WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: SOMEWHERE BEYOND SEALED DOORS]
WHEN I WAS A LITTLE
GIRL
BY
ZONA GALE
AUTHOR OF “THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE,”
“FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
AGNES PELTON
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1911, by The Curtis Publishing Company.
COPYRIGHT, 1913,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913.
Norwood Press
J. B. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
THE LITTLE GIRL ON CONANT STREET
AND TO THE
MEMORY OF HER GRANDMOTHER
HARRIET BEERS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN THOSE DAYS 1
II. IN NO TIME 16
III. ONE FOR THE MONEY 35
IV. THE PICNIC 53
V. THE KING’S TRUMPETER 77
VI. MY LADY OF THE APPLE TREE 103
VII. THE PRINCESS ROMANCIA 118
VIII. TWO FOR THE SHOW 147
IX. NEXT DOOR 159
X. WHAT’S PROPER 173
XI. DOLLS 192
XII. BIT-BIT 211
XIII. WHY 228
XIV. KING 247
XV. KING (_continued_) 281
XVI. THE WALK 307
XVII. THE GREAT BLACK HUSH 315
XVIII. THE DECORATION OF INDEPENDENCE 329
XIX. EARTH-MOTHER 354
XX. THREE TO MAKE READY 375
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Somewhere beyond sealed doors _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Sat on a rock in the landscape and practised 32
Little by little she grew silent and refused to join in
the games 128
But the minute folk left the room--ah, then! 168
She settled everything in that way; she counted the
petals of fennel daisies and blew thistle from
dandelions 196
Then out of the valley a great deev arose 216
To see what running away is really like 316
There used to be a little girl who does not come here any more. She is
not dead, for when certain things happen, she stirs slightly where she
is, perhaps deep within the air. When the sun falls in a particular
way, when graham griddle cakes are baking, when the sky laughs
sudden blue after a storm, or the town clock points in its clearest
you-will-be-late way at nine in the morning, when the moonlight is on
the midnight and nothing moves--then, somewhere beyond sealed doors,
the little girl says something, and it is plain that she is here all
the time.
You little child who never have died, in these stories I am trying
to tell you that now I come near to understanding you. I see you
still, with your over-long hair and your over-much chattering, your
naughtiness and your dreams. I know the qualities that made you
disagreeable and those that made you dear, and I look on you somewhat
as spirit looks on spirit, understanding from within. I wish that
we could live it again, you and I--not all of it, by any means, and
not for a serious business; but now and then, for a joy and for an
idleness. And this book is a way of trying to do it over again,
together.
Will you care to come from the quiet where you are, near to me and
yet remote? I think that you will come, for you were wont untiringly
to wonder about me. And now here I am, come true, so faintly like her
whom you dreamed, yet so like you yourself, your child, fruit of your
spirit, you little shadowy mother....
If only words were moments
And I knew where they fly,
I’d make a tale of time itself
To tell you by and bye.
If only words were fathoms
That let us by for pearls,
I’d make a story ocean-strange
For little boys and girls.
But words are only shadow things.
I summon all I may.
Oh, see--they try to spell out Life!
Let’s act it, like a play.
When I was a Little Girl
I
IN THOSE DAYS
In those days time always bothered us. It went fast or it went slow,
with no one interfering. It was impossible to hurry it or to hold it
back.
“Only ten weeks more,” we invariably said glibly, when the Spring term
began.
“Just think! We’ve--got--t-e-n--weeks!” we told one another at the
beginning of vacation, what time we came home with our books, chanting
it:--
“_No more Latin,
No more French,
No more sitting on a hard wood bench._”
--both chorally and antiphonally chanting it.
Yet, in spite of every encouragement, the Spring term lasted
immeasurably and the Summer vacation melted. It was the kindred
difference of experience respectively presented by a bowl of hot
ginger tea and an equal bulk of ice-cream.
In other ways time was extraordinary. We used to play with it: “Now is
now. But now that other Now is gone and a Then is now. How did it do
it? How do all the Nows begin?”
“When is the party?” we had sometimes inquired.
“To-morrow,” we would be told.
Next morning, “Now it’s to-morrow!” we would joyfully announce, only
to be informed that it was, on the contrary, to-day. But there was no
cause for alarm, for now the party, it seemed, had changed too, and
that would be to-day. It was frightfully confusing.
“_When_ is to-morrow?” we demanded.
“When to-day stops being,” they said.
But never, never once did to-day stop that much. Gradually we
understood and humoured the pathetic delusion of the Grown-ups: _To-day
lasted always and yet the poor things kept right on forever waiting for
to-morrow._
As for me, I had been born without the time sense. If I was told that
we would go to drive in ten minutes, I always assumed that I could
finish dressing my doll, tidy my play-house, put her in it with all
her family disposed about her down to the penny black-rubber baby
dressed in yarn, wash my face and hands, smooth my hair (including
the protests that these were superfluous), make sure that the kitten
was shut in the woodshed ... long before most of which the family
was following me, haling me away, chiding me for keeping older folk
waiting, and the ten minutes were gone far by. Who would have thought
it? Ten minutes seem so much.
