How Mrs. Grapp ever came to, was the wonder. Her having the baby was
nothing. Her having the name for it was the astonishment.
Her own name was Lucy; her husband's Luther: that, perhaps,
accounted for the first syllable; afterwards, whether her mind
lapsed off into combinations of such outshining appellatives as
"Clara" and "Marion," or whether Mr. Grapp having played the
clarionet, and wooed her sweetly with it in her youth, had anything
to do with it, cannot be told; but in those prescriptive days of
quiet which followed the domestic advent, the name did somehow grow
together in the fancy of Mrs. Luther; and in due time the life-atom
which had been born indistinguishable into the natural world, was
baptized into the Christian Church as "Luclarion" Grapp.
Thenceforth, and no wonder, it took to itself a very especial
individuality, and became what this story will partly tell.
Marcus Grapp, who had the start of Luclarion in this "meander,"--as
their father called the vale of tears,--by just two years' time, and
was y-_clipped_, by everybody but his mother "Mark,"--in his turn,
as they grew old together, cut his sister down to "Luke." Then
Luther Grapp called them both "The Apostles." And not far wrong;
since if ever the kingdom of heaven does send forth its
Apostles--nay, its little Christs--into the work on earth, in these
days, it is as little children into loving homes.
The Apostles got up early one autumn morning, when Mark was about
six years old, and Luke four. They crept out of their small
trundle-bed in their mother's room adjoining the great kitchen, and
made their way out softly to the warm wide hearth.
There were new shoes, a pair apiece, brought home from the Mills the
night before, set under the little crickets in the corners. These
had got into their dreams, somehow, and into the red rooster's first
halloo from the end room roof, and into the streak of pale daylight
that just stirred and lifted the darkness, and showed doors and
windows, but not yet the blue meeting-houses on the yellow
wall-paper, by which they always knew when it was really morning;
and while Mrs. Grapp was taking that last beguiling nap in which one
is conscious that one means to get up presently, and rests so
sweetly on one's good intentions, letting the hazy mirage of the
day's work that is to be done play along the horizon of dim thoughts
with its unrisen activities,--two little flannel night-gowns were
cuddled in small heaps by the chimney-side, little bare feet were
trying themselves into the new shoes, and lifting themselves up,
crippled with two inches of stout string between the heels.
Then the shoes were turned into spans of horses, and chirruped and
trotted softly into their cricket-stables; and then--what else was
there to do, until the strings were cut, and the flannel night-gowns
taken off?
It was so still out here, in the big, busy, day-time room; it was
like getting back where the world had not begun; surely one must do
something wonderful with the materials all lying round, and such an
opportunity as that.
It was old-time then, when kitchens had fire-places; or rather the
house was chiefly fire-place, in front of and about which was more
or less of kitchen-space. In the deep fire-place lay a huge mound of
gray ashes, a Vesuvius, under which red bowels of fire lay hidden.
In one corner of the chimney leaned an iron bar, used sometimes in
some forgotten, old fashioned way, across dogs or pothooks,--who
knows now? At any rate, there it always was.
Mark, ambitious, put all his little strength to it this morning and
drew it down, carefully, without much clatter, on the hearth. Then
he thought how it would turn red under those ashes, where the big
coals were, and how it would shine and sparkle when he pulled it out
again, like the red-hot, hissing iron Jack-the-Giant-Killer struck
into the one-eyed monster's eye. So he shoved it in; and forgot it
there, while he told Luke--very much twisted and dislocated, and
misjoined--the leading incidents of the giant story; and then lapsed
off, by some queer association, into the Scripture narrative of
Joseph and his brethren, who "pulled his red coat off, and put him
in a _fit_, and left him there."
"And then what?" says Luke.
"Then,--O, my iron's done! See here, Luke!"--and taking it prudently
with the tongs, he pulled back the rod, till the glowing end, a foot
or more of live, palpitating, flamy red, lay out upon the broad open
bricks.
"There, Luke! You daresn't put your foot on _that_!"
Dear little Luke, who wouldn't, at even four years old, be dared!
And dear little white, tender, pink-and-lily foot!
The next instant, a shriek of pain shot through Mrs. Grapp's ears,
and sent her out of her dreams and out of her bed, and with one
single impulse into the kitchen, with her own bare feet, and in her
night-gown.
The little foot had only touched; a dainty, timid, yet most
resolute touch; but the sweet flesh shriveled, and the fierce
anguish ran up every fibre of the baby body, to the very heart and
brain.
"O! O, O!" came the long, pitiful, shivering cries, as the mother
gathered her in her arms.
"What is it? What did you do? How came you to?" And all the while
she moved quickly here and there, to cupboard and press-drawer,
holding the child fast, and picking up as she could with one hand,
cotton wool, and sweet-oil flask, and old linen bits; and so she
bound it up, saying still, every now and again, as all she could
say,--"What _did_ you do? How came you to?"
Till, in a little lull of the fearful smart, as the air was shut
away, and the oil felt momentarily cool upon the ache, Luke answered
her,--
"He hed I dare-hn't, and ho I did!"
