Part 3

“Thought I’d get an early start so I could sit awhile with you,” she called breezily. “The Judge had to go to court at Putnam. Real sad case, too. Some of our neighborhood boys in trouble. I told him not to dare send them up to any State homes or reformatories, but to put them on probation and make their families pay the fines.”

Kit was just putting on her stadium boots. “Oh, what is it, Becky?” she called from the kitchen. “What’s the news?”

“Well, I guess it’s pretty exciting for the poor mothers.” Mrs. Ellis put her feet up on the stool. “There’s been considerable things stolen lately, just odds and ends of harness and bicycle supplies from the store, and three hams from Miss Bugbee’s cellar, and so on; a little here and a little there, hardly no more’n a real smart magpie could make away with. But the men set out to catch whoever it might be, and if they didn’t land three of our own boys. It makes every mother in town shiver.”

“None that we know, are there?” asked Doris, with wide eyes.

“I guess not, unless maybe Abby Tucker’s brother Martin. There his poor mother scrimped and saved for weeks to buy him a bicycle out of her butter-and-egg money, and it just landed him in mischief. Off he kited, first here and then there with the two Lonergan boys, and they had a camp up toward Cynthy Allan’s place, where they played they were cave robbers or something. I had the Judge up and promise he’d let them off on probation. There isn’t one of them over fifteen, and Elmhurst can’t afford to let her boys go to prison. And I shall drive over this afternoon and give their mothers some good advice.”

“Why not the fathers too?” asked Jean. “Seems as if mothers get all the blame when boys go wrong.”

“No, it isn’t that exactly. I knew the two fathers when they were youngsters too. Fred Lonergan was as nice and obliging a lad as ever you did see, but he always liked cider too well, and that made him lax. I used to tell him when he couldn’t get it any other way, he’d squeeze the dried winter apples hanging still on the wild trees. He’ll have to pay the money damage, but the real sorrow of the heart will fall on Emily, his wife. She used to be our minister’s daughter, and she knows what’s right. And the Tucker boy never did have any sense or his father before him, but his mother’s the best quilter we’ve got. If I’d been in her shoes I’d have put Philemon Tucker right straight out of the house just as soon as he began to squander and hang around the grocery store swapping stories with men just like him. It’s her house from her father, and I shall put her right up to making Philemon walk a chalk line after this, and do his duty as a father.”

“Oh, you’re a glorious peacemaker,” exclaimed Mrs. Craig. “Hurry, children, you’ll be late for school.” She hurriedly put the last touches to three hearty lunches, and followed them out to the front porch and watched them out of sight.

“Lovely morning,” said Becky, fervently. “The ice on the trees makes the country look like fairyland.”

“And here I’ve been shivering ever since I got out of bed,” Jean cried, laughingly. “It seemed so bleak and cheerless. You find something beautiful in everything, Becky.”

“Well, happiness is a sort of habit, I guess, Jeannie. Come tell me, now, how you are fixed about going away? That’s why I came down.”

“You mean--”

“I mean in clothes. Don’t mind my speaking right out, because I know that Beth will want to take you places, and you must look right. And don’t you say one word against it, Margaret,” as Mrs. Craig started to speak. “The child must have her chance. Makes me think, Jean, of my first silk dress. Nobody knew how much I wanted one, and I was about fourteen, skinny and overgrown, with pigtails down my back. A well-to-do aunt in Boston sent a silk dress to my little sister Susan who died. I can see it now, just as plain as can be, a sort of dark bottle-green with a little spray of violets here and there. Susan was sort of pining anyway, and green made her look too pale, so the dress was set aside for me. Mother said she’d let the hem down and face it when she had time. But there was a picnic and my heart hungered for that silk dress to wear. I managed somehow to squeeze into it, and slip away with the other girls before Mother noticed me.”

“But did it fit you?” asked Jean.

