7. Country Bound
While some of the Long Island farms had begun to look faintly green by the end of March, not a blade or a leaf was unfurled anywhere around Elmhurst. There was a feeling of spring in the air with a promise of buds ready to open.
Jean put on her yellow topper, tied a scarf over her head and put on a pair of pigskin gloves. She was waiting for Matt to drive around from the garage with the car and Ella Lou, Becky’s big tan and white collie. Matt was Rebecca’s hired help, smooth-faced and lean, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty. He took care of three horses and two cows and worked the farm with outside help in busy seasons.
Ella Lou was a lovable dog who followed Becky wherever she went and since Jean’s arrival, she had taken to tagging her footsteps too. She knew every road in the township. Not a thing could be changed that Ella Lou did not take note of the fact the next time she passed by.
Today when Matt drove up with her, she was standing in the back seat with her muzzle hanging out of the window. She acted as wise and knowing as could be, turning her head around to look at Jean and barking just as if she was saying “We’re going after them at last, aren’t we?”
Becky stood at the screened pantry window, mixing pie crust. She leaned down and called some last advice as Jean got into the car and adjusted the rear view mirror.
“Park beside the express office, Jeannie. There’s usually plenty of room to park there. And have the girls and Tommy sit on the back seat ’cause them springs are kind of giving way, and your Mother’s nervous. And bring up a bulb for the hall light from the Mill Company Store. No, never mind,” just as Jean stepped on the starter, “’cause they don’t carry them, come to think of it. Goodbye. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding the way. Just keep on the main highway and you’ll get there.”
Jean laughed and waved her hand. It was the first time she had driven since she had come to Elmhurst and Becky was a little apprehensive about letting her go alone.
Maple Grove stood just at the crossroads, a white comfortable-looking house, one-and-a-half stories high, with a long low “ell” hitched on to the back, and a white woodshed leaning up against it for company.
Four great rock maples grew before its spacious lawn like a row of Titan sentinels. The Baltimore orioles and robins nested in them and contended with the chipmunks for squatter’s rights.
The house stood on a hill that faced the sunset. Down from the orchard sloped corn fields and rye fields. Below the winding white road was a deep ravine where a brook ran helter-skelter by hilly pastures until it slipped away into the cool shade of a quiet glen, sweet-scented with hemlock and spruce.
In the distance, hill after hill rose in mellowed beauty, each seeming to lean in sisterly fashion against the next taller one. The course of Little River could be traced down through the valley by its fringe of willows and alders. For perhaps fifteen miles it rambled, winding in and out around little islands, dodging old submerged trees that lifted skeleton arms in protest, spreading out above some old rock dam into a tiny lake, then dashing like some wild thing being chased through a mill run and out again into low, moist meadows, thick with flag and rushes.
At a point about a mile below the house stood the old Barlow lumber mill. Ella Lou barked at a dog as they passed by. Jean drove leisurely, knowing she had plenty of time. Once she put on the brakes suddenly when she saw a shadowy brown shape that skitted across the road in front of the car. She wondered whether it was a rabbit or a muskrat. Already she was catching the country spirit. Little objects of everyday life held a meaning for her and she found herself watching eagerly for new surprises as she drove along the old river road. How the kids would love it all, she thought, with a little tightening of her throat. It might be a little lonesome at first, but surely it was, as Becky said, a peaceful countryside.
The final decision on the new home site was to be left to her mother. Several places had been selected with a leaning toward Woodhow, but, as Becky suggested, Margie must be left unbiased to form her own opinion, although according to her way of thinking, no sensible person with half their wits could pass over the merits of Woodhow, or the wonderful opportunities it presented.
“It’s going to rack and ruin and it fairly cries out for somebody to take hold of it and get it in shape,” she had said. “I don’t know but what I’d drive by it if I were you, Jeannie, on your way back from the station, even if it is a little out of your way, just to see the look on your mother’s face when she sees it.”
It was a drive of seven miles down to Nantic, the nearest railroad station. Jean made it in good time and parked beside the express office, as Becky had suggested. Already, it appeared, Mr. Briggs, the station master, knew Jean, and smiled over at the trim, city-like figure pacing up and down on the platform waiting for the Willimantic train. This was the side line up to Providence that connected with the Boston express from New York.
“Expecting some of your family up?” asked Mr. Briggs pleasantly. Nobody could say that friendly interest in strangers and their affairs was not evinced around Nantic. It was part of the joy of life to Mr. Briggs to locate their general intentions.
“My mother and sisters and brother,” Jean answered happily.
“Figure on staying awhile, do they?”
She nodded rather proudly. “We’re going to live here. We’re Miss Craig’s cousins. You’ll have the freight car up with our goods this week.”
“Like enough,” said Mr. Briggs encouragingly. “Yes, I knew you belonged to Becky. I’ve known Becky herself since she was knee-high to a toadstool. There comes your local.”
Around the hillside bend of track came the train, the wonderful train that was bringing Mother and Doris and Kit and Tommy up out of the world of uncertainty and trouble into this haven of blossoming hopes. It seemed to Jean as if seconds turned to minutes. She wanted to stretch out both her arms to it as it slowed down and puffed, but there on the last car she caught a glimpse of Kit, one foot all ready to hop off, waving one hand and hanging on with the other.
“Oh, Mom darling,” Jean cried joyously, once she had them all safe on the platform. “It’s so beautiful up here, and Dad’s looking better every day. He sits up for a while now, and the old doctor told us the only thing that ailed him was a little distemper. Isn’t that a riot? Where are your trunks?”