And if I went somewhere with permission to stay an hour! Then the
hour stretched invitingly before me, a vista lined with crowding
possibilities.
“How long can you stay?” we always promptly asked our guests, for there
was a feeling that the quality of the game to be entered on depended
on the time at our disposal. But when they asked me, it never was
conceivable that anything so real as a game should be dependent on
anything so hazy as time.
“Oh, a whole hour!” I would say royally. “Let’s play City.”
With this attitude Delia Dart, who lived across the street, had no
patience. Delia was definite. Her evenly braided hair, her square
finger tips, her blunt questions, her sense of what was due to
Delia--all these were definite.
“City!” she would burst out. “You can’t play City unless you’ve got all
afternoon.”
And Margaret Amelia and Betty Rodman, who were pretty definite too,
would back Delia up; but since they usually had permission to stay all
afternoon, they would acquiesce when I urged: “Oh, well, let’s start
in anyhow.” Then about the time the outside wall had been laid up in
the sand-pile and we had selected our building sites, the town clock
would strike my hour, which would be brought home to me only by Delia
saying:--
“Don’t you go. Will she care if you’re late?”
On such occasions we never used the substantive, but merely “she.”
It is worth being a child to have a sense of values so simple and
unassailable as that.
“I’m going to do just this much. I can run all the way home,” I would
answer; and I would begin on my house walls. But when these were
done, and the rooms defined by moist sand partitions, there was all
the fascination of its garden, with walks to be outlined with a
shingle and sprays of Old Man and cedar to be stuck in for trees, and
single stems of Fever-few and Sweet Alyssum or Flowering-currant and
Bleeding-heart for the beds, and Catnip for the borders, and a chick
from Old-Hen-and-Chickens for a tropical plant. We would be just begun
on the stones for the fountain when some alien consciousness, some
plucking at me, would recall the moment. And it would be half an hour
past my hour.
“You were to come home at four o’clock,” Mother would say, when I
reached there panting.
“_Why_ did I have to come home at four o’clock?” I would finally give
way to the sense of great and arbitrary wrong.
She always told me. I think that never in my life was I bidden to
do a thing, or not to do it, “because I tell you to.” But never
once did a time-reason seem sufficient. What were company, a
nap-because-I-was-to-sit-up-late, or having-to-go-somewhere-else beside
the reality of that house which I would never occupy, that garden where
I would never walk?
“You can make it the next time you go to Delia’s,” Mother would say.
But I knew that this was impossible. I might build another house,
adventure in another garden; this one was forever lost to me.
“... only,” Mother would add, “you can not go to Delia’s for ...” she
would name a period that yawned to me as black as the abyss. “...
because you did not come home to-day when you were told.” And still
time seemed to me indefinite. For now it appeared that I should never
go to Delia’s again.
I thought about it more and more. What was this time that was laid on
us so heavy? Why did I have to get up _because_ it was seven o’clock,
go to school _because_ it was nine, come home from Delia’s _because_
the clock struck something else ... above all, why did I have to go to
bed _because_ it was eight o’clock?
I laid it before my little council.
“Why do we have to go to bed because it’s bed-time?” I asked them.
“Which started first--bed-time or us?”
None of us could tell. Margaret Amelia Rodman, however, was of opinion
that bed-time started first.
“Nearly everything was here before we were,” she said gloomily. “We
haven’t got anything in the house but the piano and the rabbits that
wasn’t first before us. Mother told father this morning that we’d had
our stair-carpet fifteen years.”
We faced that. Fifteen years. Nearly twice as long as we had lived. If
a stair-carpet had lasted like that, what was the use of thinking that
we could find anything to control on the ground of our having been here
first?
Delia Dart, however, was a free soul. “_I_ think we begun before
bed-time did,” she said decidedly. “Because when we were babies,
we didn’t have any bed-time. Look at babies now. They don’t have
bed-times. They sleep all the while.”
It was true. Bed-time must have started after we did. Besides, we
remembered that it was movable. Once it had been half past seven. Now
it was eight. Delia often sat up, according to her own accounts, much
later even than this.
“Grown-ups don’t have any bed-time either,” Betty took it up. “They’re
like babies.”
This was a new thought. How strange that Grown-ups and babies should
share this immunity, and only we be bound.
“Who _made_ bed-time?” I inquired irritably.
“S-h-h!” said Delia. “God did.”
“I don’t believe it,” I announced flatly.
“Well,” said Delia, “anyway, he makes us sleepy.”
This I also challenged. “Then why am I sleepier when I go to church
evenings than when I play Hide-and-go-seek in the Brice’s barn
evenings?” I submitted.
This was getting into theology, and Delia used the ancient method.
“We aren’t supposed to know all those things,” she said with
superiority, and the council broke up.
