CHAPTER XVI

GREENACRE LETTERS

Jean confessed her mistake to Cousin Beth after they had returned home. There were just a few moments to spare before bedtime, after wishing Carlota and her aunt 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 stag hound, Cousin Beth—”

Mrs. Newell laughed softly, braiding her hair down into regular schoolgirl pigtails.

“That was Betty Goodwin. Betty loves to dress up. She plays little parts for herself all the time. I think today she was a Russian princess perhaps. The next time she will be a tailor-made English girl. Betty’s people have money enough to indulge 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, child, 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. She thinks only real geniuses should paint.”

“Nonsense. Paint all you like. 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 worth while in the art line. But in any event you would have no regrets. I mean you could trot along life’s highway contentedly, without feeling there was something you had missed. It was odd your meeting the Contessa as you did. She likes you very much. I wish it could be arranged for you to go over to Italy in a year, and be under her wing. It’s such a broadening experience for you, Jeanie. Perhaps I’ll be going myself by then and could take you. You would love it as I did, I know. There’s a charm and restfulness about old world spots that all the war clamour and devastation cannot kill. Now run along to bed. Tomorrow will be a quiet day. The Contessa likes it here because she can relax and as she says ‘invite her soul to peace.’ Good night, dear.”

When Jean reached her own room, she found a surprise. On the desk lay a letter from home that Minory had laid there. Minory was Cousin Beth’s standby, as she said. She was middle-aged, and had been “help” to the Peabodys ever since she was a girl. Matrimony had never attracted Minory. She had never been known to have a sweetheart. She was tall and spare, with a broad serene face, and sandy-red hair worn parted in the middle and combed smoothly back over her ears in old-fashioned style. Her eyes were as placid and contented as a cat’s, and rather greenish, too, in tint.

“Minory has reached Nirvana,” Cousin Beth would say, laughingly. “She always has a little smile on her lips, and says nothing. I’ve never seen her angry or discontented. She’s saved her earnings and bought property, and supports several indigent relatives who have no earthly right to her help. Her favorite flower, she says, is live forever, as we call it here in New England, or the Swiss edelweiss. She’s a faithful Unitarian, and her favorite charity is orphan asylums. All my life I have looked up to Minory and loved her. There’s a poem called ‘The Washer of the Ford,’ I think it is, and she has made me think of it often, for over and over at the passing out of dear ones in the family, it has been Minory’s hand on my shoulder that has steadied me, and her hand that has closed their eyes. She stands and holds the candle for the rest of us.”

It was just like her, Jean thought, to lay the home letter 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 a budget as soon as you got it out of the envelope. The one on top was from the Motherbird, written just before the mail wagon came up the hill.

DEAR PRINCESS ROYAL:

You have been much on my mind, but I haven’t time for a long letter, as Mr. Ricketts may bob up over the hill any minute, and he is like time and tide that wait for no man, you know. I am ever so glad your visit has proved a happy one. Stay as long as Cousin Beth wants you. Father is really quite himself these days, and I have kept Mrs. Gorham, so the work has been very easy for me, even without my first lieutenant.

It looks like an early spring, and we expect Ralph and Honey from the west in about a week, instead of in May. Ralph will probably be our guest for awhile, as Father will enjoy his company. The crocuses are up all along the garden wall, and the daffodils and narcissus have started to send up little green lances through the earth. I have never enjoyed the coming of a spring so much as now. Perhaps one needs a long bleak winter in order to appreciate spring.

Have you everything you need? Let me know otherwise. You know, I always find some way out. A letter came for you from Bab which I enclose. Write often to us, my eldest fledgling. I feel very near you these days in love and thought. The petals are unfolding so fast in your character. I want to watch each one, and you know this, dear. There is always a curious bond between a firstborn and a mother, to the mother specially, for you taught me motherhood, all the dear, first motherlore, my Jean. 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 girls’ letters. Mothers were wonderful persons, she thought. Their brooding wings 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 Helen, quite like her too. Brief and beautifully penned on her very own violet tinted note paper.

DEAR JEANIE:

I do hope you have met the wonderful Contessa. I can picture her in my mind. You know Father’s picture of Marie Stuart with the pearl cap? Well, I’ve been wondering if she looked like that. I know they wore pearl caps in Italy because Juliet wore one. I’d love a pearl cap. Tell me what Carlota talks about, and what color are her eyes!

