5. New York Dreams Come True
Christmas week had already passed when the surprise came. As Kit said the charm of the unexpected was always catching you unaware when you lived on the edge of nowhere.
Beth and Elliott had departed two days after Christmas for New York. Somehow even Tommy could not get really acquainted with this new boy cousin. Billie, once won, was a friend forever, but Elliott was a smiling, confident boy, quiet and resourceful, with little to say.
By this time, Jean had settled down contentedly to the winter regime. She was giving Doris piano lessons, and taking over more of the household duties with Kit back at school. School had been one of the problems to be solved that first year. Doris and Tommy went to the District schoolhouse at the crossroads, a one-story, red frame building. Doris had despised it thoroughly until she heard that her father had gone there in his boyhood, and she had found his old desk with his initials carved on it.
Kit was in high school, and the nearest one was over the hills six miles away. Every morning, she caught the school bus at the end of the drive. Mrs. Craig would often stand out on the wide porch in the early morning and watch the three go off.
“I think they’re wonderfully plucky,” she said one morning to Jean. “If they had been country girls, born and bred, it would be different, but stepping right out of Long Island shore life into these hills, you have all managed splendidly.”
“We’d have been a fine lot of quitters if we hadn’t,” Jean answered. “I think it’s been much harder for you than for us, Mom.”
And then the oddest, most unexpected thing had happened, something that strengthened the bond between them and made Jean’s way easier. Her mother had turned and had met Jean’s glance with a telltale flush on her cheeks and a certain whimsical glint in her eyes.
“Jean, do you never suspect me?” she had asked, half laughingly. “I know just exactly what a struggle you have gone through, and how you miss all that lies back in New York. I do too. If we could just divide up the time, and live part of the year here and the other part back at the Cove. I wouldn’t dare tell Becky that I had ever regretted, but there are days when the silence and the loneliness up here seem to crush so strongly in on one.”
“Oh, Mom! I never knew you felt like that.” Jean leaned her head against her shoulder. “I’ve been horribly selfish, just thinking of myself. But now that Dad’s getting strong again, you can go away, can’t you, for a little visit anyway?”
“Not without him,” Mrs. Craig said decidedly. “Perhaps by next summer we can, I don’t know. I don’t want to suggest it until he feels the need of a change too. But I’ve been thinking about you, Jean, and I want you to go to school in New York for a little while anyway. Beth and I had a talk together before she left, and I felt proud of you, when I heard her speak of your work. She says the greatest worry on her mind is that Elliott has no definite ambition, no aim. He has always had everything that they could give him, and she begins now to realize it was all wrong.”
“But, Mother, how can I go and leave you?”
“I want you to, Jean. You have been a great help to me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed everything you have done to save me worry, because I have.”
“Well, you had Dad to care for—”
“I know, and he’s so much better now that I haven’t any dread left.”
Peg Moffat wrote after receiving her Christmas box from Jean. Jean had gathered pine cones, ground pine, sprays of red berries, and little winter ferns. It was one of several she had sent to friends in the city for whom she felt she could not afford expensive presents.
Peg had caught the real spirit of it, and had written back urgently. “You must run down if only for a few days, Jean. I put the pines and other greens around the studio for decorations at Christmas and they just talk at me about you all the time. Never mind about new clothes. Come along.”
It was these same new clothes that secretly worried Jean all the same, but with some new ribbon for two of her formals, her brown wool suit cleaned, and a new feather for her hat, she felt she could make the trip if it were only possible.
It was the letter that arrived the following day that really caused a stir in the family. Beth wrote to Jean that there was a special course beginning the following week at the Academy in textile designing. It was only a two-months’ course so it wouldn’t be very expensive and Jean could stay with her, eliminating the problem of board. “I really think if you can possibly be spared from home at this time, it would be a wise thing for you to enroll in the course. It is in the field you’re interested in and you will learn both valuable and practical things from it. Please write me immediately and say you’ll come.”
When Jean showed the letter to her mother, her answer was swift and decisive. “An opportunity such as this cannot be ignored. Of course you will go.”
The winter sunshine had barely clambered to the crests of the hills the following morning when Becky drove up with Ella Lou.
“Thought I’d get an early start so I could sit awhile with you,” she called breezily. “The Judge had to go to court at Putnam. Real sad case, too. Some of our neighborhood boys in trouble. I told him not to dare send them up to any State homes or reformatories, but to put them on probation and make their families pay the fines.”
Kit was just putting on her stadium boots. “Oh, what is it, Becky?” she called from the kitchen. “What’s the news?”