That night I brought my revolt into the open. At eight o’clock I was
disposing the articles in my play-house so that they all touched,
in order that they might be able to talk during the night. It was
well-known to me that inanimate objects must touch if they would
carry on conversation. The little red chair and the table, the blue
paper-weight with a little trembling figure inside, the silver vase,
the mug with “Remember me” in blue letters, the china goat, all must be
safely settled so that they might while away the long night in talk.
The blue-glass paper weight with the horse and rider within, however,
was uncertain what he wanted to companion. I tried him with the china
horse and with the treeful of birds and with the duck in a boat, but
somehow he would not group. While he was still hesitating, it came:--
“Bed-time, dear,” they said.
I faced them at last. I had often objected, but I had never reasoned it
out.
“I’m not sleepy,” I announced serenely.
“But it’s bed-time,” they pressed it mildly.
“Bed-time is when you’re sleepy,” I explained. “I’m not sleepy. So it
can’t be bed-time.”
“Bed-time is eight o’clock,” they said with a hint of firmness, and
picked me up strongly and carried me off; and to my expostulation that
the horse and his rider in the blue paper-weight would have nobody to
talk to all night, they said that he wouldn’t care about that; and when
I wept, they said I was cross, and that proved it was Bed-time.
There seemed no escape. But once--once I came near to understanding.
Once the door into Unknown-about Things nearly opened for me, and just
for a moment I caught a glimpse.
I had been told to tidy my top bureau drawer. I have always loathed
tidying my top bureau drawer. It is so unlike a real task. It is made
up of odds and ends of tasks that ought to have been despatched long
ago and gradually, by process of throwing away, folding, putting in
boxes, hanging up, and other utterly uninteresting operations. I can
create a thing, I can destroy a thing, I can keep a thing as it was;
but to face a top bureau drawer is none of these things. It is a motley
task, unclassified, without honour, a very tag-end and bobtail of a
task, fit for nobody.
I was thinking things that meant this, and hanging out the window. It
was a gentle day, like a perfectly natural human being who wants to
make friends and will not pretend one iota in order to be your friend.
I remember that it was a still day, that I loved, not as I loved Uncle
Linas and Aunt Frances, who always played with me and gave me things,
but as I loved Mother and father when they took me somewhere with them,
on Sunday afternoons.... I had a row of daffodils coming up in the
garden. I began pretending that they were marching down the border,
down the border, down the border to the big rock by the cooking-apple
tree--why of course! I had never thought of it, but that rock was where
they got their gold....
A house-wren came out of a niche in the porch and flew down to the
platform in the boxalder, where father was accustomed to feed the
birds. The platform was spread with muffin crumbs. The little wren ate,
and flew to the clothes-line and poured forth his thankful exquisite
song. I had always felt regret that we had no clothes reel that
would whirl like a witch in the wind, but instead merely a system of
clothes-lines, duly put up on Mondays; but the little wren evidently
did not know the difference.
“Abracadabra, make me sing like that....” I told him. But I hadn’t said
the right thing, and he flew away and left me not singing. I began
thinking what if he _had_ made me sing, and what if I had put back my
head and gone downstairs singing like a wren, and gone to arithmetic
class singing like a wren, and nobody could have stopped me, and nobody
would have wanted to stop me....
... I leaned over the sill, holding both arms down and feeling the
blood flow down and weight my fingers like a pulse. What if I should
fall out the window and instead of striking the ground hard, as folk do
when they fall out of windows, I should go softly through the earth,
and feel it pressing back from my head and closing together behind my
heels, and pretty soon I should come out, plump ... before the Root of
Everything and sit there for a long time and watch it grow....
... I looked up at the blue, glad that I was so near to it, and thought
how much pleasanter it would be to fly right away through the blue and
see what colour it was lined with. Pink, maybe--rose-pink, which showed
through at sunset when the sun leaped at last through the blue and it
closed behind him. Rose-pink, like my best sash and hair-ribbons....
That brought me back. My best sash and hair-ribbons were in my top
drawer. Moreover, there were foot-steps on the stairs and at the very
door.
“Have you finished?” Mother asked.
I had not even opened the drawer.
“You have been up here one hour,” Mother said, and came and stood
beside me. “What have you been doing?”
I began to tell her. I do not envy her her quandary. She knew that I
was not to be too heavily chided and yet--the top drawers of this world
must be tidied.
“Think!” she said. “That Hour has gone out the window without its work
being done. And now this Hour, that was meant for play, has got to
work. But not you! You’ve lost your turn. Now it’s Mother’s turn.”
She made me sit by the window while she tidied the drawer. I was not to
touch it--I had lost my turn. While she worked, she talked to me about
the things she knew I liked to talk about. But I could not listen. It
is the only time in my life that I have ever really frantically wanted
to tidy a top bureau drawer of anybody’s.
“Now,” she said when she had done, “this last Hour will meet the
Hour-before-the-last, and each of them will look the way the other
ought to have looked, and they will be all mixed up. And all day I
think they will keep trying to come back to you to straighten them out.
But you can’t do it. And they’ll have to be each other forever and ever
and ever.”