"You little fool!"
The rough word was half reaction of relief, that the child could
speak at all, half horrible spasm of all her own motherly nerves
that thrilled through and through with every pang that touched the
little frame, hers also. Mothers never do part bonds with babies
they have borne. Until the day they die, each quiver of their life
goes back straight to the heart beside which it began.
"You Marcus! What did you mean?"
"I meant she darsn't; and she no business to 'a dars't," said Mark,
pale with remorse and fright, but standing up stiff and manful, with
bare common sense, when brought to bay. And then he marched away
into his mother's bedroom, plunged his head down into the clothes,
and cried,--harder than Luclarion.
Nobody wore any new shoes that day; Mark for a punishment,--though
he flouted at the penalty as such, with an, "I guess you'd see me!"
And there were many days before poor little Luclarion could wear any
shoes at all.
The foot got well, however, without hindrance. But Luke was the same
little fool as ever; that was not burnt out. She would never be
"dared" to anything.
They called it "stumps" as they grew older. They played "stumps" all
through the barns and woods and meadows; over walls and rocks, and
rafters and house-roofs. But the burnt foot saved Luke's neck scores
of times, doubtless. Mark remembered it; he never "stumped" her to
any certain hurt, or where he could not lead the way himself.
The mischief they got into and out of is no part of my story; but
one day something happened--things do happen as far back in lives as
that--which gave Luclarion her clew to the world.
They had got into the best parlor,--that sacred place of the New
England farm-house, that is only entered by the high-priests
themselves on solemn festivals, weddings and burials, Thanksgivings
and quiltings; or devoutly, now and then to set the shrine in order,
shut the blinds again, and so depart, leaving it to gather the gloom
and grandeur that things and places and people do when they are good
for nothing else.
The children had been left alone; for their mother had gone to a
sewing society, and Grashy, the girl, was up-stairs in her
kitchen-chamber-bedroom, with a nail over the door-latch to keep
them out while she "fixed over" her best gown.
"Le's play Lake Ontario," says Marcus.
Now Lake Ontario, however they had pitched upon it, stood with them
for all the waters that are upon the face of the earth, and all the
confusion and peril of them. To play it, they turned the room into
one vast shipwreck, of upset and piled up chairs, stools, boxes,
buckets, and what else they could lay hands on; and among and over
them they navigated their difficult and hilarious way. By no means
were they to touch the floor; that was the Lake,--that were to
drown.
It was Columbus sometimes; sometimes it was Captain Cook; to-day, it
was no less than Jason sailing after the golden fleece.
Out of odd volumes in the garret, and out of "best books" taken down
from the secretary in the "settin'-room," and put into their hands,
with charges, of a Sunday, to keep them still, they had got these
things, jumbled into strange far-off and near fantasies in their
childish minds. "Lake Ontario" included and connected all.
"I'll tell you what it is," said Marcus, tumbling up against the
parlor door and an idea at once. "In here!"
"What?" asked Luke, breathless, without looking up, and paddling
with the shovel, from an inverted rocking-chair.
"The golden thing! Hush!"
At this moment Grashy came into the kitchen, took a little tin
kettle from a nail over the dresser, and her sun-bonnet from another
behind the door, and made her way through the apartment as well as
she could for bristling chair-legs, with exemplary placidity. She
was used to "Lake Ontario."
"Don't get into any mischief, you Apostles," was her injunction.
"I'm goin' down to Miss Ruddock's for some 'east."
"Good,"; says Mark, the instant the door was shut "Now this is
Colchis, and I'm going in."
He pronounced it much like "cold-cheese," and it never occurred to
him that he was naming any unusual or ancient locality. There was a
"Jason" in the Mills Village. He kept a grocer's shop. Colchis might
be close by for all he knew; out beyond the wall, perhaps, among the
old barrels. Children _place_ all they read or hear about, or even
all they imagine, within a very limited horizon. They cannot go
beyond their world. Why should they? Neither could those very
venerable ancients.
"'Tain't," says Luclarion, with unbeguiled practicality. "It's just
ma's best parlor, and you mustn't."
It was the "mustn't" that was the whole of it. If Mark had asserted
that the back kitchen, or the cellar-way closet was Colchis, she
would have indorsed it with enthusiasm, and followed on like a loyal
Argonaut, as she was. But her imagination here was prepossessed.
Nothing in old fable could be more environed with awe and mystery
than this best parlor.
"And, besides," said Luclarion, "I don't care for the golden
fleece; I'm tired of it. Let's play something else."
"I'll tell you what there is in here," persisted Mark. "There's two
enchanted children. I've seen 'em!"
"Just as though," said Luke contemptuously. "Ma ain't a witch."
"Tain't ma. She don't know. They ain't visible to her. _She_ thinks
it's nothing but the best parlor. But it opens out, right into the
witch country,--not for her. 'Twill if we go. See if it don't."
He had got hold of her now; Luclarion could not resist that.
Anything might be true of that wonderful best room, after all. It
was the farthest Euxine, the witch-land, everything, to them.