Thus ended Jessica Trent’s first year at school. It was the forerunner of others so like it that no record is needed. There were summer vacation trips in various directions, visits to the homes of schoolmates, and one year—the third of her absence from Sobrante—was spent in Europe.
The intimacy with Aubrey and Natalie begun on her entrance to the Adelphi, continued through all their mutual course and at last the time came when they, too, were to be graduated; strangely enough, Aubrey with first honors and our heroine with none. She wrote home:—
“Dear Mother:
“You’re going to be dreadfully disappointed in me, I know, and I wish, I wish I could make it otherwise. But I can’t. I think all that feverish energy of the first year was but a ‘spurt,’ as rowers say. It came from shame. But as soon as I had picked up enough to keep even with the girls of my own age I couldn’t tear ahead and climb any more of that ‘bean-stalk’ dear Miss Montaigne used to talk about. Poor thing! She feels a deal worse about my stupidity than I do. She thought she had found a genius to instruct when she first took hold of my brains, but she made a mistake.
“I can sing—a little. I can fiddle, or violin, enough to make it pleasant for the ‘boys’ when I get home. I can sew a seam and I’ve never forgotten Aunt Sally’s parting injunction to ‘keep my stockings mended.’ I can set a table, I can entertain a guest, I’ve been through the cooking class and can do an omelet or a Welsh rarebit to a turn. I’ve studied banking and economy till I think, I hope, I can take care of a good deal of your business; or, at least, can see that nobody carries it on badly.
“I can trim a bonnet, I can make a gown, and I can wash fine laces. Aubrey says she doesn’t see what Madame’s pupils need of such ‘accomplishments,’ but Madame, who is wise, says one never can tell what one may or may not need to know. Anyway, it was her place to give us an all around education and she’s done her best for us.
“I can speak French and German well enough to act as interpreter on our trip abroad, and I’ve hammered enough Latin into my head to understand Botany and a bit of mineralogy. But I don’t yet see how long it would take Mr. A, working so many hours a day to be as smart as Mr. B, working some other time. Arithmetic isn’t my strong point.
“In brief, dearest mother, you’ll find your girl is just a plain, home-loving, people-loving, glad-to-be-alive-and-a-link-in-the-chain sort of creature; and thus forewarned you’re not to be so greatly, greatly disappointed, if you please. I’m not a ‘star,’ as you were; not even that bottom-of-the-class-one I sometimes aspired to be.
“Your room is all ready. You are to stay right here at the Adelphi while you are in town. Madame, my second mother, will hear of no other arrangement; and, dear, she has promised she will accept your invitation to go home with us to Sobrante and stay all summer.
“Last evening we went to a sort of farewell reception at the ‘Adelphi Home for Children,’ our blessed sanctuary for the little ones over on Avenue A. As I looked at that great building, with all its fine appointments, its comfort and its hosts of happy babies, I got—as I used to say when I was a baby myself—‘all chokey up.’ And I sighted backward along the ‘chain’ to that far-away afternoon when Buster laid its corner stone, so to speak. Knocking down one little maid from Avenue A was the real beginning of things.
“You’ll be in time for Sophy’s graduation, too. She is so strong and well now, and such an ideal nurse. They’re going to miss her dreadfully at St. Luke’s which has been her home so long. The Superintendent told me there was nobody who could manage a fractious patient with the skill and tenderness of our dear Sophy. She’s the real honor girl of our family. It seems to me there isn’t anything in the realm of nursing that she hasn’t conquered. The head surgeon says she could even perform one of those fearful ‘operations’ if necessary, though I hope it never will be.
“You should see the darling’s pride in her new, white linen uniforms. All her old blue gingham, ‘probationer’ ones she is leaving for any other girl who wants to be a nurse and hasn’t money for her clothes. You’d think it was bridal finery to see Sophy handle those garments: see her fondle the spotless aprons and dainty caps; and hear her murmur: ‘At last, at last! I am authorized and free to do for others what has been done for me!’ She looks so pretty, so earnest, so noble, that I’m sure some of our ‘boys’ will want to break a bone or two just to have her attend them.
