THE ROOF-TREE
If my father had married a certain sweetheart of his early youth, and
Mother a suitor to whom she almost became engaged, what would have
become of me?
Should I be I, or would it be
One-tenth another to nine-tenths me?
I often asked myself this question. But after each of my parents had
had a preliminary romance, they met at a Methodist prayer-meeting, and
each knew from the start what the outcome would be.
Mother was then a school-teacher, Father a dry-goods clerk. Both were
born in log houses; both reared in the frugal way of their times; the
snow often blew in on their coverlids through chinks in the logs; they
slept in trundle beds; wore homespun clothes and calf-skin shoes,
and had their education at the district schools to which they walked
through the woods following marked trees. Born amid the drumlins less
than fifty miles apart, all their married lives--more than fifty years
together--have been spent in the little village where they met.
In the early years of their marriage Father had a travelling wagon
called a “Yankee Notion and Boot and Shoe Store.” Brother, several
years my senior, would tell with pride of Papa’s big wagon and the
iron-gray horses. In girlhood I spent hours upstairs, when supposed
to be putting the large closet to rights at the spring housecleaning,
sitting on the floor poring over Father’s letters to Mother, written
during those years. How like a romance to find those letters so full
of solicitude and love!--comments on Brother’s baby ways; admonitions
to the adopted brother; words of love to Mother--strange to get this
glimpse of my parents; to see the young father’s pride in his boy; and
to read these unrestrained expressions of devotion! For the father I
knew, though affectionate and kind, was a more staid, reserved person
than the one in the letters. Now the baby boy was grown up, the adopted
brother scarcely a memory, and the girl who was not born when the
letters were written was reading eagerly the ardent words that had
gladdened her mother’s young heart!
The circumstances of my brother’s birth strongly appealed to my
imagination: My parents had given up hopes of a child some years before
he came. Father’s health had long been precarious--a persistent cough
and exhausting night sweats were wasting him rapidly. Mother, at his
side day and night, facing his approaching death, was facing a hidden
dread as well--the fear that she was now to become a mother. As the
weeks passed and the fear became a certainty, she determined to spare
Father the knowledge, thinking it would kill him outright. She almost
prayed for his release before the truth must be apparent. How she
dreaded the scrutiny of the Doctor, and Father’s questioning eyes!
How she resorted to evasion, artifice, and concealment! But one day,
suddenly changing her mind, trusting in God to help him bear it, she
told Father that the child they had hoped for so long was actually to
come.
Instantly he became electrified with the glad tidings. Summoning
unknown funds of strength he cried, “I must live, _I will live_!” It
was a greatly improved patient that the Doctor found the next day, and
recovery, though slow, dated from that time. (It was probably arrested
tuberculosis.)
Many years later Father’s health again seemed precarious--dizziness,
and numbness of the arms, caused the physician to prophesy approaching
paralysis. I remember this as my first sorrow. I was perhaps fourteen
years old. When Mother told me what the Doctor had said I flung myself
on the bed in a paroxysm of grief. My Father was going to leave me!
The utter helplessness and wretchedness of us all without him! It
was an hour of agony. But there stood Mother with her own grief, and
mine. This calmed me. I must help and comfort her, instead of giving
way like this. The storm passed; but the days, weeks, and months that
followed were shadowed by this dread, which, however, proved less
well-founded than it had seemed; or else Father’s change in his mode
of life effected a decided change in his condition. Closing out his
boot-and-shoe store, and travelling again for the same firm for which
he had travelled as a young man, he recuperated markedly. Now, in his
seventy-second year, he is in fair health, alert, enduring, and with
keen intellectual vigour--a man of undaunted courage and unconquerable
optimism.
I have often wondered how it would seem to have more than one brother
and sister; it always seems as if all the love I have went to these
two, and that there would have been none left for others; or at least
that it would have had to be divided up, leaving each the poorer--one
does not have to divide for brother and sister--the love you give a
sister is peculiarly hers, the love to a brother peculiarly his, but
how is it that large families have enough to go around?
Death has never come nearer to me than when my grandparents were
taken. Not unmindful of this escape, I think of it often now. Once I
thought, “Death can never take away my father and mother, my sister
and brother,” but of late I am losing the feeling that none of the
calamities of life can come nigh me; and, instead, find myself trying
to think what it would be like to live on if one of them were taken.
Once when Brother was a lad of perhaps twelve, during an attack of
inflammatory rheumatism, his heart acted so badly that Sister and I
were sent for in great haste to come home from school. The attack
passed, but after that illness his disposition was altered; he was
more irritable, with a temper much like Grandpa’s. He would domineer
over us, as big brothers will, speaking sharply over trifles, and he
and Sister would quarrel. I did not quarrel, but would grieve over his
harsh tones. I never could endure angry tones, they always made me
shudder. Noting this susceptibility, Brother was more patient with me
than with Sister, who would get miffed easily and talk back. My tears,
which came easily in those days, always melted him. Consciously or
unconsciously, I ruled him to some extent by this weakness.