She went away again, and I was left face to face with the very heart of
this whole perplexing Time business: those two Hours that would always
be somewhere trying to be each other, forever and ever, and always
trying to come back for me to straighten them out.
Were there Hours out in the world that were sick hours, sick because we
had treated them badly, and always trying to come back for folk to make
them well?
And were there Hours that were busy and happy somewhere because they
had been well used and they didn’t have to try to come back for us to
patch them up?
Were Hours like that? Was Time like that?
When I told Delia of the incident, she at once characteristically
settled it.
“Why, if they wasn’t any time,” she said, “we’d all just wait and wait
and wait. They couldn’t have that. So they set something going to get
us going to keep things going.”
Sometimes, in later life, when I have seen folk lunch because it is one
o’clock, worship because it is the seventh day, go to Europe because it
is Summer, and marry because it is high time, I wonder whether Delia
was not right. Often and often I have been convinced that what Mother
told me about the Hours trying to come back to get one to straighten
them out is true with truth undying. And I wish, that morning by the
window, and at those grim, inevitable Bed-times, that I, as I am now,
might have told that Little Me this story about how, just possibly,
they first noticed time and about what, just possibly, it is.
II
IN NO TIME
Before months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds were counted
and named, consider how peculiar it all must have seemed. For example,
when the Unknown-about Folk of those prehistoric times wished to know
_when_ a thing would happen, of course they can have had no word
_when_, and no answer. If a little Prehistoric Girl gave a party, she
cannot have known when to tell her guests to come, so she must have
had to wait until the supper was ready and then invite them; and if
they were not perfectly-bred little guests, they may have been offended
because they hadn’t been invited before--only they would not have known
how to say or to think “before,” so they cannot have been quite sure
what they were offended at; but they may have been offended anyway, as
happens now with that same kind of guest. And if a little Prehistoric
Boy asked his father to bring him a new eagle or a new leopard for a
pet, and his father came home night after night and didn’t bring it,
the Prehistoric Boy could not say, “_When_ will you bring it, sir?”
because there was no when, so he may have asked a great many other
questions, and been told to sit in the back of the cave until he could
do better. Nobody can have known how long to boil eggs or to bake
bread, and people must have had to come to breakfast and just sit and
wait and wait until things were done. Worst of all, nobody can have
known that time is a thing to use and not to waste. Since they could
not measure it, they could not of course tell how fast it was slipping
away, and they must have thought that time was theirs to do with what
they pleased, instead of turning it all into different things--this
piece into sleep, this piece into play, this piece into tasks and
exercise and fun. Just as, in those days, they probably thought that
food is to be eaten because it tastes good and not because it makes
the body grow, so they thought that time was a thing to be thrown away
and not to be used, every bit--which is, of course, a prehistoric way
to think. And nobody can have known about birthdays, and no story can
have started “Once upon a time,” and everything must have been quite
different.
About then,--only of course they didn’t know it was then--a Prehistoric
Mother said one morning to her Prehistoric Little Daughter:--
“Now, Vertebrata, get your practising done and then you may go to
play.” (It wasn’t a piano and it wasn’t an organ, but it was a lovely,
reedy, blow-on-it thing, like a pastoral pipe, and little girls always
sat about on rocks in the landscape, as soon as they had had their
breakfasts, and practised.)
So Vertebrata took her reed pipes and sat on a rock in the landscape
and practised--all of what we now know (but she did not know) would be
five minutes. Then she came in the cave, and tossed the pipes on her
bed of skins, and then remembered and hung them in their place above
the fireplace, and turned toward the doorway. But her mother, who was
roasting flesh at the fire, called her back.
“Vertebrata,” she said, “did I not tell you to practise?”
“I did practise,” said Vertebrata.
“Then practise and practise,” said her mother, not knowing how else to
tell her to do her whole hour. Her mother didn’t know hours, but she
knew by the feel of her feelings when Vertebrata had done enough.
So Vertebrata sat on a rock and did five minutes more, and came and
threw her pipes on her bed of skins, and remembered and hung them up,
and then turned toward the door of the cave. But her mother looked up
from the flesh-pot and called her back again.
“Vertebrata,” she said, “do you want mother to have to speak to you
again?”
“No, _indeed_, muvver,” said her little daughter.
“Then practise and practise and practise,” said her mother. “If you
can’t play when you grow up, what will people think?”
So Vertebrata went back to her landscape rock, and this thing was
repeated until Vertebrata had practised what we now know (but she did
not know) to have been a whole hour. And you can easily see that in
order to bring this about, what her mother must have said to her the
last time of all was this:--
“I want you to practise and practise and practise and practise and
practise and practise and practise and practise and practise and
practise and practise and practise--” _or_ something almost as long.