“Fit me?” Becky laughed. “Fit me like an acorn cap would a bullfrog. I let the hem down as far as I could, but didn’t stop to hem it or face it, and there it hung, six inches below my petticoat, with the sun shining through as nice as could be. My Sunday School teacher took me to one side and said severely, ‘Rebecca Craig, does your mother know that you’ve let that hem down without fixing it properly?’ Well, it did take away my hankering for a silk dress. Now, run along upstairs and get out all your wardrobe so we can look it over.”

Jean obeyed for somehow Becky swept away objections before her airily. And the wardrobe was at a low ebb.

Becky dragged her chair over beside the couch now, and took inventory of the pile of clothing Jean laid there.

“You’ll want a good knockabout sport coat like the other girls are wearing. Then a couple of new sweaters and skirts for school. Now, what about date dresses?”

Here Jean felt quite proud as she laid out her assortment. She and Kit had always gone out a good deal at the Cove, and she had a number of well-chosen, expensive dresses.

“They look all right to me, but I guess Beth will know what to do to them, with a touch here and there. Well, if I were you, I’d just bundle all I wanted to take along in the way of pretty things into the trunk and let Beth tell you what to do with them. I’ll give you the money to buy the other things you’ll need in New York. Their stores have more selection than what we’ve got around here. Good heavens, child, you’ll squeeze the breath out of me,” as Jean gave her a hug of thanks. “I must be going along.”

6. Leaving Home

Thursday of that week was set for Jean’s departure. This gave very little time for preparations, and Kit plunged into them with a zest and vigor that made Jean laugh.

“Well, so little ever happens up here we just have to make the most of goings and comings,” said Kit exuberantly. “And besides, I’m rather fond of you, in an offhand sort of way.”

“Of course, we’re all glad for you,” Doris put in seriously. “It’s an opportunity, Mom says, and I suppose we’ll all get one in time.”

Jean glanced up as they sat around the last evening, planning and talking. Out in the side hall stood her trunk, packed, locked, and strapped, ready for the early trip in the morning. Tommy was trying his best to nurse a frost-bitten chicken back to life out by the kitchen stove, where Jack was mending Doris’s skates. Kit and Doris were freely giving her advice.

“Enjoy yourself all you can, but think of us left at home and don’t stay too long,” advised Doris.

“Yes, and learn all about designing things for people. Personally I don’t want to make things for people,” Kit said emphatically. “I want to soar alone. I’m going with Sally to live on the top of a mountain. But, gosh, I do envy you, Jean, after all. You must write and tell us every single thing that happens, for we’ll love to hear it all. Don’t be afraid it won’t be interesting. I wish you’d even keep a diary. Buzzy told me once that his grandmother did, every day from the time she was fourteen, and they had a perfectly awful time getting rid of them when she died. Imagine burning barrels full of diaries.”

Tommy came out of the kitchen to tell them to be quiet. “I’ve just this minute got that chicken to sleep. They’re such light sleepers, but I think it will get well. It only had its poor toes frostbitten. Jack found it on the ground this morning, crowded off the perch. Chickens look so civilized, and they’re not. They’re regular savages.”

There flashed across Jean’s mind a picture of the evenings ahead without the home circle, without the familiar living room, and the other room upstairs where at this time her mother would be brushing out her soft hair, and listening to some choice bit of reading Mr. Craig had run across during the day and saved for her.

“I just wish I had a chance to go West like Sally,” Kit said suddenly. “When I’m old enough, I’m going to take up a homestead claim and live on it with a wonderful horse and some dogs, wolf dogs. I wish Sally’d wait till we were both old enough, and had finished school. She could be a forest ranger and I’d raise--”

“Ginseng,” Jean suggested mischievously. “Dopey. It takes far more courage than that just to stick it out on one of these old barren farms, all run-down and fairly begging for somebody to take them in hand. What do you want to hunt a western claim for? Besides, I don’t think there are any left anymore.”

“Space,” Kit answered with feeling. “I don’t want to see my neighbors’ chimney pots sticking up all around me through the trees. I want to gaze off at a hundred hilltops, and not see somebody’s scarecrow waggling empty sleeves at me. Sally and I have the spirits of eagles.”

“Isn’t that nice,” said Doris pleasantly. “It’ll make such a good place to spend our vacations, kids. While Sally and Kit are out soaring, we can fish and ride and have really swell times.”