Once in school a boy whispered maliciously, “Genie, Art is reading a
dime novel.” Now I had never read a dime novel, but having strait-laced
notions of how wicked they were, my whole soul rose in denial--_my_
brother do such a thing! No! But seeing Arthur bending over his
geography with unaccustomed diligence, something in his absorption
told me that _what that boy said was true_! The tears flowed fast. Ah,
the bitterness of that knowledge! Someone--the same boy, was it?--told
Arthur his little sister was weeping because he was reading a dime
novel, and at recess he berated me; I cried the more bitterly; he then
consoled me in his half-scolding, half-wheedling way, finally promising
not to do it again.
And when he first learned to smoke! We were skating on the canal at
noon-time, I skating with a girl that Arthur was “sweet on.” Suddenly
he skated past us with a braggadocio air, _a cigar in his mouth_!
Carrie and I gave one look at each other, one swift, comprehending
look--if Arthur had robbed a bank or stolen a horse we could hardly
have felt worse. We tacitly sat down and took off our skates, and,
heavy-hearted, went ’cross-lots to school, the skates dangling from our
arms, and the lumps in our throats choking us. I cannot remember that
we talked about it; it was too awful to discuss. And that defiant look
of Arthur’s, how it cut! Our grief-stricken faces must have worked on
his conscience, for in the afternoon a note was passed to me (I’ve no
doubt he wrote to Her, too), in which Arthur said:
DEAR SISTER,
Why did you leave the ice this noon? We had a good time.
Then as if in afterthought,
Did you feel bad because I was smoking? I won’t do it again.
Your loving brother,
ARTHUR.
He kept his word for a long time; then, whenever he would break it,
there would be tears and repentance and fresh promises. Similar scenes
occurred the first time I smelled his breath and learned that he had
been drinking. Heart-breakings, attempted denials, then confessions,
promises, struggles to keep them, followed by lapses, penitence, and
tears.
“I’ll never do it again, Genie,” used to make my heart bound with hope.
The tears no longer come now. Something too deep for tears is felt
when the poor fellow, thinking he can keep his word this time, says
penitently, “I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t do it again, Genie.”
This weakness of Arthur’s has been almost the only sorrow in our
family. We each react to it in different ways, according to our
temperaments. Father’s watchfulness, and the necessary work and care
that are occasioned by this infirmity; his forgiveness, seventy times
seven; and his optimism, are his ways of meeting the conditions; Mother
suffers, pities him, and prays that with the grace of God he will yet
be able to conquer; Sister, seeing the sorrow that follows in the
wake of such indulgence, loses patience with a weakness she cannot
understand, upbraids him, and chides the rest of us for lenience; yet,
in spite of herself, breaks through her resolutions and, in practical
ways, dispenses timely aid; and I, knowing it to be a disease, perhaps
largely an inheritance, am bound to regard it charitably. Trying
to throw around him what safeguards we can, I am thankful for the
periods of well-doing, and can but be merciful when defeat comes. He
tries hard, never stops trying, and suffers keen remorse at times. It
is unspeakably pitiful, and especially in later years, since he has
children of his own and sees how they suffer through his infirmity.
Who knows how much inherited tendencies in certain ancestors, the poor
state of Father’s and Mother’s health before and at the time of his
birth, and that critical illness when a lad, may have had to do with
giving him an organization seriously hampered from the beginning? How
can any of us blame another for a given course since, if we were that
other, and were confronted with identical conditions, we should have to
react to them in the same way? We make the mistake of saying virtually,
“If I were _you_, I would be _I_” whereas, the truth would be, “If I
were you, I should _be_ you, and do as _you_ do.”
But all my life with Brother has not been under a cloud. He used to let
me go fishing with him (though I had to keep very still); sometimes
go with him down to the pasture after Grandpa’s cows; and often when
he went alone he would bring me back a flower--usually a syringa,
“cabbaged” from a bush that overhung a fence we used to pass. This
stolen sweet was precious to me, largely because he gave it, perhaps
partly because it was stolen.
One especially joyous memory is that of a visit to a cousin in a
neighbouring village, and the happy time we children had there one
sunny forenoon. Three things contributed to our pleasure: Brother and
Sister, who usually bickered a lot, were amiable; the spearmint was
luxurious and abundant; and we followed a path across a meadow to a
spring--little things, simple things, but that particular day with its
keen joy of life is a red-letter day in my memory. That was the one
spring of my childhood. To this day the taste and smell of spearmint
bring all this back, and I mentally substitute “spearmint” for
Tennyson’s “violet”--
Who can tell
Why to smell
The violet recalls the dewy prime
Of youth and buried time?
The cause is nowhere found in rhyme.
I never go past the little town nowadays without looking longingly
at that farm from the car-window and wondering if the spring and the
spearmint are still there. At times I have almost decided to get off
the train and seek it, but have never dared--it would be a needless
pain to find my one little spring gone dry.
