Part 2

“I’ll have to pretty soon. It looks like an early spring, Tom, and there’s a heap of work waiting for me up there. Of course Matt knows how things go as well as I do, but I’ve been away over a month now, and I like to have the oversight of things. Men are only boys, after all, and you can’t expect too much from them. I want to get the barn shingled, and some more hen runs set out before the chicks begin to hatch, and all my berry patches need clearing out. You know that mass of blackberries along the stone wall in the clover patch below the lane—what’s the matter, Tom?” She glanced at him in alarm.

He had closed his eyes as if in pain, and his hand closed suddenly over her own as it lay on the blanket.

“It makes me homesick to hear you talk, Becky.”

Their glances met in a long look of sympathetic remembrance of the old days at Maple Grove.

“If it were not for the children,” he went on slowly. “They are all at an age now when they need the advantages of being near the city.”

“Well, I’m not so sure of that,” answered Becky dubiously. “I suppose you feel that you can do more for them down here, Tom, and it is a beautiful place to live, but you did pretty well yourself up at the old Green District, didn’t you?”

He smiled and nodded his head.

“I wonder what Margie would say to the Green District schoolhouse?” he asked. A vision of it arose out of the memories of the past, the little red schoolhouse that stood at the crossroads, with rocky pastures rising high behind it, and the long white dusty road curving before it. He had been just a country boy, born and bred within a few miles of Maple Grove at the old Craig homestead. He knew every cow path through the woods around Elmhurst, every big chestnut and hickory tree for five miles around, every fork and bend in the course of the wild little river that cut through the valley meadows. Somehow, in these days of weakness and fear that he was losing his grip on life, there had grown a great yearning to be home again, to find himself back in the shelter of the protecting hills. They had always been the hills of rest to him as a boy. He had often turned his thoughts to them longingly while he sloshed through jungles in the Pacific, but now they beckoned to him even more urgently to come back to peace and health.

“She isn’t country-bred, is she, Tom?”

The question called him to reality from his dreams. “No,” he answered gently, “no, Margie’s from California. I believe her people went out originally from New York State, but she herself was born in San Diego. Later, she lived on her father’s ranch for a while in the Coronado Valley, but she was educated in the city. She doesn’t know anything about farm life as we do.”

Rebecca looked nonplussed. California might just as well be Borneo, so far as her knowledge of it was concerned. It did seem rather too bad that Margie had come from such far-off stock, but still, she thought, a great deal could be excused in her on account of it, since it wasn’t given to everybody to be born in New England.

“Would she mind it just for a summer, do you suppose?”

“It would have to be for a longer time than one summer, Becky.”

Something in his voice made her suspicious. Mrs. Craig had walked out to meet the girls on their way home from the movies. A lone adventurous fly crept up the window curtain and Rebecca promptly slapped him with a ready hand.

“Pesky thing, doesn’t it know it’s not time for them to start pestering us,” she said. “What did you say, Tom?”

“I said that it would have to be for a longer time than just one summer. Things have not gone well with me for the past year. I haven’t got the guts to break the news to Margie now.”

“You should have,” said Becky promptly. “It isn’t fair to her not to share your sorrows with her as well as your joys.”

“Margie had enough to worry about in the years I was away when she was managing alone to keep the family together. I don’t want to have her worrying about money now.”

“Just like a man. So now you’ve backed yourself up against a stone wall and can’t see a way out. Can I help you? How much money do you need to tide you over?”

He laughed unsteadily.

“Dear old Becky. You’d give anyone your left ear if they needed it, wouldn’t you? You don’t understand how we live. It takes nearly every cent I get from the government to cover our current expenses. We’ve already made a large hole in our savings in order to get medicine and things. I’m wondering what we are going to do, and I dread even mentioning it to Margie.”

“Then let me do it,” said Miss Craig promptly. “I’d love to. Better yet, talk it over with the whole family if you’re strong enough. How long can you hold out here?”

“I’m not certain.” He looked weary and harassed. “We only rent the place and the lease is up the first of May.”

