Part 3

Jean pulled off the ribbon that tied her hair back and started pulling at a lock thoughtfully. “What’s Elmhurst then? Isn’t that a town?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s a village. Nearest town seven miles away, post office five. There used to be a post office there when the mail truck made the trip over, but they needed the building to keep the hearse in, so it’s gone.”

“You’re making that up, Kit,” put in Doris.

“I’m not,” protested Kit. “You can ask Becky. Nobody ever dies up there. They just fade away, and the hearse is seldom needed and was in the way. There are only nine houses in the village proper, one store, one church, and one school. Her house is a mile outside the village, so where will we be?”

“Is it on the map?” asked Tommy hopefully.

“Some maps. Township maps. This morning Mother and I were looking up how to get there. You’ve got your choice of two routes and each one’s worse than the other, and more of it.”

“Kit, you’re exaggerating.”

Kit ignored the remark, absorbed in her own forebodings.

“You can reach this spot by land or sea. Becky says that it takes five hours for anybody to get out of there once they’re in. You can take a boat to New London, ride up to Norwich on the train, transfer to a bus and rattle along for another hour, then hire a cab in East Elmhurst, and drive twenty minutes more up through the hills. Or you can take a Boston Express up to Willimantic, and hop on a side line from there. A train runs twice a day—”

“What road, Kit?” asked Doris. They leaned around her, fascinated at her sudden store of information.

“Any road you please. Central Vermont up to Plainfield, or Providence line over to South Elmhurst. There’s South Elmhurst and East Elmhurst and Elmhurst Green and Elmhurst Station. It really doesn’t seem to matter which way you go so long as it lands you at one of the Elmhursts. And Elmhurst Station is five miles from Elmhurst, Plainfield is seven miles, Boulderville is—”

“Oh, please, Kit, quit it,” Jean cried, both hands over her ears. “We’ll drive over anyway. Didn’t you know that Dad and I are going to take the car up first before the rest of you? We’re going to sell Mother’s car,” said Jean. “The Phelpses are going to buy it. Bob told me so.”

“Dad says it will pay nearly all moving expenses and keep us for months. What else could he do? Besides, we’ll still have one car, that’s enough. At least we won’t be completely marooned. He’d sell that one too only it’s an absolute necessity to have one. We’re going to have to buy a trailer, too, for hauling things. Anyway I want a horse to ride, don’t you, Kit?”

“Isn’t it queer,” Doris broke in, “when a father breaks down, it just seems as if a home caves in.”

“Well, it doesn’t do any such thing, Doris,” responded Kit stolidly. “It may seem to, but it doesn’t. Even if we are going to live five miles from nowhere with the eye of Rebecca forever resting upon us, there’ll be lots of fun ahead. What’s that about the world making a pathway to your door? I’m going to be famous some day and there’ll be a nice, well-worn path leading from New York up to Elmhurst, worn by the feet of faithful admirers.”

“It’s so nice having one genius in the family,” Jean answered, leaning her chin on one hand. “Now I don’t mind leaving the house behind, or the car, or anything like that. But it’s the people I like best that I can’t take up with me. Who will we know there, I wonder?”

“Human beings anyhow,” Doris stated. “We’ll make oodles of new friends. Besides, lots of the girls have promised to visit us. We’re not going to be lonesome.”

6. Pulling Up Stakes

It had been suggested that Kit and Jean stay behind to finish their schooling. They could board at the Phelpses’ home next to Sandy Cove along the shore road, but both girls begged to go with the family.

“Why don’t you stay?” advised Doris. “You’ll escape all of the moving and settling and ploughing.”

“We don’t want to escape anything,” said Kit firmly. “It isn’t any fun being left behind with the charred remains.”

“Oh, Kit, don’t call them that, it’s gruesome.”

“I don’t care. I feel gruesome when I think of being left behind. How do you suppose we’d feel to walk past the Cove and not see any of the rest of you around?”

“It’s better than being cut right bang off in the middle of everything,” replied Doris, with one of her rare explosions. “But everything,” she repeated tragically. “I can’t finish a single thing and I know I’ll never pass, being switched off to gosh knows what sort of a school.”

