Читать книгу Jean Craig in New York - Kay Lyttleton - Страница 6

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After her marriage to Judge Ellis, Becky had taken Ella Lou, her big collie dog, from Maple Grove over to the large white house behind its towering elms.

“I’ve had that dog for ten years and never saw another one like her for intelligence,” she would say, her head held a little bit high, her glasses halfway down her nose. “I told the Judge if he wanted me he’d have to take Ella Lou too.”

So it was Ella Lou’s familiar black nose that poked around the door the following morning when the New York cousins came over to get acquainted.

Jean never forgot her introduction to Beth Newell. She was about forty-seven then, with her son Elliott fully five inches taller than herself, but she looked about twenty-seven. Her feathery brown hair, her wide gray eyes, and quick, sweet laughter, endeared her to Jean right away.

Elliott was about fifteen, not one single bit like his mother, but broad-shouldered and blond and sturdy. It was so much fun, Kit said, to watch him take care of his mother.

“Where’s your high school out here?” he asked. “I’m at prep school specializing in math.”

“And how any son of mine can adore mathematics is beyond me,” Beth laughed. “I suppose it’s reaction. Do you like math, Jean?” She put her arm around the slender figure nearest her.

“I should say not,” Jean answered immediately, and then all at once, out popped her heart’s desire before she could check the words. Anybody’s heart’s desire would pop out with Beth’s eyes coaxing it. “I—I want to be an artist.”

“Keep on wishing and working then, dear, and as Becky says, if it is to be it will be.”

While the others talked of New England farms, these two sat together on the couch, Jean listening eagerly and wistfully while her cousin told of her own girlhood aims and how she carried them out.

“We didn’t have much money, so I knew I had to win out for myself. There were two boys to help bring up, and Mother was not well, but I used to sketch every spare moment I could, and I read everything on art I could find, even articles from old magazines in the attic. But most of all I sketched anything and everything, studying form and composition. When I was eighteen, I taught school for two terms in the country. Dad had said if I earned the money myself, I could go abroad, and how I worked to get that first nest egg.”

“How much did you get a week?”

“Twelve dollars, but my board was only three and a half in the country, and I saved all I could. Of course, at that time, it was cheaper to go abroad—and easier, too. I wouldn’t recommend your trying to go to Europe right now, but there are plenty of good schools and teachers in this country. If you really do want work and kind of hunt a groove you’re fitted for, you’ll always find something to do.”

Jean was leaning forward, her chin propped on her hands. “Yes, I know,” she said. “Do go on, please.”

“Ellen Brainerd, the teacher I studied under in Boston at one time, was one of New England’s marvelous spinsters with the far vision and cash enough to make a few of her dreams come true. Every year she used to take a group of art students to Europe, and with her encouragement I went the third year, helping her with a few of the younger ones, and paying part of my tuition that way. And oh,” Beth’s eyes were sparkling as she recalled her student days, “we set up our easels in the fountain square in Barcelona and hunted Dante types in Florence. We trailed through Flanders and Holland and lived for a time in Paris.”

“And you painted all those places?” exclaimed Jean. “I’ve wanted so much to go.”

“Well, I tried to,” Beth looked ruefully into the open fire. “Yes, I tried to paint like all the old masters and new masters, from Rembrandt to Degas. I did everything except try to develop a technique of my own.”

“But isn’t it important to study the techniques of the masters?”

“Yes, of course it is, but it was long after I came back home that I realized this. After David came over and stopped my career by marrying me I came back home. We lived out near New Rochelle and I began painting things of everyday life just as I saw them, the things I loved. It was our old apple tree out by the well, steeped in full May bloom, that brought me my first prize.”

“Gee, after Paris and all the rest!”

“Yes. And the next year they accepted our red barn in a snowstorm. I painted it from our kitchen window. Another was a water color of our Jersey calves standing knee deep in the brook in June. That is the kind of picture I have succeeded with. I think because, as I say, they are part of the home life and scenes I love best and so I have put a part of myself into them.”

Dürer’s heart’s blood, Jean thought to herself. “You’ve helped me so much, Beth,” she said aloud. “I was just longing to go back to the art school right now, and throw up everything here that I ought to do.”

“Keep on sketching every spare moment you can. Learn form and color and composition. Things are only beautiful according to the measure of our own minds. I’d like you to come to New York and study there. You could stay with me and share my studio when you weren’t in classes.”

“I’d love to come when Mother can spare me.” Jean’s eyes sparkled at this prospect.

“Well, do so, my dear,” Becky’s hands were laid on her shoulders from behind. “It’s a poor family that can’t support one genius.” She laughed in her full-hearted, joyous way. “Now, listen, all of you. I’ve come to invite you to have Christmas dinner with us.”

