CONCERNING CARROTS
When I had finished my work, I rose from my knees and stood waiting for
John Chitling's directions.
"Run along to the next street," he said kindly, "an' you can tell my
house, I reckon, by the number of children in the gutter. It's the house
with the most children befo' it. You'll find my wife cookin', likely
enough, in the kitchen, an' all you've got to say is that I told you to
tell her that you were hungry. She won't ax you many questions,--that
ain't her way,--but she'll jest set to work an' feed you."
Reassured by this description, I whistled to Samuel, and crossed the
narrow street, crowded with farmers' wagons and empty wheelbarrows, to a
row of dingy houses, with darkened basements, which began at the corner.
By the number of ragged and unwashed children playing among the old tin
cans in the gutter before the second doorway, I concluded that this was
the home of John Chitling; and I was about to enter the close, dimly
lighted passage, when a chorus of piercing screams from the small
Chitlings outside, brought before me a large, slovenly woman, with
slipshod shoes, and a row of curl papers above her forehead. When she
reached the doorway, a small crowd had already gathered upon the
pavement, and I beheld a half-naked urchin of a year or thereabouts,
dangled, head downwards, by the hand of a passing milkman.
"The baby's gone an' swallowed a cent, ma," shrieked a half-dozen treble
voices.
"Well, the Lord be praised that it wa'nt a quarter!" exclaimed Mrs.
Chitling, with a cheerful piety, which impressed me hardly less than did
the placid face with which she gazed upon the howling baby. "There,
there, it ain't near so bad as it might have been. Don't scream so,
Tommy, a cent won't choke him an' a quarter might have."
"But it was _my cent_, an' I ain't got a quarter!" roared Tommy, still
unconsoled.
"Well, I'll give you a quarter when my ship comes in," responded his
mother, at which the grief of the small financier began gradually to
subside.
"I had it right in my hand," he sniffled, with his knuckles at his eyes,
"an' I jest put it into the baby's mouth for keepin'."
By this time Mrs. Chitling had received the baby into her arms, and
turning with an unruffled manner, she bore him into the house, where she
stopped his mouth with a spoonful of blackberry jam. As she replaced the
jar on the shelf she looked down, and for the first time became aware of
my presence.
"He ain't swallowed anything of yours, has he?" she enquired. "If he has
you'll have to put the complaint in writing because the neighbours are
al'ays comin' to me for the things that are inside of him. I've never
been able to shake anything out of him," she added placidly, "except one
of Mrs. Haskin's bugle beads."
She delivered this with such perfect amiability that I was emboldened to
say in my politest manner, "If you please, ma'am, Mr. Chitling told me I
was to say that he said that I was hungry."
"So the baby really ain't took anything of yours?" she asked, relieved.
"Well, I al'ays said he didn't do half the damage they accused him of."
As I possessed nothing except the clothes in which I stood, and even
that elastic urchin could hardly have accommodated these, I hastened to
assure her that I was the bearer of no complaint. This appeared to win
her entirely, and her large motherly face beamed upon me beneath the
aureole of curl papers that radiated from her forehead. With a single
movement she cleared a space on the disorderly kitchen table and slapped
down a plate, with a piece missing, as if the baby had taken a bite out
of it.
"To think of yo' goin' hungry at yo' age an' without a mother," she
said, opening a safe, and whipping several slices of bacon and a couple
of eggs into a skillet. "Why, it would make me turn in my grave if I
thought of one of my eleven wantin' a bite of meat an' not havin' it."
As she switched about in her cheerful, slovenly way, I saw that her
skirt had sagged at the back into what appeared to be an habitual gap,
and from beneath it there showed a black calico petticoat of a dingy
shade. But when a little later she sat me at the table, with Samuel's
breakfast on the floor beside me, I forgot her slatternly dress, her
halo of curl papers, and her slipshod shoes, while I plied my fork and
my fingers under the motherly effulgence of her smile. Tied into a high
chair in one corner, the baby sat bolt upright, with his thumb in his
mouth, deriving apparently the greatest enjoyment from watching my
appetite; and before I had finished, the ten cheerful children trooped
in and gathered about me. "Give him another cake, ma!" "It's my turn to
help him next, ma!" "I'll pour out his coffee for him!" "Oh, ma, let me
feed the dog," rose in a jubilant chorus of shrieks.
