Chapter II: Part 2

“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.”

6. Leaving Home

Thursday of that week was set for Jean’s departure. This gave very little time for preparations, and Kit plunged into them with a zest and vigor that made Jean laugh.

“Well, so little ever happens up here we just have to make the most of goings and comings,” said Kit exuberantly. “And besides, I’m rather fond of you, in an offhand sort of way.”

“Of course, we’re all glad for you,” Doris put in seriously. “It’s an opportunity, Mom says, and I suppose we’ll all get one in time.”

Jean glanced up as they sat around the last evening, planning and talking. Out in the side hall stood her trunk, packed, locked, and strapped, ready for the early trip in the morning. Tommy was trying his best to nurse a frost-bitten chicken back to life out by the kitchen stove, where Jack was mending Doris’s skates. Kit and Doris were freely giving her advice.

“Enjoy yourself all you can, but think of us left at home and don’t stay too long,” advised Doris.

“Yes, and learn all about designing things for people. Personally I don’t want to make things for people,” Kit said emphatically. “I want to soar alone. I’m going with Sally to live on the top of a mountain. But, gosh, I do envy you, Jean, after all. You must write and tell us every single thing that happens, for we’ll love to hear it all. Don’t be afraid it won’t be interesting. I wish you’d even keep a diary. Buzzy told me once that his grandmother did, every day from the time she was fourteen, and they had a perfectly awful time getting rid of them when she died. Imagine burning barrels full of diaries.”

Tommy came out of the kitchen to tell them to be quiet. “I’ve just this minute got that chicken to sleep. They’re such light sleepers, but I think it will get well. It only had its poor toes frostbitten. Jack found it on the ground this morning, crowded off the perch. Chickens look so civilized, and they’re not. They’re regular savages.”

There flashed across Jean’s mind a picture of the evenings ahead without the home circle, without the familiar living room, and the other room upstairs where at this time her mother would be brushing out her soft hair, and listening to some choice bit of reading Mr. Craig had run across during the day and saved for her.

“I just wish I had a chance to go West like Sally,” Kit said suddenly. “When I’m old enough, I’m going to take up a homestead claim and live on it with a wonderful horse and some dogs, wolf dogs. I wish Sally’d wait till we were both old enough, and had finished school. She could be a forest ranger and I’d raise--”

“Ginseng,” Jean suggested mischievously. “Dopey. It takes far more courage than that just to stick it out on one of these old barren farms, all run-down and fairly begging for somebody to take them in hand. What do you want to hunt a western claim for? Besides, I don’t think there are any left anymore.”

“Space,” Kit answered with feeling. “I don’t want to see my neighbors’ chimney pots sticking up all around me through the trees. I want to gaze off at a hundred hilltops, and not see somebody’s scarecrow waggling empty sleeves at me. Sally and I have the spirits of eagles.”

“Isn’t that nice,” said Doris pleasantly. “It’ll make such a good place to spend our vacations, kids. While Sally and Kit are out soaring, we can fish and ride and have really swell times.”

“Cut it out,” Jean whispered, as Kit’s ire started to rise. “It’s getting late, really, and I have to get up while it is still night, you know. Good night all.”

The start next morning was made at seven, before the sun was up. The tears were wet on Jean’s cheeks as she climbed into the seat beside Kit, and turned to wave goodbye to the group on the porch. She had not realized before what this first trip away from home meant.

“Write us everything,” called Doris, waving both hands to her.

“Come back soon,” yelled Tommy.

But her mother went back into the house in silence, away from the living room into the study where Jean had kept her own bookcase, desk, and a few choice pictures. A few old paintbrushes lay beside Jean’s worn pigskin gloves on the table. Mrs. Craig picked up both, laid her cheek against the gloves and closed her eyes. The years were racing by so fast, so fast, she thought, and mothers must be wide-eyed and generous and fearless, when the children suddenly begin to top heads with one, and feel impatient to be out on their own.

