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Ebook has 1058 lines and 70920 words, and 22 pages

I went to the kitchen, but I only stood in the door for a moment, and then I backed away, for Mrs. Bradly was crying--awfully hard--her face buried in the roller towel. And I knew it was because I was going away. . . . I felt that way too, but I never cry, so I went up to my room and got out my fishing tackle and tried to make a fly for a shallow, shady stream out of some gray and green silk and a grasshopper wing. . . . But it didn't divert me much. . . . I didn't think I could exist very long in real civilization. I knew I didn't want to. All the loveliness that I felt earlier in the evening was gone, and all that was left was an ache, a dull, sodden, gray, growing-larger-all-the-time ache. . . . You see, I cared awfully for outdoors and the sports that keep you there. They were all I really knew of life. . . . And my New York relatives live in an apartment.

"I will be bored," I thought, "and miserably, horribly unhappy!" But--whatever else I was--I was not bored! Oh, my soul, no! Not for one instant! Sometimes it was almost ghastly, that mystery which gripped and held us all, and even now I tremble to think of phases of it; but it gave more in the end than it took, which is the curious way of much pain and discomfort. When I think that--but I mustn't begin now. For that part comes much later.

The next few weeks were so crowded that the events which came in them have a kaleidoscopic flavour. Everyone called on me, and everyone gave me advice. The calls, the advice, the shrill of the locusts, the way the sunlight looked in the garden, and the braid which Mrs. Bradly insisted must be put on my new dresses, all tangled. I can't think of one thing without having something else, that came in that time, creep in. I suppose it was because I was so hurried that nothing was sorted. It all simply sunk in my mind together as I rushed; and, of course, there was no calm between, in which one's consciousness builds fences, or tethers a thought in its proper pasture. My going away acted like a big egg-beater on everything that happened then; everything was too well mixed and--flavoured with tears.

Mrs. Bradly wept over everything, including my favourite things to eat, which she cooked for every meal.

Willy Jepson seemed to understand how I felt, more than anyone else, which was surprising. He sat with me a good deal in the garden, while I sewed on braid. I was not interested in the braid, nor sewing it on, but Mrs. Bradly made me put yards on everything. She said: "Yuh gotta look swell in New York. Take this here and put three rows above the hem." And--for the first time in my life, I sewed. We put narrow ribbon velvet on my thin things, and lace wherever it could be attached. When I had to rip it off, I did almost cry; and not because of the work, but because dear Bradly thought it was so fine. I can't quite explain, and I haven't time here. But when people whom you love think things are beautiful, you don't like to destroy them.

"Whatcha doing that for?" Willy asked one afternoon. We were sitting in the arbour. I told him Mrs. Bradly thought you had to be trimmed a lot in New York.

"Well, it is," he said, looking at my skirt a little doubtfully, "and it doesn't look like you."

That annoyed me because I'd pricked my fingers a lot.

"It's got to," I said. "I'm going to wear it."

"What'll I slide down in New York?" I asked resentfully.

"Oh," he answered, "there are fire-escapes." I sniffed at that. I never dreamed I ever would--but of course that time I didn't know what was coming. After that we were quiet. I sewed hard, and Willy looked at me. I felt him, as you do, and wondered whether I was losing my petticoat or anything. When he spoke he did something noble, which I shall never forget.

"Look here, Nat," he said, after a cough.

"I can't," I answered. "I have nine more yards of this stuff to lam on. It goes around the sleeves too."

"Well," he said, and his voice was very gruff, "it's this way; if you get too darned homesick you can always come back and marry me."

I appreciated that. I really did, although it was not my idea of a romantic proposal. My reading taste most closely embraces Alger, but I have read a few love stories, and Willy didn't act at all like the man in "The Rosary." But Evelyn says that men never do act like books. She has had several proposals. She says they look sort of scared, and as if they wished they hadn't begun it, and usually stutter a little, beside gulping. But, as I said, before criticizing Willy's technique, I was grateful, for I thought if nothing else turned up I could marry Willy before I became an old maid. No woman really wants to be one; she only says so after SHE IS.

"Don't you tell any of the fellows!" said Willy, after a few moments.

I said I wouldn't. Then I thanked him and said I might call his bluff when I was about twenty-two or so. . . . That memory is closely wrapped in braid and a blue-and-pink plaid dress. Aunt Penelope gave that one to the janitor's daughter.

Willy's offer was a help, for Uncle Frank had told me that I must try to stay in New York with Aunt Penelope for the three years, anyway. He explained about the locusts and how they went through stages, and he thought it would take about three years for my country shell to slip off and be replaced by the new one, which New York would grow underneath. It seemed Aunt Penelope has a country place, but uncle was afraid it was not very wild , and she wants me to go there with her. When I heard that I wasn't to come home at all, I almost expired.

I said: "I wish I was one!"

And he said, "Rare specimen, rare specimen, ho hum!" and again went to poring over his books.

To be brief, everyone was kind to me, and it made my throat feel stuffy. It was honestly a relief to go, for I knew it had to come, and the feeling of its coming was like that pressure that going to the dentist's to-morrow lays on your spirit. And at last the day did come, and I went.

The morning of that day, I went out in the garden and looked at it carefully. I thought that perhaps I could pack the way it looked in my heart, as I had Uncle Frank's face, and Bradly-dear's fat figure, just dimly indented at the waistline with her starchy, blue-checked apron. . . . And so I walked around a little while. August had made it sag, but it was lovely; grass was sprouting between the red bricks of the walk, the picket fence was leaning and, being grayed from sun and the rain, made a lovely background for the late flowers and the dusty foliage.

