MY BROTHER STEVIE.
I must have been about five when my sovereignty was seriously threatened
by the coming of Stevie. The ceremony of arrival I do not remember. He
seems to have started into my life like Jack out of his box to kneel for
ever in his single attitude,--upon a sofa, with his elbows on a little
table drawn up in front of the sofa, and his head resting either on one
or both palms.
Do not ask me if he ever slept, lay down, or walked as other children. I
have no memory of him except kneeling thus upon the parlour sofa,
looking at me or out of the window with beautiful unearthly eyes of the
deepest brown, full of passionate pain and revolt. Only for my tender
nurse did this fierce expression soften to a wistfulness still more sad.
That Stevie's head was impressive, almost startlingly great, even eyes
so young as mine could discern. Auburn hair the colour of rich toned
wood, that only reveals the underlying red when the sun or firelight
draws it out, and looks like heavy shadow upon a broad white forehead
when no gleam is upon it; strong features not pinched but beautified by
disease, and a depth and eloquence of regard such as are rarely looked
for under children's lids.
The head expressed not pathos so much as tragedy. The frame I never saw;
I cannot tell if Stevie were tall or dwarfed. A tipsy town nurse had
dropped him down the length of two long flights of stairs, and a strong
child's back was broken.
He did not bear his sorrow patiently, I fear, but with sullen courage
and with a corrosive silent fretting. He hated me in envy of my health
and nimble limbs, but what he hated still more than even the sight of my
vivacious pleasures was any question about his health. I never saw a
glance so deadly as that with which he responded to the kindly hope of
Mary Jane's mamma that his back was feeling better. If a look could
kill, Mary Jane had been motherless on the spot.
But alas for me! no longer a sole sovereign. My serene _al fresco_
kingdom was invaded by the darker passions. I did not like Stevie. He
was a boy a little girl might be sorry for in her better moments, but
could not love.
He was querulous whenever I was near, and had a spiteful thirst for
whatever I had set my heart upon. Nurse transferred the better part of
her affection and attention to him. This was as it should be, but I was
sadly sore about it in those unreasoning times. The little packages of
round hard sweets in transparent glazed paper, pink and violet, that Jim
Cochrane used to bring me home from the big shop we called the Co.
(_i. e._, Co-operative Store), were now offered to Stevie, who took all
my old privileges as his due.
Even Mary Jane would sit on the window-sill, when she should have been
playing with me outside, and gaze at him in prolonged owlish
fascination, drawn by the fierce pain of those suffering eyes, with
their terrible tale of revolt and anger. Stevie got into the way of
tolerating Mary Jane's society.
You see she could sit still for hours; she was a quiet little body who
enjoyed her sampler and a book--not a creature of nerves, that raced and
danced through the hours and was dropped into slumber by exhausted
limbs. He would even let Mary Jane sit at his table and stroke his
white hand with an air of deprecating tenderness, while he stared
silently out upon the noisy green, where boys and girls were romping
with straight backs and strong limbs.
What wonder this poor little fellow with the soul of a buccaneer hated
us all. Did his favourite books, read and re-read, not amply reveal his
tastes, though of these he never spoke? The lust of travel, of
adventure, of daring deed filled his dreaming, and yet he never had the
courage to ask a soul if he should one day be well and fit to meet the
glory of active manhood.
Let remembrance dwell rather with this thought than upon the darker side
of his temper, upon the subtle cruelty of the glance that met mine, upon
the quiver of baffled desire that shook his fine nostrils and the
vindictive clutch of his bloodless fingers whenever I thoughtlessly
raced near him. If he gave me my first draught of the soul's bitters, I
still owe him pity and sympathy, and I had my pleasures abroad to
console me for his hate.
There were the wide fields and the birds, the swans on the pond, our
friend the applewoman, and a band of merry shock-headed playmates
outside for me. There were the seasons for my choosing: the spring lanes
in their bloomy fragrance; the warm summer mornings, when it was good
to sit under trees and pretend to be a bewitched palace waiting for the
coming of the prince, or dabble on the brim of pool edges; the autumn
luxuriance of fallen leaves, which lent the charmed excitement of rustle
to our path along the lanes: and the frost of winter, with the undying
joys of sliding and snowballs and the fun of deciphering the meaning of
Jack Frost's beautiful pictures on the window-panes and his tricks upon
the branches.
If Stevie disliked my restlessness, it gave him great satisfaction to
despise my artistic sensibilities, and jeer at my lack of learning. I
adored music, and often amused myself for hours at a time crooning out
what I must have conceived as splendid operas, until my voice would
break upon a shower of tears.
I naturally thought my wordless singing must be very beautiful to move
me to such an ecstasy of emotion, and I think I enjoyed the tears even
more than my melancholy howling. But Stevie did not. On the first
occasion of this odd performance, he watched me in a convulsion of
unjoyous laughter.
"What an awful fool you are, Angela!" he hissed, when he saw the
pathetic tears begin to roll quickly down my cheeks. I rushed from the
parlour, and the sweet water of artistic emotion turned into the bitter
salt of chagrin.
