12. Homesick
No qualms of homesickness visited Kit the first two months after school opened. Not even New England could eclipse the glory of autumn when it swept in full splendor over this corner of the Lake States. Down east there was a sort of middle-aged relaxation to this season of the year.
But here autumn came as a gypsy. The stretches of forest that fringed the ravines rioted in color. The lakes seemed to take on the very deepest sapphire blue. No hush lay over the land as it did in the East, but there were wild sudden storm flurries, a feeling in the air as if there might be a regular tornado any minute.
Hardly a Saturday passed but what Kit was included in some fall picnic hike or else she was off to a football game. The Dean never joined these, but occasionally Della did and thoroughly enjoyed them. And once, toward the end of November, in the very last of Indian summer weather, they took a weekend tour up to Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls.
“I only wish,” Rex said, “that we could come up here next spring when they have their big logging time. It’s one of the greatest sights you ever saw, Kit. I have seen the logs jammed out there in the river until they looked like a giant’s game of jackstraws. Maybe we could arrange a trip, don’t you think so, Mom?”
“I don’t see any reason why not,” replied Mrs. Bellamy.
“But I won’t be here then,” protested Kit.
“Oh, you’ll stay till the end of the spring term, dear,” Della corrected, and right then Kit experienced her first pang of homesickness. Would she really be away from home until next June? Even with this novelty of recreation, backed by wealth, she felt suddenly as though she could have slipped away from it all without a single regret, just to find herself safely back home with the family.
One weekend while Jean was home at Maple Grove, she and her mother were talking together about Jean’s work. Doris and Tommy with Jack had walked over to Woodhow to help Mr. Craig, so Jean and her mother were alone.
Each time Jean came home she found herself turning with a sigh of relief and safety from the city life to the peace of the hills. It was her comment on this to her mother that had prompted their talk.
“Are you going to begin looking into job possibilities while you are in New York, Jean?” asked her mother. “I think if you are really serious about a career, you should begin getting interviews for a job next year.”
“No Mom,” replied Jean. “I think I have reached an important decision. I wasn’t going to tell you until my course was over and I was positive I was right, but I’ll tell you now since you asked. I love Ralph more than I do a career and if he asks me to marry him, I’ll say yes. I’ve learned to analyze my feelings and I am quite sure my love for art is only a hobby. To have a happy marriage like yours and Dad’s is, is the most important thing I want.”
“You have made a wise and difficult decision, my dear,” said Mrs. Craig tenderly. “Your father and I have felt all along that Ralph was ideally suited for you, but we wanted you to make your own decisions first.”
Just then, the mailman brought Kit’s next letter and Jean read it over her mother’s shoulder. A little puzzled frown drew Jean’s straight dark brows together.
“She’s getting homesick, Mother. Kit never writes tenderly like that unless she feels a heart throb. I never thought she’d last as long as she has—”
But Mrs. Craig looked dubious.
“She seems to have made such a good impression. I hate to have her spoil it by jumping back too soon. It’s such an opportunity for her.”
Jean stopped washing the dishes and gazed out of the kitchen window toward the fields, where none but the crows could find a living now.
“I don’t blame her a bit if she wants to come back home before summer, Mom. Money isn’t everything.”
“That’s true,” sighed her mother. “But it’s a shame not to take advantage of it when it comes your way.”
“Just the same, if I were you, I’d write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas vacation if she wanted to.”
But Becky took an entirely different view of the matter when she was consulted. “Fiddlesticks,” she said. “No girl of Kit’s age knows what she wants two minutes of the time. She isn’t needed here at all, Margaret. Doris is getting plenty old enough to take hold and help.”
So two letters went back to Kit, and in hers Mrs. Craig could not resist slipping a hint that perhaps it would be a wise thing to ask the Dean about ending her visit at Christmas time.
But Jean added in hers, “Mother’s afraid you are homesick, or that they may be tired of you by this time, but if I were in your place, I’d try to stay until June. Dad thinks the house may be done in time for us to go into it next month, but we’ve had lots of wet weather, and Becky says it would be horribly unhealthful to move in before the plaster has had a chance to thoroughly dry. Matt goes down every day with Dad, and they’ve kept the fire going in the furnace, so I suppose that will help some, but there isn’t a particle of need for your coming back, except Mother’s dread that you may be homesick, and you’re getting too old to mollycoddle yourself, where there’s a big interest at stake.”
Kit read this with a frown. “It’s so nice to have been born Jean, and speak on any subject as the oldest,” she said scornfully. “I know perfectly well that Mom needs me when she is moving back into the new house, and I never expected to stay so long when I came, anyway.”
She stopped short, meditating on just what this queer, choky feeling was that had swept over her. She knew that she would have given up everything, the new friends she had made, and all the winter’s fun at Hope College, just to be safely back home.