CHAPTER VII

THE CALL HOME

The second evening Aunt Win took them down to a Red Cross Bazaar at her club rooms. Jean enjoyed it in a way, although after the open air life and the quiet up home, overcrowded, steam-heated rooms oppressed her. She listened to a famous tenor sing something very fiery in French, and heard a blind Scotch soldier tell simply of the comfort the Red Cross supplies had brought to the little wayside makeshift hospital he had been taken to, an old mill inhabited only by owls and martins until the soldiers had come to it. Then a tiny little girl in pink had danced and the blind soldier put her on his shoulder afterwards while she held out his cap. It was filled with green bills, Jean saw, as they passed.

Then a young American artist, her face aglow with enthusiasm, stood on the platform with two little French orphans, a boy and girl. And she told of how the girl students had been the first to start the godmother movement, to mother these waifs of war.

“Wonderful, isn’t it, the work we’re doing?” said Aunt Win briskly, when it was over and they were in her limousine, bound uptown. “Doesn’t it inspire you, Jean?”

“Not one single bit,” Jean replied fervently. “I think war is awful, and I don’t believe in it. Up home we’ve made a truce not to argue about it, because none of us agree at all.”

“Well, child, I don’t believe in it either, but if the boys will get into these fights, it always has fallen to us women and always will, to bind up the wounds and patch them up the best we can. They’re a troublesome lot, but we couldn’t get along without them as I tell Mr. Everden.”

“That sounds just like Cousin Roxy,” Jean said, and then she had to tell all about who Cousin Roxy was, and her philosophy and good cheer that had spread out over Gilead land from Maple Lawn.

Better than the bazaar, she had liked the little supper at the Valleé’s studio. Mrs. Crane had found a costume for her to wear, a white silk mandarin coat with an under petticoat of heavy peach blossom embroidery, and Bab had fixed her dark hair in quaint Manchu style with two big white chrysanthemums, one over each ear. Bab was a Breton fisher girl in a dark blue skirt and heavy linen smock, with a scarlet cap on her head, and her blonde hair in two long heavy plaits.

The studio was in the West Forties, over near Third Avenue. The lower floor had been a garage, but the Valleé’s took possession of it, and it looked like some old Florentine hall in dark oak, with dull red velvet tapestry rugs and hangings. A tall, thin boy squatted comfortably on top of a chest across one corner, and played a Hawaiian ukulele. It was the first time Jean had heard such music, and it made her vaguely homesick.

“It always finds the place in your heart that hurts and wakes it up,” Bab told her. “That’s Piper Pearson playing. You remember the Pearsons at the Cove, Talbot and the rest? We call him Piper because he’s always our maker of sounds when anything’s doing.”

Piper stopped twanging long enough to shake hands and smile.

“Coming down to the Cove?”

“I don’t think so, not this time,” Jean said, regretfully. She would have loved a visit back at the old home, and still it might only have made her dissatisfied. As Kit said, “Beware of the fleshpots of Egypt when one is living on corn bread and Indian pudding.”

Marion Valleé remembered her at once, and had the girls help make sandwiches behind a tall screen. Rye bread sliced very thin, and buttered with sweet butter, then devilled crabmeat spread between. That was Bab’s task. Jean found herself facing a Japanese bowl of cream cheese, bottle of pimentoes and some chopped walnuts.

Later there was dancing, Jean’s first dance in a year, and Mrs. Crane smiled at her approvingly when she finished and came to her side.

“It’s good to watch you enjoy yourself. Jean, I want you to meet the youngest of the boys here tonight. He’s come all the way east from the Golden Gate to show us real enthusiasm.”

Jean found herself shaking hands with a little white haired gentleman who beamed at her cheerfully, and proceeded to tell her all about his new picture, the Golden Gate at night.

“Just at moonrise, you know, with the reflections of the signal lights on ships in the water and the moon shimmer faintly rising. I have great hopes for it. And I’ve always wanted to come to New York, always, ever since I was a boy.”

“He’s eighty-three,” Mrs. Crane found a chance to whisper. “Think of him adventuring forth with his masterpiece and the fire of youth in his heart.”

A young Indian princess from the Cherokee Nation stood in the firelight glow, dressed in ceremonial garb, and recited some strange folk poem of her people, about the “Trail of Tears,” that path trod by the Cherokees when they were driven forth from their homes in Georgia to the new country in the Osage Mountains. Jean leaned forward, listening to the words, they came so beautifully from her grave young lips, and last of all the broken treaty, after the lands had been given in perpetuity, “while the grass grows and the waters flow.”

“Isn’t she a darling?” Bab said under her breath. “She’s a college girl too. I love to watch her eyes glow when she recites that poem. You know, Jean, you can smother it under all you like, not you, of course, but we Americans, still the Indian is the real thing after all. Mother Columbia has spanked him and put him in a corner and told him to behave, but he’s perfectly right.”