Now of course it was very hard for her mother to say all this besides
roasting the flesh and tidying the cave, so she made up her mind that
when her Prehistoric Husband came home, he must be told about it. And
when the sun was at the top of the sky and cast no shadow, and the
flesh was roasted brown and fragrant, she dressed it with pungent
herbs, and raked the vegetables out of the ashes and hid the dessert in
the cool wall of the cave--_that_ was a surprise--and spread the flat
rock at the door of the cave and put vine-leaves in her hair and, with
Vertebrata, set herself to wait.
There went by what we now know to have been noon, and another hour, and
more hours, and all afternoon, and all early twilight, and still her
Prehistoric Husband did not come home to dinner. Vertebrata was crying
with hunger, and the flesh and the vegetables were ice-cold, and the
Prehistoric Wife and Mother sat looking straight before her without
smiling. And then, just as the moon was rising red over the soft breast
of the distant wood, the Prehistoric Father appeared, not looking as if
he had done anything.
“Is dinner ready?” he asked pleasantly.
Now this was the last straw, and the Prehistoric Wife and Mother said
so, standing at the door of the cave, with Vertebrata crying in the
offing.
“Troglodyte,” she said sadly (that was what she called him), “dinner
has been ready and ready and ready and ready and ready and ready and
ready ...” and she showed him the ice-cold roasted flesh and vegetables.
“I’m _so_ sorry, dearest. I never knew,” said the Troglodyte,
contritely, and did everything in the world that he could do to show
her how sorry he was. He made haste to open his game-bag, and he drew
out what food he had killed, and showed her a soft, cock-of-the-rock
skin for a cap for her and a white ptarmigan breast to trim it with,
and at last she said--because nobody can stay offended when the
offender is sorry:--
“Well, dear, say no more about it. We’ll slice up the meat and it will
do very well cold, and I’ll warm up the potatoes with some brown butter
(or the like). But hurry and bathe or I’ll be ready first _again_.”
So he hurried and bathed in the brook, and the cave smelled savoury
of the hot brown butter, and Vertebrata had a Grogan tail stuck in her
hair, and presently they sat down to supper. And it was nearly eight
o’clock, but they didn’t know anything about _that_.
When the serious part of supper was done, and the dessert that was a
surprise had been brought and had surprised and gone, Vertebrata’s
mother sat up very straight and looked before her without smiling. And
she said:--
“Now, something must be done.”
“About what, Leaf Butterfly?” her husband asked.
“Vertebrata doesn’t practise enough and you don’t come home to dinner
enough,” she answered, “and something must be done.”
“I did practise--wunst,” said Vertebrata.
“But you should practise once and once and once and once and once and
once, and so on, and not have to be told each once,” said her mother.
“I did come home to dinner,” said the Prehistoric Husband, waving his
hand at his empty platter.
“But you should come first and first and first and first and first, and
so on, and not let the dinner get ice-cold,” said his wife. “Hear a
thing,” said she.
She sprinkled some salt all thick on the table and took the stick on
which the flesh had been roasted, and in the salt she drew a circle.
“This,” she said, “is the sky. And this place, at the top, is the top
of the sky. And when the sun is at the top of the sky and there is no
shadow, I will have ready the dinner, hot and sweet in the pot, and
dessert--for a surprise. And when the sun is at the top of the sky
and there is no shadow, do you come to eat it, _always_. That will be
dinner.”
“That is well,” said the Troglodyte, like a true knight--for in those
first days even true knights were willing that women should cook and
cave-tidy for them all day long and do little else. But that was long
ago and we must forgive it.
Then she made a mark in the salt at the edge of the circle a little way
around from the first mark.
“When the sun is at the edge of the sky and all red, and the shadows
are long, and the dark is coming, I will have ready berries and nuts
and green stuffs and sweet syrups and other things that I shall think
of--for you. And when the sun is at the edge of the sky and all red,
and the shadows are long, and the dark is coming, do you hurry to us,
_always_. That will be supper.”
“That is well,” said the Troglodyte, like a true knight.
Then she drew the stick a long way round.
“This is sleep,” she said. “This place here is waking, and breakfast.
And then next the sun will be at the top of the sky again. And we will
have dinner in the same fashion. And this is right for you. But what to
do with the child I don’t know, unless I keep her practising from the
time the sun is at the top of the sky until it is at the bottom. For if
she can’t play when she grows up, what will people think?”
Now, while she said this, the Prehistoric Woman had been sitting with
the stick on which the flesh had been roasted held straight up in her
fingers, resting in the middle of the ring which she had made in the
salt. And by now the moon was high and white in the sky. And the Man
saw that the moon-shadow of the stick fell on the circle from its
centre to beyond its edge. And presently he stretched out his hand and
took the stick from her, and held it so and sat very still, thinking,
thinking, thinking....
“Faddie,” said Vertebrata--she called him that for loving--“Faddie,
will you make me a little bow and arrow and scrape ’em white?”
But her father did not hear her, and instead of answering he sprang
up and began drawing on the soft earth before the cave a deep, deep
circle, and he ran for the long stick that had carried his game-bag
over his shoulder, and in the middle of the earth circle he set the
stick.
“Watch a thing!” he cried.