“Cut it out,” Jean whispered, as Kit’s ire started to rise. “It’s getting late, really, and I have to get up while it is still night, you know. Good night all.”

The start next morning was made at seven, before the sun was up. The tears were wet on Jean’s cheeks as she climbed into the seat beside Kit, and turned to wave goodbye to the group on the porch. She had not realized before what this first trip away from home meant.

“Write us everything,” called Doris, waving both hands to her.

“Come back soon,” yelled Tommy.

But her mother went back into the house in silence, away from the living room into the study where Jean had kept her own bookcase, desk, and a few choice pictures. A few old paintbrushes lay beside Jean’s worn pigskin gloves on the table. Mrs. Craig picked up both, laid her cheek against the gloves and closed her eyes. The years were racing by so fast, so fast, she thought, and mothers must be wide-eyed and generous and fearless, when the children suddenly begin to top heads with one, and feel impatient to be out on their own.

Ready to try it alone, she thought. If it had been Kit now, she would not have felt this curious little pang. Kit was self-sufficient and full of buoyancy that was bound to carry her over obstacles, but Jean was sensitive and dependent on her environment for spur and stimulation. She heard a step behind her and turned eagerly as Mr. Craig came into the room, looking for her. He saw the brushes and the gloves in her hand, and the look in her eyes uplifted to his own. Very gently he folded his arms around her, his cheek pressed close to her brown hair.

“She’s only seventeen,” whispered Mrs. Craig.

“Eighteen in April,” he answered, “and dear, she isn’t trusting to her own strength for the flight. Don’t you know this quiet little girl of ours is mounted on Pegasus, and riding him handily in her upward trend?”

But there was no winged horse or genius in view to Jean’s blurred sight as she watched the road unroll before her, and looking back, saw only the curling smoke from Woodhow’s white chimneys.

7. Aldo from Italy

“This is truly beautiful,” Jean said, in breathless admiration, as she laid aside her coat and hat, and stood in the big living room in Hastings. The beautiful home not far from New York had been a revelation to her. Overlooking the Hudson River, the view, although totally different, reminded her a little of her former home at Sandy Cove.

The center hall had a blazing fire in the big old rock fireplace, and Victoria, a prize-winning Angora, opened her wide blue eyes at the newcomer but did not stir. In the living room was another open fire. Influence of an artist’s hand was quite evident in the details of the room. There were flowering plants at the windows, and fresh roses on the table in gracefully studied arrangements.

“You know, or maybe you don’t know,” said Beth, “that we have one hobby here, raising flowers, and especially roses. We exhibit every year, and you’ll grow to know them and love the special varieties just as I do. You have no idea, Jean, of the thrill when you find a new bloom different from all the rest.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out anything new and wonderful about this place.” Jean laughed, leaning back in the deep-seated chair. Like the rest of the room’s furniture it was slipcovered in chintz, deep cream, cross-barred in dull green, with splashy pink roses scattered here and there. Two large white Polar rugs lay on the polished floor.

“If those were not members of the Peabody family, old and venerated, they never would be allowed to bask before my fire,” Beth said. “But way back there was an Abner Peabody who sailed the northern seas, and used to bring back trophies and bestow them on members of his family as future heirlooms. Consequently, we fall over these bears in the dark, and bless Abner’s precious memory.”

After she was thoroughly warmed up and had drunk a cup of scalding tea, Jean found her way up to the room that was to be hers during her visit. It was the sunniest kind of a retreat in daffodil yellow and rich brown. The furniture was all in warm, deep-toned ivory, and there were springlike bouquets of daffodils everywhere.

“Gee, I think this is just darling,” Jean gasped, standing in the middle of the floor and gazing around happily. “It’s just as if spring were already here.”

“I put a drawing board here for you too,” Beth told her. “Of course you’ll use my studio any time you like, but it’s handy to have a corner all your own at odd times. I forgot to mention it before, but we’re going to have a guest for the weekend. A boy whose parents I knew in Sorrento years ago. His name is Aldo Thomas. His father was an American sculptor who married an Italian Contessa. Aldo is also studying art here in New York this winter and lives with his aunt. He has inherited his father’s artistic talent so I know you will find much in common. And I also think you’ll do each other a world of good.”