Jean laughed contentedly. In her other ear somebody else was telling her the Princess was one fourth Cherokee and the rest Scotch. But it all stimulated and interested her. As Kit would have said, there was something new doing every minute down here. The long weeks of monotony in Gilead faded away. Nearly every day after class Mrs. Everden took the girls out for a spin through the Park in her car, and twice they went home with her for tea in her apartment on Central Park South. It was all done in soft browns and ivories, and Uncle Frank was in brown and ivory too, a slender soldierly gentleman with ivory complexion and brown hair just touched with gray. He said very little, Jean noticed, but listened contentedly to his wife chat on any subject in her vivacious way.

“I trust your father is surely recovering up there,” he said once, as Jean happened to stand beside him near a window, looking down at the black swans preening themselves on a tiny island below. “I often think how much better it would be if we old chaps would take a playtime now and then instead of waiting until we’re laid up for repairs. Jerry was like I am, always too busy for a vacation. But he had a family to work for, and Mrs. Everden and I are alone. I’d like mighty well to see him. What could I send him that he’d enjoy?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jean thought anxiously. “I think he loves to read now, more than anything, and he was saying just before I left he wished he had some new books, books that show the current thought of the day, you know what I mean, Mr. Everden. I meant to take him up a few, but I wasn’t sure which ones he would like.”

“Let me send him up a box of them,” Mr. Everden’s eyes twinkled. “I’ll wake him up. And tell him for me not to stagnate up there. Rest and get well, but come back where he belongs. There comes a point after a man breaks down from overwork, when he craves to get back to that same work, and it’s the best tonic you can give him, to let him feel and know he’s got his grip back and is standing firmly again. I’ll send the books.”

Sunday Bab planned for them to go to service down at the Church of the Ascension on lower Fifth Avenue, but Mrs. Crane thought Jean ought to hear the Cathedral music, and Aunt Win was to take them in the evening to the Russian Church for the wonderful singing there.

Jean felt amused and disturbed too, as she dressed. Up home Cousin Roxy said she didn’t have a mite of respect for church tramps, those as were forever gadding hither and yon, seeking diversion in the houses of the Lord. Still, when she reached the Cathedral, and heard the familiar words resound in the great stone interior, she forgot everything in a sense of reverence and peace.

After service, Mrs. Crane said she must run into the children’s ward across the street at St. Luke’s to see how one of her settlement girls was getting along. Bab and Jean stayed down in the wide entrance hall, until the latter noticed the little silent chapel up the staircase at the back.

“Oh, Bab, could we go in, do you think?” she whispered.

Bab was certain they could, although service was over. They entered the chapel, and knelt quietly at the back. It was so different from the great cathedral over the way, so silent and shadowy, so filled with the message to the inner heart, born of the hospital, “In the midst of life ye are in death.”

“That did me more good than the other,” Jean said, as they went downstairs to rejoin Mrs. Crane. “I’m sure worship should be silent, without much noise at all. Up home the little church is so small and sort of holy. You just have that feeling when you go in, and still it’s very plain and poorly furnished, and we haven’t a vested choir. The girls sing, and Cousin Roxy plays the organ.”

Bab sighed.

“Jean, you’re getting acclimated up there. I can see the signs. Even now your heart’s turning back home. Never mind. We’ll listen to Aunt Win’s Russian choir tonight, and that shall suffice.”

In the afternoon, some friends came in for tea, and Jean found her old-time favorite teacher, Daddy Higginson, as all the girls called him at the school. He was about seventy, but erect and quick of step as any of the boys; smooth shaven, with iron gray hair, close cut and curly, and keen, whimsical brown eyes. He was really splendid looking, she thought.

“You know, Jeanie,” he began, slipping comfortably down a trifle in his easy chair, as Bab handed him a third cup of tea, “you’re looking fine. How’s the work coming along up there in your hill country? Doing anything?”

Jean flushed slightly.

“Nothing in earnest, Mr. Higginson. I rather gave up even the hope of going on with it, after we went away.”

“You couldn’t give it up if it is in you,” he answered. “That’s one of the charms and blessings of the divine fire. If it ever does start a blaze in your soul’s shrine, it can never be put out. They can smother it down, and stamp on it, and cover it up with ashes of dead hopes, all that, but sure as anything, once the mind is relaxed and at peace with itself, the fire will burn again. You’re going back, I hear from Bab.”

Jean nodded.

“I’m the eldest, and the others are all in school. I’m needed.”

He smiled, looking down at the fire Justine had prepared for them on the wide hearth.

“That’s all right. Anything that tempers character while you’re young, is good for the whole system. I was born out west in Kansas, way back in pioneer days. I used to ride cattle for my father when I was only about ten. And, Lord Almighty, those nights on the plains taught my heart the song of life. I wouldn’t take back one single hour of them. We lived in a little dugout cabin, two rooms, that’s all, and my mother came of a fine old colonial family out of Colebrook, in your state. She made the trip with my father and two of us boys, Ned and myself. I can just remember walking ahead of the big wagon with my father, chopping down underbrush and trees for us to get through.”