"An' he ain't got any mother!" roared Tommy suddenly, and burst into
tears.
A sob lodged in my throat, but before the choking sound of it reached my
ears, I felt myself enfolded in Mrs. Chitling's embrace. As I looked up
at her from this haven of refuge, it seemed to me that her curl papers
were transfigured into a halo, and that her face shone with a heavenly
beauty.
I was given a bed in the attic, with the six younger Chitlings, and two
days later, when my father tracked me to my hiding-place, I hid under
the dark staircase in the hall, and heard my protector deliver an
eloquent invective on the subject of stepmothers. It was the one
occasion in my long acquaintance with her when I saw her fairly roused
out of her amiable inertia. Albemarle, the baby, had spilled bacon gravy
over her dress that very morning, and I had heard her console him
immediately with the assurance that there was "a plenty more in the
dish." But possessed though she was with that peculiar insight which
discerns in every misfortune a hidden blessing, in stepmothers, I found,
and in stepmothers alone, she could discern nothing except sermons.
"To think of yo' havin' the brazen impudence to come here arter the harm
you've done that po' defenceless darling boy," she said, with a noble
dignity which obscured somehow her slovenly figure and her dirty
kitchen. Peering out from under the staircase, I could see that my
father stood quite humbly before her, twirling his hatbrim nervously in
his hands.
"I ax you to believe, mum, what is the gospel truth," he replied, "that
I wa'nt meanin' any harm to Benjy."
"Not meanin' any harm an' you brought him a stepmother befo' six months
was up?" she cried. "Well, that ain't _my_ way of lookin' at it, for
I've a mother's heart and it takes a mother's heart to stand the tricks
of children," she added, glancing down at the gravy stains on her bosom,
"an' it ain't to be supposed--is it?--that a stepmother should have a
mother's heart? It ain't natur--is it?--I put it to you, that any man or
woman should be born with a natchel taste for screamin' an' kickin' an'
bein' splashed with gravy, an' the only thing that's goin' to cultivate
them tastes in anybody is bringin' ten or eleven of 'em into the world.
Lord, suh, I wa'nt born with the love of dirt an' fussin' any mo' than
you. It just comes along o' motherhood like so much else. Now it stands
to reason that you ain't goin' to enjoy the trouble a child makes unless
that child is your own. Why, what did my baby do this mornin' when he
was learnin' to walk, but catch holt of the dish an' bring all the gravy
down over me. Is thar any livin' soul, I ax you plainly, expected to see
the cuteness in a thing like that except a mother? An' what I say is
that unless you can see the cuteness in a child instead of the badness,
you ain't got no business to bring 'em up--no, not even if you are the
President himself!--"
Just here I distinctly heard my father murmur in his humble voice
something about having named an infant after the office and not the man.
But so brief was the pause in Mrs. Chitling's flow of remonstrance that
his interjection was overwhelmed almost before it was uttered. Her very
slovenliness, expressing as it did what she had given up rather than
what she was, served in a measure to increase the solemn majesty with
which she spoke; and I gathered easily that my father's small wits were
vanquished by the first charge of her impassioned rhetoric.
"I thank you kindly, mum, it is all jest as you say," he replied, with
the submissiveness of utter defeat, "but, you see, a man has got to give
a thought to his washin'. It stands to reason--don't it?"--he concluded
with a flash of direct inspiration, "that thar ain't any way to get a
woman to wash free for you except to marry her."
The logic of this appeared to impress even Mrs. Chitling, for she
hesitated an instant before replying, and when she finally spoke, I
thought her tone had lost something of its decision.
"An' to make it worse you took a yaller-headed one an' they're the kind
that gad," she retorted feebly.
My father shook his head, while a stubborn expression settled on his
sheepish features.
