Chapter XXIV

"All that's Bright must Fade"--Departures--Preparing the House for the Winter--Page's Portrait of Pickie--Packing up--Studious Habits of the Domestics--The Cook and her Admirers--Adieu to Chappaqua.

_October 1_.

"All that's bright must fade."

This long, delightful summer is now over, and the time approaches for us to return to the din and whirl of city life.

Miss Worthington left us this morning to return to her beautiful Southern home, and Gabrielle, too, has gone back to the quiet of her convent school, guided by the Protestant Sisters of St. Mary.

Ida is busily counting, and packing away the dainty china and silver, suggestive of so many pleasant gatherings of friends that we have had this summer, and Minna has brought down from the store-room large chests to contain the heavy linen sheets with Aunt Mary's initials beautifully embroidered in scarlet.

The guest-room and the parlors commence to wear a dismantled look, for one by one the pretty trifles that ornamented them are being removed, and although many of the pictures still hang upon the walls, dear little Pickie's portrait stands in an unoccupied bedroom swathed in linen, and ready to journey to the city when we do, for Ida prizes it so highly that she will not box it up and send it by express, but intends to have one of the servants carry it under her supervision, lest some harm may befall it. I do not wonder that it is priceless to her; I also think it of inestimable value, for not only is it a portrait of the beautiful little cousin whom I never saw, but even one uninterested in Pickie would, I am sure, be attracted by it as a rare work of art. It is a full-length picture: the child holds in his hands a cluster of lilies--a fit emblem of his spotless purity, and his undraped limbs are perfectly moulded as those of an infant St. John. His hair, of the line that Titian and Tintoretto loved to paint, falls upon his shoulders like a shower of ruddy gold, and for depth of tone and richness of color the picture more resembles the work of one of the old Venetian Masters than a painting by modern hands.

Whilst in town the other day, I called in the Tenth Street Studio Buildings to ask Mr. Page when he could give a few days of his time to restoring Pickie's portrait, as it has been somewhat affected by the dampness during the years that it has stood in the house in the woods. Mr. Page gave me a very amusing account of the difficulty he experienced in obtaining sittings from Pickie.

"Young children," he said, "are always averse to having their portraits painted, and there is usually a struggle to induce them to submit to the confinement of posing for me; but in Master Pickie's case, the child was so full of life that I might almost as well have tried to obtain sittings from a butterfly as from him."

Pickie's rapid illness and sudden death occurred before the picture was completed, and although Mr. Page worked upon it for some time from memory and from daguerrotypes of the child, a few finishing touches remain to be added.

_October 3_.

This morning I at last realized what I have been endeavoring to banish from my mind--that the day of our departure from dear Chappaqua is at hand. This fact was brought home to me in a very practical manner by the arrival of our immense French trunks from the side-hill house, where they have been stored this summer, and the necessity of packing them, coupled with an intimation from mamma that it would be as well to put my books and music in the bottom, and my dresses in the top of my trunk. I am somewhat of a novice in packing, for during the preparations for our eight ocean voyages that duty never once fell to my lot; however I flatter myself that such _very_ elementary instructions were not necessary.

Quite tenderly I took down from the shelves the books that I had brought from New York for summer reading, for mingled with every page was some pleasant association. One chapter in Kohlrausch's "Germany" seemed still to retain the faint perfume of the pale primroses that I gathered in the meadow that day to mark my stopping-place, and my little volume of Voltaire's "Charles Douze" recalled an interesting argument upon the relative claims to greatness of that hero, and my hero par excellence, the first Napoleon.

My ponderous volumes of Plato brought before my mind Arthur's reading, and the life with which he invested the words of these old-time philosophers that had so keen an interest for him; while Madame de Staël's "Allemagne," and my little copy of Ehlert's "Letters on Music" were associated with almost every hour of the day. They had lain upon my writing-table the entire summer, and it was my habit whenever I laid down my pen for a moment to take up one book or the other, and glance at a page of Ehlert's criticisms upon opera, symphony, or song, or Madame de Staël's profound essays upon art, morals, and politics.

This long summer has been one of great sweetness and content to us all. A tinge of sadness has, it is true, been mingled with our daily life, but we have felt the spiritual presence of our loved ones always near us, urging and encouraging us to persevere and fit ourselves to join them hereafter. With this feeling we have worked constantly and closely, and our record of improvement has been somewhat satisfactory--to ourselves at least. We have gone through the weighty volumes that we had given ourselves as summer tasks; we have written and practised; and, although Minna constantly exclaims upon our close attention to study, a desire for improvement has extended (unconsciously to ourselves) from the parlor to the kitchen. Going down there one night to give some orders for the next day, I was amused by overhearing Lina say, "It is time to go to school now." Immediately Minna's bright-colored knitting was laid aside, and the two women drew up to the table with their books. After studying their English lesson, they recited it to each other, followed by a brief reciprocal lesson of Swedish and German.

