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Highacres, a fiction by Jane Abbott |
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Chapter 7. Highacres |
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_ CHAPTER VII. HIGHACRES Old Peter Westley had made up his mind, so gossip said, to build Highacres when he heard that Thomas Knowles, a business rival, had bought a palatial home on the most beautiful avenue of the city. "Pouf"--that was Uncle Peter's favorite expression and he had a way of blowing it through his scraggly mustache that made it most impressive. "Pouf! I'll show him!" The next morning he drove around to a real estate office, bundled the startled real estate broker into his car and carried him off to the outskirts of the city, where lay a beautiful tract of land advertised as "Highacre Terrace," and held (with an eye to the growth of the city) at a startling figure. In the real estate office it had been divided into building lots with "restrictions," which meant that only separate houses could be built on the lots. Peter Westley struck the ground with his heavy cane and said he'd take the whole piece. The real estate man gasped. Uncle Peter said "pouf" again and the deal was settled. Then he summoned architects from all over the country who, to his delight, spent hours in the office of the Westley Cement-Mixer Manufacturing Company trying to outdo one another in finesse and suavity. Fortunately he decided upon a man who had genius as well as tact, who, without his knowing it, could quietly bend old Peter Westley to his way of thinking. Under this man's planning the new home grew until it stood in its finished perfection, a mass of stone and marble surrounded by great trees and sloping lawns. Gossip said further that Highacres so far surpassed the remodeled home of Thomas Knowles that that poor gentleman had resigned from the Meadow Brook Country Club so that he would not have to drive past it! What sentiment had led Peter Westley to leave Highacres to the Lincoln School no one would ever know; perhaps deep in his queer old heart was an affection for his nephew Robert's children, who came dutifully to see him once or twice a year, but made no effort to conceal the fact that they thought it a dreadful bore. "I think," Isobel said seriously to her family, as they were gathered around the breakfast table, a few days after Jerry's arrival, "that it'd be nice if Gyp and I put on black----" "Black----" cried Gyp, spilling her cocoa in her astonishment. "Yes, black. We should have worn it when Uncle Peter died and now, going to school out there, it would show the others that we respected----" Mrs. Westley laughed, then when she saw the color deepen on Isobel's cheeks she added soothingly: "Your thought's all right, Isobel dear, but it will be hardly necessary for you and Gyp to put on black now to show your respect. I think every pupil of Lincoln can best do it by building up a reputation for scholarship that will make Lincoln known all over the country." "Isobel just wants everybody to remember she's Uncle Peter's----" "Hush, Graham." Mrs. Westley had a way of saying "hush" that cleared a threatening atmosphere at once. "Oh, isn't it going to be fun?" cried Gyp. "Mother, can't we take Jerry out there this morning?" "But I have to use the car----" "If you girls were fellows, we could walk," broke in Graham. "We can--we can! It's only two miles and a half. Simpson watched on the speedometer the last time we drove out." Graham looked questioningly at Jerry and Jerry, suddenly recalling the miles of mountain trail over which she had climbed, laughed back her answer. Because a new world, that surpassed any fairy tale, had opened to Jerry in these last few days, it seemed only fitting to go to school in a building that was like a palace. She thrilled at the thought of the new school life, the girls and boys who would be her classmates, the new teachers, the new studies. For years and years, back at the Notch she had always sat in front of Rose Smith and back of Jimmy Chubb; she had progressed from fractions to measurements and then on to algebra and from spelling to Latin with the outline of Jimmy's winglike ears so fixed a part of her vision that she wondered if now she might not find that she could not study without them. And there had always been, as far back as she could remember, only little Miss Masten to teach multiplication and geography and algebra alike; she and the other children who made up the "advanced grade" of the school at Miller's Notch always called her "Miss Sarah." Would there be anyone like Miss Sarah at Lincoln? As they walked along, Gyp bravely measuring her step to Jerry's freer stride, Gyp explained to Jerry "all about" Uncle Peter. "He's father's uncle. Father's father--that's my grandfather--was his youngest brother. He died when he was just a young man and Uncle Peter never got over it. Mother says my grandfather was the only person Uncle Peter ever really liked. He always lived in the same funny little old house even after he made lots of money, until he built Highacres. He was terribly queer. I used to be dreadfully afraid of him because he always carried a big cane and had the awfullest way of looking at you! His eyes sort of bored holes right through you, so that you turned cold all over and couldn't even cry. I'm glad he's dead. He was