Ready to try it alone, she thought. If it had been Kit now, she would not have felt this curious little pang. Kit was self-sufficient and full of buoyancy that was bound to carry her over obstacles, but Jean was sensitive and dependent on her environment for spur and stimulation. She heard a step behind her and turned eagerly as Mr. Craig came into the room, looking for her. He saw the brushes and the gloves in her hand, and the look in her eyes uplifted to his own. Very gently he folded his arms around her, his cheek pressed close to her brown hair.

“She’s only seventeen,” whispered Mrs. Craig.

“Eighteen in April,” he answered, “and dear, she isn’t trusting to her own strength for the flight. Don’t you know this quiet little girl of ours is mounted on Pegasus, and riding him handily in her upward trend?”

But there was no winged horse or genius in view to Jean’s blurred sight as she watched the road unroll before her, and looking back, saw only the curling smoke from Woodhow’s white chimneys.

7. Aldo from Italy

“This is truly beautiful,” Jean said, in breathless admiration, as she laid aside her coat and hat, and stood in the big living room in Hastings. The beautiful home not far from New York had been a revelation to her. Overlooking the Hudson River, the view, although totally different, reminded her a little of her former home at Sandy Cove.

The center hall had a blazing fire in the big old rock fireplace, and Victoria, a prize-winning Angora, opened her wide blue eyes at the newcomer but did not stir. In the living room was another open fire. Influence of an artist’s hand was quite evident in the details of the room. There were flowering plants at the windows, and fresh roses on the table in gracefully studied arrangements.

“You know, or maybe you don’t know,” said Beth, “that we have one hobby here, raising flowers, and especially roses. We exhibit every year, and you’ll grow to know them and love the special varieties just as I do. You have no idea, Jean, of the thrill when you find a new bloom different from all the rest.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out anything new and wonderful about this place.” Jean laughed, leaning back in the deep-seated chair. Like the rest of the room’s furniture it was slipcovered in chintz, deep cream, cross-barred in dull green, with splashy pink roses scattered here and there. Two large white Polar rugs lay on the polished floor.

“If those were not members of the Peabody family, old and venerated, they never would be allowed to bask before my fire,” Beth said. “But way back there was an Abner Peabody who sailed the northern seas, and used to bring back trophies and bestow them on members of his family as future heirlooms. Consequently, we fall over these bears in the dark, and bless Abner’s precious memory.”

After she was thoroughly warmed up and had drunk a cup of scalding tea, Jean found her way up to the room that was to be hers during her visit. It was the sunniest kind of a retreat in daffodil yellow and rich brown. The furniture was all in warm, deep-toned ivory, and there were springlike bouquets of daffodils everywhere.

“Gee, I think this is just darling,” Jean gasped, standing in the middle of the floor and gazing around happily. “It’s just as if spring were already here.”

“I put a drawing board here for you too,” Beth told her. “Of course you’ll use my studio any time you like, but it’s handy to have a corner all your own at odd times. I forgot to mention it before, but we’re going to have a guest for the weekend. A boy whose parents I knew in Sorrento years ago. His name is Aldo Thomas. His father was an American sculptor who married an Italian Contessa. Aldo is also studying art here in New York this winter and lives with his aunt. He has inherited his father’s artistic talent so I know you will find much in common. And I also think you’ll do each other a world of good.”

“How?”

“Well, you’re thoroughly an American girl, Jean, and Aldo is half Italian. You’ll understand what I mean when you see him. He is high-strung and temperamental, and you are so steady-nerved and well-balanced.”

Jean thought over this last when she was alone, and smiled to herself. Why on earth did one have to give outward signs of temperament, she wondered, before people believed one had sensitive feelings or responsive emotions? Must she wear her heart on her sleeve for a sort of personal barometer? Peg Moffat was high-strung and temperamental too. So was Kit. They both indulged now and then in mental fireworks, but nobody took them seriously, or considered it a mark of genius. She felt just a shade of half-amused tolerance toward this Aldo person who was to get any balance or poise out of her own nature.

“If Beth knew for one minute,” she told the face in the oval mirror of the dressing table, “what kind of a person you really are, she’d never trust you to balance anybody’s temperament.”