The name of my mother’s rejected suitor was Fairchild. If she could
have overcome a certain inexplicable repugnance and married him, “then
I might have been a fair child,” I used to think, with a mental play
upon the name; for I knew myself to be a very plain little girl. I
suffered over this fact; could see myself objectively--greenish-gray
eyes, a long nose, a prominent forehead--I hated the sight of my
face in the glass, yet would torture myself with scrutinizing it,
searching for some redeeming thing, but ending with, “No, there’s
nothing, _nothing_ nice about it.” My facial angle I used to study
with a hand-glass, mentally cutting about half an inch from my nose,
pinning back my ears, and thinking how nice it would be if the straight
uncompromising hair would grow low in ripples on that ugly forehead.
But, opposed to anything artificial, I would, not bang and curl my
hair as the others girls did. Looking at certain girls that I now know
were plainer than I, I wondered pitifully if I looked as well as they,
afraid of deceiving myself with such cold comfort.
All of which shows how self-engrossed and morbid I was; what capacity
for self-torture I developed early. I was constantly reading of
beautiful persons. I lamented secretly because my mother was not
beautiful. I loved her none the less, but had such a craving for the
beautiful, which Fate had cruelly withheld from me and my mother. I
have often been ashamed of this feeling; it seems as though a child
should so love its mother (and such a mother!) that her face would have
to be beautiful to it; but it was not so with me. And it was one of
my bitter childish and girlish griefs that Mother would not take more
pains always to appear at her best. It seems pathetic, how pleased I
used to feel when she would wear particularly becoming gowns, or take
special pains with dressing her hair. Unable to overcome this feeling,
I have always envied one with a beautiful mother. My mother’s heart and
soul are beautiful, but there was always this yearning for beauty of
face as well as of character.
Once, as a child, when impersonating Summer at a school exhibition,
crowned with roses and bedecked with garlands of flowers, elated by it
all, I sang so much better at the concert than I had at rehearsals as
to surprise every one, myself included. Best of all I overheard someone
say that I “really looked pretty”; that she never knew before _that my
eyes were black_! How I treasured that statement, though knowing it was
only a temporary condition!
I have no doubt I exaggerated my ugliness somewhat for, in addition to
youth and health, I had a clear dark skin, good teeth, unusually fine
and abundant hair, and a well-formed body. The one thing I took pride
in was my hair. It was a pardonable pleasure that I felt in contrasting
my long heavy brown braids with the wisps of hair many of the girls
had. But when I was perhaps sixteen, working too hard in school and
with my music, my hair came out so rapidly that one day a girl sitting
behind me leaned over and whispered, “Why, what has become of your
hair?” Bitter were the tears I shed that night! “_That_ is going, too!”
I cried in my wretchedness. But it did not all go; I still had more
than the average girl. Even to-day I sometimes get a sudden sense of
that schoolgirl’s pang at the threatened loss of her one beauty.
In babyhood I received a burn the shock of which nearly cut short my
life: Tied in a high chair and placed before a stove, I was pushed over
by some frozen clothes which a “green” Irish girl had brought in from
the yard. The under part of my chin rested upon the stove, leaving its
imprint, when I was snatched from it.
As I grew up I grieved over the scar thus sustained. I became morbidly
sensitive over it, though consoling myself somewhat that it was not in
a more conspicuous place. I envied children and girls their smooth soft
chins. It seemed to me the sweetest part of a girl’s features--that
white, smooth place under the chin. When a child I would never play “Do
you love butter?” although I liked to see the buttercup’s yellow shadow
on the chins of the other girls. When my turn came I always drew away,
painfully embarrassed.
As a young girl I used to think it would be lovely to faint away. When
we “made believe,” I usually chose to be French, to have black eyes and
red cheeks, and to faint away on critical occasions. But after studying
physiology and hygiene, and acquiring more sensible views, I scorned
these earlier ambitions, and ridiculed the silly girls who pretended to
swoon when vaccinated; and who turned pale and asked to leave the room
when the skeleton was brought in to the physiology recitations.
There were only eighteen months between my sister’s age and mine,
and, although I was the elder, she dominated me. There was almost no
difference in our heights, and not much in our figures. She had a
pretty face with fairer skin and sunnier hair. Unobserving persons
thought we looked alike. Dressing alike until we were sixteen, we were
often asked by strangers if we were twins. Those who mistook one for
the other could not have been very discriminating, for with the marked
difference in our natures, there must have been, even in childhood, a
corresponding difference in our looks. I was quiet, shy, and dreamy;
Kate lively, active, outspoken. She had to take the lead because I
would hang back. In church, when we were little things, she would fix a
place for my head on her lap, then pull me down and pet me, whispering
to me to keep still and go to sleep; and, although I knew I should have
been the one to play that rôle, I would submit, while she carried out
to the finish her assumed dignity.
How quick-witted she was! One summer Father had a certain pear tree
that yielded only a few choice pears which he was jealously watching.
We children had been admonished not to touch them. One day as Father
walked around the yard, he hesitated before the ripening pears, then
passed on. We thought him waiting unnecessarily long: one was surely
dead ripe. That afternoon, while he was taking his Sunday nap, Kate
picked that pear. She had just bitten into it as Father appeared.
Putting both hands behind her, she edged backward in the yard till she
stood under the astrachan tree, frightened, but “gamey.”
“Katherine, come here,” Father called sternly.
