Part 4

“And I love Long Island. I was born there, not at the Cove, but farther down the coast near Montauk Point, and the smell of salt water and the marshes always stirs me. I love the long green rolling stretches, and the little low hills in the background like you see in paintings of the Channel Islands and some of the ones along the Scotch coast. Just a few straggly scrub pines, you know, and the willows and wild cherry trees and beach plums.”

“Somewhere I’ve read about that--the earth’s hold upon her people. I’m afraid I only respond to New York’s rolling country, too. I’ve been so homesick abroad just to look at a crooked apple tree in bloom that I didn’t know what to do. Where were you born, Aldo?”

“At the Villa Marina. Ah, but you should see it.” Aldo’s dark eyes glowed with pride. “It is dull terra cotta color, and then dull green too, the mold of ages, I think, like the under side of an olive leaf, and flowers everywhere, and poplars in long avenues. My father laughs at our love for it, and says it is just a moldy old ruin, but every summer we used to spend there. Some day perhaps you could come to see us, Jean. Would they lend her to us for a while, do you think, Mrs. Newell?”

“I should love to. Isn’t it fun dreaming of impossible things like this?”

“Sometimes they turn out to be very possible,” Beth returned, whimsically. “Hopes to me are so tangible. We just set ahead of us the big hope, and the very thought gives us incentive and endeavor and punch. Plan from now on, Jean, for one spring in Italy. Then, maybe, some spring you’ll find yourself there.”

They arrived just a little late at the Morel studio. Jean had expected it to be more of the usual workshop, where canvases heaped against the walls seemed to have collected the dust of ages, and a broom would have been a desecration. Here, you ascended in an elevator, from an entrance hall that Beth declared always made her think of an Egyptian tomb.

When they reached the ninth floor, they found themselves in the long foyer of the Morel studio. Jean had rather a confused idea of what followed. There was the meeting with Morel himself, stoop-shouldered and thin, with his vivid foreign face, half-closed eyes, and sparse gray hair. Near him stood Madame Morel, with a wealth of auburn hair and big dark eyes. Aldo said to Jean just before they were separated, “He loves to paint red hair, and Aunt Signa says she has the most wonderful hair you ever saw.”

Beth had been taken possession of by a stout smiling young man with horn-rimmed glasses and was already the center of a little group. Jean heard his name, and recognized it as that of a famous illustrator. Aldo introduced her to a tall girl in brown whom he had met in Italy, and then somehow, Jean could not have told how it happened, they drifted apart. Not but what she was glad of a breathing spell, just a chance to get her bearings. Morel was showing some recent canvases, still unframed, at the end of the studio, and everyone seemed to gravitate that way.

Jean found a quiet corner just as someone handed her fragrant tea in a little red and gold cup, and she was free to look around her. A beautiful woman had just arrived. She was tall and past first youth, but Jean leaned forward expectantly. This must be the Contessa. Her gown seemed as indefinite and elusive in detail as a cloud. It was dull blue violet in color, with a gleam of gold here and there as she moved slowly toward Morel’s group. Under a wide-brimmed felt hat, the same shade of blue violet, Jean saw the lifted face, with tired lovely eyes, and close waves of pale golden hair. And this was not all. If only Doris could have seen her, thought Jean. She had wanted a princess from real life, or a countess, anything that was tangibly romantic and noble, and here was the very pattern of a princess, even to a splendid white Russian wolfhound that followed her with docile eyes and drooping long nose.

“My dear, would you mind coaxing that absent-minded girl at the tea table to part with some lemon for my tea? And the Roquefort sandwiches are excellent too.”

Jean turned at the sound of the new voice beside her. There on the same settee sat a robust, middle-aged latecomer. Her black coat was worn and frayed, her hat altogether too youthful with its pink and purple roses veiled in net. Jean saw, too, that there was a button missing from her dress, and her collar was pinned at a slightly crooked angle. But the collar was real lace and the pin was of old pearls and amethysts. It was her face that charmed. Framed in an indistinct mass of fluffy hair, mixed gray and blonde, with a turned-up, winning mouth, and delightfully expressive eyes, it was impossible not to feel immediately interested and acquainted.