awfully old, anyway--or at least he looked old. We used to just hate to have to go to see him. The old stingy wouldn't ever even give us a stick of candy." "The poor old man," Jerry said so feelingly that Gyp stared at her. "My mother always said that such people are so unhappy that they punish themselves. Maybe he really wanted to be nice and just didn't know how! Anyway, he's given his home to the school." If Peter Westley, looking down from another world, was reading that thought in a hundred young hearts he must surely be finding his reward. "There it is!" cried Graham, who was walking ahead. School could not really seem a bit like school, Jerry thought, as she followed the others through the spacious grounds into the building, when one studied in such beautiful rooms where the sun, streaming through long windows framed in richly-toned walnut, danced in slanting golden bars across parqueted floors. Gyp's enthusiasm, though, made it all very real. "Here, Jerry, here's where the third form study room will be. Look, here's the geom. classroom! Oh, I hope we'll be put in the same class. Let's go down to the Gym. Oh--look at the French room--isn't it darling?" The trees outside were casting a shimmer of green through the sunshine in the room. "Mademoiselle will say: 'Young ladies, it ees beau-ti-ful!' Aren't these halls jolly, Jerry? Oh, I can't wait for school to begin." On their way to the gymnasium, which was in the new wing of the building, the girls met another group. One of these disentangled herself from the arms that encircled her waist and threw herself into Gyp's embrace. The extravagance of her demonstration startled Jerry, but when Gyp introduced her, in an off-hand way: "This is Ginny Cox, Jerry," Jerry found herself fascinated by the dash and "camaraderie" in the girl's manner. There were other introductions and excited greetings; each tried to tell how "scrumptious" and "gorgeous" and "spliffy" she thought the new school. Like Gyp, none of them could wait until school opened. Then the group passed on and Jerry, breathless at her first encounter with her schoolmates-to-be, remembered only Ginny Cox. "She's the funniest girl--she's a perfect circus," Gyp explained in answer to Jerry's query. "Everybody likes her and she's the best forward we ever had in Lincoln." All of which was strange tribute to Jerry's ears, for, back at the Notch, poor Si Robie had always been dubbed the "funniest" child in the school and he had been "simple." Jerry did not know exactly how valuable a good "forward" was to any school but, she told herself, she knew she was going to like Ginny Cox. In the gymnasium the girls found Graham with a group of boys. Gyp greeted them boisterously. Jerry, watching shyly, thought them all very jolly-looking boys. "Do you see that tall boy down there?" Gyp nodded toward another group. "That's Dana King. Isobel's got an awful crush on him. She won't admit it but I know it, and the other girls say so, too. He's a senior." The boy turned at that moment. His pleasant face was aglow with enthusiasm. "Come on, fellows," he cried to the other boys, "let's give a yell for old Peter Westley." And the yell was given with a will!
Jerry tingled to her finger-tips. Gyp had yelled with the others, so had Ginny Cox, who had come back into the room. What fun it was all going to be. Dana King was leading the boys in a serpentine march through the building; out in the hall the line broke to force in a laughing, remonstrating carpenter. Jerry heard their boyish voices gradually die away. "Before we go back let's climb up to the tower room." That was the name the children had always given to the largest of the turrets that crowned Highacres' many-gabled roof. A stairway led directly to it from the third floor. But the door of the room was locked. "How tiresome," exclaimed Gyp, shaking the knob. Not that she did not know just what the tower room was like, but she hated locked doors--they always made her so curious. "It's the nicest room--you can see way off over the city from its windows." She gave the offending door a little kick. "They put all of Uncle Peter's old books and papers and things up here--mother wouldn't have them brought to our house, you see. I remember she told Graham the key was down in the safety-deposit box at the bank. Well----" disappointed, Gyp turned down the stairs. "I've always loved tower rooms, don't you, Jerry? They're so romantic. Can't you just see the poor princess who won't marry the lover her father has commanded her to marry, languishing up there? Even chained to the wall!" Jerry shuddered but loved the picture. She added to it: "She's got long golden, hair hanging down over her shoulders and she's tearing it in her wretchedness." "And beating her breast and vowing over and over that she will not marry the horrible wicked prince----" "And refusing to eat the dry bread that the ugly old keeper of the drawbridge slips through the door----" At this point in the heartrending story the two laughing girls reached the outer door. Gyp slipped an affectionate hand through Jerry's arm. She forgot the languishing princess she had consigned to the prison above in her joy of the bright sunshine, the inviting slopes of Highacres, velvety green, and the new friend at her side. "I'm so glad Uncle Johnny found you!" _ |
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