But the following day brought a trim car to the door, and out stepped Aldo. And Jean, coming down the wide center staircase, saw Beth before the fire with a tall, thin figure, whose clothes seemed to hang on him carelessly as if he wore them as a concession to convention.

“This is my cousin Jean,” said Mrs. Newell in her pleasant way. Aldo extended his hand diffidently. “I want you two to be very good friends.”

“But I know, surely, we shall be,” Aldo said easily. And at the sound of his voice Jean’s prejudices melted. He had very dark eyes with lids that drooped slightly at the outer corners. His thin face emphasized his prominent cheekbones and his skin was fair in spite of his Italian heritage.

“Now, you won’t be treated one bit as guests,” Beth told them. “You must come and go as you like, and have the freedom of the house. I keep my own study hours and like to be alone then. Do as you like and be happy. Run along, both of you.”

“She is wonderful, isn’t she?” Aldo said as they walked out to the cliff above the river. “She makes me feel always as if I were a ship waiting with loose sails, and all at once--a breeze--and I am on my way again. You have not been to Sorrento, have you? You can see the little fisher boats from our terraces. It is all so beautiful, but now the villa is quite shabby and parts of it are gone. It was bombed during the war and there are no materials to rebuild it. But it is still beautiful.”

Jean was strangely charmed by him. He was so different from anyone she had ever known. None of the boys she knew would have talked so poetically, even if they had known the right words and phrases to use. That would be sissy stuff.

“I wonder if you ever knew Peg Moffat. She’s a Long Island girl from the Cove where I used to live, and she lived abroad every year until the war came, for two or three months with her mother. She is an artist.”

“I don’t know her,” Aldo shook his head doubtfully. “You see over there, while we entertained a great deal, I was away at school in Milan or Rome and scarcely met anyone excepting in the summertime, and then we went to my aunt’s villa up on Lake Maggiore. Ah, but that is the most beautiful spot of all. There is one island there called Isola Bella. I wish I could carry it right over here with me and set it down for you to see. It is all terraces and splendid old statuary, and when you see it at sunrise it is like a jewel, it glows so with color.”

Jean stood looking down at the river, listening. There was always a lingering love in her heart for the beauty and romance of Europe, and especially of Italy. “I’d love to go there,” she said, with a little sigh.

“And that is what I was always saying when I was there, and my father told me of this country. I wanted to see it so. He would tell me of the great gray hills that climb to the north, and the craggy broken shoreline up through Maine, and the little handful of amethyst isles that lie all along it. He was born in New Hampshire, at Portsmouth. We are going up to see the house some day, but I know just what it looks like. It stands close down by the water’s edge in the old part of the town, and there is a big rambling garden with flagged walks. His grandfather was a shipbuilder and sent his ships out all over the world. And he had just one daughter. There was an artist who came up from the south in one of his ships, and he was taken very ill. So they took him in as a guest, and the daughter cared for him. And when he was well, what do you think?”

“They married.”

“But more than that,” he said warmly. “He carved the most wonderful figureheads for my great grandfather’s ships. All over the world they were famous. His son was my father.”

It was indescribable, the tone in which he said the last. It told more than anything else how much he admired this sculptor father of his. That night Jean wrote to Ralph.

Dearest Ralph,

I know you’ll want to know all about my trip. Beth met me
at Grand Central Station and we drove out here to Hastings.
Honestly, Ralph, when I saw the house, I had to blink my eyes.
It looks as if it belonged right out on the North Shore at the
Cove. The lawn sweeps down at the back to the cliffs where you
can look right down at the Hudson. And inside the house it is
summertime even now. They have flowers everywhere you look,
because they raise their own. Beth says she’ll give me slips
from her rosebushes and I can start a sunken rose garden.

A most interesting artist friend of Beth’s has come out to
spend the weekend here. His name is Aldo Thomas--the Aldo
because his mother is an Italian countess and the Thomas
because his father is an American sculptor. He has been telling
me all about Italy and his father’s statues.