“Let’s not grouch anyway,” reminded Jean. “Mom’s getting thinner every day. As long as it’s got to be, let’s be cheerful about it.”

“I do wish that Kit wouldn’t be so happy about things that make you just miserable,” grumbled Doris.

Kit danced away down the hallway crooning:

“Night and day, You are the one. Only you beneath the moon And under the sun.”[1]

“You’re an old tease, Kit,” Jean admonished in her very best big-sister style. “Please keep away from that crate of dishes.”

It had been decided to send Mr. Craig up before the moving, so he could have a week or two of rest at Maple Grove, Rebecca’s home. The latter was diligently sending down descriptions of adjacent farms and all sorts of home possibilities, but none seemed to fit the bill. Either there was too much land or not enough, or it was too far from the village or not far enough, or too much room or not room enough.

“For gosh sake,” Kit said one night, after all the family had suggested various possible houses, “let’s all tent out and do summer light housekeeping. We’ll never find just what we want—never, Mom. Jean wants a rose garden. I want at least a tennis court, even if we have to remove the hay fields. Doris wants wisteria arbors and a very large vine-covered porch. Tommy wants a dog, four cats, a hive of bees, a calf, and a pony. You want a house facing south, far back from the road, barn not too near, dry cellar, porch, century-old elms for shade, modern kitchen, indoor plumbing, and option of purchase, not over sixty-five dollars a month.”

“What do you want, Dad?” asked Jean. It was one of her father’s good days, when he was able to sit up in his big lounge chair before the fire in the bedroom, and be one of the family circle with them.

“Peace and rest,” smiled Mr. Craig.

“Me too,” Kit agreed, kneeling beside his chair and rubbing her head up and down his arm. “Dad and I are going to seek glorious peace the livelong day under some shady chestnut tree.”

“Dad may, but you won’t, Kathleen,” Jean laughingly warned. “It’s going to be a family project and you’ll have to do your share.”

“Wish we were going to an island,” Doris said wistfully. “I’ve always felt as if I could do wonders with an island.”

“Anybody could. There’s some chance for imagination to work on an island, but what can you do with a farm in Elmhurst?” Kit looked pensive with her head on one side, eyes half closed in melancholy anticipation. “Darling, precious old Dad here doesn’t know a blessed thing about farming—”

“Now, Kit, go easy,” Mr. Craig chided. “After all, I was born and raised on a farm. I should have learned something about it, I expect.”

“We’ll all be scouring pots, Kathleen,” offered Jean. “It’s the Craigs’ destiny. You know, Dad, I thought all along that Lydia would go with us. I thought she’d feel hurt if we didn’t take her, after she’d been telling us all these fairy tales about her native land where she loved to milk twenty cows at three A. M. I thought she’d simply leap at the chance of rural delights, and now she isn’t going along with us at all. She says she won’t go anywhere unless there are streetcars, tall buildings, and movies. It’s going to be tough without her.”

“Oh, I don’t believe it’s going to be nearly as bad as we expect,” Mrs. Craig said happily, as she passed through the room with her favorite silver candlesticks in her hands. “We’re facing the summer, remember, and I can’t help thinking that Rebecca will be a regular bulwark of strength to all of us.”

By the second week in March word came from the family’s bulwark that she thought the weather was mild enough for Jean and Mr. Craig to attempt the trip. Accordingly, the first section of the caravan set out on its trip to the land of oblivion, as Kit called it.

“It does seem, Mom,” Jean said at the last minute, “as if Kit ought to go with Dad, and let me stay down here to help you close up things. Kit knows how to drive.”

“I’d rather have you with your father.” Mrs. Craig laid her hands tenderly on Jean’s slender shoulders. “If I can’t be with him, I’d rather have the little first mate. Remember how he used to call you that, when you were only Tommy’s size?”

“Well, I feel terribly grown up now, Mother. Seventeen is really the dividing line. You begin to think of everything in a more serious way, you know. When I look at Kit and Doris sometimes, it seems years and years since I felt the way they do, so sort of irresponsible.”

“Poor old grandma.” Mrs. Craig laughed as she kissed her.