"Thar's the cookin' an' the washin' for her to think of," he said. "I
ain't got any use for a woman that ain't satisfied with the pleasures of
home."
"The moral kind are, Mr. Starr," rejoined Mrs. Chitling, who had
relapsed into a condition of placid indolence. "An' as far as I am
concerned since the first of my eleven came, I've never wanted to put on
my bonnet an' set foot outside that do'. My kitchen is my kingdom," she
added, with dignity, "an' for my part, I ain't got any use for those
women who are everlastingly standin' up for thar rights. What does a
woman want with rights, I say, when she can enjoy all the virtues? What
does she want to be standin' up for anyway as long as she can set?"
"Thar's no doubt that it is true, mum," rejoined my father; and when he
took his leave a few minutes afterwards, their relations appeared to
have become extremely friendly,--not to say confidential. For an instant
I trembled in my hiding-place, half expecting to be delivered into his
hands. But he departed at last without discovering me, and I emerged
from the darkness and stood before Mrs. Chitling, who had begun
absent-mindedly to take down her curl papers.
"Most likely it ain't his fault arter all," she observed, for her
judgment of him had already become a part of the general softness and
pliability of her criticism of life; "he seems to be a nice sensible
body with proper ideas about women. I like a man that knows a woman's
place, an' I like a woman that knows it, too. Yo' ma was a decent,
sober, hard-workin' person, wa'nt she, Benjy?"
I replied that she was always in her kitchen and generally in her
washtub, except when she went to funerals.
"Well, I ain't any moral objection to a funeral now an' then, or some
other sober kind of entertainment," returned Mrs. Chitling, removing her
curl papers in order to put on fresh ones, "but what I say is that the
woman who wants pleasure outside her do' ain't the woman that she ought
to be, that's all. What can she have, I ax, any mo' than she's got?
Ain't she got everything already that the men don't want? Ain't
sweetness an' virtue, an' patience an' long suffering an' childbearin'
enough for her without her impudently standin' up in the face of men an'
axin' for mo'? Had she rather have a vote than the respect of men, an'
ain't the respect of men enough to fill any honest female's life?"
In the beginning of her discourse, she had turned aside to slap a
portion of cornmeal into a cracked yellow bowl, and after pouring a
little water out of a broken dipper, she began whipping the dough with a
long, irregular stroke that scattered a shower of fine drops at every
revolution of her hand. Two of the children had got into a fight over a
basin of apple parings, and she left her yellow bowl and separated them
with a hand that bestowed a patch of wet meal on the hair of one and on
the face of another. Not once did she hasten her preparations or
relinquish the cheerful serenity which endowed her large, loose figure
with a kind of majesty.
The next day I started in as general assistant and market boy to John
Chitling, and when I was not sorting over ripe vegetables or barrels of
apples fresh from the orchard, I was toiling up the long hill, with a
split basket, containing somebody's marketing, on my arm. By degrees I
learned the names of John Chitling's patrons, the separate ways to their
houses, which always seemed divided by absurd distances, and the faces
of the negro cooks who met me at the kitchen steps and relieved me of my
burden. In the beginning I was accompanied on my rounds by a fat,
smudge-nosed youth some six or eight years my senior, who smoked vile
tobacco and enlivened the way by villainous abuses of John Chitling and
the universe. For the first months, I fear, my outlook upon the
customers I served was largely coloured by his narratives, but when at
last he dropped off and went on a new job at the butcher's, I arrived
gradually at a more correct, and certainly a more charitable, point of
view. By the end of the winter I had ceased to believe that John
Chitling was a skinflint and his customers all vipers.
In the bright soft weather of that spring the city opened into a bloom
of faint pink and white, which comes back to me like a delicate
fragrance. The old gardens are gone now, with their honeysuckle arbours,
their cleanly swept walks, bordered by rows of miniature box, their
deep, odorous bowers of microphylla and musk cluster roses. Yet I can
look back still through the gauzy shadows of elms and sycamores; I can
hear still the rich, singing call of the negro drivers, as the covered
wagons from country farms passed sleepily through the hot sunshine which
fell between the arching trees; and I can smell again the air steeped in
a fragrance that is less that of flowers than of the subtle atmosphere
of an unforgettable youth. To-day the city is the same city no longer,
nor is the man who writes this the market boy who toiled up the long
hill in the blossoming spring, with the seeds of the future quickening
in brain and heart.
