Read Ebook: Jean Craig Grows Up by Lyttleton Kay

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Ebook has 961 lines and 43438 words, and 20 pages

Kit hurried over, put her hand on Becky's arm, and squeezed it reassuringly. "What's the matter? Anything about Dad?" demanded Kit, swift to catch the connection between her cousin's tears and words. "Did you get a letter?"

"No," answered Rebecca, "your mother just telephoned me from Philadelphia. Your father is worse and the doctors think he would be better off at home. They will be home in three days. You know, Kit, they'd never do that if the doctors could do anything more." There was a break in Rebecca's voice. "I just wish I had him up home safe in the room he used to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I did when my mother was alive. That's your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that was Charlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after the Craig side instead of the Peabody, they said, and Tom was just like my own brother. I wish I had him away from doctors and trained nurses and Army hospitals, and had old Doctor Gallup tending him instead. I've seen him march right up to Charon's ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn't think was through living."

Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at the pines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow it didn't seem as if God could let her father slip out of the world after He had allowed him to come home from the war. And just when they all needed him so much. During all the months of illness, the girls and Tommy had not grasped the seriousness of it. He only seemed weak and not himself. They knew he had not gone back to work in his office in New York after he left the Army, but they had taken these things lightly.

Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the meaning of her mother's anxious face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last of all, the decision to return to the Army Hospital in Philadelphia.

Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharp pain. "It's going to be awful," she said softly, "just awful for Mom."

Rebecca squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted her double chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold.

"It's worse for you children and Tom. We women are given special strength to bear just such trials. We've got to be strong," she said.

But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit's brown eyes. She pulled the curtains back, and looked out as the blue waters of the Sound were turning purple and violet in the gathering gloom of the late afternoon. The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a light snowfall. Down close to the water some gulls rose and swept in a big half circle toward the other side of the inlet. Bob Phelps, running along the sidewalk toward home, waved a big bunch of pussy willows at her.

"Spring's coming, Kit," he yelled. "Just found some and they're 'most out!"

Kit waved back mechanically. Of course she must not break down and cry. Even Tommy wouldn't, and she and Jean must be strong and brace up the two younger ones so they all could help their mother. Still the tears came. What was the use of spring if--

"Kit, aren't you ever coming down?" called Jean from the foot of the stairs.

"Right now," Kit answered. "You come too, please, Becky. We need you awfully. To tell us what to do next."

"No, you don't," said Rebecca calmly. "You don't need me anymore than the earth needs me to tell it this snow's going away and the flowers will soon be blossoming. The first thing you must do is learn how to meet your father with a smile."

The next three days were anxious ones. All plans for the party had been cancelled, and after school the girls and Tommy hung around Rebecca feeling that she alone could help them bear the suspense. Jean occasionally stole away to her mother's room and looked around to be sure that everything was as she liked it best, and when she came out into the wide upper hall she usually met Kit and Doris stealing from their father's room, their eyes red from crying.

Tommy hid himself in dark corners, rather like a small puppy trying to run away from his fears. Kit declared there wasn't a dry pillow in the house.

"How about your own self?" Doris asked.

"I cry too, but not all the time. I said before that I don't intend to mope around. We've got to keep a stiff upper lip if we don't want to go to pieces. We must represent the beyondness in feminine efficiency."

"What does that mean, Kit?" asked Tommy.

Kit gave Tommy a good-natured shove. "Means that we've got to keep calm no matter what happens."

Jean said little. Ever since she could remember, her mother had said to her, "You know I rely on you most, dear. You give me reassurance when I need it most."

It was a thought that always gave her fresh strength, to know how much her mother needed her. She was smaller than Kit, slender and with dark eyes, with a soft look about them.

"Jeannie, you've got such sympathetic, interested, mellow eyes."

"Eyes can't be mellow, Dorrie, try something else."

"Well, they are mellow just the same--tender and nice, aren't they, Tommy?"

And Tommy would always agree that they were. But they were full of trouble now, as Jean hurried around the house, following Rebecca's direction. Rebecca really did herself proud as chief of operations. Mr. Craig's rooms were immaculate and as clear of nonessentials as the deck of a battleship. Under her orders the girls worked hard, Tommy ran all the errands she demanded, while Lydia, the Hungarian maid who came in by the day, regarded her with silent, wide-eyed admiration.

"We'd never have managed without you, Rebecca," Jean declared when the final day arrived, and they all gathered in the long living room, listening for the hum of the car up the drive. Doris and Tommy were curled up on the wide window seat. Kit paced back and forth restlessly, and Jean sat with her legs dangling over the arm of her father's lounge chair before the open fireplace. She was watching the curling flames.

"Land, child, I don't see what you want to burn open fires for when you run a good furnace," Rebecca had demurred.

"I know it isn't necessary," Jean answered, getting up from the chair to poke at the fire already blazing steadily, "but it's consoling to watch an open fire. Don't you think so, Becky?"