She came slowly, hands behind her and mouth full of the big bite she
was vainly trying to swallow.
“What have you in your mouth?”
A gulp, and she said, “Nothing,” opening wide her little mouth.
“Let me see your hand.”
Out from behind her came the right hand.
“Let me see your other hand.”
Back went her right hand, out came her left, the pear still invisible.
“Let me see both hands,” said Father relentlessly.
Quick as thought the little minx lifted her leg and, hands still behind
her, thrust the pear between her thighs, and calmly held out both
hands. Father’s anger vanished.
Kate never resorted to deceit, and almost never to untruths, unless
hard pressed. While my own hypocrisies were subtle, hers were palpable.
But I long cherished resentment for one offense--an unusual one
with her: Mother had a bed of choice tulips--her special pride, our
special temptation. Kate succumbed one day, picking nearly all of them,
and with such short stems they were useless. Mother’s anger really
frightened Kate, who declared, “Genie did it.” Though denying it, I
probably acted guilty, for Mother believed her. (I always blushed
and looked the culprit in school if a general accusation was made;
and if any one rapped on the door and asked if a certain article had
been found, I used to feel so uncomfortable it is a wonder I was not
accused of having stolen it--self-conscious little snip that I was!)
To punish me for my supposed falsehood Mother put red pepper on my
tongue--a practice which a cousin had told her that she followed with
her children. It was terrible, and was all the worse because I was
innocent; though I’ve no doubt it was good for me, for I was more given
to prevarication than was Sister.
My tendency to exaggerate was the cause of my fibs; they were
usually harmless ones; facts never seemed startling enough; I liked
to embellish them. Then, too, I was always making mistakes about
quantities or anything with figures or distances, and some of my
misstatements should be set down to this weakness rather than to
deliberate deception. In this very matter, years after, when speaking
of this red-pepper punishment, I used to say that my mother put a
teaspoonful of red pepper on my tongue. I can’t remember that any one
ever questioned or corrected the statement. I probably told it mostly
to children. It is only within a few years that, telling the story
again, my own common sense, so late to develop, showed me that that
must have been a gross exaggeration--a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper on
a child’s tongue!--the red pepper had punished one lie that had never
been told, but had given rise to one that I had gone on repeating until
at last I had sense enough to see that it was too preposterous to be
believed!
Similarly in the matter of my weight: I had heard it mentioned--it
was probably fifty pounds--but with my usual inaccuracy for figures I
solemnly protested that I weighed five pounds, standing my ground even
when corrected, till the absurdity of it was shown me.
I remember, too, hearing Mother talking with some women about how
young a certain neighbour was when her daughter was born. In telling
the school girls about it later, I announced that Mrs. H---- was only
five years older than her daughter Ida. Shouts of derision greeted my
statement, but I was firm. One big girl called me “little fool,” and
I suffered I know not what ridicule. It was partly an exaggeration,
partly ignorance. Grasping the main fact, that the mother was very
young when her child was born, and having forgotten how young, but
wanting to make my story worth while, I had resorted to a positive
statement which I stoutly maintained. I could not see why those girls
should doubt my word, even if the statement was startling. _Of course_
it was unusual--that was why I had cited it. I have a fellow feeling
for the Vassar student who, when asked by the resident woman physician
what her paternal grandfather died of, and not knowing, but wishing not
to seem ignorant, said, “I--I think he died in infancy.”
For years I was not a little given to reporting bright things people
might have said, as though they had said them. It was such fun to
embellish commonplace events and comments with additions of my own.
Whenever I would tell these untruths I always had a queer feeling
(almost of disappointment) to find that nothing happened to me; that
no one questioned them; and that everything went on just as before
the lie had slipped off my tongue. I don’t know whether I expected
Ananias’s and Sapphira’s fate, or what, but I expected something, and
nothing happened!
This tendency to exaggeration and misstatement, and, on occasion, to
deliberate falsehood, I have tried conscientiously to overcome. In
fact, for years I swung far to the other side. Now, in matters of fact,
I think I am more often scrupulously accurate than not. If I cannot
be accurate, I refrain from giving a definite statement. My special
training in later years of course helped in this respect. But it was
earlier, when I became a “Christian,” that this tendency appeared to me
in all its heinousness, and in striving to overcome it I became, for a
time, almost morbidly conscientious.
One day in school the word “conscientious” came up for discussion. I
was not present, but learned from one of the girls that “Prof” had
spoken out in school freely, using my name as an example of what
conscientiousness meant. But my wise little sister (and how I loved
her for it!), though pleased at the reference to me, went to all the
girls she thought likely to mention it to me, and cautioned them not
to. When I learned of it, from one who never could keep a secret, I
asked why Sister didn’t want her to tell me. “Oh, she said it would
make you proud, or something like that.” And she was right. I was too
self-conscious as it was, and vain, in a demure kind of way. Kate knew
my weaknesses.
