Beginning Early, I Learn Love, Fear, and Hunger--I Become Acquainted
with Letters, and Alas! I Lose One of my Two Illusions.
Of the Days of St. Patrick that followed, not one found me in the city of
my birth--indeed, six months completed my period of existence in the
Dominion, and I have known it no more.
Some may think it strange that I mention these early years at all, but
the reason for such mention will appear later on. Looking back at them,
they seem to divide themselves into groups of four years each. During the
first four, my time was principally spent in growing and learning to keep
out of people's way. I acquired some other knowledge, too, and little
child as I was, I knew fear long before I knew the thing that frightened
me. I knew that love for my mother which was to become the passion of my
life, and I also knew hunger. But the fear was harder to endure than the
hunger--it was so vague, yet so all-encompassing.
We had to flit so often--suddenly, noiselessly. Often I was gently roused
from my sleep at night and hastily dressed--sometimes simply wrapped up
without being dressed, and carried through the dark to some other place
of refuge, from--what? When I went out into the main business streets I
had a tormenting barege veil over my face that would not let me see half
the pretty things in the shop windows, and I was quick to notice that no
other little girl had a veil on. Next I remarked that if a strange lady
spoke to me my mother seemed pleased--but if a man noticed me she was not
pleased, and once when a big man took me by the hand and led me to a
candy store for some candy she was as white as could be and so angry she
frightened me, and she promised me a severe punishment if I ever, ever
went one step with a strange man again. And so my fear began to take the
form of a man, of a big, smiling man--for my mother always asked, when I
reported that a stranger had spoken to me, if he was big and smiling.
I had known the sensation of hunger long before I knew the word that
expressed it, and I often pressed my hands over my small empty stomach,
and cried and pulled at my mother's dress skirt. If there was anything at
all to give I received it, but sometimes there was absolutely nothing but
a drink of water to offer, which checked the gnawing for a moment or two,
and at those times there was a tightening of my mother's trembling lips,
and a straight up and down wrinkle between her brows, that I grew to
know, and when I saw that look on her face I could not ask for anything
more than "a dwink, please."
As an illustration of her almost savage pride and honesty: I one day saw
a woman in front of the house buying some potatoes. I knew that potatoes
cooked were very comforting to empty stomachs. One or two of them fell to
the street during the measuring and I picked one up, and, fairly wild
with delight, I scrambled up the stairs with it. But my mother was angry
through and through.
"Who gave it to you?" she demanded.
I explained with a trembling voice: "I des' founded it on the very
ground--and I'se so hungry!"
But hungry or not hungry, I had to take the potato back: "Nothing in the
world could be taken without asking--that was stealing--and she was the
only person in the world I had a right to ask anything of!"
It was a bitter lesson, and was rendered more so by the fact that when I
carried the tear-bathed potato back to the street and laid it down,
neither the woman who bought nor the man who sold was in sight--and, dear
Heaven! I could almost have eaten it raw.
But I was learning obedience and self-respect; more than that, I was
already acquiring one of the necessary qualities for an actress--the
power of close observation.
The next four years (the second group) were the hardest to endure of them
all. True, I now had sufficient food and warmth, since my mother had
given up sewing for shops--which kept us nearly always hungry--and had
found other occupations. But the great object of both our lives was to be
together, and there are few people who are willing to employ a woman who
has with her a child. And if her services are accepted, even at a reduced
salary, it is necessary for that child to be as far as possible neither
seen nor heard. Therefore until I was old enough to be admitted into a
public school I never knew another child--I never played with any living
creature save a remarkable cat, that seemed to have claws all over her,
and in my fixed determination to trace her purr and find out where it
came from, she buried those claws to the very last one in my fat,
investigating little hands.
Meantime my "fear" had assumed the shape and substance of a man, a man
who bore a name that should have been loved and honored above all others,
for this "bogey" of my baby days--this nightmare and dread--was my own
father. When my mother had discovered his treachery--which had not
hesitated to boldly face the very altar--she took her child and fled from
him, assuming her mother's maiden name as a disguise. But go where she
would, he followed and made scenes. Finally, understanding that she was
not to be won back by sophistries, he offered to leave her in peace if
she would give the child to him. And when that offer was indignantly
rejected, he pleasantly informed her that he would make life a curse to
her until she gave me up, and that by fair means or by foul he would
surely obtain possession of me. Once he did kidnap me, but my mother had
found friends by that time, and their pursuit was so swift and unexpected
that he had to abandon me.
So, he who should have been the defender and support of my mother--whose
arms should have been our shelter from the world--the big, smiling
French-Canadian father--became instead our terror and our dread.
