Re-Creations (15 page)

All the morning they worked eagerly together, finding personal conversation impossible because of the presence of the carpenter. At lunch time, however, Carey, having been most courteous and apologetic, seemed to feel his time had come. Or perhaps he appreciated his sister’s silence. At any rate, he remarked quite casually that he had been out for a job in Baltimore and hadn’t got it. Worse luck! Missed the man he went to see by half an hour but had a dandy time.

Cornelia took the news quietly, thoughtfully, and presently raised her eyes.

“Carey, dear, next time you go wouldn’t you be good enough to tell us where you are going and how long you expect to be gone? You’ve given us all an extremely anxious time, you know.”

She managed to make her voice quiet and matter-of-fact, without the least bit of fault-finding, for a black cloud hovered almost imperceptibly over the handsome young brows across the table, and she had no mind to spoil the pleasant atmosphere that had surrounded them all the morning.

“The idea!” said Carey, excited at once. “Why should I do that? I’m not a baby, am I? I’m a
man,
ain’t I? I guess I can go as far as I like and stay as long as I like, can’t I?”

“Yes, you can, of course,” soothed his sister. “But, if you really are a man, you’ve noticed how gray and worn Father looks. How sick he looks! He’s been through a lot, you know, and he can’t help thinking that maybe something else dreadful is coming. He has to worry for himself and Mother, too, you know. Because just now everything is very critical on Mother’s account. I know you wouldn’t want to worry Mother, and you wouldn’t want to worry Father, either, if you just stopped to think.”

“Well, but how absurd! A trip down to Baltimore that any fella would take. You aren’t such a goose as to worry over that, are you?”

“Of course it is a bit silly,” admitted the sister. “But I must confess I lay awake several hours every night myself. You remember you had just got done telling me what a wild driver that Brand Barlock is and how he put ether in the mixture. And one can’t help knowing there are hundreds of terrible automobile accidents every day. They might happen even to a man, you know, and then—well, we
love
you, Carey, you know.”

“Oh, gosh! Well, I didn’t know you were that sort of a goose. I know of course Mother—but then she isn’t here.”

“Well, when it comes down to it, Carey, I guess we all care about as much as Mother.” She smiled at him through a sudden mist of tears that all unexpectedly welled into her eyes. “And you know it was quite sudden, and well, if you had just thought to telephone, you know, to say you would be gone several days.”

“Aw, gee! Well, I suppose I might have done that. I will next time. Sure, Nell, I’ll try to remember. It was wrong of me not to say anything, but I figured that if I didn’t get it, no one would be the wiser.”

“Well, I guess you can’t cheat your family.” She smiled again, ignoring the mist in her eyes. “We’re a kind of gang together. Isn’t that what you call it? And what affects one affects all. Why, even little Louie cried herself to sleep in my arms last night because she thought maybe you had been killed.”

“Aw! Gee!”

Carey got up swiftly and went over to the window, where he gazed out past the neighbor’s blank wall until he had control of himself, then he turned with one of his lightning smiles.

“All right, Nell. I’ll give you the tip next time. I’m sorry I had to stay so long, but I waited for the man. See?”

“Well, Carey, I suppose you thought that was the right thing to do, but I’ve been wondering since you’ve been talking whether there isn’t something good for you in all this big city where we live without going away to Baltimore.”

“I’d like to see it,” gloomily answered the boy, with a sudden grim look in his eyes. “I’ve tried everything I heard of.”

“Well, it will come,” said his sister brightly. “Come, let’s get this house finished first, and then we’ll be ready for the big position you’re going to have. Next week, you know, you’ve got to go back to the garage and earn that suit. You need it badly.”

Carey caught her suddenly and gave her a bear hug and then spun her around the room till she was dizzy; and so, happily, they went back to their work, Cornelia wondering whether she had done right to pass the matter off so lightly. But brother, as he worked away at his stones silently, was thinking more seriously on the error of his ways than he had thought for four years past.