“Wasn’t it dangerous?” asked Jean, eagerly.

“Dangerous? No! The Indians we met hadn’t learned yet that the white man was an enemy. We were treated well by them. I know after we got settled in the little house, baking day, two or three of them would stand outside the door, waiting while my mother baked bread, and cake and doughnuts and cookies, in New England style, just for all the world like a lot of hungry, curious boys, and she always gave them some.”

“Did you draw and paint them?”

He laughed, a round, hearty laugh that made Mrs. Crane smile over at them.

“Never touched a brush until after I was thirty. I loved color and could see it. I knew that shadows were purple or blue, and I used to squint one eye to get the tint of the earth after we’d ploughed, dull rusty red like old wounds, it was. First sketch I ever drew was one of my sister Polly. She stood on the edge of a gully hunting some stray turkeys. I’ve got the painting I made later from that sketch. It was exhibited too, called ‘Sundown.’”

“Oh, I saw it,” Jean exclaimed. “The land is all in deep blues and hyacinth tones and the sky is amber and the queerest green, and her skirt is just a dash of red.”

“That’s what she always made me think of, a dash of red. The red that shows under an oriole’s wing when he flies. She was seventeen then. About your age, isn’t that, Jeanie?”

He glanced at her sideways. Jean nodded.

“I thought so, although she looked younger with her hair all down her back, and short dresses on.”

“I—I hope she didn’t die,” said Jean, anxiously.

“Die? Bless your heart,” he laughed again. “She’s living up in Colebrook. Went back over the old trail her mother had travelled, but in a Pullman car, and married in the old home town. Pioneer people live to be pretty old. Just think, girlie, in your autumn of life, there won’t be any of us old timers left who can remember what a dugout looked like or a pioneer ox cart.”

“It must have been wonderful,” Jean said. “Mother’s from the west too, you know, only way out west, from California. Her brother has the big ranch there now where she was born, but she never knew any hardships at all. Everything was comfortable and there was always plenty of money, she says, and it never seemed like the real west to us girls, when she’d tell of it.”

“Oh, but it is, the real west of the last forty years, as it is grown up to success and prosperity. Ned lives out there still, runs for the State Legislature now and then, keeps a couple of automobiles, and his girls can tell you all that’s going on in the world just as easily as they can bake and keep house if they have to. If I keep you here talking any longer to an old fellow like myself, the boys won’t be responsible for their action. You’re a novelty, you know, Piper’s glaring at me.”

He rose leisurely, and went over beside Aunt Win’s chair, and Piper Pearson hurried to take his place.

“I thought he’d keep you talking here all night. And you sat there drinking it all in as if you liked it.”

“I did,” said Jean, flatly. “I loved it. I haven’t been here at all. I’ve been way out on the Kansas prairie.”

“Stuff,” said Piper calmly. “Say, got any good dogs up at your place?”

“No, why?” Jean looked at him with sudden curiosity.

“Nothing, only you remember when you were moving from the Cove, Doris sold me her Boston bull pup Jiggers?”

“Oh, I know all about it.” As if she could ever forget how they had all felt when Doris parted with her dearest treasure and brought the ten dollars in to add to the family fund.

“We’ve got some dandy puppies. I was wondering whether you’d take one home to Doris from me if I brought it in.”

“I’d love to,” said Jean, her face aglow. It was just like a boy to think of that, and how Doris would love it, one of Jiggers’ own family. “I think we’ll call it Piper, if you don’t mind.”

Piper didn’t mind in the least. In fact, he felt it would be a sign of remembrance, he said. And he would bring in the puppy as soon as Jean was ready to go home.

“But you needn’t hurry her,” Bab warned, coming to sit with them. “She’s only been down a week, and I’m hoping if I can just stretch it along rather unconsciously, she’ll stay right through the term, the way she should.”

Jean felt almost guilty, as her own heart echoed the wish. How she would study, if only it could happen. Yet there came the tug of homesickness too, along the end of the second week. Perhaps it was Kit’s letter that did it, telling how the house was at sixes and sevens without her, and Mother had to be in fifty places at once.

Jean had to laugh over that part though, for Kit was noted for her ability to attend to exactly one thing at a time.

“Now, Shad, I can’t attend to more than one thing at a time, you know.”

“Can’t you?” Shad had responded, meditatively. “Miss Roxy can tend to sixty-nine and a half things at the same time with her eyes shut and one hand tied.”

Then suddenly, out of the blue sky came the bolt. It was a telegram signed “Mother.”

“Come at once. Am leaving for California.”

Jean never stopped to think twice. It was the call to duty, and she caught the noon train back to Gilead Center.