“How?”

“Well, you’re thoroughly an American girl, Jean, and Aldo is half Italian. You’ll understand what I mean when you see him. He is high-strung and temperamental, and you are so steady-nerved and well-balanced.”

Jean thought over this last when she was alone, and smiled to herself. Why on earth did one have to give outward signs of temperament, she wondered, before people believed one had sensitive feelings or responsive emotions? Must she wear her heart on her sleeve for a sort of personal barometer? Peg Moffat was high-strung and temperamental too. So was Kit. They both indulged now and then in mental fireworks, but nobody took them seriously, or considered it a mark of genius. She felt just a shade of half-amused tolerance toward this Aldo person who was to get any balance or poise out of her own nature.

“If Beth knew for one minute,” she told the face in the oval mirror of the dressing table, “what kind of a person you really are, she’d never trust you to balance anybody’s temperament.”

But the following day brought a trim car to the door, and out stepped Aldo. And Jean, coming down the wide center staircase, saw Beth before the fire with a tall, thin figure, whose clothes seemed to hang on him carelessly as if he wore them as a concession to convention.

“This is my cousin Jean,” said Mrs. Newell in her pleasant way. Aldo extended his hand diffidently. “I want you two to be very good friends.”

“But I know, surely, we shall be,” Aldo said easily. And at the sound of his voice Jean’s prejudices melted. He had very dark eyes with lids that drooped slightly at the outer corners. His thin face emphasized his prominent cheekbones and his skin was fair in spite of his Italian heritage.

“Now, you won’t be treated one bit as guests,” Beth told them. “You must come and go as you like, and have the freedom of the house. I keep my own study hours and like to be alone then. Do as you like and be happy. Run along, both of you.”

“She is wonderful, isn’t she?” Aldo said as they walked out to the cliff above the river. “She makes me feel always as if I were a ship waiting with loose sails, and all at once--a breeze--and I am on my way again. You have not been to Sorrento, have you? You can see the little fisher boats from our terraces. It is all so beautiful, but now the villa is quite shabby and parts of it are gone. It was bombed during the war and there are no materials to rebuild it. But it is still beautiful.”

Jean was strangely charmed by him. He was so different from anyone she had ever known. None of the boys she knew would have talked so poetically, even if they had known the right words and phrases to use. That would be sissy stuff.

“I wonder if you ever knew Peg Moffat. She’s a Long Island girl from the Cove where I used to live, and she lived abroad every year until the war came, for two or three months with her mother. She is an artist.”

“I don’t know her,” Aldo shook his head doubtfully. “You see over there, while we entertained a great deal, I was away at school in Milan or Rome and scarcely met anyone excepting in the summertime, and then we went to my aunt’s villa up on Lake Maggiore. Ah, but that is the most beautiful spot of all. There is one island there called Isola Bella. I wish I could carry it right over here with me and set it down for you to see. It is all terraces and splendid old statuary, and when you see it at sunrise it is like a jewel, it glows so with color.”

Jean stood looking down at the river, listening. There was always a lingering love in her heart for the beauty and romance of Europe, and especially of Italy. “I’d love to go there,” she said, with a little sigh.

“And that is what I was always saying when I was there, and my father told me of this country. I wanted to see it so. He would tell me of the great gray hills that climb to the north, and the craggy broken shoreline up through Maine, and the little handful of amethyst isles that lie all along it. He was born in New Hampshire, at Portsmouth. We are going up to see the house some day, but I know just what it looks like. It stands close down by the water’s edge in the old part of the town, and there is a big rambling garden with flagged walks. His grandfather was a shipbuilder and sent his ships out all over the world. And he had just one daughter. There was an artist who came up from the south in one of his ships, and he was taken very ill. So they took him in as a guest, and the daughter cared for him. And when he was well, what do you think?”

“They married.”