The morning that I remember best is the one on which I carried the day's
marketing to an old grey house, with beds of wallflowers growing close
against the stuccoed bricks, and a shrub that flowered bright yellow
glancing through the tall gate at the rear. I had passed the wallflowers
as was my custom, and entering the gate at the back, had delivered my
basket at the kitchen door, when, as I turned to retrace my steps, I was
detained by the scolding voice of the pink-turbaned negro cook.
"Hi! if you ain' clean furgit de car'ots!" she cried.
Now the carrots had been placed in the basket, as I had seen with my own
eyes, by the hands of John Chitling himself, and I had been cautioned at
the time not to drop them out in my ascent of the steep hill. There was
a lady in the grey house, he had informed me, who was supposed to
subsist upon carrots alone, and who was in consequence extremely
particular as to their size and flavour.
"Are you sure they ain't among the vegetables?" I asked. "I saw them put
in myself."
"Huh! en you seed 'em fall out, too, I lay!" rejoined the negress,
protruding her thick red lips as she turned the basket upside down with
an indignant blow.
"If they're lost, I'll go back and bring others," I said, thinking
disconsolately of the hill.
"En you 'ould be back hyer agin in time fur supper," retorted the
outraged divinity. "Wat you reckon Miss Mitty wants wid car'ots fur 'er
supper? Dey is hern, dey ain' mine, but ef'n dey 'us mine I'd lamn you
twel you couldn't see ter set. Hit's bad enough ter hev ter live erlong
in de same worl' wid de slue-footed po' white trash widout hevin' dem
a-snatchin' de car'ots outer yo' ve'y mouf."
My temper, never of the mildest, was stung quickly to a retort, and I
was about to order her to hold her tongue and return me my basket, when
the door into the house opened and shut, and the little girl of the
enchanted garden appeared in the flesh before me.
"I want the plum cake you promised me, Aunt Mirabella," she cried; "and
oh! I hope you've stuffed it full of plums!" Then her glance fell upon
me and I saw her thick black eyebrows arch merrily over her sparkling
grey eyes. "It's my boy! My dear common boy!" she exclaimed, with a rush
toward me. For the first time I noticed then that she was dressed in
mourning, and that her black clothes intensified the dark brightness of
her look. "Oh, I _am_ glad to see you," she added, seizing my hand.
I gazed up at her, wounded rather than pleased. "I shan't be a common
boy always," I answered.
"Do you mind my calling you one? If you do, I won't," she said, and
without waiting a minute, "What are you doing here? I thought you lived
over on Church Hill."
"I don't now. Ma died and I ran away."
"My mother died, too," she returned softly, "and then grandmama."
For a moment there was a pause. Then I said with a kind of stubborn
pride, "I ran away."
The sadness passed from her and she turned on me in a glow of animation.
"Oh, I should just love dearly to run away!" she exclaimed.
"You couldn't. You're a girl."
"I could, too, if I chose."
"Then why don't you choose?"
"Because of Aunt Mitty and Aunt Matoaca. They haven't anybody but me."
"I left my father," I replied proudly, "and I didn't care one single
bit. That's the trouble with girls. They're always caring."
"Well, I'm not caring for you," she retorted with crushing effect,
shaking back the soft cloud of hair on her shoulders.
"Boys don't care," I rejoined with indifference, taking up my market
basket.
She detained me with a glance. "There's one thing they care
about--dreadfully," she said.
"No, there ain't."
Without replying in words she went over to the stove, and standing on
tiptoe, gingerly removed a hot plum cake, small and round and shaped
like a muffin, from the smoking oven.
"I reckon they care about plum cake," she remarked tauntingly, and as
she held it toward me it smelt divinely.