Before long, Jean found herself indulging in all sorts of confidences. They seemed united by a common feeling of, not isolation exactly, but newness to this circle.

“I enjoy it so much more sitting over here and looking on,” Jean said. “Beth, my cousin, knows everyone, of course, but it is like a painting. You close one eye, and get the group effect. And I must remember everything to write home to the girls and Tommy.”

“Tell me about them. Who are they that you love them so?” asked her new friend. “I, too, like the bird’s-eye view best. I told Morel I did not come to see anything but his pictures, and now I am ready for tea and talk.”

So Jean told all about Woodhow and the family there and before she knew it, she had disclosed too, her own hopes and ambitions, and perhaps a glimpse of what it might mean to the others at home, if she, the first to leave, could only make good. And her companion told her, in return, of how sure one must be that the career decided upon was what one really wanted before one gives up all to it.

“Over in France, and in Italy, too, but mostly in France,” she said, “I have found girls like you who before the war were living on little but hopes, wasting their time and what money could be spared them from some home over here, following false hopes, and sometimes starving. It is but a will-o’-the-wisp, this success in art, a sort of pitiful madness that takes possession of our brains and hearts and makes us forget the commonplace things in life that lie before us.”

“But how can you tell for sure?” asked Jean, leaning forward anxiously.

“Who can answer that? I have only pitied the ones who could not see that they had no genius. Ah, my dear, when you meet real genius, then you know the difference instantly. It is like the real gems and the paste. There is consecration and no thought of gain. The work is done irresistibly, spontaneously, because they cannot help it. They do not think of so-called success, it is only the fulfillment of their own visions that they love. You like to draw and paint, you say, and you have studied some in New York. What then?”

Jean pushed back her hair impulsively.

“Do you know, I think you are a little bit wrong. You won’t mind my saying that, will you, please? It is only this. Suppose we are not geniuses, we who see pictures in our minds and long to paint them. I think that is the gift too, quite as much as the other, as the power to execute. Think how many go through life with eyes blind to all beauty and color! Surely it must be something to have the power of seeing it all, and of knowing what you want to paint. My cousin Becky back home says it’s better to aim at the stars and hit the fence post, than to aim at the fence post and hit the ground.”

“Ah, so, and one of your English poets says too, ‘A man’s aim should outreach his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ Maybe, you are quite right. The vision is the gift.” She turned and laid her hand on Jean’s shoulder, her eyes beaming with enjoyment of their talk. “I shall remember you, Brown Eyes.”

And just at this point Beth and Aldo came toward them, the former smiling at Jean. “Don’t you think you’ve monopolized the Contessa long enough?” she asked. Jean could not answer. The Contessa? This whimsical, oddly-dressed woman who had sat and talked with her over their tea in the friendliest sort of way, all the time that Jean had thought the Contessa was the tall lady in the ethereal dress with the Russian wolfhound at her heels.

“But this is delightful,” exclaimed the Contessa, happily. “We have met incognito. I thought she was some demure little art student who knew no one here, and she has been so kind to me, who also seemed lonely. Come now, we will meet with the celebrities.”

With her arm around Jean’s waist, she led her over to the group around Morel, and told them in her charming way of how they had discovered each other.

“And she has taught me a lesson that you, Morel, with all your art, do not know, I am sure. It is not the execution that is the crown of ambition and aspiration, it is the vision itself. For the vision is divine inspiration, but the execution is the groping of the human hand.”

“Oh, but I never could say it so beautifully,” exclaimed Jean, pink-cheeked and embarrassed, as Morel laid his hand over hers.

“Nevertheless,” he said, gently, “success to thy fingertips, Mademoiselle.”

9. Letters from Home

Jean confessed her mistake to Beth after they had returned home. There were just a few minutes to spare before bedtime, after wishing Aldo good night, and she sat on a little stool before the fire in the sitting room.