Jean had to laugh too, seeing the comic side of her aged feeling, but it was true that she felt a new sense of responsibility when they left New York for Elmhurst. The Saturday following their departure, the first carload of household goods left Sandy Cove. It had been a difficult job, weeding out the necessities from the luxuries, as Kit expressed it. Many a semi-luxury was slipped in by the girls on the plea that Father might need it, or would miss it. Kit had managed to save all the furniture from the study on this excuse.

“Books and pictures are necessities,” she declared firmly, saving a still life done in water colors. “This, for instance, has always hung over the desk, hasn’t it? Could we separate them? I guess not. In it goes, Doris, and see that you handle it with care. There’s one thing that we can take up with us and nothing can get it away from us, either, that’s atmosphere. Even if we have to live in a well-shingled, airy barn, we can have atmosphere.”

“Don’t laugh, Tommy,” Doris admonished as he dove into a mass of pillows. “Kit doesn’t mean that sort of atmosphere. She means—”

“I mean living with a copper vase. Miss Carruthers, our teacher at the art class, told us a story the other day about a woman she knew who was married to a band leader and they had to travel continually, living only in hotel rooms. She had a copper vase that she took wherever they went. She said even one familiar object like that, in strange surroundings, was the difference between living and just existing. Just think of Dad’s face if we can blindfold him, lead him into a lovely sunny room up there, take off the bandage, and let him find himself right in his own study just as he had it down here!”

“And as long as he’s going to stay in bed or lie on a couch he’ll never know what the rest of the house is like,” added Doris.

“But he’s not going to stay in bed, we hope,” answered their mother, catching up Tommy for a quick kiss, and for once he didn’t protest. “That’s why we’re going up there, to get him out into the sunlight as soon as possible, so he’ll get quite well again.”

Kit passed down the stairs completely covered with the burden which she bore. “I’ve got all the drapes, tablecloths, slipcovers, and underneath this load is me,” she called. “We may have to turn the attic into a cosy corner before we get through. It’s all in the effect, isn’t it, Mom?”

“I’m sorry that Dad sold your car, that’s all,” Doris remarked. Doris was the farsighted one of the family. “Bruce Pearson says he knows we could have gotten fifteen hundred for it just as easy as not. His mother told him it was worth every penny of fifteen hundred, and Dad let it go for eight hundred just because he liked the Phelpses.”

“Doris, dear, eight hundred cash is worth more than fifteen hundred promised,” Mrs. Craig said, smiling over at her. “And the car is several years old. I’m glad with all my heart that Mr. Phelps bought it, because they’ve been wanting one very much, and the children will get so much pleasure out of it.”

The children looked down at her admiringly, almost gloatingly, as she sat back contentedly in the low slipper chair in the sunny window.

“Mother, you’re a regular darling, truly you are,” Kit exclaimed. “You’re so big and fine and sympathetic that you make us feel like two cents sometimes when we’ve been selfish. Why do you look so happy when everything’s going topsy-turvy?”

Mrs. Craig held up a letter that Tommy had just brought in from the mailbox.

“Rebecca writes that Father stood the trip well and has slept every night since they reached Maple Grove. Isn’t that worth all the automobiles in the world?”

The eight hundred dollars in cash had been a helpful addition to their bank account. During the past few weeks, the girls and Tommy had learned what it meant to consider money, something they had never given a thought to before. While they had never been rich, they never had wanted, and never a suggestion of retrenching on expenses until now. Once they understood the situation, however, they all seemed to enjoy helping to solve the family problem. For several days Tommy had appeared to have something on his mind. Finally, he came in smiling and opened his hand, disclosing a ten-dollar bill. Kit staggered over to fall into a chair.

“Tommy, you mustn’t give your poor old sister sudden shocks like that in these days,” she exclaimed. “Where did you find that?”

“I sold Jiggers to Bruce Pearson,” Tommy replied, his eyes shining like stars. “He’s been asking and asking for him ever since I got him, and now I’ve done it. There’s ten dollars I got all by myself to help Dad.”

Neither Kit nor Doris spoke, but they regarded the youngest member of the family with the deepest pride and affection. Jiggers was a cocker spaniel puppy, the special property of Tommy, and they knew just what it took to part with him. Mrs. Craig took the crisp green bill from Tommy’s hand, while the tears slowly gathered on her lashes.