Sister’s deceits, as I have said, were such funny ones; they never
deceived any one--were never really intended to; they were only
desperate measures resorted to when in a tight place, their drollery
usually serving to protect her from punishment. As a rule she and
Brother managed to quarrel when left to their own devices. I played
the peace-maker between them, and have done it ever since. One Sunday,
when we stayed home from church, they got into a wrangle. Spiteful
words led to threats, and Kate was soon chasing Arthur round the room
in childish rage, I trying to intervene. In the squabble my belt fell
off--a black shiny belt with a metal buckle. As Kate could not reach
Arthur, she grabbed up my belt and, brandishing it in the air, chased
him, trying to hit him.
Crash! went the buckle against the rosewood mirror. When Father and
Mother came home and saw that crack in the mirror, they saw also three
guilty apprehensive children. Brother and Sister pitched in, telling
about the quarrel, who did this, and who did that. “I don’t care about
who started it, or who kept it up,” said Father, “I want to know who
broke that looking-glass--the one to blame for that will be punished.”
“Genie is to blame for it,” Kate promptly rejoined.
Father looked at me in surprise, Arthur opened his mouth in wonderment,
while I stood dumb and guilty-looking beyond question. Then Kate added:
“Arthur hit me, and I chased him with the belt, and the buckle broke
the glass, _and it was Genie’s belt-buckle_!”
She escaped punishment.
We had fewer playthings than children have nowadays, but for that very
reason they meant more to us. I had but two dolls in my childhood
and one is still--living, I was about to say. One was a leather-head
doll, with painted cheeks, black hair, and blue, blue eyes. But in the
beginning of her career she met a strange fate--a boy much bigger than
I snatched her from me and bit off her nose before my very eyes! This
was one of my earliest griefs. I hated that boy but cherished the
noseless doll for many years.
Later Kate and I had big wax dolls whose eyes would open and shut and
who would cry when we pressed a little place in the pit of the stomach.
We played with them only on state occasions. They were kept up in the
“front bedroom” in a bureau drawer. I saw them a year ago. They had on
the same scarlet wool dresses trimmed with narrow black velvet ribbon,
but the dresses were moth-eaten and the dolls showed the ravages of
time.
Occasionally, other relatives joining us, we had a family Christmas
tree--perhaps only four or five in our childhood. But there was always
the hope of one, and when there was one, the joy recompensed for the
lean years. One Christmas tree at Aunt Lucinda’s at which some Western
relatives were present, stands out vividly--the big house overflowing
with people, the smell of the dinner preparing, the air of mystery
of the elders as they went to and fro to the parlour with various
parcels; and then, at last, when the doors swung open and we got
that first glimpse of the blessed tree! But how was my joy modified!
Making our way, pell-mell, grown-ups and children, in the eagerness to
push through, someone bumped against me, driving my nose against the
door-jamb. I can feel the pain yet, and the blinding tears. Not all the
splendour of that tree could drive that pain away. After that, in a way
I had of accounting for things, I attributed a slight deflection of
my nose to that bump. I recall black walnut work-boxes for Sister and
me and a writing-desk for Brother as the most elaborate and expensive
gifts which as children we ever received. Some years there were no
gifts, except new clothing, which never satisfied the craving--except
once--our white “moss velvet hats”--these made our hearts light as
well as our heads. When there were no presents--can one ever forget the
bitter disappointment? A trivial gift means so much to an expectant
child! All in vain were we told (as we sometimes were in advance) that
no gifts could be afforded that year. We never quite gave up hope. But,
cruel as was the disappointment, perhaps the discipline was wholesome.
One year there were crosses covered with crinkly paper bedecked with
wreaths of worsted flowers, and framed in deep rustic frames. What
works of art! Almost equal to the hanging basket made of allspice that
adorned a cousin’s parlour, and to the framed pyramid of hair-flowers
that hung in our own!
I still treasure a paper-covered Red Riding Hood, cut in the form
of the little lass, with the wolf crouching at her feet, the text a
metrical version, charmingly illustrated. I must have had it since I
was seven or eight years old. I knew the verses “by heart,” and have
heard Mother tell that I used to recite them and other long pieces in
my sleep. A bottle of oil once made a spot on the book and the paper
is yellow with age, but I still cherish it and would part with many a
choicer possession sooner than with this childhood treasure.
In this connection I recall that when I was perhaps in my early ’teens,
the instinct of acquisition developing, I went about the house placing
my name upon all my belongings--every book and picture, even on the
bottoms of little toy vases, a porcelain lamb, and so on. As to Red
Riding Hood, I seemed to think it fitting to write my name in a big
sprawling child’s hand, every letter a capital, with the notion, I
suppose, that it would be thought that I had written it there when
a child. I even selected a date, reckoning back as well as I could,
and putting it upon one of my early birthdays. In the same way I
mutilated a quaint book that had belonged to Grandpa, by writing his
name on the fly leaf, and the legend, “His Book,” in what I considered
an old-fashioned hand-writing. Some years later, coming upon these
evidences of my silly deception, my cheeks burned with shame, and I
erased the false records.