School is very uninteresting just now, and it is cold driving over to the car. But I have one teacher I love, Miss Simmons. Jean, she has the face of Priscilla exactly, and she is descended from Miles Standish, really and truly. She told me so, and Kit said if all of his descendants could be bunched together, they would fill a state. You know Kit. Miss Simmons wears a low lace collar with a small cameo pin, and her voice is beautiful. I can’t bear people with loud voices. When I see her in the morning, it just wipes out all the cold drive and everything that’s gone wrong. Well, Kit says it’s time to go to bed. I forgot to tell you, unless Mother has already in her letter, that Mr. McRae is coming from Saskatoon with Honey, and he will stay here. Doris hopes he will bring her a tame bear cub.

Your loving sister, Helen Beatrice Robbins.

“Oh, Helenita, you little goose,” Jean laughed, shaking her head. The letter was so entirely typical of Helen and her vagaries. A mental flash of the dear old Contessa in a pearl cap came to her. She must remember to tell Cousin Beth about that tomorrow.

Doris’s letter was hurried and full of maternal cares.

DEAR SISTER:

We miss you awfully. Shad got hurt yesterday. His foot was jammed when a tree fell on it, but Joe is helping him, and I think they like each other better.

We are setting all the hens that want to set. The minute I notice one clucking I tell Mother, and we fix a nest for her. Father has the incubator going, but it may go out if we forget to put in oil, Shad says, and the hens don’t forget to keep on the nests. Bless Mother Nature, Mrs. Gorham says. She made caramel filling today the way you do, and it all ran out in the oven, and 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 things went contrariwise, she just lost her head entirely. Isn’t that fun? Send me a pressed pink rose. I’d love it.

Lovingly yours, Dorrie.

Last of all was Kit’s, six sheets of pencilled scribbling, crowded together on both sides.

I’m writing this the last thing at night, dear sister mine, when my brain is getting calm. Any old time the poet starts singing blithesomely of ye joys of springtide I hope he lands on this waste spot the first weeks in March. Jean, the frost is thawing in the roads, and that means the roads are simply falling in. You drive over one in the morning, and at night it isn’t there at all. There’s just a slump, understand. I’m so afraid that Princess will break her legs falling into a Gilead quagmire, I hardly dare drive her.

I suppose Mother has written that we have a guest coming from Saskatoon. I feel very philosophical about it. It will do Dad good, and I’ll be glad to see Honey again. Billie’s coming home for Easter, thank goodness. He’s human. Do you suppose you will be here then? What do you do all day? Gallivant lightsomely around the adjacent landscape with Cousin Beth, or languish with the Contessa and Carlota in some luxurious spot, making believe you’re nobility too. Remember, Jean Robbins, the rank is but the guinea’s stamp, “a man’s a man for a’ that.” Whatever would you do without your next sister to keep you balanced along strict republican lines? Don’t mind me. We’ve been studying comparisons between forms of government at school, and I’m completely jumbled on it all. I can’t make up my mind what sort of a government I want to rule over. This kingship business seems to be so uncertain. Poor old King Charles and Louis, and the rest. I’m to be Charlotte Corday at the prison window in one of our monthly tableaux. Like the picture?

If you do see any of the spring styles, don’t be afraid to send them home. Even while we cannot indulge, it’s something to look at them. I don’t want any more middies. They are just a subterfuge. I want robes and garments. And how are the girls wearing their hair in quaint old Boston town? Mine’s getting too long to do anything with, and I feel Quakerish with it. It’s an awful nuisance trying to look like everybody else. I’ll be glad when I can live under a greenwood tree some place, with a stunning cutty sark on of dull green doeskin. Do you know what a cutty sark is? Read Bobby Burns, my child. I opine it’s a cross between a squaw’s afternoon frock and a witch’s kirtle. But it is graceful and comfortable, and I shall always wear one when I take to the forest to stay.

I have a new chum, a dog. Shad says he’s just as much of a stray as Joe was, but he isn’t. He’s a shepherd dog, and very intelligent. I’ve called him Mac. He fights like sixty with Shad, but you just ought to see him father that puppy of Doris’s you brought up from New York. He trots him off to the woods with him, and teaches him all sorts of dog tricks. Doris had him cuddled and muffled up until he was a perfect little molly-coddle. I do think she would take the natural independence out of a kangaroo just by petting it.

I miss you in the evenings a whole lot. Helen goes around in a sort of moon ring of romance nowadays, so it’s no fun talking to her, and Dorrie is all fussed up over her setting hens and the incubator natural born orphans, so I am left to my own devices. Did you ever wish we had some boys in the family? I do now and then. I’d like one about sixteen, just between us two, that I could chum with. Billie comes the nearest to being a kid brother that I’ve ever had. That boy really had a dandy sense of fairness, Jean, do you know it? I hope being away at school hasn’t spoilt him. And that makes me think. The Judge and Cousin Roxy were down to dinner Sunday, and the flower of romance still blooms for them. It’s just splendid to see the way he eyes her, not adoringly, but with so much appreciation, Jean, and he chuckles every time she springs one of her delicious sayings. I don’t see how he ever let her travel her own path so many years.