Monday I begin my course at the Academy and I am so excited,
although it seems as though I have forgotten all I have
learned. I have to keep reminding myself that all of this is
really happening to me. I woke up this morning completely
bewildered for I thought I was still back in Elmhurst.

I hope to see Peg Moffat while I am here. Of course I shall
probably see her at school, but I won’t have much opportunity
to really talk to her there. She has a studio in Greenwich
Village that I am simply dying to see.

Even with all these new things to do and see and learn I still
miss you terribly. And June seems such a long way off. I wish
it were tomorrow that you were coming back so that you could
enjoy this with me. But since that is impossible I shall write
you everything that happens while I’m here.

All my love,
Jeannie

8. Jean Meets a Contessa

“I’ve just had a telephone call from your aunt, the Contessa,” Beth said to Aldo at breakfast Saturday morning. “She sends an invitation to us for this afternoon, a private view of paintings and sculpture at Henri Morel’s studio. She knew him in Italy and France, and he leaves for the west coast on Monday. There will be a small reception and tea, nothing too formal, Jean, so dress well, hold up your chin and turn out your toes, and behave with credit to your chaperon. It is your debut.”

Aldo looked at her quite seriously, but Jean caught the flutter of fun in her eyes, and knew it would not be as ceremonious as it sounded. When she was ready that afternoon she slipped into Beth’s own bedroom, at the south end of the house. Here were three rooms, all so different, and each showing a distinct phase of character. One was her winter studio. This was a large sunny room, paneled in soft-toned pine, with a wood-brown rug on the floor, and all the treasures accumulated abroad during her years there of study and travel. In this room Jean used to find the girl Beth, who had ventured forth after the laurels of genius, and found success awaiting her with love back in Hastings.

The second room was a private sitting room, comfortable furniture, and window boxes filled with blooming hyacinths. Here were framed photographs of family and friends, a portrait of Elliott over the desk, his class colors on the wall, and intimate snapshots he had sent her. This was the mother’s and wife’s room. And the last was her bedroom. Here Jean found her dressing. All in black, with a bunch of violets pinned to her waist. She turned and looked at Jean critically.

“I only had this new green suit,” said Jean. “I thought with a sort of feminine blouse it would look all right.”

The blouse was white handkerchief linen with folded-back cuffs that were edged with Irish crochet lace. Above it Jean’s eager face framed in brown hair, her brown eyes, small imperative chin with its deep cleft, and look of interest that Kit called “questioning curiosity,” all seemed accentuated.

“It’s just right, dear,” said Beth. “Go get a yellow jonquil to wear.”

There was a clean smell of fresh snow in the air as they drove along the highway to New York that afternoon. Once Aldo called out in surprise. A pair of sparrows teetered on a fence rail, bickering with each other.

“Ah, there they are,” he cried. “And in Italy now there would be no snow. My father told me of the sparrows here. He said they were such quarrelsome and saucy birds that he really didn’t like them when he lived here. But now, not seeing them, he misses their chirping.”

“How queer it is,” Jean said, “I mean the way one remembers and loves all the little things about one’s own country.”

“Not so much all the country. Just the spot of earth you spring from. He loves New England.”

“And I love Long Island. I was born there, not at the Cove, but farther down the coast near Montauk Point, and the smell of salt water and the marshes always stirs me. I love the long green rolling stretches, and the little low hills in the background like you see in paintings of the Channel Islands and some of the ones along the Scotch coast. Just a few straggly scrub pines, you know, and the willows and wild cherry trees and beach plums.”

“Somewhere I’ve read about that--the earth’s hold upon her people. I’m afraid I only respond to New York’s rolling country, too. I’ve been so homesick abroad just to look at a crooked apple tree in bloom that I didn’t know what to do. Where were you born, Aldo?”

“At the Villa Marina. Ah, but you should see it.” Aldo’s dark eyes glowed with pride. “It is dull terra cotta color, and then dull green too, the mold of ages, I think, like the under side of an olive leaf, and flowers everywhere, and poplars in long avenues. My father laughs at our love for it, and says it is just a moldy old ruin, but every summer we used to spend there. Some day perhaps you could come to see us, Jean. Would they lend her to us for a while, do you think, Mrs. Newell?”