Fondness for my own belongings did not prevent me from a cruel piece
of vandalism in regard to a cherished possession of my sister’s: She
had made a clove-apple by sticking a greening full of cloves, and
hiding it in a cuff-box in the upstairs closet, had declared she was
going to keep it till she grew up. Laughing at her, I said it would
decay, but she maintained that it would not. On rare occasions, as if
it were a religious rite, she would peep into the box and sniff at the
apple, vouchsafe us a sniff also, and put it carefully away. As it
dwindled and dwindled, her attachment strengthened and strengthened.
I believe she kept it six years. Although I had often threatened to
throw it away, she never believed I would. But one day, whether out
of spite, or because of my strenuous housekeeping, I did it, probably
silencing my compunctions by thinking she was too old longer to indulge
in such nonsense. But her grief and anger on learning of the loss were
so moving that I was conscience-stricken, and would then have given
anything to have restored the treasure. She scorned all attempts at
extenuation. It is with real shame that I confess this misdeed--more,
perhaps, than I feel for later, graver ones. I know now that as one
of her treasures it should have been respected. Anything that another
really loves--a toy, a bauble, an idol, a comforting superstition--why
not let him keep it as long as he can?
We were a happy and harmonious family as such things go. I do not mean
that we never said a cross word to one another; such families, I
fancy, exist only in Sunday-school books. There was not always unity;
our parents sometimes differed; Father was critical and methodical;
Mother forgetful and wanting in system. She was tried by Father’s
smoking and inordinate croquet-playing, and he was tried by her
procrastination; at such times fault-finding was forthcoming. Sister
and Brother had early and late unpleasantnesses; and, in our ’teens,
Sister and I became less harmonious than formerly, about the time, I
suppose, when we were each becoming more individual; at least, when,
ceasing to be docile, I became more assertive. But there was always the
good-night kiss all around, and Kate and I went to sleep with our arms
around each other as long as we were girls at home. I do not think we
could have slept had we let the sun go down upon our wrath.
I remember the first time I omitted our custom of kissing all round
at night--the family and any guest staying with us. Some strange man
was there; when I had kissed Father and Mother I hesitated before the
man--I was getting to be a big girl--then, putting out my hand, said a
bashful good night and went upstairs with burning cheeks, wondering if
it had seemed rude not to kiss him.
We were not a demonstrative family--the good-night kiss was the chief
expression of affection. I remember no fondling, no caresses after
early childhood, except the habitual ones--no spontaneous overflow of
affection at irregular intervals, such as I was inclined to, had the
others been so minded. Once in a great while Father would call us the
sweetest pet name in the world--“darling.” On these rare occasions I
was secretly overjoyed. Had he known the delight it gave me, I’m sure
he would have said it oftener. Mother sometimes jocosely called me
“Keturah,” and when, in one of her rare playful moods, she dubbed me
“Keturah Ketunk,” I liked it exceedingly.
I remember once--I was probably thirteen or fourteen--going into the
bedroom to bid my parents good night, when, having kissed them, as I
started to leave the bed, Father threw out his arm; and, seeing it in
the half light, and thinking he did it to motion me back, I bent down
and swiftly kissed him again--an unusual thing for either him or me.
No sooner had I done it than my cheeks got hot as fire: perhaps I had
misunderstood his gesture; he may have just happened to stretch out
his arm, and was not beckoning me at all. Upstairs I went, torturing
myself with the query which I never solved. Whether or not he had
called me back, I now know he was not sorry to get the extra kiss. Why
couldn’t I have thus comforted myself then? I suppose I was hungry for
more demonstration of affection than I got, yet ashamed to show it.
Sister, not at all demonstrative, provoked demonstration in me; the
curve of her cheek, and her long eyelashes resting upon it, appealed
to me as a child’s beauty appeals; I longed to kiss her at inopportune
times, and sometimes did not resist. Half annoyed at me, she thought
it nonsense, I suppose. As we grew up, when she would be fitting a
dress for me, I would try to snatch kisses, sometimes calling forth
her impatience, at others her laughing dexterity as she eluded me. I
admired her prettiness, but was never jealous of her, though she could
dance and skate, and do all such things, with an ease and grace I could
never acquire. Making friends more readily than I, being sociable,
lively, and even-tempered, she had plenty of beaux while I had none.
But I had friends among the beaux of the other girls. Although I did
not want them for beaux, I should have been unhappy had I not had them
for friends--I understood myself well enough to know that much then,
though the general impression among my schoolmates was that I cared
nothing for the boys.
My hypersensitiveness about the life of the affections was apparent in
the way I felt when Father would bid us all good-bye: When he kissed
Mother I would always turn away. It never seemed right to look on;
perhaps, partly, because it made me want to cry; but also because it
seemed as though _I had no right_. Even to-day, if I see lovers on the
stage whose acting is good enough to give the sense of reality, I find
myself turning away--it seems too intimate for me to witness.
A favourite custom in our family was an annual Sunday drive in
apple-blossom time. Father would hire a team and a sort of landau
which, on a pinch, would hold ten persons--an aunt’s family and
ours--big baskets would be stowed under the seats, and off we would
go through the country on an all-day’s drive, stopping to picnic in
some grove, or by a stream. Then on again under the blue skies, the
air sweet with blossoming trees; and the tender spring green giving
that hazy, twiggy look of early May. (That line of Whitman’s--“Rich
apple-blossomed earth”--always brings back those far-off May-times
with those perfect childish joys.) Then we would drive home in the
twilight, singing as we went, old and young joining in the songs. Happy
children, happy parents! I’m sure the apple blossom is an escape from
the Beautiful Garden. I never breathe its fragrance without recalling
those cherished drives in the Mays that are no more.
