Cloudy Jewel
By Grace Livingston Hill
“Well, all I’ve got to say, then, is, you’re a very foolish woman!”
Ellen Robinson buttoned her long cloak forcefully and arose with a haughty air from the rocking chair where she had pointed her remarks for the last half-hour by swaying noisily back and forth and touching the toes of her new high-heeled shoes with a click each time to the floor.
Julia Cloud said nothing. She stood at the front window, looking out across the sodden lawn to the road and the gray sky in the distance. She did not turn around to face her arrogant sister.
“What I’d like to know is what you do propose to do, then, if you don’t accept our offer and come to live with us? Were you expecting to keep on living in this great barn of a house?” Ellen Robinson’s voice was loud and strident with a crude kind of pain. She could not understand her sister, in fact, she never had. She had thought her proposition that Julia come to live in her home and earn her board by looking after the four children and being useful about the house was most generous. She had admired the open-handedness of Herbert, her husband, for suggesting it. Some husbands wouldn’t have wanted a poor relative about. Of course, Julia always had been a hard worker; and it 8would relieve Ellen, and make it possible for her to go around with her husband more. It would save the wages of a servant, too, for Julia had always been a wonder at economy. It certainly was vexing to have Julia act in this way, calmly putting aside the proposition as if it were nothing and saying she hadn’t decided what she was going to do yet, for all the world as if she were a millionaire!
“I don’t know, Ellen. I haven’t had time to think. There have been so many things to think about since the funeral I haven’t got used yet to the idea that mother’s gone.” Julia’s voice was quiet and controlled, in sharp contrast with Ellen’s high-pitched, nervous tones.
“That’s it!” snapped Ellen. “When you do, you’ll go all to pieces, staying here alone in this great barn. That’s why I want you to decide now. I think you ought to lock up and come home with me tonight. I’ve spent just as much time away from home as I can spare the last three weeks, and I’ve got to get back to my house. I can’t stay with you anymore.”
“Of course not, Ellen. I quite understand that,” said Julia, turning around pleasantly. “I hadn’t expected you to stay. It isn’t in the least necessary. You know I’m not at all afraid.”
“But it isn’t decent to leave you here alone when you’ve got folks that can take care of you. What will people think? It places us in an awkward position.”
“They will simply think that I have chosen to remain in my own house, Ellen. I don’t see anything strange or indecent about that.”Julia Cloud had turned about and was facing her sister calmly now. Her quiet voice seemed to irritate Ellen.
“What nonsense!” she said sharply. “How exceedingly childish, letting yourself be ruled by whims when common sense must show you that you are wrong. I wonder if you aren’t ever going to be a woman.”
Ellen said the word “woman” as if her sister had already passed into the antique class and ought to realize it. It was one of the things that hurt Julia Cloud to realize that she was growing old apparently without the dignity that belonged to her years, for they all talked to her yet as if she were a little child and needed to be managed. She opened her lips to speak but thought better of it, and shut them again, turning back to the window and the gray, sodden landscape.
Genre: Fiction And Literature | Romance Books
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Grace Livingston Hill
Grace Livingston Hill was born in Wellsville, New York to Marcia Macdonald Livingston and her husband, Presbyterian minister, Rev. Charles Montgomery Livingston.
Biography.
Both were writers, as was her aunt, Isabella Macdonald Alden, who wrote under the pseudonym “Pansy.” Hill’s writing career began as a child in the 1870s, writing short stories for her aunt’s weekly children’s publication, The Pansy.
Her first story printed in book form was The Esselstynes, which was published in 1877 as part of the “Mother’s Boys and Girls Library” by D. Lothrop & Company. A Chautauqua Idyl, her first book as a young adult, was written in 1887 to earn enough money for a family trip from her Florida home to the summer Chautauqua gathering at Chautauqua, New York. This illustrated allegory of a Chautauqua gathering held by the flowers, trees, and animals was published in time to be offered for sale that summer and brought enough earnings to take the family there. Several books written in collaboration with her family followed in the early 1890s, as well as her only children’s book, A Little Servant. Lack of funds was a frequent motivator, particularly after the death of her first husband left her with two small children and no income other than that from her writing. After the death of Hill’s father less than a year later, her mother came to live with her. This prompted Hill to write more frequently.
During and after her failed ten-year marriage to her second husband Flavius Josephus Lutz, a church organist 15 years her junior, she continued to write to support her children and mother. She stopped using the Lutz surname after they parted ways in May 1914. Although many of her earlier novels were specifically intended to proselytize, Hill’s publishers frequently removed overt references to religious themes. After her publishers realized the popularity of her books, references to religious topics were allowed to remain, although she later modified her writing style to appeal to a more secular audience.
The last Grace Livingston Hill book, Mary Arden, was finished by her daughter, Ruth Hill Munce, writing under the name of Ruth Livingston Hill, and published in 1948.
Grace Livingston Hill