“I should love to. Isn’t it fun dreaming of impossible things like this?”

“Sometimes they turn out to be very possible,” Beth returned, whimsically. “Hopes to me are so tangible. We just set ahead of us the big hope, and the very thought gives us incentive and endeavor and punch. Plan from now on, Jean, for one spring in Italy. Then, maybe, some spring you’ll find yourself there.”

They arrived just a little late at the Morel studio. Jean had expected it to be more of the usual workshop, where canvases heaped against the walls seemed to have collected the dust of ages, and a broom would have been a desecration. Here, you ascended in an elevator, from an entrance hall that Beth declared always made her think of an Egyptian tomb.

When they reached the ninth floor, they found themselves in the long foyer of the Morel studio. Jean had rather a confused idea of what followed. There was the meeting with Morel himself, stoop-shouldered and thin, with his vivid foreign face, half-closed eyes, and sparse gray hair. Near him stood Madame Morel, with a wealth of auburn hair and big dark eyes. Aldo said to Jean just before they were separated, “He loves to paint red hair, and Aunt Signa says she has the most wonderful hair you ever saw.”

Beth had been taken possession of by a stout smiling young man with horn-rimmed glasses and was already the center of a little group. Jean heard his name, and recognized it as that of a famous illustrator. Aldo introduced her to a tall girl in brown whom he had met in Italy, and then somehow, Jean could not have told how it happened, they drifted apart. Not but what she was glad of a breathing spell, just a chance to get her bearings. Morel was showing some recent canvases, still unframed, at the end of the studio, and everyone seemed to gravitate that way.

Jean found a quiet corner just as someone handed her fragrant tea in a little red and gold cup, and she was free to look around her. A beautiful woman had just arrived. She was tall and past first youth, but Jean leaned forward expectantly. This must be the Contessa. Her gown seemed as indefinite and elusive in detail as a cloud. It was dull blue violet in color, with a gleam of gold here and there as she moved slowly toward Morel’s group. Under a wide-brimmed felt hat, the same shade of blue violet, Jean saw the lifted face, with tired lovely eyes, and close waves of pale golden hair. And this was not all. If only Doris could have seen her, thought Jean. She had wanted a princess from real life, or a countess, anything that was tangibly romantic and noble, and here was the very pattern of a princess, even to a splendid white Russian wolfhound that followed her with docile eyes and drooping long nose.

“My dear, would you mind coaxing that absent-minded girl at the tea table to part with some lemon for my tea? And the Roquefort sandwiches are excellent too.”

Jean turned at the sound of the new voice beside her. There on the same settee sat a robust, middle-aged latecomer. Her black coat was worn and frayed, her hat altogether too youthful with its pink and purple roses veiled in net. Jean saw, too, that there was a button missing from her dress, and her collar was pinned at a slightly crooked angle. But the collar was real lace and the pin was of old pearls and amethysts. It was her face that charmed. Framed in an indistinct mass of fluffy hair, mixed gray and blonde, with a turned-up, winning mouth, and delightfully expressive eyes, it was impossible not to feel immediately interested and acquainted.

Before long, Jean found herself indulging in all sorts of confidences. They seemed united by a common feeling of, not isolation exactly, but newness to this circle.

“I enjoy it so much more sitting over here and looking on,” Jean said. “Beth, my cousin, knows everyone, of course, but it is like a painting. You close one eye, and get the group effect. And I must remember everything to write home to the girls and Tommy.”

“Tell me about them. Who are they that you love them so?” asked her new friend. “I, too, like the bird’s-eye view best. I told Morel I did not come to see anything but his pictures, and now I am ready for tea and talk.”

So Jean told all about Woodhow and the family there and before she knew it, she had disclosed too, her own hopes and ambitions, and perhaps a glimpse of what it might mean to the others at home, if she, the first to leave, could only make good. And her companion told her, in return, of how sure one must be that the career decided upon was what one really wanted before one gives up all to it.

