Part 7

“I think we’ve just about time to get by before the fire breaks through,” said Mrs. Ellis calmly. Jean was on the back seat, one arm supporting old Cynthy, her other hand pacifying the rebellious captives in the bags.

Not a word was said as Becky turned the car toward home, but they had not gone far before the wind changed suddenly. The full force of the smoke from the fire-swept area poured over them suffocatingly. Cynthy half-rose to her feet in terror, Jean’s arm around her waist trying to hold her down as she screamed.

“For land’s sakes, Cynthy, keep your head,” called Mrs. Ellis. “If it’s the Lord’s will that we should all go up in a chariot of fire, don’t squeal out like a stuck pig. Hold her close, Jean. I’m going to drive into the river.”

15. Fire!

At the bend of the road the land sloped suddenly straight for the river brink. A quarter of a mile below was the dam, above Mr. Rudemeir’s red sawmill. Little River widened at this point, and swept in curves around a little island. There were no buildings on it, only broad low lush meadows that provided a home for muskrats and waterfowl. Late in the fall fat otters could be seen circling around the still waters, and wild geese and ducks made it a port of call in their flights north and south.

As Becky started to drive the car into the water, Jean asked just one question.

“Do you know how deep it is here?”

“No, it varies in spots,” answered Becky cheerfully. Her chin was up, her firm lips set in an unswerving smile. She was holding the steering wheel tightly. To Jean she had never seemed more resourceful or fearless. “There’s some pretty deep holes, here and there, but we’ll trust that we don’t hit them.”

Becky edged the car along slowly and inch by inch they moved across the river. Out in midstream, the car stalled once and for a minute or two, danger seemed imminent. By a stroke of luck, the car started again and Becky gave a quick look over her shoulder.

Jean was hanging on grimly to the cats and Cynthy. It was hard saying which of the two was proving the more difficult to manage. The car lurched perilously, but Becky held steady, and suddenly they felt the rise of the shore line again. Overhead, there had flown a vanguard of frightened birds, flying ahead of the smothering clouds of smoke that poured now in blinding masses down from the burning woods. The faint cries and calls of the men working along the back fire line reached the little group on the far shore.

As the car jolted up the bank, Doris glanced back over her shoulder at the way they had come. Cynthy gave one look too, and covered her face with her hands. The flames had swept straight down over her little home, and she cried out in anguish.

“Pity’s sakes, Cynthy, praise God that the two of us aren’t burning up this minute with those old shingles and rafters,” cried Mrs. Ellis, joyfully.

“Oh, and Miss Allan, not one of the cats got wet even,” Doris exclaimed, laughing almost hysterically. “You should be thankful for that.”

The flames had reached the opposite shore, but while the smoke billowed across, Little River left them high and dry in the safety zone.

“I guess we’d better be making for home as quick as we can,” said Becky. Except for a little pallor around her lips, and an extra brightness to her eyes, no one could have told that she had just fought a winning battle with death. She stepped on the starter and headed toward home.

The Judge was watching anxiously, pacing up and down the long porch with Billie sitting in his chair bolstered up with pillows beside him. He had telephoned repeatedly down to Woodhow, but they were all quite as anxious now as himself. It was Billie who first caught sight of the car and its occupants.

Kit had gone out to the kitchen to start lunch going. She had refused to believe that any harm could come to Becky or anyone under her care, and at the sound of Billie’s voice, she glanced from the window and caught sight of Jean’s coat.

“Land alive, don’t hug me to death, all of you,” exclaimed Becky. “Jean, you go and telephone your mother right away and relieve her anxiety. Like enough, she thinks we’re all burned to cinders by this time, and tell her she’d better have plenty of coffee and sandwiches made up to send over to the men in the woods. All us women will have our night’s work cut out for us.”

It was the Craigs’ first experience with a country forest fire. All through the afternoon fresh relays of men kept arriving from the nearby villages, and outlying farms, ready to relieve those who had been working through the morning.

There was but little sleep for any members of the family that night. Jean never forgot the thrill of watching the fire from the upstairs windows, and when she wasn’t preparing food with the others, she spent most of the time up there until daybreak. There was a fascination in seeing that battle from afar, and realizing how the little puny efforts of a handful of men could hold in check such a devastating force. Only country dwellers could appreciate the peril of having all one owned in the world, all that was dear and precious, and comprised the word “home,” swept away in the path of the flames.