“I hadn’t the least idea she was the Contessa. You know that tall woman with the wolfhound, Beth--”

Mrs. Newell laughed softly. “That was Betty Goodwin. Betty loves to dress up. She plays little parts for herself all the time. I think today she was an Austrian princess perhaps. The next time she will be a tailor-made English girl. Betty indulges her whims, and she has just had her portrait done by Morel as a sort of dream maiden, I believe. I caught a glimpse of it on exhibition last week. Looks as little like Betty as I do. Jean, paint if you must, but paint the thing as you see it, and do choose apple trees and red barns rather than dream maidens who aren’t real.”

“I don’t know what I shall paint,” Jean answered with a little quick sigh. “She rather frightened me, I mean the Contessa. I don’t think she has much use for my kind of art. She thinks only real geniuses should paint.”

“Nonsense. Paint all you like. It will train you in form and color and that you can apply later to your designing. You’re seventeen, aren’t you, Jean?”

Jean nodded. “Eighteen in April.”

“You seem younger than that. If I could, I’d swamp you in paint and study for the next two years. By that time you would have either found out that you were tired to death of it, and wanted real life, or you would be doing something worthwhile in the art line. But in any event you would have no regrets. I mean you could live the rest of your life contentedly, without feeling there was something you had missed. It was odd your meeting the Contessa as you did. She likes you very much. Now run along and good night, dear.”

When Jean reached her own room, she found a surprise. On the desk lay a letter from home that Mathilda had laid there. Mathilda was Beth’s standby, as she said. She was tall and spare and middle-aged, with a broad serene face, and sandy-red hair worn parted in the middle. It was just like her, Jean thought, to lay the letter from home where it would catch her eye and make her happy before she went to sleep.

One joy of a letter from home was that it turned out to be several as soon as you got it out of the envelope. The one on top was from her mother, written just before the mail truck came up the hill.

Dear Princess,

You have been much on my mind, but I haven’t time for a long letter, since Mr. Ricketts may chug up over the hill any minute, and he won’t wait. I am ever so glad for you that you have had this opportunity to study again. Dad is really quite himself these days, and Becky has lent me Mrs. Gorham, so the work has been very easy for me, even without you.

Becky says it looks like an early spring this year, although how she can tell when it is still so bleak and barren is beyond me. The roads are still piled with snow and the river is frozen over. The girls, Tommy, and Jack have been skating almost every day.

Have you everything you need? Let me know otherwise. You know, I can always find some way out. Write often to us, my dear. I feel very near you these days in love and thought. Your character is developing so fast and I want to watch so carefully. There is always a curious bond between the firstborn and a mother, to the mother especially, for you taught me motherhood, my darling. Some day you will understand what I mean, when you look down into the face of your own. I must stop, for I am getting altogether homesick for you.

Tenderly, Mother.

Jean sat for a few minutes after reading this, without unfolding the other letters. Mothers were wonderful persons, she thought. Their loving arms stretched so far over one, and gave forth a love and protectiveness such as nothing else in the world could do.

The next was from Doris, quite like her too. Brief and beautifully penned on her very own pink notepaper.

Dear Jeannie,

I do hope you are having a wonderful time. Have you met any glamorous people yet? If you have, I hope you write us all about them. I want to know everything.

School is very uninteresting just now and it is cold walking to school. But I do have that one teacher that I’m crazy about, you know, Miss Simmons. She wears such nice clothes and her voice is so beautiful. I can’t bear people with loud voices. When I see her in the morning, it just wipes out all the cold walk and everything that’s gone wrong.

I wish I could have gone away to school like you and Billie, or at least I wish Billie was back home. Kit says it’s time to go to bed.

Your loving sister, Doris.

“Oh, Doris, you crazy kid,” Jean laughed to herself. The letter was entirely typical of Doris and her vagaries.

Tommy’s letter was hurried.