“Over in France, and in Italy, too, but mostly in France,” she said, “I have found girls like you who before the war were living on little but hopes, wasting their time and what money could be spared them from some home over here, following false hopes, and sometimes starving. It is but a will-o’-the-wisp, this success in art, a sort of pitiful madness that takes possession of our brains and hearts and makes us forget the commonplace things in life that lie before us.”

“But how can you tell for sure?” asked Jean, leaning forward anxiously.

“Who can answer that? I have only pitied the ones who could not see that they had no genius. Ah, my dear, when you meet real genius, then you know the difference instantly. It is like the real gems and the paste. There is consecration and no thought of gain. The work is done irresistibly, spontaneously, because they cannot help it. They do not think of so-called success, it is only the fulfillment of their own visions that they love. You like to draw and paint, you say, and you have studied some in New York. What then?”

Jean pushed back her hair impulsively.

“Do you know, I think you are a little bit wrong. You won’t mind my saying that, will you, please? It is only this. Suppose we are not geniuses, we who see pictures in our minds and long to paint them. I think that is the gift too, quite as much as the other, as the power to execute. Think how many go through life with eyes blind to all beauty and color! Surely it must be something to have the power of seeing it all, and of knowing what you want to paint. My cousin Becky back home says it’s better to aim at the stars and hit the fence post, than to aim at the fence post and hit the ground.”

“Ah, so, and one of your English poets says too, ‘A man’s aim should outreach his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ Maybe, you are quite right. The vision is the gift.” She turned and laid her hand on Jean’s shoulder, her eyes beaming with enjoyment of their talk. “I shall remember you, Brown Eyes.”

And just at this point Beth and Aldo came toward them, the former smiling at Jean. “Don’t you think you’ve monopolized the Contessa long enough?” she asked. Jean could not answer. The Contessa? This whimsical, oddly-dressed woman who had sat and talked with her over their tea in the friendliest sort of way, all the time that Jean had thought the Contessa was the tall lady in the ethereal dress with the Russian wolfhound at her heels.

“But this is delightful,” exclaimed the Contessa, happily. “We have met incognito. I thought she was some demure little art student who knew no one here, and she has been so kind to me, who also seemed lonely. Come now, we will meet with the celebrities.”

With her arm around Jean’s waist, she led her over to the group around Morel, and told them in her charming way of how they had discovered each other.

“And she has taught me a lesson that you, Morel, with all your art, do not know, I am sure. It is not the execution that is the crown of ambition and aspiration, it is the vision itself. For the vision is divine inspiration, but the execution is the groping of the human hand.”

“Oh, but I never could say it so beautifully,” exclaimed Jean, pink-cheeked and embarrassed, as Morel laid his hand over hers.

“Nevertheless,” he said, gently, “success to thy fingertips, Mademoiselle.”

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.

Dear Jeannie,

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.”

10. At the Art Academy

The next morning Jean took the commuter’s train into New York and found her way to the Art Academy. The first person she ran into after she had enrolled was Peg Moffat.

“Gosh, it’s good to see you again, Jean. I was so excited when you wrote to say you were coming back. How long will you be here?”

“Just a couple of months, Peg. I’m taking that special course in textile designing.”

It was now nearly a year since Jean had been a student at the art school. She had gone into the work enthusiastically when they had lived at the Cove on Long Island, making the trip back and forth every day. It thrilled her to be back again for it represented so much to her, all the aims and ambitions of a year before.

As they walked upstairs to Jean’s classroom, some of the girls recognized her and called out. Jean waved her hand to them, but did not stop. She was too busy looking at the sketches along the walls, listening to the familiar sounds through open doors, Pop Higgins’ deep laugh, Miss Weston’s clear voice calling to one of the girls, Pierre the Frenchman, standing with his arm resting on a boy’s shoulders, pointing out to him mistakes in underlay of shadows. Even the familiar smell of turpentine and paint made her unbearably happy to be there.