“It’s perfectly splendid of you, dear,” she said.

Tommy beamed and put his hands into his pockets. The family noticed that he kept carefully avoiding the window for outside was where Jiggers’ little kennel had stood. There are some things the heart cannot quite bear.

Much debating was held over the piano. The children loved it and declared it could not be true economy to part with it. It was a baby grand that they had had ever since the Riverside apartment days in town. Doris said she wanted to continue her practicing even if she couldn’t take any more lessons.

“Listen, Mom,” Kit said finally, “you know what I told you about the copper vase. That precious old piano is a copper vase and we’ll starve our inmost souls if we try to live without it. Why, we’ve loved it and pounded it for years.”

So it was boxed and shipped to Elmhurst as a copper vase, together with many another disguised necessity.

“They’ve turned into arrant smugglers,” Mrs. Craig wrote her husband. “And I cannot blame them, because I catch myself doing the same thing, packing things I should not take, and making myself believe they are essential. I’m sure I don’t see where we are ever to put everything in a farmhouse.”

Rebecca brightened up and smiled when that portion of the letter was read aloud to her. She was sitting in a straight-backed, split-bottomed chair by the south window in the sitting room, sorting out morning-glory and nasturtium seeds and putting them into old baking powder cans.

“Guess Margie’ll buck up some when she sees the house we think she will like,” she said.

7. Country Bound

While some of the Long Island farms had begun to look faintly green by the end of March, not a blade or a leaf was unfurled anywhere around Elmhurst. There was a feeling of spring in the air with a promise of buds ready to open.

Jean put on her yellow topper, tied a scarf over her head and put on a pair of pigskin gloves. She was waiting for Matt to drive around from the garage with the car and Ella Lou, Becky’s big tan and white collie. Matt was Rebecca’s hired help, smooth-faced and lean, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty. He took care of three horses and two cows and worked the farm with outside help in busy seasons.

Ella Lou was a lovable dog who followed Becky wherever she went and since Jean’s arrival, she had taken to tagging her footsteps too. She knew every road in the township. Not a thing could be changed that Ella Lou did not take note of the fact the next time she passed by.

Today when Matt drove up with her, she was standing in the back seat with her muzzle hanging out of the window. She acted as wise and knowing as could be, turning her head around to look at Jean and barking just as if she was saying “We’re going after them at last, aren’t we?”

Becky stood at the screened pantry window, mixing pie crust. She leaned down and called some last advice as Jean got into the car and adjusted the rear view mirror.

“Park beside the express office, Jeannie. There’s usually plenty of room to park there. And have the girls and Tommy sit on the back seat ’cause them springs are kind of giving way, and your Mother’s nervous. And bring up a bulb for the hall light from the Mill Company Store. No, never mind,” just as Jean stepped on the starter, “’cause they don’t carry them, come to think of it. Goodbye. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding the way. Just keep on the main highway and you’ll get there.”

Jean laughed and waved her hand. It was the first time she had driven since she had come to Elmhurst and Becky was a little apprehensive about letting her go alone.

Maple Grove stood just at the crossroads, a white comfortable-looking house, one-and-a-half stories high, with a long low “ell” hitched on to the back, and a white woodshed leaning up against it for company.

Four great rock maples grew before its spacious lawn like a row of Titan sentinels. The Baltimore orioles and robins nested in them and contended with the chipmunks for squatter’s rights.

The house stood on a hill that faced the sunset. Down from the orchard sloped corn fields and rye fields. Below the winding white road was a deep ravine where a brook ran helter-skelter by hilly pastures until it slipped away into the cool shade of a quiet glen, sweet-scented with hemlock and spruce.

In the distance, hill after hill rose in mellowed beauty, each seeming to lean in sisterly fashion against the next taller one. The course of Little River could be traced down through the valley by its fringe of willows and alders. For perhaps fifteen miles it rambled, winding in and out around little islands, dodging old submerged trees that lifted skeleton arms in protest, spreading out above some old rock dam into a tiny lake, then dashing like some wild thing being chased through a mill run and out again into low, moist meadows, thick with flag and rushes.

