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Highacres, a fiction by Jane Abbott |
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Chapter 24. Plans |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV. PLANS "Oh, dear--how dreadfully fast time passes. It seems only a little while ago we were planning for the winter and now here comes Mrs. Hicks about new summer covers for the furniture, and Joe Laney wants to know if there's going to be any painting done and I haven't thought of any summer clothes--and with those two great growing girls! I suppose if we're going to the seashore we ought to make some reservations, too----" and Mrs. Westley concluded her plaint with a sigh that came from her very toes. John Westley, from the depths of the great armed chair where he stretched, laughed at her serious face. But the expression of his own reflected the truth of what she had said. "It's the rush we live in, Mary. Why don't you cut out the seashore and find a quiet place--out of this torrent? Something--like Kettle." The mention of Kettle brought him suddenly to a thought of Jerry. "Well, my Jerry-girl's year of school is almost up. What next?" Mrs. Westley laid down her knitting. "Yes--what next?" she asked. "Somehow, I can't picture Jerry going back to Miller's Notch and--staying there----" "That's it--I've thought of it often. Have we been doing the girl a kindness? After all, John, contentment is the greatest thing in this world, and perhaps we've hurt the dear child by bringing her here and letting her have a taste of--this sort of thing." John Westley regarded his sister-in-law's plump, kindly face with amusement. She had the best heart in the world and the biggest, but she had not the discernment to know that there were treasures even in Miller's Notch and Sunnyside, and, anyway---- "Isn't contentment, Mary, a thing that depends on something inside of us, rather than our surroundings?" She nodded, speculatively. "And I rather think my girl from Kettle will be contented anywhere. She's gone ahead fast here. I was talking to Dr. Caton about her. He says she is amazingly intense in her work. I suppose that has come from her way of living there at Sunnyside. But what can the school there at Miller's Notch give her now? "And what is there for a girl, living in a small place like that, after school? Contentment does depend upon our state of mind, I grant, but one's surroundings affect that state of mind--so there you are! How is a girl going to be happy if she knows that she is far superior mentally to everything that makes up her life? Jerry will grow to womanhood in her little mountain village--marry some native and----" Uncle Johnny ignored the picture. "We can trip ourselves up at almost every turn, Mary. Aren't places really big or small as we ticket them in our own minds? If you think of Miller's Notch and Kettle by figures of the census, they are small--but, maybe, reckoning them from real angles they're big--very big, and it's our cities that are small. To go back to Jerry--when I think of her I always think of something I said to Barbara Lee--that nothing on earth could chain a spirit like that anywhere--she was one of the world's crusaders. Oh--youth! If nothing spoils my Jerry, she'll always go forward with her head up! But that's what has made me worry, more than once, during my "experiment." Have we risked the girl to the danger of being spoiled? Will our little superficialities, so ingrained that we don't realize them, taint her splendid unaffectedness? I don't know--I can't tell until I see her back at Kettle--in that environment the like of which I've never found anywhere else. If she isn't the same shining-eyed Jerry plus considerable wisdom gleaned from her books and her school friends, I'll have it on my conscience--if she's the same, well, the winter's been worth a great deal to all of us! When I see her and watch her back there--I'll know. And that leads me to what I really came here to tell you." John Westley drew a letter from his pocket. "I had word from Trimmer--the Boston attorney. He's found traces of a Craig Winton who was a graduate of Boston Tech. He lived in obscure lodgings in a poorer part of Boston and yet he seemed to have quite a circle of friends of an intellectual sort. Some of them have given enough facts to be pieced together so as to prove, I think conclusively, that this chap is the one we're looking for. He was an inventor and of a very brilliant turn of mind, but unpractical--the old story--and desperately poor. He married the only daughter of a chemist who lived in Cambridge. His health broke down and he took his wife and went off to the country somewhere--his Boston friends lost track of him after that. Later one received a letter telling of the birth of a son." "How interesting! Robert will be home in two weeks and then we can make the settlement." "But, Mary--the search hasn't ended. He left Boston for the 'country'--that is very vague. And I don't like the tone of Trimmer's communication. He advises dropping