“Well, I guess it’s pretty exciting for the poor mothers.” Mrs. Ellis put her feet up on the stool. “There’s been considerable things stolen lately, just odds and ends of harness and bicycle supplies from the store, and three hams from Miss Bugbee’s cellar, and so on; a little here and a little there, hardly no more’n a real smart magpie could make away with. But the men set out to catch whoever it might be, and if they didn’t land three of our own boys. It makes every mother in town shiver.”
“None that we know, are there?” asked Doris, with wide eyes.
“I guess not, unless maybe Abby Tucker’s brother Martin. There his poor mother scrimped and saved for weeks to buy him a bicycle out of her butter-and-egg money, and it just landed him in mischief. Off he kited, first here and then there with the two Lonergan boys, and they had a camp up toward Cynthy Allan’s place, where they played they were cave robbers or something. I had the Judge up and promise he’d let them off on probation. There isn’t one of them over fifteen, and Elmhurst can’t afford to let her boys go to prison. And I shall drive over this afternoon and give their mothers some good advice.”
“Why not the fathers too?” asked Jean. “Seems as if mothers get all the blame when boys go wrong.”
“No, it isn’t that exactly. I knew the two fathers when they were youngsters too. Fred Lonergan was as nice and obliging a lad as ever you did see, but he always liked cider too well, and that made him lax. I used to tell him when he couldn’t get it any other way, he’d squeeze the dried winter apples hanging still on the wild trees. He’ll have to pay the money damage, but the real sorrow of the heart will fall on Emily, his wife. She used to be our minister’s daughter, and she knows what’s right. And the Tucker boy never did have any sense or his father before him, but his mother’s the best quilter we’ve got. If I’d been in her shoes I’d have put Philemon Tucker right straight out of the house just as soon as he began to squander and hang around the grocery store swapping stories with men just like him. It’s her house from her father, and I shall put her right up to making Philemon walk a chalk line after this, and do his duty as a father.”
“Oh, you’re a glorious peacemaker,” exclaimed Mrs. Craig. “Hurry, children, you’ll be late for school.” She hurriedly put the last touches to three hearty lunches, and followed them out to the front porch and watched them out of sight.
“Lovely morning,” said Becky, fervently. “The ice on the trees makes the country look like fairyland.”
“And here I’ve been shivering ever since I got out of bed,” Jean cried, laughingly. “It seemed so bleak and cheerless. You find something beautiful in everything, Becky.”
“Well, happiness is a sort of habit, I guess, Jeannie. Come tell me, now, how you are fixed about going away? That’s why I came down.”
“You mean—”
“I mean in clothes. Don’t mind my speaking right out, because I know that Beth will want to take you places, and you must look right. And don’t you say one word against it, Margaret,” as Mrs. Craig started to speak. “The child must have her chance. Makes me think, Jean, of my first silk dress. Nobody knew how much I wanted one, and I was about fourteen, skinny and overgrown, with pigtails down my back. A well-to-do aunt in Boston sent a silk dress to my little sister Susan who died. I can see it now, just as plain as can be, a sort of dark bottle-green with a little spray of violets here and there. Susan was sort of pining anyway, and green made her look too pale, so the dress was set aside for me. Mother said she’d let the hem down and face it when she had time. But there was a picnic and my heart hungered for that silk dress to wear. I managed somehow to squeeze into it, and slip away with the other girls before Mother noticed me.”
“But did it fit you?” asked Jean.
“Fit me?” Becky laughed. “Fit me like an acorn cap would a bullfrog. I let the hem down as far as I could, but didn’t stop to hem it or face it, and there it hung, six inches below my petticoat, with the sun shining through as nice as could be. My Sunday School teacher took me to one side and said severely, ‘Rebecca Craig, does your mother know that you’ve let that hem down without fixing it properly?’ Well, it did take away my hankering for a silk dress. Now, run along upstairs and get out all your wardrobe so we can look it over.”
Jean obeyed for somehow Becky swept away objections before her airily. And the wardrobe was at a low ebb.
Becky dragged her chair over beside the couch now, and took inventory of the pile of clothing Jean laid there.
“You’ll want a good knockabout sport coat like the other girls are wearing. Then a couple of new sweaters and skirts for school. Now, what about date dresses?”
Here Jean felt quite proud as she laid out her assortment. She and Kit had always gone out a good deal at the Cove, and she had a number of well-chosen, expensive dresses.
“They look all right to me, but I guess Beth will know what to do to them, with a touch here and there. Well, if I were you, I’d just bundle all I wanted to take along in the way of pretty things into the trunk and let Beth tell you what to do with them. I’ll give you the money to buy the other things you’ll need in New York. Their stores have more selection than what we’ve got around here. Good heavens, child, you’ll squeeze the breath out of me,” as Jean gave her a hug of thanks. “I must be going along.”