THE UPHEAVAL.
My coadjutor, the Author, has told how the new mother came home to us on
a lovely May afternoon, when we had made the old house bright with
flowers and schooled ourselves to receive her as our father’s wife
should be received by his daughters. We had heard she was a remarkable
woman and a handsome woman, and we were not disappointed. She was
handsome, with the brightest and blackest eyes I ever saw,—dark, glossy
hair,—not one of which ever dared get out of place,—brilliant complexion
and regular features, if I except her nose, which inclined upward a
little, and her chin, which receded in proportion as her nose went up.
And she was remarkable, too, and so different from any type of woman we
had ever seen that she took our breath away, and for a few days we were
in a state of collapse and bewilderment. She was a highly educated
woman, bristling all over with views and theories and maxims, one of
which was “never to let the grass grow under her feet, if there was
anything to do.” And she didn’t let it grow, but plunged at once into
the midst of a domestic cyclone, which not only swept away for the time
being all our comfort, but, also, the good opinions we had entertained
of ourselves as housekeepers and young ladies of judgment.
We had never dreamed that we were as shiftless and no account and
dilapidated a set as we came to believe ourselves in the new light shed
upon us and our surroundings. We knew that our furniture was old and our
carpets worn, but we had a pride in and an affection for them because
they had belonged to our mother, and we thought the house was clean, and
we told Mrs. Hathern so when she suggested a regular tear up such as was
customary in New England twice a year. For answer to our assertion that
we had been scrubbed from attic to cellar she smiled a pitying kind of
smile at our ignorance, and rubbing her hand over the top of a door
brought off an amount of black which appalled us. We had never thought
of looking on the top of doors for dirt. But her eyes went everywhere,
and she went with them and wrote against us “weighed in the balance and
found wanting.” Everything was wrong, especially in the kitchen, where,
she said, Norah O’Rourke would not stay a day. Privately, Fan and I
thought she was more than half afraid of Norah O’Rourke, whom she quoted
so constantly and for whom it seemed to us our hitherto quiet house was
turned inside out. Two carpenters were brought into the kitchen, where
an extra window was cut so that Norah O’Rourke could have more light and
air; a new cupboard was built for Norah O’Rourke’s iron utensils, which
Phyllis had kept anywhere, so that they were handy; there was a sink for
Norah O’Rourke’s dish-washing, and stationary tubs for Norah O’Rourke’s
laundrying. The ceiling was whitewashed; the walls painted a light drab
and the floor snuff color, and when everything was in readiness for
Norah O’Rourke, except the range which had not come, that lady’s
quarters were certainly a great improvement upon the dark, dingy room
where Phyllis had reigned supreme so long.
Just what her position in the household was to be when Norah O’Rourke
arrived we did not know, as Mrs. Hathern was reticent on that point.
That she didn’t like Phyllis, and Phyllis didn’t like her, was an
assured fact, but there was as yet no open rupture between them. Mrs.
Hathern was evidently trying to control her temper, while Phyllis was
conscientiously striving to do her duty. I think she _rassled_ in
_pra’r_ at the night meetings a great many times during the toss up,
which extended from the kitchen to the house proper, where, as Fan wrote
to Jack, “The old Harry held high carnival.” Had I then read Jane
Carlyle’s life and letters, as I have since, I should have sympathized
with her fully in her despair and discomposure when her lord came home
full of bile and raised Cain generally. As it was with that house at No.
5 Cheyne Row, so it was with our house under the Elms. Carpets came up,
curtains came down, furniture was banished to the attic to make room for
the new that was coming. Paper was torn from the walls and lay in long
mouldy strips upon the floor. Pails of suds, with mops and brooms and
brushes and four colored women who had been pressed into service in
order to expedite matters, were everywhere, together with plumbers and
painters and upholsterers and paper-hangers brought from Richmond to
assist in the mélee.
In her cambric dress and white apron, which never showed a particle of
soil, and a dainty little cap, with a lavender bow, perched on the top
of her head, Mrs. Hathern moved among her forces like a
brigadier-general, urging them on as they had never been urged before in
their lives. The women, however, baffled her. They were not accustomed
to the Yankee quick step, and if she left one washing a window while she
went to look after another, she was very apt on her return to find the
window washer setting in a rocking chair or rummaging through a bureau
drawer. Dire were the complaints she made about the blacks. She was a
rank abolitionist during the war, she said, but if she had known what a
good-for-nothing race they were, she shouldn’t have troubled herself
about them, and she’d like nothing better now than to thrash them if she
could. But they were free and her _ekles_ one of them told her during a
hot controversy over a window which was washed three times before it
suited.
Had there been nothing except a battle between Boston energy and
Virginia slowness, Fan and I might have enjoyed it, knowing that out of
the confusion order would finally come, but a more serious matter was
daily confronting us in the shape of little Katy’s misdemeanors. We
never knew before that she had any, but now we found that of all
children to get into mischief and tear her clothes she was the worst.
She enjoyed the commotion and was always in the thickest of it.
Naturally she soiled her dress and apron and hands, for which she was
promptly reproved and punished. Sometimes she was made to sit for an
hour or more in a high chair near the bureau in father’s bedroom. For
diversion she was told to commit either the collect for the day, or
several verses in the Bible, beginning with the sermon on the mount, the
number of verses varying according to the heinousness of her offense.
Sometimes, if the rent in her dress were longer and the soil worse than
usual, she was sent to bed and kept there until morning supperless,
unless Phyllis surreptitiously conveyed a paper parcel into her window
by standing on a stool and using a pitchfork. Once, when overcome with
sleep, she fell off the chair and was only saved a hard blow on her head
by the open Bible which fell under it. Then Fan interfered, and holding
the sobbing child in her arms appealed to her father, asking if so much
discipline were necessary.
During the war father had never been quite sure on which side he stood,
and now he was equally undecided, until Mrs. Hathern said, in that cool,
rasping voice, which always irritated me, “My dear, I am sorry to be the
cause of any trouble between you and your daughters, but really you must
decide at once which is to take charge of Katy, Miss Fanny or myself.
The child is a dear little creature, but needs restraining. Sitting in a
chair, or lying in bed, does not hurt her physically. I always corrected
Carl that way, and——”
She stopped suddenly as if she had left some name unsaid, and it seemed
to me that she flushed a little.
Her hand was on father’s arm rubbing a speck of dirt she saw there, as
she waited for his answer.
“Yes, certainly, certainly,” he said, hesitatingly, “Katy is our baby,
and I suppose we have spoiled her; naturally it is a mother’s place to
take charge of her. Be as easy with her as you can, and you, Katy, be
good.”
So Katy was ordered back to the chair until she had committed all the
Blesseds which she did not already know in the sermon on the mount.
There was only one of these and she was soon at liberty, and as she had
the sunniest nature I ever knew she was in a few minutes at her play
again under the Elms, making believe she was in church singing the grand
old Te Deum with that clear, wonderful voice which made the workmen stop
to listen, while Mrs. Hathern said to us, “Miss Errington was right.
Katy has great capabilities. I know something of music myself, and when
my piano comes I shall take her in hand.”
“May the Lord help Katy if the madam takes her in hand more than she has
already done,” Fan said to me when we were alone and she could give vent
to her wrath. “I tell you what it is, father is an imbecile and she is a
tyrant, and I won’t stand it. I’ll marry Col. Errington. You’ll see.”