Rebecca sat in the old-fashioned pine rocker, placidly knitting on a sweater she was making for Tommy.

"We must all hope for the best," she said, beaming at the anxious faces. "Doris, for pity's sake stop that silent drizzling. If your father were to walk in now, he'd certainly be discouraged to look at you. I feel just as badly as any of you." She took off her glasses, that were always balanced halfway down her nose, and reminisced, "Land, didn't I live with him for years after his mother died? That was your own grandmother, Doris Craig. I've still got her spinning wheel up home in the attic. But I always did say we made too much woe of the passing over of our dear ones. And for heaven's sake, your father not gone yet. Smile, even if your hearts do ache, and cheer him up. Don't meet him with tears and fears. Jean, run and tell Lydia to keep an eye on that beef tea while I'm here. It has to keep simmering. Kit, can't you keep still for a minute, or does it ease your mind to keep pacing?"

So she encouraged and cheered them, and when the car came up the driveway to the porch steps with Mr. and Mrs. Craig, the four children did their best to look happy. Mr. Craig, wrapped well in the automobile robe, waved to them, his lean, handsome face showing an eagerness to be with them once more.

"Hello, my dears," he called to them. "Becky, God bless you, give me a hand. I'm still rather shaky."

They were all trying to kiss him at once, and Tommy held one of his thin white hands in his strong ones. It did not require the look in their mother's eyes to warn them about being careful. Slender and tall, she stood behind him smiling at them all.

"Why, he doesn't look nearly so bad as I expected," Rebecca told her, kissing her in a motherly way. Somehow it seemed quite natural for all to pet and comfort Mom. It had been the same when their father had been in the service; now, more than ever, when the past three months had shown them the possibilities of trouble and sorrow.

"You mustn't tire him, girls," she told them. "Tommy, help your father upstairs." He and Becky between them helped Mr. Craig go up, one step at a time, then a rest before the next. "He must have a chance to recover from the trip."

"Land," Rebecca called back, "I'm so relieved that you didn't have to bring him back on a stretcher I can hardly catch my breath."

"I'm hopeful since he stood the trip so well," answered Mrs. Craig. She leaned her head against the back of the big, cushioned chair. Jean slipped off her coat and Doris took her gloves. Tommy came downstairs and put a fresh log on the fire and Kit hurried out to the kitchen after a cup of tea. They all hovered over her, each eager to make her comfortable. Then suddenly, unable to hold back any longer, she burst into tears. Jean rushed to her side and pulled her close into her arms.

"Mother darling," she begged. "Don't, don't cry so. Why, you're home, and we're all going to look after him, and help you as much as we can."

Doris raced out of the room and up the stairs after Rebecca, and presently she came bustling downstairs, flushed and efficient.

"Why, Margaret Ann," she cried, smoothing back her hair just as if she had been one of the children. "Don't give way just when your strength is needed most."

"Please call me Margie," protested Mrs. Craig, smiling a little. "It sounds so formal for you to call me Margaret Ann. It always makes me feel like squaring my shoulders, Becky."

"So you should, child," Rebecca declared cheerily. "Margie's so sort of gay to my way of thinking and there's stability to Margaret Ann. Lord knows, you're going to need a lot of stability before you find the way out of this."

"I know I am." As she spoke she held her family close to her, Doris and Tommy kneeling beside her and Jean and Kit on each side. She leaned back and smiled at them.

"That's better," Becky said. "Now you children let her go up to her room. I have to tend my broth and see how Tom's coming along. Looks to me like rest and quiet will carry him through if anything will."

"Becky!" There was a note of panic in their Mother's voice. Nobody but the same unemotional Becky knew how she longed to put her head right down on that ample bosom and have a good old-fashioned cry. "Becky, the doctors at the hospital say he'll never be any better."

"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed Becky indignantly, with a toss of her head. "Lots they know about it. I never take any stock in those doctors at all, Margie. Give me castor oil, some quinine and calomel, and maybe a little arnica salve for emergencies, and I'll undertake to help anybody hang on to themselves a little bit longer. They can keep their penicillin and sulfa powder and other fancy drugs."

"But things seem so near a crisis now."

"Let them." Rebecca stood with her hands on her hips, as if she were hurling defiance at somebody, and the family fairly hung on her words. "Buck up, Margie Craig. As for you, Jean and Kit and Doris and Tommy, if I find any of you looking doleful, I declare I'll stick clothespins on your noses and fasten a smile to your lips with adhesive tape."

Even without this advice the children were determined to look cheerful and to keep their father carefree and happy.

Saturday came and went without the party. Once, and sometimes twice a day the doctor's car turned into the broad pebbled driveway and the children went around with subdued voices and anxious faces. Even Lydia, down in her kitchen domain, looked foreboding, and told Rebecca that she had dreamed three times of three blackbirds perching on the chimneys, which was a sure sign of death, anyone could tell you, in her own country.

"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't," Becky laughed back. "If I were you, Lydia, I'd take something for my liver and go to bed a little earlier at night."

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