“I’ve paid my last visit, too, to Granny Briggs in her apartment. She is as happy as Sophy and as proud, but far more weighed down with the cares of life. ‘What will I do with this here painted plate, what Miss Montaigne first et Indian puddin’ off?’ ‘Them granite pots ’t Ephraim Marsh bought, and don’t need scourin’ all the time, I certain can’t leave them behind to be thrown into a rubbish heap!’ Ephraim sits and chuckles and says that he too, ‘at last, is on the road to freedom. Sophia Badger that was has badgered the life out of him ’cause he’s so forgetful and will eat stuff no man of his age ought to, though it’s never hurt him a mite. Fire the whole mess of trash into the garbage box, Sophia, and let the poor ash-man get the benefit of ’em. We don’t need no New York truck on our ranch, Sophia. We’re going home to Sobrante.’
“The dear old fellow is as happy as a child; but, mother darling, there’s a lump in my throat every time I hear him say that sweet word ‘home.’ He is going. He must hold out till he gets there and maybe, oh! maybe, the ‘superfine air of Californy, where folks live to be a hundred and fifteen years old, some of ’em,’ may put that new life into his veins that he anticipates. But there are moments when my eyes fill looking on his blessed, honest, rugged face and I see how worn and thin it is. ‘Sophia Badger’ sees the change in him, as well. She has never said so and I would not ask her if she did. I couldn’t bear to hear my own fear put into words. She merely cossets him and feeds him and scolds him more than ever; yet does it all with that maternal smile that makes my heart ache. The two poor, dear old creatures! Who still talk of their childhood ‘scrapes’ in ‘Cawnco’d’ as if it were but yesterday. Ephraim has sent up-river for Buster and that happy broncho is also ready for his homeward trip.
“Altogether, we shall be, must be a merry, merry party; and I can hardly realize that I have come to a time when I am writing my very last letter to you. Before another one could reach you we shall be together, face to face.
“Till then, and hoping you are duly prepared for the girl you haven’t seen in five long years—just because you thought it wiser and better for me that I should mature outside the family garden—I bring this long one to a close.
“Your daughter,
“Jessica.”
Commencements are much alike. This one that witnessed Jessica Trent’s graduation, might have been any other of her whole school course, so far as outward appearances went. There were the same artistic decorations, the same superabundance of flowers, the same well-spread tables. There was almost the same old crowd of eager spectators so like were these to the gatherings gone before.
But there was always, as there always will be, a great difference to the maidens most concerned.
To Jessica’s vast astonishment, she had been chosen valedictorian of her class; and with a fine ambition that here, at least, she might make her mother proud, she had worked night and day on her essay and had brought it to what even Madame pronounced a fine and graceful climax. Jessie had a gift of speech and she had a gift of pen; but— Let us not forecast!
Almost the same Faculty occupied the platform. Almost the same teachers sat beside the stately Madame; and almost the same group of white-clad maidens waited with fluttering hearts for their bit of sheepskin which the President would soon present them.
Mrs. Trent was there, grown scarcely old in these past years, because of the greater ease and luxury of her life. Madam Dalrymple, in shimmering silk and coiffure quite as bewildering as when her young “second cousin twice removed” had first beheld her. She had made the long trans-continental journey—“I left my rheumatism behind me in that dry air of California”—to witness a scene which would bring back that one when Gabriella, beloved of her heart, had also graduated. She even “Poohs!” at that mother’s disappointment in that Jessica is not a world-famous scholar. “Why, what do you want, Gabriella? The child is a gentlewoman—one glance shows it—and the only ‘career’ to which she need aspire is to make our home a real home, back there at Sobrante. Leave the scholarship to Ned. That boy has reached the necktie stage of his existence and begins to think about his hair and finger nails. He has brains enough, else he’d never have been so mischievous. Don’t worry because Jessica isn’t a mannish woman, but be content. For my part, I never saw a more beautiful, wholly satisfactory girl. You couldn’t hold a candle to her even in your earliest youth; and now you see how good my judgment was. If I hadn’t fairly nagged you into sending her to me you’d never have seen such a picture as that yon,” finished the delighted dame, nodding her white pompadour stage-ward.
Ephraim was there, Mrs. Briggs and Sophy beside him; all in that same front row with Mrs. Dalrymple and Gabriella; also a young lad who is taking his first peep at life outside his home and whom the valedictorian can scarcely believe is the scampish little “tacker” she remembers, even Ned.