“Poor old Cynthy,” said Jean. “I’m so glad she has her cats. I shall never forget her face when she looked back. Just think of losing all the little keepsakes of a lifetime.”

It was nearly five o’clock when Tommy returned. Even though he was only twelve, he had certainly done a man-sized job that day. He was grimy and smoky, but exuberant.

“By golly, we’ve got her under control,” he cried. “Got some milk and doughnuts for a guy? Who do you suppose worked better than anybody? Gave us all pointers on how to manage a fire. He says this is just a little fire compared with the ones he has up home. He says he’s seen a forest fire twenty miles wide, sweeping over the mountains.”

“Who do you mean, Tommy?” asked Jean. “For gosh sakes, quit elaborating and come to the point.”

“Who do you suppose I mean?” asked Tommy reproachfully. “Buzzy Hancock’s cousin, your Ralph McRae from Saskatoon.”

Jean blushed prettily, as she always did when Ralph’s name was mentioned. She hadn’t spent as much time with Ralph since his arrival as she had wanted to owing to Billie’s illness. Still, oddly enough, even Tommy’s high praise of him made her feel shyly happy.

The fire burned fitfully for three days, breaking out unexpectedly in new spots and keeping everyone excited and busy. The old Ames barn went up in smoke, and Mr. Rudemeir’s sawmill caught fire three times.

“Whew!” he said, jubilantly, “I guess I sat out on that roof all night long, slapping sparks with a wet mop, but it didn’t get ahead of me.”

Lucy Peckham and Kit ran a sort of pony express, riding horseback from house to house, carrying food and coffee over to the men who were scattered nearly four miles around the fire-swept area. Ralph and Sally ran their own rescue work at the north end of town. Buzzy had been put on the mail truck with Mr. Rickett’s eldest boy, while the former gave his services on the volunteer fire corps. The end of the third day Jean was driving back from Nantic after a load of groceries when she noticed Ralph turning on to the main road ahead of her. She stopped the car beside him and asked him to get in.

“The fire’s all out,” he said. “We have left some of the boys on guard yet, in case it may be smouldering in the underbrush. I have just been telling Rudemeir and the other men, if they’d learn to pile their brush the way we do up home, they would be able to control these little fires in no time. You girls must be awfully tired out. You did splendid work.”

“Kit and Lucy did, you mean,” answered Jean. “All I did was to help cook.” She laughed. “I never dreamed that men and boys could eat so many doughnuts and cupcakes. Becky says she sent over twenty-two loaves of gingerbread, not counting all the other stuff. Was anyone hurt, at all?”

“You mean eating too much?” asked Ralph teasingly. Then more seriously, he added, “A few of the men were burnt a little bit, but nothing to speak of. How beautiful your springtime is down here in New England. It makes me want to take off my coat and go to work right here, reclaiming some of these old worked-out acres, and making them show the good that still lies in them if they are plowed deep enough.”

Jean sighed quickly. “Do you really think one could ever make any money here?” she asked. “Sometimes I get awfully discouraged, Ralph. Of course, we didn’t come up here with the idea of being farmers. It was Dad’s health that brought us, but once we were here, we couldn’t help but see the chance of making Woodhow pay our way a little. Becky has told us we’re in awfully good luck to even get our vegetables and fruit out of it this last year, and it isn’t the past year I’m thinking of. It’s the next year, and the next one and the next. One of the most appalling things about Elmhurst is, that you get absolutely contented up here, and you go around singing blissfully. Old Pop Higgins who taught our art class down in New York always said that contentment was fatal to progress, and I believe it. Dad is really a brilliant man, and he’s getting his full strength back. And while I have a full sense of gratitude toward the healing powers of these old green hills, still I have a horror of Dad stagnating here.”

Ralph turned his head to watch her face. “Has he said anything himself about wanting to go back to his work?” he asked.

“Not yet. I suppose that is what we really must wait for. His own confidence returning. You see, what I’m afraid of is this. Dad was born and brought up right here, and the granite of these old hills is in his system. He loves every square foot of land around here. Just supposing he should be contented to settle down, like old Judge Ellis, and turn into a sort of Connecticut country squire.”