Vertebrata and her mother, understanding little but trusting much, sat
by his side. And together in the hot, white night the three watched the
shadow of the stick travel on the dial that they had made. Of course
there was no such thing as bed-time then, and Vertebrata usually sat
up until she fell over asleep, when her mother carried her off to her
little bed of skins; but this night she was so excited that she didn’t
fall over. For the stick-shadow moved like a finger; like, indeed, a
living thing that had been in the world all the time without their
knowing. And they watched it while it went a long way round the circle.
Then her mother said, “Nonsense, Vertebrata, you must be sleepy now
whether you know it or not,” and she put her to bed, Vertebrata saying
all the way that she was wide awake, just like in the daytime. And
when her mother went back outside the cave, the Man looked up at her
wonderfully.
“Trachystomata,” said he (which is to say “siren”), “if the sun-shadow
will do the same thing as the moon-shadow, we have found a way to make
Vertebrata practise enough.”
In the morning when Vertebrata came out of the cave--she woke alone and
dressed alone, just like being grown-up--she found her mother and her
father down on their hands and knees, studying the circle in the soft
earth and the long sun-shadow of the stick. And her mother called her
and she went running to her. And her mother said:--
“Now we will have breakfast, dear, and then you get your pipes and come
here and practise. And when you begin, we will lay a piece of bone
where the shadow stands, and when I feel the feeling of enough, I will
tell you, and you will stop practising, and we will lay another piece
of bone on that shadow. And after this you will always practise from
one bone to another, forever.”
Vertebrata could hardly wait to have breakfast before she tried it,
and then she ran and brought her pipes and sat down beside the circle.
And her father did not go to his hunting, or her mother to her cooking
and cave-tidying, but they both sat there with Vertebrata, hearing her
pipe and watching the shadow finger move, and waiting till her mother
should feel the feeling of enough.
_Now!_ Since the world began, the Hours, Minutes, and Seconds had been
hanging over it, waiting patiently until people should understand
about them. But nobody before had ever, ever thought about them, and
Vertebrata and her mother and her father were the very first ones who
had even begun to understand.
So it chanced that in the second that Vertebrata began to pipe and the
bone was laid on the circle, _that_ Second (deep in the air and yet
as near as time is to us) knew that it was being marked off at last
on the soft circle of the earth, and so did the next Second, and the
next, and the next, and the next, until sixty of them knew--and there
was the first Minute, measured in the circle before the cave. And other
Minutes knew what was happening, and they all came hurrying likewise,
and they filled the air with exquisite, invisible presences--all to
the soft sound of little Vertebrata’s piping. And she piped, and piped,
on the lovely, reedy, blow-on-it instrument, and she made sweet music.
And for the first time in her little life, her practising became to her
not merely practising, but music-making--there, while she watched the
strange Time-shadow move.
“J--o--y!” cried the Seconds, talking among themselves. “People are
beginning to know about us. It is _time_ that they should.”
“Ah!” they cried again. “We can go faster than anything.”
“Think of all of our poor brothers and sisters that have gone, without
anybody knowing they were here,” they mourned.
“Pipe, pipe, pipe,” went Vertebrata, and the little Seconds danced by
almost as if she were making them with her piping.
The Minutes, too, said things to one another--who knows if Time is so
silent as we imagine? May not all sorts of delicate conversations go on
in the heart of time about which we never know anything--Second talking
with Second, and Minute answering to Minute; and the grave Hours,
listening to everything we say and seeing everything we do, confiding
things to the Day about us and about Eternity from which they have
come. I cannot tell you what they say about you--you will know that, if
you try to think, and especially if you stand close to a great clock
or hear it boom out in the night. And I cannot tell you what they say
about Eternity. But I think that this may be one of the songs that they
sing:--
SONG OF THE MINUTES
We are a garland for men,
We are flung from the first gate of Time,
From the touch that opened the minds of men
Down to the breath of this rhyme.
We are the measure of things,
The rule of their sweep and stir,
But whenever a little girl pipes and sings,
We will keep time for her.
We are a touching of hands
From those in the murk of the earth,
Through all who have garnered life in their hands
And wrought it from death unto birth.
We are the measure of things,
The rule of their stir and sweep,
And wherever a little child weeps or sings
It is his soul we keep.
At last, when sixty Minutes had danced and chorussed past, there was,
of course, the first rosy Hour ever to have her coming and passing
marked since earth began. And when the Hour was gone, Vertebrata’s
mother felt the feeling of enough, and she said to Vertebrata:--
“That will do, dear. Now you may go and play.”
That was the first exact hour’s practising that ever any little girl
did by any sort of clock.
“Ribbon-fish mine,” said the Prehistoric Man to his wife, when
Vertebrata had finished, “I have been thinking additional thoughts. Why
could we not use the circle in other ways?”
“What ways, besides for your coming home and for Vertebrata’s
practising?” asked the Prehistoric Woman; but we must forgive her for
knowing about only those two things, for she was a very Prehistoric
Woman indeed.
