in full panoply of high puffed feather-bed, valance and canopy and
curtains of white dimity, “English” blankets, quilted silk comforter,
and counterpane of heavy marseilles, in a bygone pattern. No pillow
shams were seen in the house; its fashions never changed. The best
pillow-cases were plain linen, hemstitched,--smooth as satin with much
use, as Jack’s mother remembered them,--and the slender initials, in an
old-fashioned hand, above the hem, had faded sympathetically to a pale
yellow-brown.
Some of the house linen had come down from great-grandmother’s
trousseau. It bore her maiden initials, E. B., in letters that were
like the marking on old silver of that time; the gracious old Quaker
names, sacred to the memory of gentle women and good housewives whose
virtues would read like the last chapter of Proverbs, the words of King
Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him.
It was only after the daughters of the house grew up and were married
and came home on visits with their children, that the spare bedroom
fell into common use, and new fashions intruded as the old things wore
out.
When Jack’s mother was a child, it still kept its solemn and festal
character of birth and marriage and death chamber; and in times less
vital it was set apart for such guests as the family delighted to
honor. Little girls were not allowed to stray in there by themselves;
even when sent to the room on errands, they went and came with a
certain awe of the empty room’s cold dignity.
But at the semi-annual house-cleaning, when every closet and bureau
drawer resigned itself to the season’s intrusive spirit of research,
the spare room’s kindly mysteries were given to the light. The children
could look on and touch and handle and ask questions; and thus began
their acquaintance with such relics as had not been consigned to the
darker oblivion of the garret, or suffered change through the family
passion for “making over.”
In the bottom drawer of the bureau was the “body” of grandmother’s
wedding gown. The narrow skirt had served for something useful,--a
cradle quilt, perhaps, for one of the babies. Jack could have put the
tiny dress waist into one of his trousers’ pockets with less than
their customary distention. It was a mere scrap of dove-colored silk,
low necked, and laced in the back. Grandmother must have worn over her
shoulders one of the embroidered India muslin capes that were turning
yellow in that same drawer.
The dress sleeves were “leg o’ mutton,” but these, too, had been
sacrificed in some impulse of mistaken economy.
There was the high shell comb, not carved, but a solid piece of shell
which the children used to hold up to the light to see the colors glow
like a church window. There were the little square-toed satin slippers,
heelless, with flat laces that crossed over the instep; and there were
the flesh-colored silk stockings and white embroidered wedding shawl.
Little grandmother must have been rather a gay Friend; she never wore
the dress, as did her mother, who put on the “plain distinguishing cap”
before she was forty. She dressed as one of the “world’s people,” but
always plainly, with a little distance between herself and the latest
fashion. She had a conscientious scorn of poor materials. Ordinary
self-respect would have prevented her wearing an edge of lace that was
not “real,” or a stuff that was not all wool, if wool it professed to
be, or a print that would not “wash;” and her contempt for linen that
was part cotton, for silk that was part linen, or velvet with a “cotton
back,” was of a piece with her truthfulness and horror of pretense.
Among the frivolities in the lower drawer was a very dainty little
nightcap, embroidered mull or some such frailness; the children used to
tie it on over their short hair, framing the round cheeks of ten and
twelve years old. It was the envelope for sundry odd pieces of lace,
“old English thread,” and yellow Valenciennes, ripped from the necks
and sleeves of little frocks long outgrown.
The children learned these patterns by heart; also the scrolls and
garlands on certain broad collars and cuffs of needlework which always
looked as if something might be made of them; but nothing was, although
Jack’s mamma was conscious of a long felt want in doll’s petticoats,
which those collars would have filled to ecstasy.
In that lower drawer were a few things belonging to grandmother’s
mother, E. B. of gracious memory. There were her gauze
neck-handkerchiefs, and her long-armed silk mitts which reported her
a “finer woman” than any of her descendants of the third generation,
since not a girl of them all could show an arm that would fill out
these cast coverings handsomely from wrist to biceps.
And there was a bundle of her silk house shawls, done up in one
of the E. B. towels, lovely in color and texture as the fair,
full grandmotherly throat they once encircled. They were plain,
self-fringed, of every shade of white that was not white.
There they lay and no one used them; and after a while it began to
seem a waste to the little girls who had grown to be big girls. The
lightest minded of them began to covet those sober vanities for their
own adornment. Mother’s scruples were easily smiled away; so the old
Quaker shawls came forth and took their part in the young life of the
house--a gayer part, it would be safe to say, than was ever theirs
upon the blessed shoulders of E. B. One or two of them were made into
plaited waists to be worn with skirts and belts of the world’s fashion.
And one soft cream-white shawl wrapped little Jack on his first journey
in this world; and afterward on many journeys, much longer than that
first one “from the blue room to the brown.”
No advertised perfumes were used in grandmother’s house, yet the things
in the drawers had a faint sweet breath of their own. Especially it
lingered about those belongings of her mother’s time--the odor of
seclusion, of bygone cleanliness and household purity.
The spare bedroom was at its gayest in summer-time, when, after the
daughters of the house grew up, young company was expected. Swept
and dusted and soberly expectant, it waited, like a wise but prudent
virgin, with candles unlighted and shutters darkened. Its very colors
were cool and decorous, white and green and dark mahogany polish, door
knobs and candlesticks gleaming, andirons reflected in the dull-red
shine of the hearth.
After sundown, if friends were expected by the evening boat, the
shutters were fastened back, and the green Venetian blinds raised,
to admit the breeze and a view of the garden and the grass and the
plashing fountain. Each girl hostess visited the room in turn on a
last, characteristic errand,--one with her hands full of roses, new
blown that morning; another to remove the sacrificed leaves and broken
stems which the rose-gatherer had forgotten; and the mother last of all
to look about her with modest pride, peopling the room with the friends
of her own girlhood, to be welcomed there no more.
Then, when the wagon drove up, what a joyous racket in the hall; and
what content for the future in the sound of heavy trunks carried
upstairs!
If only one girl guest had come, she must have her particular friend
of the house for a bedfellow; and what in all the world did they not
talk of, lying awake half the summer night in pure extravagance of
joy--while the fountain plashed and paused, and the soft wind stirred
in the cherry-trees, and in the moonlit garden overblown roses dropped
their petals on the wet box-borders.
Visitors from the city brought with them--besides new books, new
songs, sumptuous confectionery and the latest ideas in dress--an odor
of the world; something complex rich and strange as the life of the
city itself. It spread its spell upon the cool, pure atmosphere of
the Quaker home, and set the light hearts beating and the young heads
dreaming.
In after years came the Far West, with its masculine incense of camps
and tobacco and Indian leather and soft-coal smoke. It arrived in
company with several pieces of singularly dusty male baggage; but it
had not come to stay.
For a few days of confusion and bustle it pervaded the house, and then
departed, on the “Long Trail,” taking little Jack and his mother away.
And in the chances and changes of the years that followed, they were
never again to sleep in the spare bedroom at grandfather’s.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A.
Transcriber’s Notes
Page 9: “a snow flaw came” changed to “a snow fall came”
Page 66: “those were bad places, for” changed to “those were bad places
for”