Our parents were wisely indulgent, giving us treats and privileges as
they could afford them. We were brought up to go without a thing till
it could be paid for; consequently, all of us have a horror of being in
debt. Father spent a good deal (considering our circumstances) on our
music, first and last, and he and Mother were ever looking forward to
our advancement. But there was always a struggle over money matters. We
had to economize and count the cost of any indulgence; but when it was
decided that we could afford a given thing, how happy, almost jubilant,
Father was over the expenditure!
One of the happiest hours in childhood (I was perhaps ten years old)
was when, after spending the day from home, we returned at dusk and
were met at the door by Father and Mother looking so excited and happy
we knew something was on the carpet. And there was! In the sitting-room
our eyes encountered a change--the furniture was rearranged, and there
standing against the wall (were we awake or dreaming?) was a brand new
organ!
Our joy was unbounded, our parents’ delight no less. How we smoothed
the polished walnut case; gingerly touched the black and the white
keys; fingered the stops; tried the pedals; moved the swell; and asked
to have the top lifted so we could look inside! And then Father sat
down and struck a few rich chords--those chords with their variations
that seemed peculiarly his own! Soon the music teacher came in, and
some neighbours, and the new organ sounded throughout our home, and
doubtless in our dreams that night; and the next morning _it was still
there_!
Then began the lessons. Gradually the novelty wore away, lessons grew
harder and harder. Kate and Arthur, restless beings that they were,
made only fair progress; they disliked the practice. But, taking to it
eagerly from the start, I made rather more than ordinary progress. It
was as hard to get me away from the organ as it was to get Kate and
Arthur to it. I was still very young when, one day, putting aside my
exercise book, I opened the Methodist Hymnal and “picked out” one of
the hymns--Boylston. I was scared, it sounded so natural--and I had
done it alone! Mother came running in to see if it was really I who was
playing.
Shortly after that, in Sunday School, the organist leaving before the
close, the superintendent came to me, saying, “We want you to play the
last piece.” I tried to beg off, but no, he knew I could do it; so, in
fear and trembling, I got up and played. The treadles worked hard, and
the stool was too high, so the superintendent pedalled for me, while
the school rose and sang. It didn’t take us children long to get home
that Sunday. “Genie played the organ! Genie played the organ!” shouted
Kate and Arthur as we rushed into the house. After that this occurred
so often that my timidity before the Sunday School wore away. This was
the forerunner of a greater event: I had never touched the big organ,
but as Father was chorister, we children often sat “in the choir”
pretending to help sing. One day toward the close of the service the
bass singer, leaning over, whispered, “Miss R---- has gone home, you
will have to play for us, Genie.” Protesting, I looked imploringly at
Father, but he only nodded and smiled encouragingly. My heart nearly
thumped itself to pieces, but the wily Basso whispered, “We’ll sing
so loud, if you make a mistake they’ll never know it, and we’ll pick
out one with an easy bass.” So I undertook it. In time, as Miss R----
dropped out more and more, I became the regular organist. Later came
piano lessons, and later still I had a teacher from a neighbouring city.
When I was developing rapidly, undergoing the physiological and
emotional changes of pubescence, they unwisely put me to studying
“Thorough Bass.” A paternal aunt had been an accomplished musician,
and my parents hoped I would show a like talent. How my head used to
ache over that study! As the lessons became more complicated, I grew
stupid; my health failed perceptibly and our family physician was
called. He talked with me a long time, then I was sent out of the room
while he and Mother talked; then called in again, and the little black
medicine-case was opened, while the Doctor folded the tiny powders
that, he said, as he patted my head and called me “lassie,” were to
make me strong again.
The upshot of it all was I had to drop my music, not only then, he
advised, but for all time. I had too emotional a temperament, he said,
to stand the strain. (What kind of a musician would a non-emotional
person be!) But he was wise in prohibiting it then. I used to dignify
the severe headaches which I had at that time by saying I had “brain
fever.” (Girls in the books I read had “brain fever.”) But there was no
real illness, no staying out of school, though for a time my hours were
lessened.
Dropping music was a real cross to me. Probably, had I been allowed to
resume it, I should have followed that as a vocation and not cast about
for another field of work. Although discontinuing the study of music, I
did not drop its practice. Music was an important part of our home life.
I remember how cruel I once thought my parents because they would not
let me go to a distant county to pick hops. One of the schoolgirls
had gone with her mother the year before, had earned a lot, and had
had a “splendid time.” As the season came round again, I “teased” to
go with this girl and her mother. I was hearing a good deal at home
about economy, economy, and Nora’s account of the money she had made
had fired me with the prospect of earning great sums to relieve our
growing needs. Confident, I announced my plan. Was ever a girl so
repulsed, so silenced? They wouldn’t even hear me out. I tried to say
what Nora said, and what her mother said, but they were obdurate.