Chapter 12

I
t was several weeks before the Copley house was finished. Even then there were cushions to make out of old pieces brightened up by the stitches of embroidery or appliqué work of leaves cut from bits of old velvet. There were rugs to braid out of all the old rags the house afforded, and there were endless curtains to wash and hem and hemstitch and stencil and put up. All the family united to make the work as perfect a thing of the kind as could be accomplished. Every evening was spent in painting or papering, or rubbing down some bit of old furniture to make it more presentable, and gradually the house began to assume form and loveliness.

Paint, white paint, had done a great deal toward making another place of the dreary little house. The kitchen was spotless white enamel everywhere, and enough old marble slabs had been discovered to cover the kitchen table and the top of the kitchen dresser and to put up shelves around the sink and under the windows. Mr. Copley brought home some ball-bearing casters for the kitchen table and spent an evening putting them on so it would move easily to any part of the kitchen needed. Cornelia and Louise rejoiced in scrubbing the smooth white surfaces that were going to be so convenient and so easily kept clean. Even the old kitchen chairs had been painted white and enameled, and Cornelia discovered by chance one day that a wet sponge was a wonderful thing to keep the white paint clean; so thereafter Louise spent five minutes after dinner every evening going about with her wet sponge, rubbing off any chance fingermarks of the day before and putting the gleaming kitchen in order for the next day.

The dining room had gradually become a place of rest and refreshment for the eyes as well as for the palate. Soft green was the prevailing color of furniture and floor, with an old grass rug scrubbed back to almost its original color. The old couch was repaired and covered with pretty cretonne in greens and grays, with plenty of pillows covered with the same material. The curtains were white with a green border of stenciling. The dingy old paper had been scraped from the walls, which had been painted with many coats of white, and a pretty green border had been stenciled at the ceiling. The carpenter had found an old plate rail down in the shop, which, painted white, made a different place of the whole thing, with a few bits of Mother’s rare old china rightly placed; two Wedgwood plates in dull yellow, another of bright green; a big old Blue Willow ware plate; and some quaint cups hung on brass hooks under a little white shelf. One couldn’t ask for a pleasanter dining room than that. It dawned upon the family anew and joyously every time any one of them entered the room and made them a little better and a little brighter because it spoke “home” so softly and sweetly and comfortingly.

“Mother won’t know the place!” said Louise, standing back to survey it happily after putting the sideboard in perfect order with a clean linen cover. “She won’t know her own things, will she? Won’t it be great when she comes?”

But the living room was the crown of all: wide and pleasant with many windows, with its stone fireplace and wide mantel, adorned with a quaint old pair of brass candlesticks that had belonged to the grandmother; the walls covered with pale-yellow felt-paper like soft sunshine; the floor planed down to the natural wood, oiled and treated with shellac; and the old woolen rugs in two tones of gray, which used to be bedroom rugs when Cornelia was a baby, washed and spread about in comfortable places; it no more resembled the stuffy, dark little place they used to call a “parlor” than day resembles night. Soft white sheer curtains veiled the windows everywhere, with overcurtains of yellow cotton crêpe, and the sunshine seemed to have taken up its abode in that room even on dark days when there was no sun to be seen. It was as if it had stayed behind from the last sunshiny day, so bright and cheerful was the glow.

The little “bay” was simply overflowing with ferns the children had brought from the woods, set in superfluous yellow and gray bowls from the kitchen accumulation. Harry ran extra errands after hours and saved enough to buy the yellowest, throatiest canary the city afforded, in a big wicker cage to hang in the window.

Cretonne covers in soft gray tones covered the shabby old chairs and couch, and Carey and his father spent hours with pumice stone and oil, polishing away at the piano, the bookcase, and the one small mahogany table that was left, while Cornelia did wonderful things in the way of artistic shades for little electric lamps that Carey rigged up in odd, unexpected corners, made out of all sorts of unusual things: an old pewter sugar bowl, this with a shade of silver lace lined with yellow, a relic of some college costume; a tall gray jug with odd blue Chinese figures on it that had been among the kitchen junk for years, this with a dull-blue shade; a bright-yellow vase with a butterfly-yellow shade; and a fat green jar with willow basketwork around it on which Cornelia put a shade of soft green with some old brown lace over it.