“Little bones might be laid between the big bones,” said the Man--and
by that of course he meant measuring off minutes. “By certain of them
you could roast flesh and not kneel continually beside the fire. By
certain of them you could boil eggs, make meet the cakes, and not be in
peril of burning the beans. Also....”
He was silent for a moment, looking away over the soft breast of the
wood where the sun was shining its utmost, because it has so many
reasons.
“When I look at that moving finger on the circle thing,” he said
slowly, “it feels as if whoever made the sun were saying things to me,
but with no words. For his sun moves, and the finger on the circle
thing moves with it--as if it were telling us how long to do this
thing, and how long to do that thing--you and me and Vertebrata. And
we must use every space between the bones--and whoever made the sun is
telling us this, but with no words.”
The Prehistoric Woman looked up at her husband wonderfully.
“You are a great man, Troglodyte!” she told him.
At which he went away to hunt, feeling for the first time in his
prehistoric life as if there were a big reason, somewhere out in the
air, why he should get as much done as he could. And the Prehistoric
Woman went at her baking and cave-tidying, but always she ran to the
door of the cave to look at the circle thing, as if it bore a great
message for her to make haste, a message with no words.
As for Vertebrata, she had taken her pipes and danced away where,
on rocks in the landscape, the other little Prehistorics sat about,
getting their practising done. She tried to tell them all about the
circle thing, waving her pipes and jumping up and down to make them
understand, and drawing circles and trying to play to them about it on
her pipes; and at last they understood a little, like understanding a
new game, and they joined her and piped on their rocks all over the
green, green place. And the Seconds and Minutes and Hours, being fairly
started to be measured, all came trooping on, to the sound of the
children’s piping.
When the sun was at the top of the sky, Vertebrata remembered, and she
stuck a stick in the ground and saw that there was almost no shadow.
So she left the other children and ran very hard toward her own cave.
And when she had nearly reached it, somebody overtook her, also running
very hard.
[Illustration: SAT ON A ROCK IN THE LANDSCAPE AND PRACTISED.]
“Faddie!” she called, as she called when she meant loving--and he swung
her up on his shoulder and ran on with her. And they burst into the
open space before the cave just as the shadow-stick pointed straight to
the top of the circle thing.
There, before the door of the cave, was the flat rock, all set with
hot baked meat and toothsome piles of roast vegetables and beans that
were not burned. And the Prehistoric Woman, with vine-leaves in her
hair, was looking straight before her and smiling. And that was the
first dinner of the world that was ever served on time, and since that
day, to be late for dinner is one of the things which nobody may do;
and perhaps in memory of the Prehistoric Woman, when this occurs, the
politest ladies may always look straight before them _without smiling_.
“Is dinner ready, Sea Anemone?” asked the Man.
“On the bone,” replied his wife, pleasantly.
“What’s for ’sert?” asked Vertebrata.
“It’s a surprise,” said her mother--which is always the proper answer
to that question.
And while they sat there, the Days and Weeks and Months and Years
were coming toward them, faster than anything, to be marked off on the
circle thing before the door, _and to be used_. And they are coming
yet, like a message--but with no words.
III
ONE FOR THE MONEY
We were burying snow. Calista Waters had told us about it, when, late
in April, snow was found under a pile of wood in our yard. We wondered
why we had never thought of it before when snow was plentiful. We had
two long tins which had once contained ginger wafers. These were to be
packed with snow, fastened tight as to covers, and laid deep in the
earth at a distance which, by means of spoons and hot water, we were
now fast approaching.
It was Spring-in-earnest. The sun was warm, robins were running on the
grass, already faintly greened where the snow had but just melted;
a clear little stream flowed down the garden path and out under the
cross-walk. The Wells’s barn-doors stood open, somebody was beating
a carpet, there was a hint of bonfire smoke in the air, there were
little stirrings and sounds that belonged to Spring as the gasoline
wood-cutter belonged to Fall.
Calista was talking.
“And then,” she said, “some hot Summer day, when they’re all sitting
out on the lawn in the shade, with thin dresses and palm-leaf fans,
we’ll come and dig it up, and carry ’em big plates of feathery white
snow, with a spoon stuck in.”
We were silent, picturing their delight.
“Miss Messmore says,” I ventured, not without hesitation, “that snow is
all bugs.”
In fact all of us had been warned without ceasing not to eat snow--but
there were certain spots where it was beyond human power to resist
it: Mr. Britt’s fence, for instance, on whose pickets little squares
of snow rested, which, eaten off by direct application of the lips,
produced a slight illusion of partaking of caramels.
Delia stopped digging. “Maybe they won’t eat it when we bring it to
them in Summer?” she suggested.
“Then we will,” said Calista, promptly. Of course they would not have
the heart to forbid us to eat it in, say, June.
About a foot down in the ground we set the two tins side by side in an
aperture lined and packed with snow and filled in with earth. Over it
we made a mound of all the snow we could find in the garden. Then we
adjourned to the woodshed and sat on the sill and the sawbuck and the
work-bench.