A martyr in my own eyes for a time, it was probably years before I
realized what I had asked to do. When I learned what class of young
people usually engaged in such work, I understood how “out of the
question” (a finality of Father’s) it had been for my parents even to
discuss the project. I remembered, too, how the same bright-eyed Nora
had soon left school; how she changed in manner; became coarsened;
drifted out of our lives. Strange how, years after, children become
aware of the safeguards thrown around them in youth! With this
awareness, what a feeling of gratitude wells up within one toward the
parents who have surrounded them with such wise and loving care! How
one longs to fly home and tell them of it; yet how reticent are we, how
chary of expressing this gratitude!
One of the deepest of my early griefs was when we first learned what it
was as a family to be separated; when Brother, who was a printer, went
to Colorado to work. We had been so closely bound together. I realized
the anxiety of our parents, divined the loneliness Arthur would feel,
and what it would mean to lose him from the home. What interesting and
humorous letters he wrote us, with the homesickness sometimes peeping
through! How we read and re-read them!
He stayed away less than a year. Shall I ever forget the day he came
back? His clothes had become shabby; he was stained with travel, but
I almost devoured him with my eyes. How good his voice sounded--every
well-known tone; every gesture; and his laugh--my heart was like to
burst. And, oh, the joy, the security, the blessed feeling that night,
to know we were all together again under the home roof!
I used to resort to various devices to keep Arthur at home in the
evening, which sometimes worked, sometimes not. The most effectual was
to slip away from the supper table while the rest were still seated,
under the pretext of wishing to try a new piece, thus getting him under
the spell of the music while he was filling the stoves and bringing in
water, so he would be drawn in spite of himself into the sitting-room.
Once there, he would hang around and read, often appearing indifferent
when I knew he was not. When he would get up to go, after I had held
him as long as I could, how my heart would sink as the door closed and
his steps sounded fainter and fainter on “stoop” and sidewalk! But I
would keep on playing long enough so as not to make it too apparent to
the others what I had been up to, though they were doubtless as well
aware of my motive as I. Sometimes he would say, on going out, “Well,
I’ve got to go now”--his way of thanking me for playing.
Even when he was doing his best, there was always more or less anxiety
until Brother would come home at night. No matter what I was reading,
when ten o’clock came, unless he had come, I felt an anxious pang.
All of us felt it, though it was seldom mentioned. Mother sometimes
spoke of it, or her sighs betrayed it, but as a rule we hid our
anxiety under an assumed cheerfulness. I would listen when the steps
came on the veranda to see if there were two walking, or only Father.
Then if Father came alone, he would ask with apparent lightness, “Is
Arthur home yet?” and I would hasten to answer, “No, not yet,” just to
forestall Mother’s sadder negative with its accompanying sigh. Then
we would all fall to talking to cover our fears. But when he did come,
how we strove to conceal the delight that our fears had been unfounded!
Putting up my books, but not too quickly, lest he be aware that I was
trying to reward him for coming home early, I would go to the organ,
and after making a pretense by first playing some indifferent thing,
would play and sing the songs he liked best.
Oh, the safe housed feeling, when we could say good night to one
another, and not have to lie awake listening for Brother’s footsteps
that came so late sometimes, and sometimes not at all! After such
nights of watching, Sister and I would peep into his room in the
morning, to see if perchance he had come after we had fallen asleep.
And when his bed was untouched--the dread and fear of what may have
befallen him!
Brother was always good company. He is witty, and easily moved by
humour or pathos. Once stir his worthy emotions and his better nature
comes to the surface, though he resists being stirred as long as he
can. A fond father, he is, on the whole, a wise one, except when his
temper, or his infirmity, gets the better of him. Like our dear, testy
grandfather in disposition, he reacts in much the same way, yet, with
all his impatience, shows surprising tolerance with certain vagaries
and eccentricities in others who, being the victims of hereditary and
constitutional handicaps, are “gey ill to live with.” Love for his
children is one of his strongest traits.
A few months ago, when a maternal uncle, an alcoholic, died, Brother
took his own little son to the uncle’s coffin and there, telling the
child what a promising youth the uncle had been, explained to him
that drink had been his ruination. He wrote me that he had made the
child (only three years old) understand it all; and then had made him
promise that he would never touch alcohol in any form.
Poor, tempted, struggling soul! Whitman has expressed tenderly and
understandingly the feelings that always well up in me at the thought
of my brother’s struggles and defeats--“Vivas for those who have
failed!” Such need pity, help, and credit far more than we are wont to
give. Bobbie Burns knew whereof he spoke when he reminded us:
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.
Father and Mother still have hope in Brother’s ultimate
victory[2]--such faith, and such optimism, combined with such
tenderness and forgiveness! I know of nothing more God-like than these
attributes as I have seen them exemplified in the daily lives of my
parents. “Like as a father pitieth his children”--what a perfect
example I have known of this infinite, compassionate love!
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The victory came some years after this was written. My brother now
knows the triumph of him “who ruleth his spirit.”