But my pride was in arms, for I remembered the cup of milk she had
refused disdainfully more than three years ago in our little kitchen.
"No, they don't," I replied with a stoicism that might have added lustre
to a nobler cause.
In my heart I was hoping that she would drop the cake into my basket in
spite of my protest, not only sparing my pride by an act of magnanimity,
but allowing me at the same time the felicity of munching the plums on
my way back to the Old Market. But the next moment, to my surprise and
indignation, she took a generous bite of the very dainty she had offered
me, making, while she ate it, provoking faces of a rapturous enjoyment.
I was lingering in the doorway with a scornful yet fascinated gaze on
the diminishing cake, when the pink-turbaned cook, who had gone out to
empty a basin of pea shells, entered and resumed her querulous abuse.
"De bes' thing you kin do is ter clear out," she said, "you en yo'
car'ots. He ain' fit'n fur you ter tu'n yo' eyes on, honey," she added
to the child, "en I don' reckon yo' ma would let yo' wipe yo' foot on
'im ef'n she 'uz alive. Yes'm, Miss Mitty, I'se a-comin'!"
Her voice rose high in response to a call from the house, but before she
could leave the kitchen, the door behind the little girl opened, and a
lady said reprovingly:--
"Sally, Sally, haven't I told you to keep away from the kitchen?"
"Oh, Aunt Mitty, I had to come for my plum cake," pleaded Sally, "and
Aunt Matoaca said that I might."
An elderly lady, all soft black and old yellow lace, stood in the
doorway. Then before she could answer a second one appeared at her side,
and I had a vision of two slender maidenly figures, who reminded me,
meek heads, drooping faces, and creamy lace caps, of the wallflowers in
the border outside blooming in a patch of sunshine close against the old
grey house. At first there seemed to me to be no visible difference
between them, but after a minute, I saw that the second one was gentler
and smaller, with a softer smile and a more shrinking manner.
"It was my fault, Sister Mitty," she said, "I told Sally that she might
come after her plum cake."
Her voice was so low and mild that I was amazed the next instant to hear
the taller lady respond.
"Of course, Sister Matoaca, you were at liberty to do as you thought
right, but I cannot conceal from you that I consider a person of your
dangerous views an unsafe guardian for a young girl."
She advanced a step into the kitchen, and as Miss Matoaca followed her
she replied in an abashed and faltering voice:--
"I am sorry, Sister Mitty, that we do not agree in our principles. There
is nothing else that I will not sacrifice to you, but when a question of
principle is concerned, however painful it is to me, I must be firm."
At this, while I was wondering what terrible thing a principle could
possibly turn out to be, I saw Miss Mitty draw herself up until she
fairly towered like a marble column about the shrinking figure in front
of her.
"But such principles, Sister Matoaca!" she exclaimed.
A flush rose to the clear brown surface of the little lady's cheek, and
more than ever, I thought, she resembled one of the wallflowers in the
border outside. Her head, with its shiny parting of soft chestnut hair,
was lifted with a mild, yet spirited gesture, and I saw the delicate
lace at her throat and wrists tremble as if a faint wind had passed.
"Remember, sister, that my ancestors as well as yours fought against
oppression in three wars," she said in her sweet low voice that had, to
my ears, the sound of a silver bell, "and it has become my painful duty,
after long deliberation with my conscience, to inform you--I consider
that taxation without representation is tyranny."
"Sally, go into the house," commanded Miss Mitty, "I cannot permit you
to hear such dangerous sentiments expressed."
"Let me go, Sister Mitty," said Miss Matoaca, for the flash of spirit
had left her as wan and drooping as a blighted flower; "I will go
myself," and turning meekly, she left the kitchen, while Sally took a
second cake from the oven and came over to where I stood.
"I'll just put this into your basket anyway," she remarked, "even if you
don't care about it."
"Come, child," urged Miss Mitty, waiting, "but give the boy his cake
first."
The cake was put into my hands, not into the basket, and I took a large,
delicious mouthful of it while I went by the meek wallflowers standing
in a row, like prim maiden ladies, against the old grey house.