Up a Road Slowly

by Irene Hunt

  It had been so simple before the new developments. I would stay with Aunt Cordelia in my familiar old room; Danny would continue living at home; we would drive into college together, home together, to all the college activities together. Everything together. Just Danny and Julie for at least three years; then there would have to be one year of separation while Danny did graduate work and I finished college, but when that year was finished we would be married. Now the plans called for four long years apart, both of us among strangers, a whole new way of life. It was frightening.

  “Don’t fall in love with someone else, Danny,” I said. I tried to make it sound gay, but I was terribly in earnest.

  “I’m not worried about me; it’s you losing your head if some poet barges in on my territory,” Danny said glumly.

  Little by little, however, we became less fearful of the change, more aware of the fact that we were living in a narrow, comfortable world, and like some little old couple of eighty or so, highly apprehensive about branching off the beaten track. By the time Chris got home for summer vacation, Danny and I were ready to join him in plans for the coming year, plans that involved several trips back and forth across half the continent for holidays and special occasions together.

  I wondered sometimes when I was alone what Aunt Cordelia had meant about my becoming another Cordelia Bishop. I knew that I must look a little like the girl in the picture, at least Jonathan Eltwing thought so, but I believed the resemblance ended there. I was quite sure of it until one evening when Chris and I were talking with Father and Alicia and the subject of Jane Austen came up. Father was telling us about a paper written by a girl in one of his classes, a paper bitterly critical of any and all of Austen’s writings.

  “I certainly think such an attitude indicates immaturity,” I said severely. I had once been intensely bored by Jane Austen myself, but I supposed that all people who had lived seventeen years had progressed in their powers of discrimination.

  I saw Alicia’s lips twitch when she glanced at Father; neither of them would probably have said anything, but Chris never missed an opportunity to tease.

  “And, by Jove, we just don’t hold with the anti-Austen clique, do we, Aunt Cordelia?”

  I laughed with them that evening, but the incident set me to thinking. And when, a few days later, I was caught again in an unconscious mimicry of Aunt Cordelia, I began to agree that it was time that I got out into a wider world.

  It happened when Mrs. Peters brought her two small grandchildren over to visit us. They were a beautiful, winsome little pair, a girl of five and a little boy of about three. I was delighted with their large solemn eyes and their baby voices.

  When I asked them their names, the little girl answered for both. “I am Peggy, and my little brother is Bobby,” she told me.

  I amused them with a few old toys for a time; then when they grew restless, I suggested that perhaps they would like to go out to the stable and watch me feed a lump of sugar to old Peter the Great. I lifted the small boy into his wagon, and offered my hand to the little girl.

  “We’ll let Robert ride, and you and I can pull him, can’t we, Margaret?”

  The little girl smiled at me, almost as if she understood that here was a young woman who was showing the effects of living ten years with an aunt of decided opinions.

  “You didn’t listen to our names,” she said in gentle reproach. “I am Peggy, and my little brother is Bobby.”

  I glanced at Aunt Cordelia and Mrs. Peters, who sat watching us. “Another four years, Julia, and you wouldn’t be able to leave unwashed dishes in the sink overnight,” Aunt Cordelia remarked.

  “Worse things could happen to her, Cordelia,” Mrs. Peters said.

  “Much worse,” Aunt Cordelia agreed, “but Laura’s young Julie might feel someday that her aunt was a highly inflexible person. We don’t want another generation of inflexibility,” she added.

  She was laughing at herself as well as at me, I thought. Perhaps Aunt Cordelia was not quite so inflexible as I had once believed her to be.

  Whether or not they approved of the attitudes and opinions I had picked up from Aunt Cordelia, all the members of my family were pleased that I was named valedictorian of my class that year. Laura and Bill and young Julie would be coming a few days before graduation; Father and Alicia would stay at the old house too, in order to be close to all of us. Aunt Cordelia and I planned a supper to be served after the graduation exercises; besides the family there would be Jonathan, Danny’s parents, and Mr. and Mrs. Peters. Chris and Danny and I took over the task of getting things ready.