“There are worse things than that in the world,” Ralph replied. “Too many of our best men forget the land that gave them birth, and pour the full strength of their powers and capabilities into the city market. You speak of Judge Ellis. Look at what that old man’s mind has done for his home community. He has literally brought modern improvements into Elmhurst. He has represented her up at Hartford off and on for years, when he was not sitting in judgment here.”

“You mean, that you think Dad ought not to go back?” asked Jean, almost resentfully. “That just because he happened to have been born here, he owes it to Elmhurst to stay here now, and give it the best he has?”

Ralph laughed good-naturedly. “We’re getting into rather deep water, Jeannie,” he answered. “I can see that you don’t like the country, and I do. I love it down east here where all of my family came from originally, and I’m very fond of the West.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’d like that too,” broke in Jean eagerly. “Mother’s from the West, California, and I’d love to go out there. I would love the scope and freedom. What bothers me here are all those rock walls, for instance.” She pointed at the old one along the road, uneven, half tumbling down, and overgrown with gray moss--the standing symbol of the infinite patience and labor of a bygone generation. “Just think of all the people who spent their lives carrying those stones, and cutting up all this beautiful land into these little shut-in pastures.”

“Yes, but those rocks represent the clearing of fields for tillage. If they hadn’t dug them out of the ground, they wouldn’t have had any cause for Thanksgiving dinners. I’m extremely proud of my New England blood, and I want to tell you right now, if it wasn’t for the New England blood that went out to conquer the West, where would the West be today?”

“That’s OK,” said Jean, a little crossly, “but if they had pioneered a little bit right around here, there wouldn’t be so many run-down farms. What I would like to do, now that Dad is getting well, is make Woodhow our playground in summertime, and go back home in the winter.”

“Home,” he repeated, curiously.

“Yes, we were all born down in New York,” answered Jean, looking south over the country landscape as though she could see Manhattan’s panoramic skyline rising like a mirage of beckoning promises. “I’m afraid that is home to me.”

Ralph was quiet while Jean was lost in her memories of her wonderful visit with Beth in New York. Suddenly she turned to Ralph.

“I’m very confused,” she said. “I really don’t know what I want. The only thing I am sure of is that I like you better than any boy I’ve ever met.” Jean hesitated a little over this admission. “When I’m here I long to be in New York, and when I was in New York I missed everybody and everything in the country very much.”

“You’re still very young, Jean, but with your level head I’m sure you’ll be able to make a decision soon. I, for one, am willing to wait,” said Ralph.

16. Future Plans

“It always seems to me,” said Becky, the first time she drove down with Billie to spend the day, “as if Maytime is a sort of fulfilled promise to us, after the winter and spring. When I was a girl, spring up here behaved itself. It was sweet and balmy and gentle, and now it’s turned into an uncertain young tomboy. The weather doesn’t really begin to settle until the middle of May, but when it does--” She drew in a deep breath and smiled. “Just look around you at the beauty it gives us.”

She sat out on the tree seat in the garden that sloped from the south side of the house. The terraces were a riot of spring bloom; tall gold and purple flags grew side by side with dainty columbine and narcissus. Along the stone walls white and purple lilacs flung their delicious perfume to every passing breeze. The old apple trees that straggled in uneven rows up through the hill pasture behind the barn had been transformed into gorgeous splashy masses of pink bloom against the tender green of young foliage.

“What’s Jean doing over there in the orchard?” Kit rose from her knees, her fingers grimy with the soil, her face flushed and warm from her labors, and answered her own question. “Why, she’s painting.”

Jean was out of their hearing. Frowning slightly, with compressed lips, she bent over her work. She was sitting on the ground, her knees supporting her drawing board. The week before she had sent off five studies to Beth, and two of her very best ones down to Mr. Higgins. Answers had come back from both, full of criticism, but with plenty of encouragement, too. Mrs. Craig had read the two letters and given her eldest the quick impulsive embrace which ever since her childhood had been to Jean her highest reward of merit. But it was from her father, perhaps, that she derived the greatest happiness. He laid one arm around her shoulders, smiling at her with a certain whimsical speculation in his keen eyes.

“Well, my dear, if you will persist in developing such talent, we can’t afford to hide this light under a bushel. You should have more training.”

“But when?” interrupted Jean. “It isn’t that I want to know for my own pleasure, but you don’t know how fearfully precious these last years in my teens seem to me. There’s such a terrible lot of things to learn before I can really say I’ve finished.”

