Читать книгу Jean Craig in New York - Kay Lyttleton - Страница 5

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Doris caught the sound of the squeaking snow under the tires of the car as it came up the drive about four o’clock. It was nearly dark. She was standing in the living room lighting the Christmas candles in the windows, and she ran to the front door.

“Hi,” called Jean when she saw Doris in the doorway, “we’re back.”

Tommy jumped out of the car at the back door and took Jack by the hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He was shivering, but Tommy pulled him into the kitchen where Kit was getting supper. Over in a corner lay the pile of evergreens and pine that she and the other girls had gathered that afternoon.

“Look, Kit,” Tommy cried, quite as if Jack had been some wonderful gift instead of a dusty, tired, limp little derelict of fate and circumstance. “This is Jack and he’s come to stay with us. Where’s Mom?”

One quick look at Jack’s face checked all mirthfulness in Kit. There were times when it was better to say nothing. She was always intuitive, quick to catch moods in others and understand. This case needed her mother. Jack was fairly blue from the cold, and there was a pinched, hungry look around his mouth and nose that made Kit leave her currant biscuits.

“Upstairs with Dad. Beat it up there fast and call her, Tommy.” She smiled at Jack, a radiant, comradely smile that endeared Kit to all she met. “We’re so glad you’ve come home,” she said, drawing him over to the stove. “You sit up on that stool and get warm.” She slipped into the pantry and dipped out a mug of rich, creamy milk, then cut a wide slice of warm gingerbread. “There now. See how that tastes. You know, it’s the funniest thing how wishes come true. I was just longing for somebody to sample my cake and tell me if it was good. Is it?”

Jack drank nearly the whole glass of milk before he spoke, looking over the rim at her with very sleepy eyes.

“It’s awful good,” he said. “I ain’t had anything to eat since yesterday morning.”

“Oh, dear,” cried Kit. This was beyond her. She turned with relief at Mrs. Craig’s quick light step in the hall.

“Yes, dear, I know. Jeannie told me.” She went straight over to the stool. And she did just the one right thing. That was the marvel of Mrs. Craig, she always seemed to know naturally what a person needed most and gave it to them. She took Jack in her arms, his head on her shoulder, patting him while he began to cry chokingly.

“Never mind, child, now,” she told him. “You’re home.” She lifted him to her lap and started to untie his worn sodden shoes. “Tommy, get your slippers, dear, and a pair of wool socks. Warm the milk, Kit, it’s better that way. And you cuddle down on the couch by the living room fire, Jack, and rest.”

Mrs. Craig had gone into the living room and found a gray woolen blanket in the wall closet off the little side hall. From the chest of drawers she took some of Tommy’s outgrown winter underwear. Supper was nearly ready, but Jack was to have a warm bath and be clad in clean fresh clothing. Tucking him under one wing, as Kit said, she left the kitchen, and Jean told the rest how she had rescued him from Mr. Briggs’s righteous indignation and charitable intentions.

“Got a good face and looks you square in the eye,” said Doris. “I’d take a chance on him any day, and he can help around the place a lot, splitting kindlings and shifting stall bedding and what not. He and Tommy seem to be good friends already.”

The telephone bell rang and Jean answered. Rambling up through the hills from Norwich was the party line, two lone wires stretching from telephone pole to telephone pole. Its tingling call was a welcome sound. This time it was Rebecca at the other end. After her marriage to Judge Ellis, they had taken the long-deferred wedding trip up to Boston, visiting relatives there, and returning in time for a splendid old-fashioned Thanksgiving celebration at the Ellis home. Maple Grove, Becky’s former home, was closed for the winter but Matt, the hired man, decided to stay on there indefinitely and work the farm on shares for Miss Becky, as he still called her.

“And like enough,” Becky said comfortably, when she heard of his intentions, “he’s going to marry somebody himself. I wouldn’t put it past him a bit. I wish he’d choose Cindy Anson. There she is living alone down in that little bit of a house, running a home bakery when she’s born to fuss over a man. I told Matt when I left, if I were he I’d buy all my pies and cake from Cindy, and then when I drove by Cindy’s I just dropped a passing word about how badly I felt at leaving such a fine man as Matt to shift for himself up at the house, so she said she’d keep an eye on him.”

Over the telephone now came her voice, vibrant and cheery, and Jean answered the call.

“Hello, yes, this is Jean. Mother’s right in the living room. Who? Oh, wait till I tell the kids.” She turned her head, her brown eyes sparkling. “New York cousins over at the Judge’s. Who did you say they are, Becky? Yes? Beth and Elliott Newell. I’ll tell Dad right away. Tomorrow morning early? That’s swell. ’Bye.”

Before the others could stop her, she was on her way upstairs. The largest, sunniest room had been given over to her father. The months of relaxation and rest up in the hills had worked wonders in Mr. Craig’s health. As old Dr. Gallup was apt to say when Kit rebelled at the slowness of recovery, “Can’t expect to do everything in a minute. Even the Lord took six days to fix things the way he liked them.”

Instead of spending two-thirds of his time in bed or on the couch now, he would sit up for hours and could walk around the wide porch, or even along the garden paths before the cold weather set in. But there still swept over him without warning the great fatigue and weakness, the dizziness and exhaustion which had followed as one of the lesser ills in his nervous breakdown.