“But, Becky,” began Mrs. Craig, “there are so many of us—”

“Not half enough to fill the big old house. Some day after all the children are married and there are plenty of grandchildren, then we can talk about there being too many, though I doubt it. There’s always as much house room as there is heart room, if you only think so. Bring along the little one too.” She smiled over her shoulder at Jack, sitting in his favorite corner in the kitchen working industriously on one of Tommy’s model airplanes, and he gave a funny little one-sided grin back in shy return. “Billie’s going away to school after New Year’s, did I tell you?”

“Oh, golly,” cried Doris, so abruptly that everyone laughed at her. “Doesn’t it seem as if boys get all of the adventures of life just naturally.” Billie was the Judge’s grandson and Doris’s pal. He was two years older than Doris but they liked the same things and had been great friends ever since Doris first found his secret hide-out.

“He’s had adventures enough, but he does need the friendship of boys his own age. I don’t want him to be tied down with a couple of old folks like the Judge and myself. You’re never young but once. Besides, I always did want to go to these college football games and have a boy of mine in the huddle.”

“Gol—lee!” Doris exclaimed after the front door had closed on the last glimpse of Ella Lou’s plumed tail going out to the car. “Doesn’t it seem as if Becky leaves behind her a big sort of glow? She can say more nice things in a few minutes than anybody I ever heard. Except about Billie’s going away. I wonder why he didn’t come down and tell me himself.”

“Well, you know, Doris,” Kit remarked, “you haven’t a mortgage on Billie.”

“Oh, I don’t care if he goes away. It isn’t that,” Doris answered easily. “I wouldn’t like a boy that couldn’t hold his own with the other guys. Jean, did you realize the full significance of Becky’s invitation? No baking or cooking. No working our fingers to the bone for dinner on Christmas Day. I think she’s simply wonderful.”

Jean laughed and slipped up the back stairs to her own room. She felt around in her desk until she found her folio of sketches. The dining room was deserted excepting for Doris watering the rows of geraniums in the bay window, so Jean sat down to look over her old art work. Doris went upstairs to see her father, and Kit appeared with a frown on her face, puzzling over a knitting book.

“I hate the last days before Christmas,” she said savagely. “What on earth can we concoct at this last minute for Beth? I think I’ll knit her a pair of white cable-stitch gloves. If I can’t finish them in time I’ll give her one with the promise of the other. What can I give to Judge Ellis?”

“Something useful,” Jean answered.

“I can’t bear useful things for Christmas presents. Abby Tucker says she never gets any winter clothes till Christmas and then all the family unload useful things on her. I’m going to send her a bottle of perfume in a green leather case. I’ve had it for months and never touched it and she’ll adore it. I wish I could think of something for Billie too, something he’s never had and always wanted.”

“He’s going away,” Jean mused. “Why don’t you fix up a book of snapshots taken all around here. We took some marvelous ones this summer.”

“A boy wouldn’t like that.”

“He will when he’s homesick.” Jean opened her folio and began turning over her art school studies, mostly conventionalized designs from her beginnings in textile design. After her talk with Beth they only dissatisfied her. Suddenly she glanced up at the figure across the table, Kit with rumpled short curls, her bangs in disarray, and an utterly relaxed posture, elbows on the table, her feet sprawled in front of her. Jean’s pencil began to move over the back of her drawing pad. She was pleased to see how easy it was to catch Kit’s expression. It wasn’t so hard, the ruffled hair, the half-averted face. Kit’s face was such an odd mixture of whimsicality and determination. The rough sketch grew and all at once Kit glanced up and caught on to what was going on.

“Oh, it’s me, isn’t it, Jean? I wish you’d conventionalized me and embellished me. I’d like to look glamorous and sophisticated. That’s lovely, specially with the nose screwed up that way and my forehead wrinkled. I like that, it’s so subtle. Anyone getting one good look at the helpless frenzy in that downcast gaze—”

“Oh, Kit, be good,” laughed Jean. She held the sketch away from her critically. “Looks just like you.”

“OK, hang it up as ‘Exhibit A.’ I don’t mind. There’s a look of genius to it at that.”

“Naturally, I had to include that too,” replied Jean teasingly. Just then Mrs. Craig came into the room.

“Mom, look what my sister has done to me,” Kit cried tragically. Jean said nothing, only the color rose slowly in her cheeks as her mother stood looking at it.

“It’s the first since I left school,” she said, half-ashamed of the effort and all it implied.

“Finish it up, dear, and let me have it.”

“Oh, would you really like it, Mom?”

“Love it,” answered her mother promptly. “And don’t give up hope. Perhaps we may be able to squeeze in the spring term after all.”