“And one of the first things you have to learn is just that you never stop learning. That you never really start to learn until you know your own limitations. Somewhere over there lies New York,” he said, looking down the valley. “Often through the past year, I have stood looking in that direction. I’ve got a job back there waiting--”

Jean interrupted, her face alight with gladness. “Oh, Dad, Dad, you do want to go back. You don’t know how afraid I’ve been that you’d take root up here and stay forever. I know it’s perfectly splendid, and it has been a place of refuge for us all, but now that you are getting to be just like your old self--”

Her father’s hand checked her.

“Steady there,” he warned. “Not quite so fast. I am still a little bit uncertain when I try to speed up. We’ve got to be patient a little while longer.”

Jean pressed his hand in hers and understood. If it had been hard for them to be patient, it had been doubly so for him, groping his way back slowly, the past year, on the upgrade to health.

Jean was thinking of their talk as she sat out in the orchard today, trying to catch some of the fleeting beauty of its blossom-laden trees.

“How are you getting along, dear?” asked a well-known voice behind her.

“I don’t know, Dad,” said Jean, leaning back with her head on one side, looking for all the world like a meditative brown thrush. “I can’t seem to get that queer silver-gray effect. You take a day like this, just before a rain, and it seems to underlie everything. I’ve tried dark green and gray and sienna, and it doesn’t do a bit of good.”

“Mix a little Chinese black with every color you use,” said her father, closing one eye to look at her painting. “It’s the old master’s trick. You’ll find it in the Flemish school, and the Veronese. It gives you the atmospheric gray quality in everything. Here come Ralph and Sally.”

Sally waved her hand, but joined Kit, Doris and Billie in the lower garden at their grubbing for cutworms.

“If you put plenty of salt in the water when you sprinkle those, it’ll help a lot,” she told them.

“Oh, we’ve salted them. We each took a bag of salt and went out sprinkling one night, and then it rained, and I honestly believe it was a tonic to the cutworm colony. The only thing to do, is go after them and annihilate them.”

Ralph nodded to the group on the terrace, but went on up to the orchard. Kit watched him with speculative eyes and spoke in her usual impulsive fashion.

“Do you suppose he’s come here with the idea of taking Jean away? Because if he has any such notions at all, I’d like to tell him she’s not for him. If he thinks for one moment he’s going to throw her across his saddle and carry her off to Saskatoon, he’s very much mistaken.”

Sally glanced up at the figures in the orchard, before she answered in her slow, deliberate fashion. “I’m sure I don’t know, but Ralph said he was coming back here every spring, so he can’t expect to take her away this year.”

Ralph threw himself down in the grass beside Jean. She smiled at him, then bent over her board, absently touching in some shadows on the trunks of the trees. Her thoughts had wandered from the old orchard, as they did so often these days. It was the future that seemed more real to her, with its hopes and ambitions, than the present.

“Oh, Jean,” called Kit, “Becky’s going now.”

Ralph rose and caught her hand as she started to leave. “I hope your ambitions carry you far, Jean,” he said earnestly. “Sally, Buzzy, Mrs. Hancock and I are leaving for Saskatoon Monday morning and I’ll hardly get over again since Buzzy and I are doing all the packing and crating, but you’ll see me again next spring, won’t you?”

Jean looked up at him startled.

“Why, I didn’t know you were going so soon. Of course, I’ll see you when you come back,” she said with a heavy heart. Heavier than she would have wanted Ralph to see.

“I’ll come,” Ralph promised, and he stood where she left him, under the blossoming apple trees, watching her as she joined her family circle. Ralph had deliberately planned this abrupt goodbye. With his usual thoughtfulness he did not want to influence Jean’s thinking.

As Jean walked back across the path to the lower terrace, her thoughts were sad. Perhaps she would never see him again, perhaps she would decide never to marry and to continue her art career, yet if she could have known, many changes would take place in the next year that are told in _Jean Craig Finds Romance_.

She shook off these unhappy thoughts and came up to the others smiling and saying to Becky, “You’ll be over again to see us soon, won’t you?”

Becky gave her an understanding smile that seemed to say, “I’m always here and you belong here too.”

Transcriber’s Note:

Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphenation has been retained as it appears in the original publication. The following change was made:

Page 112 it still so bleak _changed to_ is still so bleak