He sat before the open fire now, reading from one of his favorite news magazines, with Miss Tilly purring on his knees. Tommy had found Miss Tilly one day late in October, loafing along the barren stretch of road going over to Gayhead school. She was a yellow kitten with white nose and paws. Tommy, forever adopting stray animals, had tucked her up in his arms and taken her home. Becky had looked at the yellow kitten with instant recognition.

“That’s a Scarborough kitten. Sally Scarborough’s raised yellow kittens with white paws ever since I can remember.”

“Had I better take it back?” asked Tommy anxiously.

“Land, no, child. It’s a barn-cat. You can tell that, it’s so frisky. Ain’t got a bit of repose or common sense. Like enough Mrs. Scarborough’d be real glad if it had a good home. Give it a name, and feed it well, and it’ll slick right up.”

So Miss Tilly had remained, but not out in the barn. Somehow she had found her way up to Mr. Craig’s room and its peace must have appealed to her, for she would stay there for hours, dozing with half-closed jade-green eyes and incurved paws.

“Dad!” Jean exclaimed, entering the quiet room like an autumn flurry of wind. “What do you think? Becky just phoned, and she wants me to tell you two New York cousins are there. Beth and Elliott Newell. Do you remember them?”

“Of course,” smiled Mr. Craig. “It must be little Cousin Beth and her boy. I used to visit at her old home when I was a little boy. She wanted to be an artist, I know.”

“Oh, Dad, an artist? And did she study and succeed?”

“I think so. I remember she lived abroad for some time and married there. Her maiden name was Lowell, Beth Lowell.”

“Did she marry an artist too?” Jean leaned forward from her low chair facing him, her eyes bright with romance, but Mr. Craig laughed.

“No, indeed, she married a schoolmate from New York. He went after her, for I suppose he tired of waiting for Beth’s career to come true. They had a very happy life together and I think Beth misses him very much since he died about two years ago. Listen a minute.”

Up from the lower part of the house floated strains of music. Surely there had never issued such music from a mouth organ. The tune was a mournful blues that had a haunting melody.

“It must be Jack,” Jean said, smiling mischievously up at her father, for he had not yet met Jack. She ran out to the head of the stairs.

“Can Jack come up, Mom?”

Up he came, fresh from a tubbing, wearing a shirt and a pair of overalls that belonged to Tommy. His straight blond hair fairly glistened from its recent brushing and his face shone, but it was Jack’s eyes that won him friends at the start. Mixed in color they were, like a moss agate, with long dark lashes, and just now they were filled with contentment.

“They wanted me to play for them downstairs,” he said gravely, stopping beside Mr. Craig’s chair. “I can play lots of tunes. My mother gave me this last Christmas.”

This was the first time he had mentioned his mother and Jean followed up the clue gently.

“Where, Jack?”

He looked down at the floor, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Over in Providence. She got sick and they took her to the hospital and she never came back.”

“Not at all?”

He shook his head. “Then afterwards—” much was comprised in that one word and Jack’s tone, “afterwards we started off together, my Dad and me. He said he’d try and get a job on some farm with me, but nobody wanted him this time of year, and with me too. And he said one morning he wished he didn’t have me bothering around. When I woke up on the freight yesterday morning, he wasn’t there. Guess he must have dropped off. Maybe he can get a job now.”

So it slipped out, Jack’s personal history, and the father and daughter wondered at his sturdy acceptance of life’s discipline. Only nine, but already he faced the world as his own master, fearless and optimistic. All through that first evening he sat in the kitchen on the high stool, playing tunes he had learned from his father. Tommy was entranced and begged him to teach him how to play.

After supper the girls and Tommy drew up their chairs around the dining room table as usual. Here every night the three younger ones prepared their lessons for the next day. Jean generally read or sat with her father awhile, but tonight she answered Peg Moffat’s letter. It was read over twice, the letter that blended in so curiously with the coming of the cousins from New York.

Ever since Jean could remember she had drawn pictures. No one guessed how she loved the paintings in New York’s art galleries. They had seemed so real to her, the face of a Millet peasant lad crossing a stubble field at dawn; a Breton girl knitting as she walked homeward behind some straying sheep; one of Frans Hals’ Flemish boys, his chin pressed close to his violin, his deep eyes looking at you from under the brim of his hat.

Once she had read of Albrecht Dürer, painting his masterpieces while he starved. How the people whispered after his death that he had used his heart’s blood to mix with his wonderful pigments. Of course it was only a story, but Jean remembered it. When she saw a picture that seemed to hold one and speak its message of beauty, she would say to herself, “There is Dürer’s secret.”

And some day, if she ever could put on canvas the dreams that came to her, she meant to use the same secret.

“I do think Socrates was an old bore,” said Kit, yawning and stretching her arms, after a struggle with her homework. “Always mixing in and contradicting everybody and starting something. No wonder his wife was cranky.”

“He died beautifully,” Doris replied. “Something about a sunset and all his friends around him.”

“If you’ve finished your homework, why don’t you go to bed?” Jean told them. She finished her letter alone. It was not easy to write it. Peg wanted her to come down for the spring term. She could board with her if she liked. Expenses were very light.

Any expense would be heavy if piled on the monthly budget of Woodhow. Jean knew that. So she wrote back with a heartache behind the plucky refusal, and stepped out on the moonlit porch for a minute. It was clear and cold after the light snowfall. The stars were very faint. From the river came the sound of the waterfall.

“You stand steady, Jean Craig,” she said, between her teeth. “Don’t you dare be a quitter. You’ve got to see this winter straight through.”