“I’ll wager you can rent a good farm up home for what you pay here, Tom—house, barns, pasture, hay fields, wood lots and all,” said Rebecca thoughtfully. “It’s a nice place here, but the cost of living is so high.” She looked out at the clean park-like territory around the large modern house. Winding drives swept in and out. Each residence stood in its own spacious grounds. There was an artificial pond where the children skated in winter, and the country club crowned the hill with a golf course sloping away to the shore on the north.

Down in the ravine stood the gray stone railroad station matching the real estate office over the way, and farther along were the village stores, the new high school of brick and concrete, and the two churches. Back and forth along the smooth highway slipped a never-ending line of cars and trucks coming and going like ants over an ant hill.

Becky turned her head toward the bed once more and asked, “Would you rather stay here than go up home with me?”

“It isn’t what I’d rather do. It’s what we may have to do unless I gain my old strength.”

“You’ll never get a bit better lying there worrying over unpaid bills and new ones stacking up. I’m going to talk to Margie.”

He shook his head with a little smile of doubt.

“But it would never be fair to take them away from this sort of thing, Becky. You don’t understand. Their friends are all here. And Jean has been taking up a course in applied design and ceramics, and Doris has her music. Kit’s deep in schoolwork and belongs to about five clubs outside of that. Even Tommy has a swimming class keeping him busy after school two days a week. Margie’s on more committees and things than I can count, and she believes we owe it to the children to give them the best social environment that we can. Perhaps we can get along in some way. There’s a little left at the bank.”

“How much?” demanded Rebecca uncompromisingly. “I mean, after you’ve paid up everything. I’ll bet there isn’t five thousand left.”

“Five thousand! I doubt much whether there is one thousand. Don’t tell Margie that. I still have a few securities I might sell and realize something on.”

“And you think that you’ve been a good husband to her. Land alive, what are men made of! Here she stands a chance of being left alone in the world with four children to bring up and you’ve never bothered her about your business. The sooner you get to it the better, I think.” Rebecca stood up and adjusted her glasses resolutely. She had seen what he could not, Margie coming leisurely up the walk, a loose cluster of pussy willows in her arms, and the girls following, all except Kit. “There they come now. I won’t say anything till you do, Tom.”

Just then Kit’s voice sounded at the door. Her short curls were rumpled and unbrushed, her eyes wide with excitement, as she hugged a heating pad to her face.

“I’ve heard almost every word you said,” she burst out. “I had an earache and stayed home this afternoon, and I’ve been asleep in there on the couch. Please don’t worry, Dad. I think it would be glorious for us all to go up into the country.”

She stopped as the front door banged and Tommy came crashing upstairs completely out of breath from a strenuous game of baseball.

“Well, child, keep your mouth shut till we know where we’re at,” warned Becky quickly. “Go back and lie down. Here they come.”

But Kit stood her ground, and Jean and Doris seemed to catch from her the fact that something was up as they came in behind their mother.

“It was a lovely walk,” said Mrs. Craig, removing her gloves as she sat down beside the bed and smiled at the patient. “We went past the Dunderdale place, Tom. It is simply lovely there. I never saw so many shrubs and trees and such beautiful landscaping. It made me think of the homes out in California. You’d enjoy the garden so this summer, and there is a screened-in porch across the back of the house. The garage is small, but it will do if we don’t get a new car this year.”

Right here Rebecca sniffed, a real, unmistakable sniff. She was a believer in quick action. If you had anything to do, the quicker you did it and got over it the better, she always said. So now she raised her head as they looked at her, and set them all back on their heels.

“You won’t get a new car this year, Margie, my dear, and you’re not going to move to any expensive house, either. I’m going to take the whole lot of you to Elmhurst, and see if Tom can’t get his health back up in that peaceful countryside.”

4. Pulling Together

A queer silence hung over all of them in the room. Mrs. Craig looked down at the tired face lying back on the white pillows with a startled expression in her usually calm eyes. Instinctively both her hands reached for his and held them fast, while Jean laid her own two down on her mother’s shoulders as if she would have given her strength for this new problem.

“You mean for a little visit, don’t you, Becky?” she asked eagerly.

“No, I don’t, Jeannie. I mean for good and all, or at least until your father has time to get well, and that can’t be done in a few days.”