“But more than that,” he said warmly. “He carved the most wonderful figureheads for my great grandfather’s ships. All over the world they were famous. His son was my father.”

It was indescribable, the tone in which he said the last. It told more than anything else how much he admired this sculptor father of his. That night Jean wrote to Ralph.

Dearest Ralph,

I know you’ll want to know all about my trip. Beth met me at Grand Central Station and we drove out here to Hastings. Honestly, Ralph, when I saw the house, I had to blink my eyes. It looks as if it belonged right out on the North Shore at the Cove. The lawn sweeps down at the back to the cliffs where you can look right down at the Hudson. And inside the house it is summertime even now. They have flowers everywhere you look, because they raise their own. Beth says she’ll give me slips from her rosebushes and I can start a sunken rose garden.

A most interesting artist friend of Beth’s has come out to spend the weekend here. His name is Aldo Thomas--the Aldo because his mother is an Italian countess and the Thomas because his father is an American sculptor. He has been telling me all about Italy and his father’s statues.

Monday I begin my course at the Academy and I am so excited, although it seems as though I have forgotten all I have learned. I have to keep reminding myself that all of this is really happening to me. I woke up this morning completely bewildered for I thought I was still back in Elmhurst.

I hope to see Peg Moffat while I am here. Of course I shall probably see her at school, but I won’t have much opportunity to really talk to her there. She has a studio in Greenwich Village that I am simply dying to see.

Even with all these new things to do and see and learn I still miss you terribly. And June seems such a long way off. I wish it were tomorrow that you were coming back so that you could enjoy this with me. But since that is impossible I shall write you everything that happens while I’m here.

All my love, Jeannie

8. Jean Meets a Contessa

“I’ve just had a telephone call from your aunt, the Contessa,” Beth said to Aldo at breakfast Saturday morning. “She sends an invitation to us for this afternoon, a private view of paintings and sculpture at Henri Morel’s studio. She knew him in Italy and France, and he leaves for the west coast on Monday. There will be a small reception and tea, nothing too formal, Jean, so dress well, hold up your chin and turn out your toes, and behave with credit to your chaperon. It is your debut.”

Aldo looked at her quite seriously, but Jean caught the flutter of fun in her eyes, and knew it would not be as ceremonious as it sounded. When she was ready that afternoon she slipped into Beth’s own bedroom, at the south end of the house. Here were three rooms, all so different, and each showing a distinct phase of character. One was her winter studio. This was a large sunny room, paneled in soft-toned pine, with a wood-brown rug on the floor, and all the treasures accumulated abroad during her years there of study and travel. In this room Jean used to find the girl Beth, who had ventured forth after the laurels of genius, and found success awaiting her with love back in Hastings.

The second room was a private sitting room, comfortable furniture, and window boxes filled with blooming hyacinths. Here were framed photographs of family and friends, a portrait of Elliott over the desk, his class colors on the wall, and intimate snapshots he had sent her. This was the mother’s and wife’s room. And the last was her bedroom. Here Jean found her dressing. All in black, with a bunch of violets pinned to her waist. She turned and looked at Jean critically.

“I only had this new green suit,” said Jean. “I thought with a sort of feminine blouse it would look all right.”

The blouse was white handkerchief linen with folded-back cuffs that were edged with Irish crochet lace. Above it Jean’s eager face framed in brown hair, her brown eyes, small imperative chin with its deep cleft, and look of interest that Kit called “questioning curiosity,” all seemed accentuated.

“It’s just right, dear,” said Beth. “Go get a yellow jonquil to wear.”

There was a clean smell of fresh snow in the air as they drove along the highway to New York that afternoon. Once Aldo called out in surprise. A pair of sparrows teetered on a fence rail, bickering with each other.

“Ah, there they are,” he cried. “And in Italy now there would be no snow. My father told me of the sparrows here. He said they were such quarrelsome and saucy birds that he really didn’t like them when he lived here. But now, not seeing them, he misses their chirping.”

“How queer it is,” Jean said, “I mean the way one remembers and loves all the little things about one’s own country.”

“Not so much all the country. Just the spot of earth you spring from. He loves New England.”