Читать книгу Greenacre Girls - Forrester Izola Louise - Страница 1

"It does seem to me, folkses," said Kit warmly, "that when anyone is trying to write, you might be a little quiet."

The three at the end of the room heeded not the admonition. Doris was so interested that she had almost succeeded in reclining like a Roman maiden on the library table, trying to see over Helen's shoulder. Jean was drawing up the plan for action. The list of names lay before her, and she tapped her pencil on her nose meditatively as she eyed it.

"Now, listen, Jean," Helen proposed. "This would really be a novelty. Let's have a Cupid for postman and not give out our valentines until after the games. And just when we've got them all seated for supper have the bell ring, and a real postman's whistle blow, and enter Cupid!"

"It's too cold for wings," Doris interposed mildly.

"Oh, Dorrie, you goose. He'd be all dressed up beautifully. Buster Phelps is going to be Cupid, only we were going to have him sit in front of a Valentine box and just hand them out. We'll put a little white suit on him with red hearts dangling all over him, and curl his hair angelically."

"You'd better have red heart favors too, Helen," Jean added; "something that opens and shuts, with something else inside for a surprise. And we'll put red crepe shades on all the electric bulbs. Could we get those, do you think, girls?"

"We can get anything if Dad and Mother are home by that time," answered Helen. The rest were silent. Kit, sitting at her mother's desk beside the wide bay window, looked up and frowned at the stuffed golden pheasant on top of the nearest bookcase. Outside snow was falling lightly. The view of the Sound was obscured. A pearly grayness seemed to be settling around the big house as if it were being cut off from the rest of the world by some magic spell.

"Hope Dad's feeling all right by now," Kit said suddenly, pushing back her thick, dark curls restlessly. "They sail from Sanibel Island the 8th. Wasn't it the 8th, Jean?"

"Oh, they'll be home in plenty of time," Jean exclaimed. "Here we all sit, having the silent mullygrumps when he's better. Mother said positively in her last letter that he had improved wonderfully the previous week."

Helen stared at the long leather couch on one side of the open fireplace. It was over four weeks since her father had lain on it. Throughout the winter there had been day after day of unremitting weakness following his breakdown, and somehow she could not help wondering whether the future held the same. She rose quickly, shaking her head with defiance at the thought.

"Let's not worry, girls. If we all are blue when he comes, he'll have a relapse."

Then Jean spoke, anxiously, tenderly, – her big dark eyes questioning Kit.

"What about Mother?"

"We're all worried about Mother, Jean. It isn't just you at all," Kit spluttered. "But you can be just boiling inside with love and helpfulness, and still not go around with a face like that!"

"Like what?" demanded Jean haughtily.

"Don't fight, children, don't fight," Doris counseled, just as if she were the eldest instead of the youngest. "Remember what Cousin Roxy says about the tongue starting more fires than the heart can put out. You two scrap much more than Helen and I do."

"Well, I think," said Helen sedately, "that we ought to remember Mother just as Jean says. She's almost sick herself worrying over Dad, and there she is, away down in Florida with just the White Hen to talk to."

Jean smiled, thinking of the plump little trained nurse, Miss Patterson, so spick and span and placid that the girls had declared they expected her to cluck at any moment. They had nicknamed her the White Hen, and it surely suited her. Even though no Chantecler had arrived yet to claim her, she was the White Hen, – good-tempered, cheerful, attending strictly to business always, but not just what one might call a lovable companion.

"She's too chirpy for anyone who has responsibilities," Jean said.

"Note Jean when she has responsibilities," Kit proclaimed. "Jean's been playing Mrs. Atlas and carrying the rest of us around on her shoulders. And look at her! Where is the merry smile of old, fair sister?"

Jean smiled rather forlornly. It was true that she had shouldered most of the responsibility since they had been left alone. Cousin Roxana had arrived only a few days previous to the departure of Mrs. Robbins, and it had been rather a formidable task suddenly to assume a mother's place and run the home.

"Oh, I'm all right," she said. "It's only that everything seems to be coming at once. The valentine party and Kit's special effusion for Lincoln's Birthday."

"Class symposium on 'Lincoln-the Man-the President-the Liberator'-" Kit ran it off proudly. "Little classics of three hundred words each. You just ought to see Billie Dunbar's, Jean. He's been boiling it down for a week from two thousand words, and every day Babbie Kane asks him how he's getting along. And you know how Billie talks! He just glowers and glooms and this morning he told her, 'It's still just sap.' He's a scream."

"Kit, don't," laughed Jean in spite of herself. "If you get ink spots on Mother's best suede desk pad, you'll find yourself a little classic."

Kit moved the ink well farther back as a slight concession, and suggested once more that the rest of the family try their level best to keep still about their old party while she finished her symposium.

"You know," Helen began with a far-off look in her eyes, "I think we're awfully selfish, and I mean all of us, not just Kit-"

"Thanking your royal highness," murmured Kit.

"Here's Dad coming back home after five weeks' absence, and we don't know really whether he's better or worse-"

"Helen, don't be a raven quothing things at us," pleaded Jean.

"But it's perfectly true. He needs rest above everything else, Miss Patterson told me so; and here we're planning for a party the minute he gets home."

"Dad says always to go right ahead and have a good time, that it makes him happier to know we are happy."

Kit frowned again. She had straight dark brows set above wide gray eyes, and her frown was somewhat portentous. At fifteen she was far more energetic than Jean at seventeen. No matter what fate might deliver to her she would always find a quick antidote for any manner of trouble. With her short curly hair, she seemed more like the boy of the family, like her father himself, cheery, optimistic, fond of all outdoor life. It was a saying in the Robbins family that Kit might neglect the weeds a bit in her special garden of life, but the general landscape effect would always be artistic and beautiful.