Therefore when my mother served in varying capacities in other people's
homes, and I had to efface myself as nearly as possible, I dared not even
go out to walk a little, so great was my mother's fear.
It seems odd, but in spite of my far-reaching memory, I cannot remember
when I learned to read. I can recall but one tiny incident relating to
the subject of learning. I stood upon a chair and while my hair was
brushed and braided I spelled my words, and I had my ears boxed--a custom
considered criminal in these better days--because, having successfully
spelled "elephant," I came to grief over "mouse," as, according to my
judgment, m-o-w-s filled all the requirements of the case. I remember,
too, that the punishment made me afraid to ask what "elephant" meant; but
I received the impression that it was some sort of a public building.
However, when I was six years old I joyfully betook myself to a primary
school, from which I was sent home with a note, saying that "in that
department they did not go beyond the 'primer,' and as this little girl
reads quite well from a 'reader,' she must have been taught well at
home." We were a proud yet disappointed pair, my mother and I, that day.
An odd little incident occurred about that time. One of our hurried
flights had ended at a boarding house, and my extreme quietude--unnatural
in a child of health and intelligence--attracted the attention of a
certain boarder, who was an actress. She was very popular with the
public, and both she and her husband were well liked by the people about
them. She took a fancy to me, and informing herself that my mother was
poor and alone, she offered to adopt me. She stated her position, her
income, and her intention of educating me thoroughly. She thought a
convent school would be desirable--from ten, say to seventeen.
Perhaps my mother was tempted--she was a fanatic on the question of
learning--but, oh! what a big _but_ came in just then: "but when I should
have, by God's will, reached the age of seventeen, she (the actress)
would place me upon the stage."
"Gracious Heaven! her child on the stage!" my mother was stricken with
horror! She scarcely had strength to make her shocked refusal plain
enough; and when her employer ventured to remonstrate with her, pointing
out the great advantage to me, she made answer: "It would be better for
her to starve trying to lead a clean and honorable life, than to be
exposed to such publicity and such awful temptations!"
Poor mother! the theatre was to her imagination but a beautiful vestibule
leading to a place of wickedness and general wrong-doing!
During those endless months, when I had each day to sit for hours and
hours in one particular chair in a corner, well out of the way--sit so
long that often when I was lifted down I could not stand at all, my limbs
being numbed to absolute helplessness, I had two great days to dream of,
to look forward to--Christmas and that wonderful 17th of March, when
because it was my birthday all those nice gentlemen, with the funny hats
and green collars, walked out behind the band. And I felt particularly
well disposed toward those most amusing gentlemen who wore, according to
my theory at least, their little girls' aprons tied about their big
waists.
I did not like so well the attendant crowd, but then I could not be
selfish enough to keep people from looking at "my procession" and
enjoying the music that made the blood dance in my own veins, even as my
feet danced on the chill pavement.
I always received an orange on that day from my mother, and almost always
a book, so it was a great event in my life, and I used to get down my
little hat-box and fix the laces in my best shoes days ahead of time that
I might be ready to stand on some steps where I could bow and smile to
the nice gentlemen who walked out in my honor. Heaven only knows how I
got the idea that the procession was meant for me, but it made me very
happy, and my heart was big with love and gratitude for those people who
took so much trouble for me.
I had but two illusions in the world--Santa Claus and "my
procession"--but, alas! on my eighth birthday, when in an outburst of
innocent triumph and joy I cried to a grown-up: "Ain't they good--those
funny gentlemen--to come and march and play music for my birthday?" I was
answered with the assurance that I "was a fool--that no one knew or cared
a copper about me--that it was a Saint, a dead and gone man, they marched
for!"
All the dance went out of my feet, heavy tears fell fast and stood round
and clear on the woolly surface of my cloak, and bending my head low to
hide my disappointment, I went slowly home, where the chair seemed
harder, the hours longer, and life more bare because I had lost the
illusion that had brightened and glorified it.
At the present time, here in my home, there is seated in an arm-chair, a
venerable doll. She is a hideous specimen of the beautiful doll of the
early "fifties." She sits with her soles well turned up, facing you, her
arms hanging from her shoulders in that idiotically helpless
"I-give-it-up" fashion peculiar to dolls. With bulging scarlet cheeks,
button-hole mouth and flat, blue staring eyes she faces Time and
unwinkingly looks him down. To anyone else she is stupidity personified,
but to me she speaks, for she came to me on my fourth Christmas, and she
is as gifted as she is ugly. Only last birthday--as I straightened out
her old, old dress skirt--she asked me if I remembered how I cried, with
my face in her lap, over that first loss of an illusion--and I told her
quite truly that I remembered well!