But this was Mr. Brigg’s cue to come forward, hat in hand, and be introduced, so he took the baggage under his own personal supervision. It appeared that you never could tell anything about when trunks were liable to show up once they got started for Nantic, but, barring accidents, they’d come up on the six o’clock train, and there wasn’t a bit of use putting any reliance on that either, ’cause they might not show up till the milk train next morning.
“Hope you’ll like it up here,” was his parting remark, as they drove up the hill road, and Kit called back that they liked it already, much to Mr. Brigg’s delight.
Mrs. Craig sat on the front seat, both as the place of honor and in remembrance of Rebecca’s warning against the back springs. At the top of the hill Jean stopped the car, so they could look back at the little town. There was the huge one-story stone mill, covering acres of ground, with immense ventilators looking like those on steamships or like strange uprearing heads of prehistoric reptiles.
The little crooked main street could be traced by its lines of buildings, and back in a mass of trees stood the old French convent. Scattered everywhere were the houses of the mill workers, all of a uniform pattern, painted white with green blinds, and a patch of green yard to each.
Jean, flushed and proud of her responsibility, turned to pat Ella Lou’s head, then started the car and headed for home. The maple buds were swelling and looked rosy red against the thickets of dark shiny green laurel. Behind them rose slim lines of white birches.
“How far is it, Jeannie?” asked Doris. Just then the road came out on another hilltop overlooking the big reservoir. “Oh, look, look, kids,” she cried. “Isn’t it like a bit of out West, Mom? All those rocks and pines.”
“I’d rather have these gorgeous hills than all the mountains going,” Kit declared with her usual forcefulness. “We seem to be going up higher and higher all the time.”
“So we are,” Jean told her. “It’s a steady rise from New London to Norwich, then up to our own Quinnebaug hills. Are you warm enough, Mom?”
“Plenty,” said Mrs. Craig happily. “Though it is ever so much cooler here than on Long Island, isn’t it?”
“We’ve got an open log fire in your room all ready for you,” Jean replied. “You can just sit and toast away to your heart’s content.”
“For gosh sake, who ever had the courage to carry all the rocks for these stone walls?” asked Kit.
“Those are the stones that were ploughed up when the land was cultivated,” answered Jean. “The land here is particularly stony, so instead of wooden fences, the farmers use the stones they uncover for marking off their boundaries. Our house will probably have them too.”
“Oh, how you talk, dear,” laughed Mrs. Craig. “When we haven’t even a home yet. You’d think there was a baronial estate waiting for us.”
“There is,” Jean answered mysteriously. “Becky and I think that we’ve found the right place. Dad hasn’t seen it, of course, but I found it, and Becky said we couldn’t get it because somebody’d died, and it had gone to people out West.”
“Which gave our precious old Jean a chance to delve into mystery,” Kit suggested. “Yes, yes, go on, kid. You’re killing us with suspense. What did you find out?”
“Oh, I found him,” said Jean, enthusiastically. “He lives away out West in Saskatoon, and has never even seen this place, so he’s willing to sell it for almost nothing, $4,000, and even that includes the water power.”
Kit shook her head deploringly.
“Listen to the poor child, Mom. She chats of thousands as if they were split peas and she was making soup.”
“Shut up, Kit. He’ll rent it for sixty-five dollars a month, timber rights reserved excepting for our own use, and we can sell the hay.”
“How many rooms, dear?” asked Mrs. Craig.
“Seven,” replied Jean. “They call it Woodhow and I think it’s a beautiful name.”
“Where is it?” Doris inquired cautiously.
“When can we move in?” Tommy asked practically.
“Well, you can see the roof, I think, as soon as we get up to the top of Peck’s Hill. I’ll stop then. It’s fearfully lonesome, and maybe you’d rather be in the village. Becky says that some people do say—”
“Make her shut up,” Kit exclaimed. “Jean, you’re talking exactly like Becky. Isn’t she, Mother?”
“Never mind, dear. Go right on,” comforted Mrs. Craig, smiling at the eager young face beside her. Three weeks at Maple Grove had surely taken a lot of the spread out of Jean’s sails.
“I don’t think we’d be one bit lonely. It’s about a mile from Maple Grove, and half a mile from Mr. Peck’s place down the valley, and the mail goes right by the door. And there’s an old ruined stone mill on an island, and a waterfall, and a bridge, and big pines along the terrace in the front yard. It does need painting, I suppose, and shingling in spots, and the porch lops a little bit where it needs shoring up, Matt told me—” Jean stopped for breath.
“Specify Matt,” Doris asked mildly. “We don’t know a thing about Matt, Jeannie.”
“He’s the hired man, and he can do anything.”
“But, dear,” interrupted Mrs. Craig, “can’t you realize that there must be something wrong with it or it never would be rented for such a sum.”
“Oh, there is,” Jean replied promptly. “It’s too far from the railroad or village, and the mill burned down six years ago, and the owner died from the shock of losing everything he had, and there it stands, going to rack and ruin, Becky says, waiting for the Craigs to appear and turn it into a home.”
“How about school?” asked Kit suddenly.
Jean waved her hand grandly.
“Who wants a school out here? But if you’re so set on one, there’s a school over at the Gayhead crossroads. There’s a school bus that picks the kids up and takes them home again at night.”
“Jean has us all moved and settled already,” Mrs. Craig said. “I’m sure I’d like to be near where Rebecca lives.”
“Well, there it is,” Jean exclaimed happily. Ella Lou pricked up her ears and started to whine excitedly. Down one little hill, up another, over a culvert, and suddenly there appeared white chimneys rising above an apple orchard at the top of the hill.
“There it is,” she said, pointing to it with her hand. “Seven miles from nowhere, but right next door to heaven.”