Privately, now that the family were facing a crisis, Kit felt far more competent to act as the head pro tem. than did Jean. The main trouble was, as Helen had said, that Kathleen needed a brake to check her official impetus.

"Anyway, the invitations are all out now and Mother knows we're going to have the party because I wrote her all about it, and she sent back word that she didn't mind a bit so long as we had Cousin Roxy to steer us safely."

"But did you ask Cousin Roxy, Jean?"

"You ask her," said Jean. "She'd fly around the morning star if you asked her to, Helenita."

Helen thawed at once. The thought of their elderly and stately Cousin Roxana sailing blithesomely around in the early dawn circling the morning star, brought about an immediate resumption of friendly relations. It was the prerogative of sisters to scrap, Kit always held. Sometimes it was quite a satisfaction to say just what you thought in the bosom of your family, get it all off your mind, and know that the family loved you just the same. Under these circumstances, Kit was wont to chant feelingly:

Therefore the mere mention of Cousin Roxana brought harmony and mirth into the strained atmosphere of the library.

It seemed as if a special dispensation of Fate had brought their elderly cousin down from her calm and well-ordered seclusion at Gilead Center, Connecticut, just when they needed her most.

Usually she contented herself with sending the family useful and proper gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but otherwise she did not manifest herself.

She was forty-seven, plump, serene, and still good to look upon, with her fluffy flaxen hair just beginning to look a trifle silvery, and a fine network of wrinkles showing around the corners of her eyes and mouth.

"Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she had told Mrs. Robbins happily the moment she set foot inside the wide entrance hall at Shady Cove, "didn't I know you needed me?" And she laughed wholesomely. "I didn't plan to descend on you so sudden, but it looked as if it was the finger of Providence pointing the way, with Jerry down sick and you so sort of pindling yourself. Don't you fret a mite about my being put out. I'll stay here with the children and take care of things till you get back home."

And lovely Elizabeth Ann, she who had been Betty all through her girlhood and graceful matronhood, had agreed thankfully. After a three months' siege of nursing her husband through a nervous breakdown, she was glad indeed to welcome the hearty assistance of Cousin Roxy.

"Let's put it right up to her now," Kit exclaimed. "I'd just as soon ask her if Helen's afraid."

Before the others could hold her back, she had slipped out of the library and was running up the stairs, two at a time, into the large sunny room at the south end of the house which Cousin Roxy had chosen because from its windows she could look out over Long Island Sound. But at the door Kit stopped short. Over at the window stood Cousin Roxy, energetically wiping her eyes with a generous-sized plain linen handkerchief, and the end of her nose was red from weeping.

"Come in, child, come right in," she said hastily, as Kit backed away. "I'm glad you happened up. Come here to your old second cousin and comfort her. I feel as if all the waves and billows of David had washed over me."

Kit hurried over and wrapped her arms around the tall, self-sufficient figure.

"There, there, save the bones," laughed Cousin Roxana, through her tears. "You're just like your father; oh, dear me, Kit, your dear splendid father."

"What's the matter with Dad?" demanded Kit, swift to catch the connection between her cousin's tears and words. "Did you get a letter?"

In silence Cousin Roxana handed over a telegram. It was from Miss Patterson at Palm Beach. They were to stop there after leaving Sanibel Island on the west coast. Kit read it breathlessly:

"Mr. Robbins worse. Sailing 2nd."

"You know, Kit, they'd never do that if there hadn't been a turn for the worse." There was a break in Cousin Roxana's voice as she reached for the telegram. "I just wish that I had him up home safe in the room he used to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I did when my mother was alive. That's your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that was Charlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after the Robbins' side 'stid of the Peabody, they said, and Jerry was just like own brother to me. I wish I had him away from doctors and trained nurses, and old Doctor Gallup tending him. I've seen him march right up to Charon's ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn't think was through living."

Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at the pines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow it didn't seem as if God could let her big, splendid father slip out of the world just when they all needed him so much. During all the months of illness, the girls had not grasped the seriousness of it. He only seemed weak and not himself. They knew he had had to give up his work temporarily, that he never went to the office in New York any more, that it was even an effort for him to give orders over the telephone, but they had taken these things as of little moment.

Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the real import of her mother's anxious face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last of all, the consultation two days before they had left for the South.

Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharp pain. "It's going to be awful," she said softly, "just awful for Mother."

Cousin Roxana squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted her double chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold.

"It's more awful for you poor children and Jerry. We women folks are given special strength to bear just such trials; we've got to be strong."

But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit's gray eyes. She pulled the curtains back, and looked out of the window to where the blue waters of Manhasset Bay were turning purple and violet in the gathering gloom of the late afternoon. The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a light snowfall. Down close to the bay some gulls rose and swept in a big half circle towards the other side of the inlet. Buster Phelps, running along the sidewalk towards home, waved up at her a big bunch of pussy willows.

"Spring's coming, Kit," he called riotously. "Just found some and they're 'most out!"

Kit waved back mechanically. Of course she must not break down and cry. Doris might do that, but she and Jean must be strong and brace up the two younger ones so they all could help their mother. Still the tears came. What was the use of spring if-

"Kit, aren't you ever coming down?" called Jean from the foot of the stairs.

"Right now," Kit answered. "You come too, please, Cousin Roxy. We need you fearfully to tell us what to do next."

"No, you don't," said Cousin Roxana calmly. "You don't need me any more than the earth needs me to tell it this snow's going away and the flowers will soon be blossoming. Just trust in the Lord, child. 'It may not be my way, and it may not be thy way, but yet in His own way, the Lord will provide.' It's one thing to stand in the choir and sing that, and it's another to live up to it. The first thing you girls must do is learn how to meet your father with a smile."