The room was really wonderful when it was done, with two or three pictures hung in just the right spots and some photographs and magazines thrown comfortably about. Really one could not imagine a pleasanter or more artistic room, not if one had thousands to spend. The first evening it was all complete the family just sat down and enjoyed themselves in it, talking over each achievement of cushion or curtain or wall as a great connoisseur might have looked over his newly acquired collection and gloated over each specimen with delight.

Carey’s delight in it all was especially noticeable. He hovered around, getting new points of view and changing the arrangement of a chair or a table, whistling wildly and gleefully, a new Carey to them all. For the whole evening he did not offer to go out, just hung around, talking, singing snatches of popular songs, breaking into a clumsy two-finger “rag” on the piano now and then, and finally ending up with a good sing with Cornelia at the piano. It was curious, but it was a fact that this was the first time Cornelia had had time since her homecoming to sit down and play for them, and it seemed like a revelation to all. They had not realized how well she could play, for she had been studying music part of the time in college. Also no one had realized how well Carey could sing. Perhaps he had never had half a chance with a good accompaniment before. At any rate, it was very plain that he liked it and would sing as long as anyone would play for him.

And the father liked it, too. Oh,
how
he liked it! He took off his glasses, put his head back on the new cretonne cushion, closed his eyes, and just enjoyed it. Now and then he would open his eyes and watch the flicker of the fire in the new fireplace, look from the one to the other of his children, sigh, and say, “I wish your mother were here now,” and again, “We must write Mother about all this. How she will enjoy it!”

Then right into the midst of this domestic scene there entered callers.

Carey was singing when the knock came and did not hear them, or else he would most surely have disappeared. It was a way Carey had. But the knock came twice before Louise heard it and slipped to the door, letting in the strangers, who stood listening at the door, motioning to her to wait until the song was finished.

Then Mr. Copley saw them and arose to come forward. Carey, feeling some commotion, turned, and the song stopped like a shot, a frown of defiance beginning to grow between his brows.

The strangers were a man and a woman and a young girl a little older than Louise and younger than Cornelia, and one could see at a glance that they were cultured, refined people, though they were quietly, simply dressed. Carey, in his gray flannel shirt open at the neck and the old trousers in which he had assisted in the last rites of putting the room in perfect order, looked down at himself in dismay and backed suddenly around the end of the piano as far out of sight as possible, meeting the intruders with a glare of disapproval. Cornelia was the last to stop playing and look around, but by that time the lady had spoken.

“Oh, please don’t stop! We want to hear the rest of the song. What a beautiful tenor voice!”

Cornelia arose to her duties as hostess and came forward, but the man by this time was introducing himself.

“I hope we haven’t intruded, brother.” He grasped Mr. Copley’s welcoming hand. “I’m just the minister at the little church around your corner here, and we thought we’d like to get acquainted with our new neighbors. My name is Kendall, and this is my wife and my daughter Grace. I brought the whole family along because I understood you had some daughters.”

“You’re very welcome,” said Mr.Copley with dignity that marked him a gentleman everywhere. “This is my daughter Cornelia; this is Louise, and Harry; and”—with an almost frightened glance toward the end of the piano, lest he might already have vanished—“this is my son Carey.”

There was something almost proud in the way he spoke Carey’s name, and Cornelia had a sudden revelation of what Carey, the eldest son, must mean to his father in spite of all his sharpness to the boy. Of course Carey must have been a big disappointment the last few months.

Carey, thus cornered, instead of bolting, as his family half expected of him, came forward with an unexpected grace of manner and acknowledged the introduction, his eyes resting interestedly on the face of Grace Kendall.

“I’m not very presentable,” he said. “But, as I can’t seem to get out without being seen, I guess you’ll have to make the best of me.”

Grace Kendall’s eyes were merry and pleasant.

“Please don’t mind us,” she said. “You look very nice. You look as if you had been playing tennis.”

“Nothing so interesting as that,” said Carey. “Just plain work. We’re still tinkering around this house, getting settled, you know.”