Margaret Weston was the girls’ favorite instructor. The daughter of an artist herself, she had been born in Florence, Italy, and brought up there, later living in London and then Boston. Jean remembered how delightful her talks with the girls had been when she had described her father’s intimate circle of friends back in Italy. It had seemed so interesting to link the past and present with one who could remember, as a little girl, visits to all the art shrines. Jean had always been a favorite with her. The quiet, imaginative girl had appealed to Margaret Weston perhaps because she had the gift of visualizing the past and its great dreamers. She took both her hands now in a firm clasp, smiling down at her.

“Back again, Jean?”

“Only for this special course, Miss Weston,” Jean smiled a little wistfully. “I wish it were for longer. It seems awfully good to be here and see you all.”

“Have you done any work at all in the country?”

Had she done any work? A swift memory of the real work of Woodhow swept over Jean, and she could have laughed.

“Not much.” She shook her head. “I sort of lost my way for a while, there was so much else that had to be done, but I’m going to study now.”

So for two months, Jean could make believe that she was back as a “regular.” Every morning she went to class, getting inspiration and courage even from the teamwork. Later that first month, she was surprised to see Aldo waiting for her at the main entrance.

“I’ve come to take you away. It is not good to bury yourself completely in your work. It is time that you thought of something besides paint and warp and woof.”

Jean suddenly remembered the words of her father’s first letter to her. How he had warned her of forgetting everything but her work. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“I have tickets to the latest Broadway play. It’s a musical and very good, from all I hear and have read about it. But first we are going to lunch at the Waldorf.”

Jean never forgot that afternoon with Aldo. She forgot the art school completely while she listened to the gay tunes and witty dialogue coming from the stage. When she returned to Elmhurst, she often remembered that day and it made it easier for her to work at home at everyday chores.

Later, while they were having dinner in a small Italian restaurant that Aldo frequented often, she told him of her work. How her designs were progressing and how she was learning to weave and how wonderful it was to see her own designs come to life in the threads of the material on her loom.

In return, Aldo told her of his own work. He was now working in clay and hoped to do some real sculpture before he was through. “I want to work in marbles, the way my father does,” he said simply. In those few words his own ambitions were exposed.

They parted at Grand Central, Jean to go back to Beth’s in Hastings and Aldo to take the subway uptown to his aunt’s apartment.

A few days later, Jean went home with Peg Moffat to spend the weekend with her in her Greenwich Village studio. “Yet you can hardly call it a studio now, since Mom came and took possession,” Peg said. “We girls had it all nice and messy, and she keeps it in order, I tell you.”

“Somebody was needed to keep it in order,” Mrs. Moffat put in. They were all sitting around the table after dinner that evening.

“Eloise and Janet and I kept house,” Peg put in significantly. “And, really, talk about temperament! We had no regular meals at all, and Eloise says if you show her crackers and pimento cheese again for a year, she’ll simply die in her tracks. Mom has fed us up beautifully since she came back from Miami. Real substantial food.”

“Yes and they didn’t think they needed me at all, Jean. Somehow a mother doesn’t go with studio equipment, but this one does, and now everyone in the block comes down to visit us. They all need mothering now.”

Jean found the studio delightfully attractive. The ceiling was beamed in dark oak, and a wide fireplace with a crackling wood fire made Jean almost feel as if she were back home. There were wide shelves lined with books on painting all around the room. At the windows hung shrimp-colored draperies that could be pulled across on transverse rods to shut out the night. A small spinet piano took up one corner of the room and now Peg walked over to it and sat down to play. In the middle of a Mozart sonata, Jean sighed heavily.

Peg stopped playing, turned around, and asked, “What is it? Tired?”

Jean’s lashes were wet with unshed tears.

“I was wishing Mother were here too,” she answered. “She loves all this so--just as I do. It’s awfully lonesome up there sometimes without any of this. I love the hills and the freedom, but, oh, it is so lonely. Why, I even love to hear the horns of the cabs blowing impatiently and the sound of the busses releasing their air brakes.”

Jean slept late the next morning, late for her at least. It was nearly ten when Mrs. Moffat came into the large room to pull back the curtains and say that breakfast was nearly ready.

“Did you close the big house at the Cove?” Jean asked while they were dressing.