found. Never since
he ran away from good little Mrs. Kitchell has he been seen or heard of.
But I can’t believe that any harm has come to him. He is off in some
other part of his beloved mountains, fiddling for new friends. I miss
him terribly. Don’t think me egotistical, but I do wonder if he would
return if he knew that I was back here. He always loved me quite out of
proportion to my deserts. It was because he helped to find me that time
I was kidnapped, I think, and because I was such a queer, unlucky little
girl and needed him so much. But whatever the reason, we are great
friends, and I can not think of anything that would give me greater
pleasure than to see him loping down the mountain-side, with his fiddle
under his arm, and his hair all in a shock, like a windblown haystack.
I had no time to prepare a fit present for Annie Laurie, the announcement
of her wedding was so unexpected. So now I am weaving a counterpane for
her of blue, orange and white in the wheel and star pattern. It is going
to be beautiful, and will bring color into her room, which always has
been too austere. Carin has ordered a beautiful rug from New York, which
will have the same colors in it. And Mrs. Carson will give the hangings
of blue for the windows. So we shall have a charming room for her by the
time she returns. The truth is, Annie Laurie never pays any attention to
herself or to the things which she alone uses, beyond keeping everything
spotlessly clean and in order after the immemorial fashion of the Paces.
But she deserves a beautiful bedroom, and she shall have it.
I am so busy in the shop during the day that I have to weave the
counterpane at night. I might have someone else do it, only I prefer to
do it with my own hands. Anyway, I have to economize a bit. Not that I
mind. Which reminds me that the first installment of the annuity dear
grandmother provided for me, arrived safely. Enclosed please find
receipt. Mr. Carson is paying me a nice little salary for my work at the
Industries. So I am well provided for, as you see. But I want to be a
bit saving, because now, indeed, Azalea is out for herself, and she does
not want to have to fall back on anybody.
I am sorry Uncle David does not write me. He isn’t vexed with me, is he?
Oh, I know he is disappointed. I know I seem to him not to have done the
right or the grateful thing. But try to make him understand that I love
him. I had to go my own way, that is all. And I am justified; I feel
that in my heart. I enjoy each moment as it comes, and I continually
feel that something yet more glorious is about to happen.
_With devotion_,
_Azalea_.