Bernard also had his book, and was studying with great apparent industry, although in what foreign tongue he was accomplishing himself I do not know. Perhaps he was trying to master the intricacies of the German language, that he might offer himself to Minna through the medium of her own tongue. I was amused to see that he occupied what might be called the neutral ground, at a table lighted by a flickering candle, and at an equal distance from his sweetheart and his foe; for since Bernard has commenced to take moonlight strolls with Minna, Lina has taken deadly umbrage, which she manifests by giving him candle-ends, cutting off his supply of coffee, and reducing his comforts generally.

At first I felt quite sorry for Lina, so completely excluded as she was at one time from the society of the other two, especially as she was much older than Minna, and not at all prepossessing in appearance; but since I have learned that she has in the village four Swedish admirers who make her weekly visits, I have ceased to waste any sympathy upon her. We were quite amazed one Sunday afternoon to see four stalwart blond men wending their way kitchen-wards, and inquiring in broken English for "Swedish girl;" for of all places our quiet little Chappaqua is the last one where we would have thought of seeing any of Lina's compatriots. These men, it seems, are employed in repairing the railroad track; and learning that they had a countrywoman in the village, called to make her acquaintance; so Lina can now triumph over Minna. I have heard from Minna that each one of the four men has already offered himself to Lina, and that she refused them, remarking, however, that she knew a girl in New York who would like to marry one of them. The men thanked her, but thought the distance rather too great to go for a wife.

Despite their little difference over Bernard, the two women have lived together quite amicably this summer; and it has been a great relief to dear Ida, while so gracefully presiding as mistress of the house, to feel that harmony reigned in the kitchen.

_October 5_.

Our last day in dear Chappaqua; we go down to the city to-morrow morning. How dread is the thought of leaving the poetic quiet of our country home, to return to the confusion and excitement of city life; that city, too, that will be fraught with such sad memories for us during the last days of October and November.

How quickly it has gone, this long, sweet summer. I cannot realize that near five months have passed since that bright May morning that we arrived here, and found dear Chappaqua in all her tender spring freshness. Imperceptibly the days have flown; the delicate hues of leafy May have deepened and gone; the summer is over, and autumn with her glowing tints has stolen upon us. Now in vain do we hunt for daisies to pull apart petal by petal with the old French rhyme that every schoolgirl knows,

"Il m'aime un peu--beaucoup,
Passionément,--pas du tout!"

The daisies have gone with the sweet double violets and roses, and the fragrant heliotrope and mignonette, of which we used to make bouquets to dress the table and adorn the rooms; whilst brilliant, scentless flowers now fill our garden beds, and the maples with their aureolas of flame color and molten cold tell the same sad story--summer has fled.

For the last time I have walked up to the pine grove, and have taken leave of that spot where dear uncle's feet have so often trodden, and said farewell, too, to the forest trees whose trunks still bear the impress of the axe once wielded by that hand now forever at rest; I have drunk once more from the spring that Aunt Mary so dearly loved, and which is far sweeter to me than the vaunted waters of Trevi, and entered for the last time her loved home in the woods over whose threshold her weary feet will never pass again.

"Tempo passato, perche non ritorni a me?"

Adieu to Chappaqua and to my journal. My daintily bound volume, so large that I feared not easily to fill its pages, is closely covered, and only a few blank lines remain whereon to take leave of it forever. Adieus are always saddening, and I close it with the words unspoken.

And for dear, dear Chappaqua, I can find no words more fitting to express my love than those verses written, it is true, in honor of another Westchester Home, but so appropriate that I will insert them here, trusting their author, Mr. JOHN SAVAGE, will pardon me for so doing.

OUR DEAR WESTCHESTER HOME.

Where'er my hopeful fancy dares,
Or toiling footstep falls--
Through ancient cities' thoroughfares
Or Fortune's festal halls;
O'er mountains grand, through forests deep,
Or crest the yielding foam,
I find no spot
Like that dear cot,
My own Westchester Home!

* * * *

Bedecked with every sylvan charm,
By loving Nature blest,
Embraced between the ocean's arm
And Hudson's bounteous breast,
Westchester, in her beauty smiles
To Heaven's protecting dome,
For all the good.
By field or flood
That crowns our happy home!

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of a Summer, by Cecilia Cleveland