Across the fence was the spot where Willy Jepson taught me to pitch, and on the small platform outside the back door was the hook where they used to tie me when I was a tiny girl and ran away so much. . . . Everything was familiar, and because of that very dear. . . . And because I knew it and had lived in that house, loved, and been loved by the people of that house, it was home.

Willy Jepson got up early that morning. He came out in the back yard carrying a cruller in one hand and four plums in the other.

"Heavy rain last night," he said. "Breakfast isn't ready yet. Thought I'd take a bite to carry me on till Liza gets up. Got packed?"

I said I had.

I didn't think that was a happy manner of putting it, and said so.

"I don't think I shall trouble you," I said, "although I am grateful, and it is nice to think that there is somewhere where you can go, if your family won't receive you before your education is finished."

Willy nodded and went on chewing.

And then Bradly-dear called, and I knew that breakfast was ready.

"Good-bye, Willy," I said.

"Coming down to the station," he said, and very gruffly.

I said, "All right," and went toward the house. When I reached the porch I looked back, and I knew that Willy felt badly, for Willy wasn't chewing.

As I said before, almost all I remember about going away is the leaves, bags, dust, and peanut shells which whirled in the wind around the station platform. A great many people came down to see me off, which was dear of them, considering that my conduct has not always been exemplary. And they all kissed me and said that they hoped New York would be pleasant and that I wouldn't be lonesome, and a few of them, women, said that they hoped it would tame me down, which I did not entirely enjoy.

Even the minister came down, and he put me out of the choir last year because I let mice loose in the middle of Miss Hooker's solo, which she finished from the top of the organ, in a squawk , and it was especially nice of the minister to come down, I thought.

But to get on. I was to go to Doctor Crane's for the night. His wife was a great friend of my mother's, and has always written me more or less regularly, beside sending me things at Christmas-time. And, although it is hard for me to meet strangers, I really looked forward to going there. And it was lovely.

I arrived in Baltimore at eight that night, and I was never so frightened. In the first place, I had never been in a large city before, and the crowd was dense. And then--I am used to being near people I know, and I hadn't spoken a word to anyone beside the conductor all day. I began to feel terribly lonely.

Well, it was Doctor Crane, and he has a real smile.

I said I was sure I would.

Then he asked about uncle and my trip, and whether I'd ever been in a city before, and I answered him, trying ever so hard not to be frightened by the great crowds that ran right in front of cars at the crossings. I was quite sure we could kill someone, but we didn't.

"Nervous?" asked Doctor Crane as we turned up into a quieter street which went past the Walters' Art Gallery . I said I wasn't exactly, but that I expected to see someone killed in the mob through which we had threaded.

"I am Mary Elinor Crane," she said shyly, but she smiled so genuinely that I liked her right away.

And then Mrs. Crane came to the door, and I forgot Mary Elinor and the Doctor. She kissed me and said, "Why, my dear little girl!" and I felt as if I had always known her. "Just like your mother," she went on, "just like Nelly Randolph--the prettiest girl in the Green Spring Valley!" And I saw that her eyes were too bright, and swimming. And then she changed the subject abruptly and said: "Come in, dear. . . . You must be tired. . . . Ted, have Lucky take those bags up to the blue room"--Lucky was the darkest little coon I ever saw--"and," she went on, "Mary Elinor, you take Miss Natalie upstairs and see that she has clean towels and has a nice chance to brush up, and then come down to supper."

"Come on," said Mary Elinor, as she slipped her arm through mine. And we went up some splendid broad, winding stairs which led to a great upstairs hall. It was the loveliest house I'd ever seen. I could only gasp.

There were dark old pictures in beautifully wide, gently mellowed gilt frames, and funny old-fashioned pieces of furniture standing here and there. I particularly noticed one, and Mary Elinor told me it was a frame on which people of our great-great-grandmother's time did embroidery. . . . And on the floor were rag rugs, in the prettiest colours. They belonged with the old mahogany. I don't know about periods or anything like that, but I could feel that they fitted.

And there--I began to understand that it was not all history, geography, French, English, and mathematics that I was to learn in New York. I began to see what I never had seen--or could see--in our little village. That is--the prettier way of living. For even Miss Hooker's table never looked like Mrs. Crane's. And Miss Hooker went to the World's Fair, studied singing in Washington in 1895, and has been as far West as Chicago.

It was lovely. I did wish that Uncle Frank and Bradly-dear could see it! There was a lunch set on it, and the way the table gleamed between the lace edges was beautiful. . . . There were candles with pink shades, and in a high glass basket late autumn roses. . . . Then there were tiny baskets of nuts and candies. . . . I could only look.

They laughed and talked a lot, and we had such a good time. Mrs. Crane and Mr. Crane seem to talk by looking, too, which is queer--and yet, I suppose if you've been in the same house with a person for a great many years, and loved them lots, you would understand every little flicker that makes a change in expression, just as I understand what sort of a fly fish will want--from a look at the light and the depth of the water, and the sort of wings the insects have that hover above. . . . Sometimes I think that everything in the world is observation, that that is the only education. And that education perhaps, after all, only tries to make you do that.

I was deeply impressed by the French pastries. Of course, I had never had them before, because almost everyone in Queensburg does their own baking, and there isn't any bakery nearer than Parsons, and that deals in nothing more involved than macaroons. I asked Mrs. Crane whether she thought that I could get them in New York, and she said I could. I was ever so glad, for I think that if you are very homesick you can be diverted as well by cheerful things to go inside as by cheerful surroundings. I told them so.

Mary Elinor agreed with me.

"Eating," she said, "is underrated. It has a great deal to do with the set of your spirits , and when I grow up and am a doctor I am going to advocate complete freedom in gratifying appetite."

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