“But Doctor Martin says he’s gaining every day,” Mrs. Craig said. She waited for some reassuring answer, her eyes almost begging for one, but Rebecca held her ground.

“Tom, tell what the doctor said to us this morning. Not that I take much stock in him, but he may be on the right track.”

“Nothing special,” said Mr. Craig as he smiled back at them, “only it appears that I am to be laid up in dry dock for repairs for a long time, and the sinews of war won’t stand the vacation expenses if we stay where we are now.”

“I wouldn’t try to talk about it, dear, before the children,” began Mrs. Craig, quick to avoid anything that sounded like trouble or anxiety. “We must not worry. There will be some way out of it.”

“There is,” Becky went on serenely. “I say you’d better move right out of this kind of a place where expenses are high and you can’t afford anything at all. This is a real crisis, Margaret Ann.” She spoke with more decision as she saw Jean pat her mother comfortingly. “It has got to be met with common sense. When the breadwinner can’t work and there’s a houseful of youngsters to bring up and feed and clothe, it’s time to sit up and take notice, and count all of your resources.”

“How would it do for you to take Dad up home with you for a rest, Becky?” Jean suggested, stepping into the awkward breach as she always did. “Then we could let Lydia go and manage alone. And when he came back we’d have all the moving over, and it would be the prettiest time of the year along in late August.”

Mrs. Craig’s face brightened at the suggestion.

“Or we might even renew the lease here, Tom. The house is very pleasant after all, and we could get along with it if it were all done over this spring.”

Mr. Craig looked up at Rebecca’s face helplessly, and she answered the appeal.

“Now, look here,” she said with decision and finality. “You’d better get the idea of staying here right out of your head, Margie. Circumstances have made it entirely out of the question. If you’re the kind of woman I think you are, you’ll start making plans to move where it’s less expensive. I think your way lies over the hills to Elmhurst. You can pay all your bills here, sell off a lot of heavy furniture, and move up there this spring. For you can’t stay here. There’s hardly enough money to see you through as it is. I’m going to help you along a bit until you get your new start.”

“Not money enough!” said Mrs. Craig as though she could not believe it. “But we couldn’t think of going up there and all living with you, Becky.”

“You’re not going to,” answered Rebecca. “Thank the Lord, I live in a land where houses and food are comparatively cheap and there’s room for everybody. We don’t tack a brass doorplate on a rock pile like I saw there in New York, Margie, and call it a home at about ten dollars a minute to breathe. I’ve been telling Tom you’d better rent a farm near me, and settle down on it.”

“But Becky—” Mrs. Craig hesitated.

“Oh, Mom, do it, do it,” came in a quick outburst from Kit, standing back against the wall. “It would be swell for all of us and would do wonders for Dad!”

“We wouldn’t mind a bit. We’d love it, wouldn’t we, Tommy?” Doris squeezed Tommy’s hand to be sure he would answer in the affirmative. “We’d all help you.”

Tommy was silent, still too bewildered at the idea to express an opinion.

“I shouldn’t mind for myself, but we must think of the children—their schooling and what environment means to teen-agers. I suppose Jean could be left at school.”

“Thought she was all through school,” interrupted Rebecca.

“I am, only I’ve been taking lessons in town this winter in a special course, arts and crafts, you know, and next fall I was going into the regular classes at the National Academy of Design.”

“What for, dear?” Becky’s gray eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “Going to be an artist?”

“Not exactly pictures,” Jean answered with dignity. “Textile design.”

“Well, whatever it is, I guess it will hold over for a year while you go up to the country and learn to keep house. Kit here can go to high school. It’s seven miles away, but there’s a school bus that picks up those who live too far away to walk. It’s real handy.”

Kit’s eyes signaled to Jean, and Jean’s to Doris and Tommy. A fleeting vision of that “handy” trip to high school in the dead of winter appeared before them.

“What do you think of it, dear?” asked Mr. Craig, looking longingly up at the face of his wife. “It would be a great comfort and relief to me to get back to those old hills, but it doesn’t seem fair to you or the children. The sacrifice is too great. They do need the right kind of environment, as you say. Suppose we left Jean where she could keep up her studies, and perhaps put Kit into a private school. Then I might go up home with Becky, and you and the two younger ones could go out to California to Benita Ranch—”

But Mrs. Craig laid her fingers on his lips.

