9. Letters from Home
Jean confessed her mistake to Beth after they had returned home. There were just a few minutes to spare before bedtime, after wishing Aldo 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 wolfhound, Beth—”
Mrs. Newell laughed softly. “That was Betty Goodwin. Betty loves to dress up. She plays little parts for herself all the time. I think today she was an Austrian princess perhaps. The next time she will be a tailor-made English girl. Betty indulges 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, 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. I don’t think she has much use for my kind of art. She thinks only real geniuses should paint.”
“Nonsense. Paint all you like. It will train you in form and color and that you can apply later to your designing. 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 worthwhile in the art line. But in any event you would have no regrets. I mean you could live the rest of your life contentedly, without feeling there was something you had missed. It was odd your meeting the Contessa as you did. She likes you very much. Now run along and good night, dear.”
When Jean reached her own room, she found a surprise. On the desk lay a letter from home that Mathilda had laid there. Mathilda was Beth’s standby, as she said. She was tall and spare and middle-aged, with a broad serene face, and sandy-red hair worn parted in the middle. It was just like her, Jean thought, to lay the letter from home 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 several as soon as you got it out of the envelope. The one on top was from her mother, written just before the mail truck came up the hill.
Dear Princess,
You have been much on my mind, but I haven’t time for a long letter, since Mr. Ricketts may chug up over the hill any minute, and he won’t wait. I am ever so glad for you that you have had this opportunity to study again. Dad is really quite himself these days, and Becky has lent me Mrs. Gorham, so the work has been very easy for me, even without you.
Becky says it looks like an early spring this year, although how she can tell when it is still so bleak and barren is beyond me. The roads are still piled with snow and the river is frozen over. The girls, Tommy, and Jack have been skating almost every day.
Have you everything you need? Let me know otherwise. You know, I can always find some way out. Write often to us, my dear. I feel very near you these days in love and thought. Your character is developing so fast and I want to watch so carefully. There is always a curious bond between the firstborn and a mother, to the mother especially, for you taught me motherhood, my darling. 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 other letters. Mothers were wonderful persons, she thought. Their loving arms 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 Doris, quite like her too. Brief and beautifully penned on her very own pink notepaper.
I do hope you are having a wonderful time. Have you met any glamorous people yet? If you have, I hope you write us all about them. I want to know everything.
School is very uninteresting just now and it is cold walking to school. But I do have that one teacher that I’m crazy about, you know, Miss Simmons. She wears such nice clothes and her voice is so beautiful. I can’t bear people with loud voices. When I see her in the morning, it just wipes out all the cold walk and everything that’s gone wrong.
I wish I could have gone away to school like you and Billie, or at least I wish Billie was back home. Kit says it’s time to go to bed.
Your loving sister,
Doris.
“Oh, Doris, you crazy kid,” Jean laughed to herself. The letter was entirely typical of Doris and her vagaries.
Tommy’s letter was hurried.
Dear Jean,
We miss you awfully. Jack got hurt yesterday. His foot was jammed when a tree fell on it. He is better now because I helped to take care of his foot. He wasn’t hurt badly.
We go skating every day for the river is frozen over. Jack and I and some of the other boys have been playing hockey with my new puck that you gave me for Christmas.
Mrs. Gorham made caramel filling today the way you do and it all ran out in the oven. 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 went wrong, she just lost her head completely. Isn’t that funny? Bring me home a puppy. I’d love it.
Love,
Tommy.
The letter from her father was gay and cheerful and full of advice. He did sound better, just as her mother had said.
Jeannie dear,
Although we all miss you, we seem to be getting along pretty well. With Mrs. Gorham to help, your mother does not have too much to do.
The Judge dropped in last evening for a visit. He says that Billie is getting along splendidly at school. He has many new friends and seems to like the work. Becky and the Judge, of course, miss him as we do you, my dear.
I am in the middle of an interesting new book on world economics. I wish you were here so that I could read parts of it to you. Even though your art work is very important, it is equally valuable to be well-informed on the affairs of the world in which you live. I hope you will keep this bit of advice in mind, for in order to be fully successful, you must keep abreast of the times and not be so completely engrossed in your work, that you fail to recognize what goes on around you.
But I didn’t mean to start preaching. You shall learn all this as you study and grow older, I am sure. I expect to see great changes in you when you return. But do not change too much so that we won’t know you. We love you as you are, darling.
With all my love,
Dad.
Jean was quite moved by this letter, for her father was making her responsible for her own future. It made her feel quite different somehow, as though she was entrusted with the power to make or break her own career.
Last of all was Kit’s letter, two sheets of penciled scribbling, crowded together on both sides.
Hi, Jean,
I’m writing this the last thing at night when my brain is getting calm. Any old time the poet starts singing carelessly of the joys and beauties of the country in the wintertime, I hope he lands on this waste spot during a January blizzard. He’d change his mind in a hurry.
If you get your hands on any of the current fashion magazines, be sure to send them home to us. Even if we can’t indulge, we can dream, can’t we? I’m getting awfully tired of skirts and sweaters. It’s high time I was allowed to burst forth in something really stunning that would knock everybody cold.
I have a new friend, a dog. Jack says he’s just a stray, but he isn’t. He’s a shepherd dog, and very intelligent. I’ve named him Mac. He fights with Tommy, which is strange for that brother of ours usually has a way with animals. I guess he’s just a one-man dog, for he likes me alone.
I miss you in the evenings an awful lot. Doris goes around in a sort of moon ring of romance nowadays, so it’s no fun talking to her, and Tommy spends most of his time fooling around with those blasted airplanes of his. His attitude toward Jack is really wonderful, it’s almost fatherly. Did you ever wish we had another boy in the family? I do now and then. I’d like one about sixteen, just between us two, that I could be pals with. Tommy’s too little. Buzzy comes the nearest to being a big brother that I’ve ever had. That guy really had a marvelous sense of fairness, Jean, do you realize that? I hope being out West hasn’t changed him too much. I liked him the way he was. I am impatient for his return. Do you feel the same way about Ralph?
Well, my dear artistic close relative and beloved sister, it is almost ten, so it’s time for Kathleen to turn into her lonely cot. Give my love to Beth, and write to me personally. We can’t bear your inclusive family letters.
Yours,
Kit.
If it hadn’t been so late, Jean felt she could have sat down then and there, and answered every one of them. They took her straight back to Woodhow and all the daily round of fun there. In the morning she read parts of them to Aldo.
“Ah, but you are lucky,” Aldo said quietly when she had finished. “I am just myself, and it’s so monotonous. I wish I could meet your family and know them all.”
“They are a wonderful family, although I rather envy you in a way. Sometimes it seems as if one loses individuality in a large family.”
“You shouldn’t feel that way,” replied Aldo. “Why, look, here you are in New York about to start studying again. Isn’t that proof enough that there is room for individuality even in a big family?”
Jean thought of this later when she was getting ready for the next day at school and decided that Aldo was probably right. “I’ll work so hard these next two months, that the family will be convinced that the time was well spent. I’ll make them proud of me, or at least I’ll try.”