I must have inherited this tendency from my mother's father, a
music-daft Scotsman, who was never quite sure whether he was Hamlet or
Bach. At long intervals he would stroll out of town by the Kildare road
in an operatic cloak and a wide-leafed sombrero, to inspect us. He had a
notion that I, if left to my own devices, might turn out a second
Catherine Hayes, and after his visits I invariably returned to my dirges
and cantatas with ardour.
During the year that Stevie lived at nurse's, visits from the people I
significantly called my Sunday parents (because, I suppose, I wore my
Sunday frock and shoes in their honour) were more frequent.
Golden-haired little ladies, in silk frocks and poky bonnets, came and
looked at me superciliously. The bland hauteur of one of those town
creatures in superior raiment once maddened me to that degree (it was
the dog-days, no doubt) that I walked up to the chair on which she
complacently sat, and hit her cheek.
This naturally afforded my mother an excuse for pronouncing me dangerous
and prolonging my absence from the family circle.
I was, I will admit, a desperate little spitfire, full of
uncontrollable passion. But I had some rudimentary virtue, I am glad to
know. I never lied, and I was surprisingly valiant for a
delicately-built little girl.
I cannot remember the period of transition, but I suddenly see Stevie in
quite a new part. The vitality and unfathomable yearning burnt
themselves out of his eyes, and there was a wearied gentleness in them
even for me. He would watch me quiescently without envy or bitterness,
and speak to me in slow unfamiliar tones. He turned with indifference
from his books, and seemed to know no active desires.
"Does your back hurt, Stevie?" I asked, staring at him solemnly. Even
now I can feel the moving sadness of his grave look.
"It always hurts;" and then he added, with a ring of his old spite, "but
you needn't be sorry for me, Angela."
"I am sorry, ever so sorry, Stevie," I sobbed, not knowing why.
"I wasn't good to you at all," he muttered, dreamily.
"Oh, I don't mind now. I'm fonder of you, Stevie. I wish you'd get well,
I do. I wouldn't mind being ill to keep you company."
"I think I'd be fond of you, Angela, if I got well. Would you mind," he
looked at me uneasily for help in his awkwardness, and then a little
pink colour came into his cheek, and he spoke so low that it was hard to
hear him--"I think I'd like you to put your arms round my neck and kiss
me, Angela."
It was our first kiss and our last. The impulsive affection of my
embrace pleased him, and he kept my cheek near his for some moments,
while in silence we both gazed out upon the blotch of dusty green that
mingled with the pale blue of the sky. I feared to move or even wink an
eyelid, this new mood of Stevie's so awed me.
"You may have my books and my penknife," said Stevie, breaking the
spell. "They're awful nice books. Grandpa gave them to me. I'll explain
the pictures to-morrow. But perhaps you wouldn't like boys' books,
Angela," he said, dejectedly, and scanned my face in a humble way.
"Oh yes, I would," I cried, eagerly.
"Then you'll be fonder of me," he sighed, satisfied. "Grandpa once read
me about a little boy that was ill like me, and he had a sister. He was
very fond of her. He didn't hate people that are well, like me, but I
don't think that's true, Angela. A boy can't feel good and nice if he is
always in pain, can he? It wouldn't be so hard for little girls, for
they don't mind sitting still so much."
This, I think, is how he talked, musingly, with none of the old vehement
revolt of voice and glance that still lingers with me as the most vivid
interpretation of his personality.
"I can't believe any boy was ever like that queer little fellow. I
wonder, if grandpa knew I wanted it very much, would he bring out that
book and read it all over again to me. I want to see if it's realler."
I drew my arms away from his neck, and ran off screaming for nurse to
drive into town, and tell grandpa to come and read about a sick little
boy to Stevie.
Nurse came to him, ready to do his slightest behest. I still see her
standing looking at him anxiously, and see lifted to her that awful
quietude of gaze, out of a face sharply thinned so suddenly.
"Bring me some gingerbread-nuts and lots of pipes to blow bubbles with,"
he said, and I felt the childish request soothed nurse's alarm.
"Faith, an' ye'll have them galore, my own boy," she cried, "if nurse
has to walk barefoot to Dublin for them."
Mary Jane's mother came over to stay with us while nurse drove off to
town. Stevie knelt in his eternal position, with his cheek against his
open palm and cushions piled around him. He did not speak, but stared
out of the window.
I went and sat with "Robinson Crusoe" on the window-ledge, to watch
nurse's departure and wave my hand to her. Not to wave my hand from the
window and blow kisses to her would be to miss the best part of the fun
of this unexpected incident.
The world outside rested in the unbroken stillness of noon. When nurse
was out of sight, I turned to acquaint Stevie with the fact. His eyes
were shut. So he remains in my memory, a kneeling statue of monumental
whiteness and stillness.
A strange way for a little lad to die! Not a sigh, not a stir of hand or
body, not a cry, no droop of head or jaw. A long, silent stare upon the
sunny land, lids quietly dropped, and then the long unawakeable sleep.
To my thinking it was an ideal close to a short life of such unrest and
pain and misery. It was indeed rest robbed of all the horrors of death.