“You’re not going to banish us to Benita Ranch. If you think it is the best thing to do, Tom, we’ll all go with you. Wherever you go, I’m going.”

Doris laid her hand over Jean’s, and they stepped out softly. Their mother, they saw, needed to be alone with their father. They fled downstairs to the study back of the living room and were followed by Kit and Tommy who were already deep in an argument about the entire situation.

“I don’t think it’s right to move up there,” Doris said, judicially. “We may not like it at all, and there we’d be just the same, stuck in a rut, and maybe we never could get out of it, and we’d grow old and look just like Becky and talk like her and everything.”

“Take it easy, kid, be careful of what you say,” Kit said sharply. “Becky is odd in some ways but she influences a lot of people in her home town. And here too. I wish I had half her common sense.”

“I hate common sense,” Jean cried passionately. “I suppose it’s the only thing to do but did you see Mom’s face? It was utterly tragic. Dad’s been a country boy, and he’s going back home where he knows all about everything and loves it, but Mother’s so different.”

“I think Mom’s a darling, but she’s adaptable too, and she’ll go, you see if she doesn’t. And it won’t kill any of us. The really great mind should rise superior to its environment.”

“Let’s tell Kit that the first time she gripes about dishwashing,” Doris said. “I didn’t hear anything about Lydia going along, did you, Jean?”

“You’ll do your share all right, Kathleen, and when the gray dawn is breaking at that,” laughed Jean. “Farm life’s no snap and really, while I wouldn’t disagree with Dad and Becky about it, I think that those who have special gifts—”

“Meaning you?” asked Kit.

“Meaning me—should not waste their time doing what is not their forte. It takes away the work from those who can’t do the other things.”

Jean’s eyes twinkled and she smiled slightly, but Kit took her seriously and shook her head.

“You’re going to walk the straight and narrow path up at Elmhurst under Becky’s eagle eye just the same, Jean. It’s no use kicking. I don’t mind so much leaving this place, but we’ll miss the kids like crazy.”

“And the roller skating,” added Doris, who went to the neighborhood skating rink with a gang of boys and girls every Friday night. “I’m going to miss that. I wonder if there is a roller rink up there.”

“I see where Kit steps off the basketball team and learns how to run a lawn mower,” Kit remarked. “Also there will be no Wednesday evening dancing class, Doris, where you can polish your jitterbug steps.”

“I wish we could all move back to town and see if we couldn’t do something to earn money,” Jean said. “One of the girls in the art class found a job designing wallpaper the other day, and another one is making ceramics. When the fortunes of the Victorian family suddenly crashed, the humble but still genteel family usually took in paying guests, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but it went out of style ages ago, Jeannie,” Kit kicked off her shoes and stared at her blue angora socks. “We’ll not take in any boarders at all. I see myself waiting on table this summer at some hillside farm retreat for aged and respectable females. If we’ve got to work, let’s pitch in and help at home first.”

“And if it has to be, let’s not fuss and make things harder for Mom,” Doris put in.

“How about Dad?” Kit demanded. “Seems to me that he’s got the hardest part to bear. It’s bad enough lying there sick all the time, without feeling that you’re dragging the whole family after you and exiling them to Elmhurst.”

“It’s a riot, kids,” Jean said all at once, her eyes softening and her dimples showing again. “Just the minute any one of us takes Dad’s part, someone springs up and gives a yell for Mother, and vice versa. We won’t be lonesome up there so long as we have ourselves—you know we won’t—and if things are slow, then we’ll start something.”

“Will we? Oh, won’t we?” Kit cried. She got up, walked across the study, and put a stack of records on the phonograph. In a few seconds _Begin the Beguine_ blared out and Kit did a few dance steps back to her seat.

“That’s better,” Jean said with a sigh of relief. “We’ve got to pull all together, and make the best of things. Dad’s sick, and Mother’s worried to death. Let’s promise ourselves to be as much help as possible and otherwise not get in the way.”

5. Busy Days Ahead

Becky departed for Elmhurst, Connecticut, the following Monday.