At a point about a mile below the house stood the old Barlow lumber mill. Ella Lou barked at a dog as they passed by. Jean drove leisurely, knowing she had plenty of time. Once she put on the brakes suddenly when she saw a shadowy brown shape that skitted across the road in front of the car. She wondered whether it was a rabbit or a muskrat. Already she was catching the country spirit. Little objects of everyday life held a meaning for her and she found herself watching eagerly for new surprises as she drove along the old river road. How the kids would love it all, she thought, with a little tightening of her throat. It might be a little lonesome at first, but surely it was, as Becky said, a peaceful countryside.

The final decision on the new home site was to be left to her mother. Several places had been selected with a leaning toward Woodhow, but, as Becky suggested, Margie must be left unbiased to form her own opinion, although according to her way of thinking, no sensible person with half their wits could pass over the merits of Woodhow, or the wonderful opportunities it presented.

“It’s going to rack and ruin and it fairly cries out for somebody to take hold of it and get it in shape,” she had said. “I don’t know but what I’d drive by it if I were you, Jeannie, on your way back from the station, even if it is a little out of your way, just to see the look on your mother’s face when she sees it.”

It was a drive of seven miles down to Nantic, the nearest railroad station. Jean made it in good time and parked beside the express office, as Becky had suggested. Already, it appeared, Mr. Briggs, the station master, knew Jean, and smiled over at the trim, city-like figure pacing up and down on the platform waiting for the Willimantic train. This was the side line up to Providence that connected with the Boston express from New York.

“Expecting some of your family up?” asked Mr. Briggs pleasantly. Nobody could say that friendly interest in strangers and their affairs was not evinced around Nantic. It was part of the joy of life to Mr. Briggs to locate their general intentions.

“My mother and sisters and brother,” Jean answered happily.

“Figure on staying awhile, do they?”

She nodded rather proudly. “We’re going to live here. We’re Miss Craig’s cousins. You’ll have the freight car up with our goods this week.”

“Like enough,” said Mr. Briggs encouragingly. “Yes, I knew you belonged to Becky. I’ve known Becky herself since she was knee-high to a toadstool. There comes your local.”

Around the hillside bend of track came the train, the wonderful train that was bringing Mother and Doris and Kit and Tommy up out of the world of uncertainty and trouble into this haven of blossoming hopes. It seemed to Jean as if seconds turned to minutes. She wanted to stretch out both her arms to it as it slowed down and puffed, but there on the last car she caught a glimpse of Kit, one foot all ready to hop off, waving one hand and hanging on with the other.

“Oh, Mom darling,” Jean cried joyously, once she had them all safe on the platform. “It’s so beautiful up here, and Dad’s looking better every day. He sits up for a while now, and the old doctor told us the only thing that ailed him was a little distemper. Isn’t that a riot? Where are your trunks?”

But this was Mr. Brigg’s cue to come forward, hat in hand, and be introduced, so he took the baggage under his own personal supervision. It appeared that you never could tell anything about when trunks were liable to show up once they got started for Nantic, but, barring accidents, they’d come up on the six o’clock train, and there wasn’t a bit of use putting any reliance on that either, ’cause they might not show up till the milk train next morning.

“Hope you’ll like it up here,” was his parting remark, as they drove up the hill road, and Kit called back that they liked it already, much to Mr. Brigg’s delight.

Mrs. Craig sat on the front seat, both as the place of honor and in remembrance of Rebecca’s warning against the back springs. At the top of the hill Jean stopped the car, so they could look back at the little town. There was the huge one-story stone mill, covering acres of ground, with immense ventilators looking like those on steamships or like strange uprearing heads of prehistoric reptiles.

The little crooked main street could be traced by its lines of buildings, and back in a mass of trees stood the old French convent. Scattered everywhere were the houses of the mill workers, all of a uniform pattern, painted white with green blinds, and a patch of green yard to each.

Jean, flushed and proud of her responsibility, turned to pat Ella Lou’s head, then started the car and headed for home. The maple buds were swelling and looked rosy red against the thickets of dark shiny green laurel. Behind them rose slim lines of white birches.

“How far is it, Jeannie?” asked Doris. Just then the road came out on another hilltop overlooking the big reservoir. “Oh, look, look, kids,” she cried. “Isn’t it like a bit of out West, Mom? All those rocks and pines.”