Dear Jean,

We miss you awfully. Jack got hurt yesterday. His foot was jammed when a tree fell on it. He is better now because I helped to take care of his foot. He wasn’t hurt badly.

We go skating every day for the river is frozen over. Jack and I and some of the other boys have been playing hockey with my new puck that you gave me for Christmas.

Mrs. Gorham made caramel filling today the way you do and it all ran out in the oven. She said the funniest thing. “Thunder and lightning.” Just like that. And when I laughed, she told me not to because she ought not to say such things, but when cooking went wrong, she just lost her head completely. Isn’t that funny? Bring me home a puppy. I’d love it.

Love, Tommy.

The letter from her father was gay and cheerful and full of advice. He did sound better, just as her mother had said.

Jeannie dear,

Although we all miss you, we seem to be getting along pretty well. With Mrs. Gorham to help, your mother does not have too much to do.

The Judge dropped in last evening for a visit. He says that Billie is getting along splendidly at school. He has many new friends and seems to like the work. Becky and the Judge, of course, miss him as we do you, my dear.

I am in the middle of an interesting new book on world economics. I wish you were here so that I could read parts of it to you. Even though your art work is very important, it is equally valuable to be well-informed on the affairs of the world in which you live. I hope you will keep this bit of advice in mind, for in order to be fully successful, you must keep abreast of the times and not be so completely engrossed in your work, that you fail to recognize what goes on around you.

But I didn’t mean to start preaching. You shall learn all this as you study and grow older, I am sure. I expect to see great changes in you when you return. But do not change too much so that we won’t know you. We love you as you are, darling.

With all my love, Dad.

Jean was quite moved by this letter, for her father was making her responsible for her own future. It made her feel quite different somehow, as though she was entrusted with the power to make or break her own career.

Last of all was Kit’s letter, two sheets of penciled scribbling, crowded together on both sides.

Hi, Jean,

I’m writing this the last thing at night when my brain is getting calm. Any old time the poet starts singing carelessly of the joys and beauties of the country in the wintertime, I hope he lands on this waste spot during a January blizzard. He’d change his mind in a hurry.

If you get your hands on any of the current fashion magazines, be sure to send them home to us. Even if we can’t indulge, we can dream, can’t we? I’m getting awfully tired of skirts and sweaters. It’s high time I was allowed to burst forth in something really stunning that would knock everybody cold.

I have a new friend, a dog. Jack says he’s just a stray, but he isn’t. He’s a shepherd dog, and very intelligent. I’ve named him Mac. He fights with Tommy, which is strange for that brother of ours usually has a way with animals. I guess he’s just a one-man dog, for he likes me alone.

I miss you in the evenings an awful lot. Doris goes around in a sort of moon ring of romance nowadays, so it’s no fun talking to her, and Tommy spends most of his time fooling around with those blasted airplanes of his. His attitude toward Jack is really wonderful, it’s almost fatherly. Did you ever wish we had another boy in the family? I do now and then. I’d like one about sixteen, just between us two, that I could be pals with. Tommy’s too little. Buzzy comes the nearest to being a big brother that I’ve ever had. That guy really had a marvelous sense of fairness, Jean, do you realize that? I hope being out West hasn’t changed him too much. I liked him the way he was. I am impatient for his return. Do you feel the same way about Ralph?

Well, my dear artistic close relative and beloved sister, it is almost ten, so it’s time for Kathleen to turn into her lonely cot. Give my love to Beth, and write to me personally. We can’t bear your inclusive family letters.

Yours, Kit.

If it hadn’t been so late, Jean felt she could have sat down then and there, and answered every one of them. They took her straight back to Woodhow and all the daily round of fun there. In the morning she read parts of them to Aldo.

“Ah, but you are lucky,” Aldo said quietly when she had finished. “I am just myself, and it’s so monotonous. I wish I could meet your family and know them all.”

“They are a wonderful family, although I rather envy you in a way. Sometimes it seems as if one loses individuality in a large family.”