“I’d take you with me, Tom, if it were spring,” she said, “but the first of March we get some pretty bad spells of weather, and it’s uncertain for anybody in poor health. You stay here and cheer up and get stronger, and gradually break camp. If you need any help, let me know.”

It was harder breaking camp than any of them realized. They had lived six years at Sandy Cove, near Great Neck on Long Island. Before that time, there had been an apartment in New York on Columbia Heights. As Kit described it with her usual graphic touch, “Bird’s-eye Castle, eight stories up. Fine view of adjacent clouds. With field glasses on clear days, you could also see the tops of the Riverside busses.”

It had seemed almost like real country to the girls and Tommy when they had left the city behind them and moved to Sandy Cove. Tommy had the measles that year, and the doctor had ordered fresh air and an outdoor life for him, so the whole family had benefited, which was very thoughtful and considerate of Tommy, the rest said.

But now came the problem of weeding out what Rebecca would have called the essential things from the luxuries.

“Dear me, I had no idea we had so many of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world,” Jean said regretfully one day. There were eight rooms in the big home, all well-furnished. Living room, dining room and study, with Lydia’s domain at the back. Upstairs were four bedrooms. Sitting on the bed and the floor of Jean’s room, the three girls and Tommy were sorting out their belongings and piling up nonessentials to be thrown away.

“I can’t find anything more of mine that I’m willing to part with,” said Tommy flatly, stuffing a catcher’s mitt into a box already jammed full. “I’ll need that to practice with. What’s a luxury anyway?”

“Makes me think of Bob Phelps,” Doris remarked. “Last night when I went over to tell Mrs. Phelps that we couldn’t be in the Easter play, Bob was just having his supper, and he wanted more of the prune whip. His mother told him he mustn’t gorge on delicacies. So Bob asked what a delicacy was anyway, and he said some day he was going to have a whole meal made of delicacies. Isn’t that a scream?”

“Don’t throw away any pieces at all, kids,” Jean warned. “Becky says we’ll need them all for rag carpets.”

“You can buy rag rugs and carpets anywhere now,” said Doris.

“Yes, and oh, brother, at what prices too. We people who are going to live at Elmhurst will cut and sew our own, roll them in nice fat balls, and hand them over to Mr. Carpenter up at Denton, to be woven into the real thing at fifteen cents a yard. It’ll last for years, Becky says. When you get tired of it, you boil it up in some dye, and have a new effect.”

Kit regarded her elder sister in speechless delight.

“Jean Craig, you’re catching it!” she gasped. “You’re talking exactly like Becky.”

“What if I am. I don’t care,” answered Jean blithely, “it’s common sense. Save the pieces.”

“She who used to be most concerned about what she was going to wear to the next formal has suddenly changed her tune,” murmured Kit. “I marvel.”

She looked down at the garden, windswept and bare in the last chilly days of February. Yet there was a hint of spring in the air. An early robin was perched near the grape arbor they had all enjoyed so much, with its luscious grapes and ceiling of green leaves. Leading from it to the hedged garden at the back was a flagged walk.

The garage was of reddish fieldstone and, like the house, covered with ivy. A tall privet hedge enclosed the grounds. Memories of all the fun which they had enjoyed in the past six years passed through her mind. There had been picnics and dances, beach parties and tennis games. She hugged her knees, rocking back and forth anxiously.

“What’s eating you, Kit?” asked Jean, mildly. Jean was the first to have an emotional storm over the inevitable, but once it was over, she always settled down to make the best of things, while Kit was gloomy and raged inwardly for days.

“Wonder what we’ll really find to do there all the time. I don’t want to be a merry milkmaid, do you?”

“If it would help Dad and Mother, yes.”

“But definitely. You don’t have a monopoly on the desire to help, you know. We’d all walk from here to Elmhurst on our left ears if it would help Dad and Mother, but the fact that we’d do it wouldn’t make it any easier, would it?”

“Don’t be a dope, Kit,” said Tommy.

“Who’s a dope?” demanded Kit. “I’m just as ready to face this thing as anyone. If it were a small town up in the wilds, even, I wouldn’t mind, but it just isn’t anything but country.”