“Now, Jessie. Do us credit,” whispers Miss Montaigne, as the fateful moment arrives and the girl steps forward to repeat the speech she has so carefully memorised. She is a “dream of beauty,” as Madam Dalrymple has declared. Her movements are graceful and easy. She wears her exquisite graduation gown as unconsciously as if it were her ordinary school frock, and that Madame has, also, said is to be a mark of gentlehood. “Such people are clothed—they never wear their clothes.”
Jessica bows, very prettily, very low. She opens her lips and a word or two issues thence. Then, most unfortunately, she lifts her eyes toward a group of other girls, with whom she has joyed and sorrowed during the close intimacy of these past years and—disaster!
Her eyes fill, her face flushes, pales, is covered by her slim white hands—and Jessica Trent has ignominiously broken down. A fierce sob escapes her—is taken up and echoed by one, a half-dozen, all of those white throats of her beloved mates, and they are all weeping in concert. Even some of the audience, moved by a profound sympathy, shed a few tears in concert; and—Commencement is over!
“Well, there generally is some unusual happening to mark the close of our year together, but we’ve never had just this sort of thing before; and it’s all because we never before graduated a girl whose whole nature was just love!” said poor Miss Montaigne, whose own heart was heavy at this parting.
Sobrante?
Yes, at last. The special or private car, also the “Sobrante,” is slowly approaching the terminal of the railway—the Sobrante mines. It is also an observation car and its open spaces are crowded with such eager people as never before journeyed over that route. Old faces, young faces, but never a sad nor lonely face among them; and happiest of all is Jessica Trent’s.
With trembling lips she questions Ninian Sharp as she has used to do in the days before she was a “young lady”; and he who has met her and all the returning party at Los Angeles answers as swiftly as she asks:
“What is that big stone building crowning the mesa, old Pedro’s mesa?”
“Our new St. Luke’s hospital; over which your friend Miss Sophy is to rule.”
“That spire? Is that a church, right here at our own dear home?”
“Yes. The Church of the Good Shepherd—Who has cared for His unfortunates,” replies the mine manager, lifting his hat.
“That long low building, in the valley, where the raisin-grapes used to grow?”
“Ah! you haven’t forgotten localities, I see. That’s our library, reading-room, bowling alley, amusement place in general.”
“That other, of red brick with white trimmings?”
“Our school; one of the best equipped and officered in southern California.”
“Those cottages? Such rows and rows of them, each with its bit of green about it—Who lives in them? Where have the people come from? you must have irrigated well and lavishly to make so much verdure here.”
“The miners’, carpenters’, and farmers’ homes. Yes, we’ve water now and to spare. We tapped it in the mountains, an ever-constant flow, and water you will remember, Miss Jessica, is a ‘mine’ in itself to California.”
“Everywhere, everywhere, such changes and so fine! Yet it almost grieves me to come home and find it all so changed. But that is wrong. It is the dream of my dead father’s life made blessed reality. So, I am glad after all, and I feel that from somewhere he is looking down on me returning, bidding me take up and carry on the work he planned, that you have organized, and that old Pedro’s gift made possible.
“Ah! here we are! And this is unchanged! This dear old ‘house’ is not one bit different from my memory of it! Home, home, at last?”
As she sprang from the car and sped across the little intervening space which yet remained, there issued from that cottage door a plump old lady, decorated everywhere with strips of flying patchwork, her glasses on top of her old gray head, and a bottle in her hand, which so shakes with delight that the vial falls to the ground and breaks.
“Why, Jess—All that good picry—Jessie, my love, my lamb! Luis! Wun Lung! John, Marty, Ephraim Ma’sh—man alive you needed that medicine, you needed it powerful, and it’s wasted! Never mind, I’ve got more and after supper—Wun Lung, do you dast tell me you come out and left them ‘sally luns’ to scorch? Back into that kitchen and serve up that supper or I’ll cut your pigtail off!”
With this dire and oft-repeated threat the Chinaman disappeared, salaaming and katowing to the last, as he retreated backward and fixed his admiring gaze upon the girl he had known and always loved.
But why seek to describe that joyful homecoming? Those who have home-loving hearts may well imagine it for themselves; and those who have not would not be interested.
But never was there, could there be, a more grateful heart than Jessica Trent’s, as she stood that night before her own old, open window and looked out over that vast estate of which she was to be the chatelaine; while from her lips there rose the humble, happy cry:
“O Thou dear God Who givest all, make me to be worthy of my Inheritance!”