  There were no half-measures with Aunt Cordelia. Long stored bedding had to be taken out and aired, curtains had to be laundered, walls must be wiped down, windows washed, and floors waxed. The house was in a state of cheerful hubbub for several days as the boys and I carried out Aunt Cordelia’s orders and were refreshed by the most appetizing meals she could dream up for us. We were reminded of the days when we had swept and dusted the schoolhouse for her, but we agreed that times were happier now; let people who have forgotten their childhood say that the early years are the happiest, I thought. For me, it was good to be over that stretch of the road which was beset by half-formed anxieties and resentments. I could now watch Aunt Cordelia glow over the two young men whom she loved devotedly, and I could catch her eye and know with complete confidence that I was just as close to her. No Grandmother Bishop denied the girl of my generation.

  One bright afternoon Jonathan Eltwing came in, ostensibly for only a brief call in order to return one of Aunt Cordelia’s books, but his face glowed with pleasure when we insisted that he stay. I tied an apron around his generous middle, and the boys led our venerable professor into the living room and pointed out the windows that had not yet been washed. He must have been the Jonathan of other years that afternoon, for he laughed and teased as lightly as did Chris or Danny, and in the evening when we had eaten the fried chicken and fresh cornbread Aunt Cordelia prepared for us, he led the singing that continued for over an hour as the five of us sat around the table. That afternoon and evening would be a picture to remember, I thought; something precious to hold when I would be out in the world viewing the new horizons and wider vistas that Aunt Cordelia felt that I must experience.

  The spotlessly clean old house was filled with family on the day before my graduation. In the library we had a few small logs blazing in the fireplace; we didn’t really need a fire, but I persuaded the boys that the wind drifting in from the woods still carried a slight chill that was sure to grow sharper by evening. So they built the fire for me, knowing very well that I wanted it for beauty rather than for comfort, calling me Emily Dickinson and asking me if I’d heard of people in some far-off places freezing for want of the fuel that I was wasting. Actually, the added warmth was not unpleasant, and the glow of the flames did much to soften the aging shabbiness of Aunt Cordelia’s library. We had waxed the floor and washed the windows, but the faded paper on the walls and the rows of worn book-bindings could not be brightened by either soapsuds or wax.

  Jonathan approved of my fire. We stood before it, hand in hand, as we watched the play of the flames. “Firelight does for an old room like this what wisdom does for an old face, Julie. It softens the grimmer aspects and compensates for the drained color.”

  “Doesn’t goodness do the same thing, Jonathan?” I asked, looking across the hall at good Mr. Peters, who stood talking to Chris.

  “That’s the kind of wisdom I am talking about. Learning isn’t always enough, you know. I’ve seen some very unlovely old faces that belonged with very well-stocked brains. There were the ones that lacked the other elements of wisdom—kindness, compassion, a sense of humor.”

  Alicia came in through the open door, hand in hand with my little niece. “What are you talking about?” she asked, smiling. “You have something of a high school commencement look about you. You weren’t, by chance, telling Julie that it is her generation that must carry the torch that is being
thrown to them tonight, were you, Jonathan?”

  “No, I realize that the torch passes from one set of hands to another almost before you get the state records settled, Alicia.”

  Alicia nodded agreement. She looked at me, and I could see her quick eyes taking in every detail of my dress, my hairdo, even the color of my lipstick. She seemed to approve of me.

  “I’d better go up and find Laura,” I said. “Aunt Cordelia made her promise to hear my speech so I won’t fumble it.”

  I noticed Father standing alone at one of the living room windows as I started to go up to my room. It struck me that he looked a little wistful that evening, a little less youngish, less animated. I noticed that the flags of gray above his temples were becoming wider and whiter lately; it didn’t seem right. I went over and linked my arm in his and I noticed that his face lighted as if he were pleased.

  “What were you thinking about over here by yourself, Professor Trelling?” I asked.

  “About my littlest one. Forgive a cliché, Julie?”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  “Well, then it seems only yesterday—” He laughed a little and left the sentence unfinished. “I’m torn between gratitude to Cordelia and envy of her. I’ve never known you well enough, Julie.”

  “Why, we’ve had wonderful times together, Father. Remember how I used to love going out to dinner with you? Remember the fun we had when you and Alicia took the boys and me to New York?”

  He nodded. “That’s what I was thinking about, Julie. I’ve been a source of entertainment; I’ve been a father who was with you when everything was going smoothly. But I haven’t been with you when you were troubled—when the crises came up. It’s been Cordelia who has stood by you in those times.”

  Once I had said the gist of that to Aunt Cordelia. I had called Father and Alicia “holiday parents.” I tried to make light of the idea now.