“You shouldn’t feel that way,” replied Aldo. “Why, look, here you are in New York about to start studying again. Isn’t that proof enough that there is room for individuality even in a big family?”

Jean thought of this later when she was getting ready for the next day at school and decided that Aldo was probably right. “I’ll work so hard these next two months, that the family will be convinced that the time was well spent. I’ll make them proud of me, or at least I’ll try.”

10. At the Art Academy

The next morning Jean took the commuter’s train into New York and found her way to the Art Academy. The first person she ran into after she had enrolled was Peg Moffat.

“Gosh, it’s good to see you again, Jean. I was so excited when you wrote to say you were coming back. How long will you be here?”

“Just a couple of months, Peg. I’m taking that special course in textile designing.”

It was now nearly a year since Jean had been a student at the art school. She had gone into the work enthusiastically when they had lived at the Cove on Long Island, making the trip back and forth every day. It thrilled her to be back again for it represented so much to her, all the aims and ambitions of a year before.

As they walked upstairs to Jean’s classroom, some of the girls recognized her and called out. Jean waved her hand to them, but did not stop. She was too busy looking at the sketches along the walls, listening to the familiar sounds through open doors, Pop Higgins’ deep laugh, Miss Weston’s clear voice calling to one of the girls, Pierre the Frenchman, standing with his arm resting on a boy’s shoulders, pointing out to him mistakes in underlay of shadows. Even the familiar smell of turpentine and paint made her unbearably happy to be there.

Margaret Weston was the girls’ favorite instructor. The daughter of an artist herself, she had been born in Florence, Italy, and brought up there, later living in London and then Boston. Jean remembered how delightful her talks with the girls had been when she had described her father’s intimate circle of friends back in Italy. It had seemed so interesting to link the past and present with one who could remember, as a little girl, visits to all the art shrines. Jean had always been a favorite with her. The quiet, imaginative girl had appealed to Margaret Weston perhaps because she had the gift of visualizing the past and its great dreamers. She took both her hands now in a firm clasp, smiling down at her.

“Back again, Jean?”

“Only for this special course, Miss Weston,” Jean smiled a little wistfully. “I wish it were for longer. It seems awfully good to be here and see you all.”

“Have you done any work at all in the country?”

Had she done any work? A swift memory of the real work of Woodhow swept over Jean, and she could have laughed.

“Not much.” She shook her head. “I sort of lost my way for a while, there was so much else that had to be done, but I’m going to study now.”

So for two months, Jean could make believe that she was back as a “regular.” Every morning she went to class, getting inspiration and courage even from the teamwork. Later that first month, she was surprised to see Aldo waiting for her at the main entrance.

“I’ve come to take you away. It is not good to bury yourself completely in your work. It is time that you thought of something besides paint and warp and woof.”

Jean suddenly remembered the words of her father’s first letter to her. How he had warned her of forgetting everything but her work. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“I have tickets to the latest Broadway play. It’s a musical and very good, from all I hear and have read about it. But first we are going to lunch at the Waldorf.”

Jean never forgot that afternoon with Aldo. She forgot the art school completely while she listened to the gay tunes and witty dialogue coming from the stage. When she returned to Elmhurst, she often remembered that day and it made it easier for her to work at home at everyday chores.

Later, while they were having dinner in a small Italian restaurant that Aldo frequented often, she told him of her work. How her designs were progressing and how she was learning to weave and how wonderful it was to see her own designs come to life in the threads of the material on her loom.

In return, Aldo told her of his own work. He was now working in clay and hoped to do some real sculpture before he was through. “I want to work in marbles, the way my father does,” he said simply. In those few words his own ambitions were exposed.

They parted at Grand Central, Jean to go back to Beth’s in Hastings and Aldo to take the subway uptown to his aunt’s apartment.

A few days later, Jean went home with Peg Moffat to spend the weekend with her in her Greenwich Village studio. “Yet you can hardly call it a studio now, since Mom came and took possession,” Peg said. “We girls had it all nice and messy, and she keeps it in order, I tell you.”