the whole matter. He says that sufficient effort has been made to meet the spirit of the letter left by the late Peter Westley----" "You will not drop it, will you?" "Indeed not. I wired him to put all the men he could find on the case. And I am going to do some work on my own account." "You?" "Yes--I have a clue all of my own." He laughed, folding the letter and putting it away. "Really, John?" "Yes--a foolish sort of a clue--I can scarcely tell it to a man like Trimmer. It's only a pair of eyes----" "I suppose if you're like all other sleuths you will not tell me anything more," said Mrs. Westley, wondering if he was really in earnest. "When and where will your personal search begin?" "I'd like to start this moment, but I happened to think I could drive Jerry home, and then I can make the test of my experiment." "Drive Jerry home----" his words reached the ears of the young people, coming into the hall. It was Friday evening and they had been at the moving-pictures. "Who's going to drive Jerry home? You, Uncle Johnny? Can't I go, too? Oh, please, please----" Gyp fell upon him, pleadingly. "Oh, I wish the girls could go," added Jerry. "Why not?" Uncle Johnny turned to Mrs. Westley. "Then you wouldn't have to worry your head over clothes and hotel space at the seashore! And Mrs. Allan's up there across at Cobble with a house big enough for a dozen----" "But they must stay at Sunnyside," protested Jerry, her face glowing. Always, now, at the back of her head, were persistent thoughts of home. She had counted the days off on her little calendar; she saw, in the bright loveliness with which the springtime had dressed the city, only a proud vision of what her beloved Kettle must be like; she hunted violets on the slopes of Highacres and dreamed of the blossoming hepaticas in the Witches' Glade and the dear sun-shadowed corners where the bloodroot grew and the soft budding beauty of the birches that lined the trail up Kettle. She longed with a longing that hurt for her little garden--for the smell of the freshly-turned soil, for the first strawberries, for the fragrance of the lilacs that grew under her small window, for the clean, cool, grass-scented valley wind. And yet her heart was torn with the thought that those very days she had counted on her calendar marked the coming separation from Gyp and the schoolmates at Highacres--Highacres itself. She must go away from them all and all that they were doing and they would in time forget her, because they would know nothing of Sunnyside. And now, quite suddenly, a new and wonderful possibility unfolded--to have Gyp at home with mother and Little-Dad, sleeping in the tiny room under the gable, climbing the trails with her, working in the garden, playing with Bigboy, sharing all the precious joys of Kettle, meant a link; after that, there could be no real separation. And she wanted Isobel, too. Between the two girls had sprung a wonderful understanding. Isobel was grateful that Jerry had not humiliated her by mentioning the debate, or the many other little meannesses of which she had been guilty; Jerry was glad that Isobel had not raked them up--it was so much nicer to just know that Isobel liked her now. Isobel was a very different girl since her accident--perhaps Uncle Johnny, alone, knew why. She had decided very suddenly that she did want to go to college. The week before she had "squeezed through" the college entrance exams--luck she did not deserve, she had declared with surprising frankness. And after college she planned to study interior decorating. Everyone wondered why they had not thought before of such wonderful summer plans. Mrs. Westley would go with Tibby to Cousin Marcia's at Ocean Point in Maine--"quiet enough there"; Graham was going to a boys' camp in Vermont, and Isobel and Gyp could divide their time between Sunnyside and Cobble. "We are not consulting Mrs. Travis," laughed Mrs. Westley. "Oh, she'd love them to be there," cried Jerry with conviction. "And anyway, if she frowns, we'll move on to Wayside, and we know the trail in between, don't we, Jerry?" "Say, Jerry," Graham thought it the psychological moment to spring a request he had been entertaining in his heart for some time. "Will you let me take Pepper to camp? Lots of the boys have dogs but none of them are as smart as Pep." Jerry could not answer for a moment. In her picture of her homegoing, Pepper had had his part; but--it would be another link---- "Of course you may take him. He'll love--being with you." Long ago she had reconciled herself to sharing Pepper's devotion with Graham. "Oh, I think that's the wonderfulest plan ever made," exclaimed Gyp rapturously--Gyp, who with her mother had visited some of the most fashionable summer and winter resorts. "I want to sleep up on--where is it, Jerry--and see the sunrise. How will we ever exist until school's over!" "Examinations will help us do that," laughed Isobel. "And Class-day and Commencement. And who's going to win the Lincoln Award?" _ |
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