  “The next crisis that I stumble into, I’ll come running to you, Father; depend upon it.” I pressed my cheek against his. “Don’t be a dope, darling, you have no idea how proud I am of you,” I whispered.

  He smiled. “You’ve grown up too fast to suit me, Julie,” he said. He kissed me before I ran off to join Laura.

  I didn’t need to practice the speech, and Laura didn’t insist. We just sat together at my window, and talked of little things. We were two young women, both of us in love, and it was a time of quiet happiness and relaxation. I wished that I could marry Danny the next day and move into a cottage next to Laura and Bill and live happily the rest of our lives.

  “Do you agree with Aunt Cordelia that Danny and I should be separated—that we should get out into life and have new experiences?” I asked her.

  “Yes, Julie, I do. I know it isn’t what you want to hear, but I think Aunt Cordelia is right, dear.”

  “I’ve worked so hard getting up to this plateau; now it seems I have to start out on another climb.”

  “One never stops climbing, Julie, unless he wants to stop and vegetate. There’s always something just ahead.”

  Then there was a knock at the door. “Girls,” Aunt Cordelia’s firm voice called, “we must get ready to drive into town. You and William and little Julie will go with Adam and Alicia, Laura. I suppose you will want to go with Danny, Julia.”

  Graduation exercises are always much alike, dreadfully routine, really, except for the members of that long processional, each one trembling a little beneath his academic robe when the first sound of the organ announces that “This is It.” For those trembling ones and for the bright-faced relatives in the audience, each commencement is unique and wonderful. Alicia was jaded with many such ceremonies, but even she admitted to a special thrill that night when the long line of us walked solemnly down the middle aisle of the auditorium, and when Ned Lawrence as salutatorian and I as valedictorian took our places on the stage beside Dean Evans and my dear old Jonathan Eltwing, who was to deliver the commencement address. I remember looking down from the platform into their faces: Laura with her great blue eyes suspiciously bright as if a film of tears might be in them; Bill whispering to small Julie, both of them looking at me while she nodded to what he was whispering and clasped and unclasped her hand in a surreptitious wave. Then there were Father and Alicia, holding hands and smiling up at me; there was Christopher with his arms folded, trying to look very serene and detached, while Danny nervously and quite openly chewed at a thumbnail, a gesture which I knew would continue until he was convinced that I wouldn’t collapse when it was time for me to speak.

  Finally, there at the end of the row was Aunt Cordelia, stiffly erect, poised, confident that no niece of hers could do other than well in this maiden speech. “Oh, Aunt Cordelia, how funny you are. And how I love you!” I said to myself. She wouldn’t have approved of such a childish thought; she would have expected me to be high-minded, reaching for the stars—that sort of thing.

  I had dreaded the first few seconds of my speech just a little, that brief interval between the final words of the introduction and the sound of my own voice going out to several hundred people in the silent auditorium. But once on my feet and accustomed after a few seconds to the sound of my voice, I stood relaxed and confident, my notes at hand in case of panic, perhaps a trace of something inherited from Uncle Haskell helping to give me a sense of pleasure and well-being.

  It was not a speech that was going to shake the world, but it was direct and earnest. I saw Father nod once or twice at an idea I brought out, and Danny was able to clasp his hands around one crossed knee and to give the impression of a young man entirely confident that his girl was doing all right. When I was through I had the pleasure of hearing applause ringing throughout the auditorium and of seeing Jonathan smiling at me as if I were someone very special to him.

  Beautiful hours move so quickly. The speeches were applauded, the diplomas handed out, the triumphant recessional march completed, and then it was over except for the extended hands, the pleasant words of many kindly people. I walked through the crowded lobby of the auditorium, my left hand clasped tightly with Danny’s, happiness in every fiber of my being.

  We were almost to the exit when we stopped to stand for a minute with Aunt Cordelia, and as we stood there I saw Jonathan Eltwing making his way toward us. He took my hand in both his own.

  “You did beautifully, Julie, it was a good speech.” Then he turned to my aunt and offered his arm to her. “Cordelia, you have every reason to be proud.”

  Aunt Cordelia was never one to lose her poise. She laid her hand on the arm of this man she had once loved, one whom I rather guessed that she still loved, and her voice was coolly proper and matter of fact.

  “I am, Jonathan,” she said, “within certain limits, I am quite proud of her.”