The horror remained for one who loved him, and this was no blood
relative, but an ignorant nurse. Mary Jane's mamma came to see how
matters were with the children. Stevie, as I thought, still slept,
kneeling with his cheek upon his palm, and elbow resting on a cushion
between it and the table. She looked at him quickly, flung up her hands,
and trembled from head to foot. Then she bethought herself of me, and
ordered me to go and sit with my book in the garden, and keep very
still.
That was a long afternoon. I thought nurse would never come back. I had
looked at all the pictures, spoken to each flower, hunted for ladybirds,
and solaced myself with operatic diversion. Now I wanted to go back to
Stevie, but the door was shut against me and the blinds were all drawn
down, though it was not night--the sun had not even begun to dip
westward.
Judge my delight to catch the sound of wheels along the road. I raced
down to the gate to meet nurse and see all the wonders from town.
Grandpa was not with her, and she came up the little path swinging her
basket blithely.
"They knew the book at once, and I've got it--'tis by a man called
Dickens. Your grandpa and mamma will come to-morrow and read it.
They're giving a grand party to-night. Such a power of flowers and
jellies and things. But the pipes I've brought Stevie in dozens and
gingerbread-nuts galore."
Then her eye fell upon the blinded windows, and the colour flew from her
blooming rustic face. She was nearly as white as Stevie inside. She
flung away her basket, and the pipes, the book, and cakes rolled out on
the gravel, to my amazement. More wonderful still, she broke out in wild
guttural sounds and whirled around in a dance of madness.
I had never seen a grown person behave so oddly, and it enchanted me. I
caught her skirt and began to spin round too in an ecstasy of shrill
sympathy. She looked down at me in a queer wild way, as if she had never
seen me before and resented my kindness, and then she cast me from her
with such unexpected force that I fell among the flower-beds, too
astounded to cry. Decidedly, grown-up people, I reflected, are hard to
understand.
I had given up wondering at all the unusual things that happened the
rest of that day. People kept coming and going, and spoke softly, often
weeping. Nobody paid the least attention to me, though I repeatedly
asserted that I was hungry. Then at last a comparative stranger took me
into the kitchen, and made me a bowl of bread and milk. She forgot the
sugar, and I was very angry. Big people often do forget the essential in
a thoughtless way.
Men, too, came pouring in, and talked in undertones, looking at me as if
I had been naughty. I resented those looks quite as much as the unwonted
neglect of my small person, and was cheered, just upon the point of
tears, by the appearance of Mary Jane, who invited me to go home and
sleep with her that night.
I did not object. I never objected to any fresh excitement, and I was
fond of Mary Jane's brindled cat. But why did Mary Jane cry over me and
treat me as a prisoner all next day? She managed to keep me distracted
in spite of her tears, and I slept a second night with the brindled cat
in my arms, quite happy.
The second day of imprisonment did not pass so well. I was restless, and
wanted to see Stevie again. I wanted several things that nobody seemed
to understand, and I moped in a corner and wept, miserable and
misunderstood. On the morning of the third day I could bear my lot no
longer. I scorned Mary Jane's hollow friendship, and ran away without
hat or jacket.
Outside nurse's gate knots of villagers were gathered in their best
clothes. It looked like Sunday. I ran past them and shot in through the
open hall-door. Nobody saw me, and I made straight for Stevie's room,
which he never left before noon. I felt a rogue, and smiled in pleased
recognition of the fact. How glad Stevie would be to see me!
The door was ajar, and I entered cautiously. On Stevie's bed I saw a
long queer box with a lid laid beside it, and there was quite a quantity
of flowers, and tapers were lit upon a table beside the bed. Was Stevie
going away? But what use were candles when the sun was shining as
brightly as possible?
I wanted to see what was inside the box, and drew over a chair which
enabled me to climb upon the bed. Anger shook me like a frenzy. To put
sick Stevie in a horrid box! Whoever heard of such a monstrous thing? It
was worse than any of the dreadful things the wicked fairies did in
stories.
They had taken care, I noted, to pad the box with nice white satin to
make it soft; and they put a pretty new nightgown, with satin and white
flowers all over it, on Stevie. All the same, I was not going to be
softened by these small concessions of cruel people. Stevie I supposed
to be in a bewitched sleep, like the poor princess, and I was determined
to save him. I did not blame nurse. I imagined she was down-stairs in
enchanted slumber too. I would save her afterwards.
After calling passionately on Stevie, touching his face, which was
colder than stone, I slipped my hands over him down the sides of the
box, nearly toppling in myself in the energy of labour.
I see myself now, with pursed lips and frowning brows, panting in the
extremity of haste. At last my hands met under the poor narrow
shoulders, and I proceeded to drag the body out of the box.
I had nearly accomplished the feat, and Stevie's head and one arm hung
over the side, when the door opened and my stepfather stood upon the
threshold, dazed with horror, I can now believe. His look so terrified
me that I clambered down from the chair, with an inclination to cry.
"What have they done to Stevie?" I gasped, as I saw him gently lift back
the dark head and desecrated limb.
My stepfather's eyes brimmed over, and he took me into his arms,
murmuring vague words about heaven and angels, with his wet cheek
pressed upon mine. This was how I learnt that Stevie was dead.