Well, my dear, artistic close relative and beloved sister, it is almost ten P. M., and Shad has wound the clock, and locked the doors, and put wood on the fire, so it’s time for Kathleen to turn into her lonely cot. Give my love to Cousin Beth, and write to me personally. We can’t bear your inclusive family letters.

Fare ye well, great heart. We’re taking up Hamlet too, in English. Wasn’t Ophelia a quitter?

Yours, Kit.

If it had not been too late, Jean felt she could have sat down then and there, and answered every one of them. They took her straight back to Greenacres and all the daily round of fun there. In the morning she read them all to Carlota, sitting on their favorite old Roman seat out in the big central greenhouse. Here were only ferns and plants like orchids, begonias, and delicate cyclamen. There was a little fountain in the center, and several frogs and gold fish down among the lily pads.

“Ah, but you are lucky,” Carlota cried in her quick way. “I am just myself, and it’s so monotonous. I wish I could go back with you, even for just a few days, and know them all. Kit must be so funny and clever.”

“Why couldn’t you? Mother’d love to have you, and the girls are longing to know what you look like. I’d love to capture you and carry you into our old hills. Perhaps by Easter you could go. Would the Contessa let you, do you think?”

Carlota laughed merrily, and laid her arm around Jean’s shoulder.

“I think she would let me do anything you wished. Let us go now and ask her.”

The Contessa had not joined them at breakfast. She preferred her tray in Continental fashion, brought up by Minory, and they found her lying in the flood of sunshine from the south window, on the big comfy chintz covered couch drawn up before the open fireplace. Over a faded old rose silk dressing gown she wore a little filmy lace shawl the tint of old ivory that matched her skin exactly. Jean never saw her then or in after years without marvelling at the perpetual youth of her eyes and smile. She held out both hands to her with an exclamation of pleasure, and kissed her on her cheeks.

“Ah, Giovanna mia,” she cried. “Good morning. Carlota has already visited me, and see, the flowers, so beautiful and dear, which your cousin sent up—roses and roses. They are my favorites. Other flowers we hold sentiment for, not for their own sakes, but because there are associations or memories connected with them, but roses bring forth homage. At my little villa in Tuscany which you must see some time, it is very old, very poor in many ways, but we have roses everywhere. Now, tell me, what is it you two have thought up. I see it in your eyes.”

“Could I take Carlota home with me for a little visit when I go?” asked Jean. “It isn’t so very far from here, just over in the corner of Connecticut where Rhode Island and Massachusetts meet, and by Easter it will be beautiful in the hills. And it’s perfectly safe for her up there. Nothing ever happens.”

The Contessa laughed at her earnestness.

“We must consult with your cousin first,” she said. “If we can have you with us in Italy then we must let Carlota go with you surely. We sail in June. I have word from my sister. Would you like to go, child?”

Jean sat down on the chair by the bedside and clasped her hands.

“Oh, it just couldn’t happen,” she said in almost a hushed tone. “I’m sure it couldn’t, Contessa. Perhaps in another year, Cousin Beth said she might be going over, and then I could be with her. But not yet.”

The Contessa lifted her eyebrows and smiled whimsically.

“But what if there is a conspiracy of happiness afoot? Then you have nothing to say, and I have talked with your cousin, and she has written to another cousin, Roxy, I think she calls her. Ah, you have such wonderful women cousins, Giovanna, they are all fairy godmothers I think.”

Jean liked to be called Giovanna. It gave her a curious feeling of belonging to that life Carlota told her of, in the terra cotta colored villa among the old terraces and rose gardens overlooking the sea. She remembered some of Browning’s short poems that she had always liked, the little fragment beginning,

“Your ghost should walk, you lover of trees, In a wind swept gap of the Pyrenees.”

“If you keep on day dreaming over possibilities, Jean Robbins,” she told herself in her mirror, “you’ll be quite as bad as Helen. You keep your two feet on the ground, and stop fluttering wings.”

Whereupon for the remainder of the stay at Cousin Beth’s, she bent to study with a will, until Easter week loomed near, and it was time to think of starting for the hills once more. Carlota was going with her, and so excited and expectant over the trip that the Contessa declared she almost felt like accompanying them, just to discover this marvelous charm that seemed to enfold Greenacres and its girls.