“What makes us give it away?” said Delia Dart, abruptly. “Why don’t we
sell it? We’d ought to get fifteen cents a dish for it by June.”
We began a calculation, as rapid as might be. Each tin would hold at
least six dishes.
“Why didn’t we bury more?” said Calista, raptly. “Why didn’t we bury a
tubful?”
“It’d be an awful job to dig the hole,” I objected. “Besides, they’d
miss the tub.”
The latter objection was insurmountable, so we went off to the garden
to hunt pig-nuts. A tree of these delicacies grew in the midst of the
potato patch, and some of the nuts were sure to have lain winter-long
in the earth and to be seasoned and edible.
“Let’s all ask to go to the Rodmans’ this afternoon and tell Margaret
Amelia and Betty about the snow,” Calista suggested.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to go calling.”
They regarded me pityingly.
“Can’t you come over there afterwards?” they suggested.
This, I knew, was useless. We should not start calling till late.
Besides, I should be hopelessly dressed up.
“Well,” said Delia, soothingly, “_we’ll_ go anyhow. Are you going to
call where there’s children?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, darkly. “We never do.”
That afternoon was one whose warm air was almost thickened by sun. The
maple buds were just widening into little curly leaves; shadows were
beginning to show; and everywhere was that faint ripple of running
water in which Spring speaks. But then there was I, in my best dress,
my best coat, my best shoes, my new hat, and gloves, faring forth to
make calls.
This meant merely that there were houses where dwelt certain Grown-ups
who expected me to be brought periodically to see them, an expectation
persevered in, I believe, solely as a courtesy to my family. Twice a
year, therefore, we set out; and the days selected were, as this one,
invariably the crown and glory of all days: Days meet for cleaning
out the play-house, for occupying homes scraped with a shingle in the
softened soil, for assisting at bonfires, to say nothing of all that
was to be done in damming up the streams of the curbs and turning aside
the courses of rivers.
The first call was on Aunt Hoyt--no true aunt, of course, but “aunt”
by mutual compliment. She lived in a tiny house on Conant Street, set
close to the sidewalk and shaded by an enormous mulberry tree. I sought
out my usual seat, a little hardwood stool to whose top was neatly
tacked a square of Brussels carpeting and whose cover, on being lifted,
revealed a boot-jack, a shoe-brush, and a round box of blacking. The
legs were deeply notched, and I amused myself by fitting my feet in the
notches and occasionally coming inadvertently back to the floor with an
echoing bump.
Now and then Aunt Hoyt, who was little and wrinkled, and whose glasses
had double lenses in the middle so that I could not keep my eyes from
them when she spoke, would turn to address an observation at me.
“How long her hair is! Do you think it is quite healthy for her to have
such long hair? I’ll warrant you don’t like to have it combed, do you,
dear?”
If Aunt Hoyt had only known the depth of the boredom with which I had
this inane question put to me! It was one of the wonders of my days:
the utterly absurd questions that grown-up people could ask.
For example: “How do you do to-day?” What had any reasonable child
to answer to that? Of course one was well. If one wasn’t, one would
be kept at home. If one wasn’t, one wasn’t going to tell anyway. Or,
“What’s she been doing lately?” Well! Was one likely to reply: “Burying
snow. Hunting pig-nuts. Digging up pebbles from under the eaves. Making
a secret play-house in the currant bushes that nobody knows about?” And
unless one did thus tell one’s inmost secrets, what was there left to
say? And if one kept a dignified silence, one was sulky!
“She’s a good little girl, I’m sure. Is she much help to you?” Aunt
Hoyt asked that day, and patted my hair as we took leave. Dear Aunt
Hoyt, I know now that she was lonesome and longed for children and,
like many another, had no idea how to treat them, save by making little
conversational dabs at them.
Then there was Aunt Arthur, who lived in a square brick house that
always smelled cool. At her house I invariably sat on a Brussels
“kick-about” in the bay window and looked at a big leather “Wonders
of Earth and Sea,” with illustrations. Sometimes she let me examine a
basket of shells that she herself had gathered at the beach--I used
to look at her hands and at her big, flat cameo ring and marvel that
they had been so near to the ocean. Once or twice, when I wriggled too
outrageously, she would let me go into the large, dim parlour, with
its ostrich egg hanging from the chandelier and the stuffed blackbird
under an oval glass case before the high mirror, and the coral piled
under the centre-table and the huge, gilt-framed landscape which she
herself had painted. But this day, between the lace curtains hanging
from their cornices, I caught sight of Calista and Delia racing up the
hill to the Rodmans, and the entire parlour was, so to say, poisoned.
In desperation I went back and asked for a drink of water--my ancient
recourse when things got too bad.
Aunt Barker’s was better--there was a baby there. But that day ill-luck
went before me, for he was asleep and they refused to let me look at
him, because they said that woke him up. I disbelieved this, because I
saw no reason in it, and nobody gave me a reason. I resolved to try it
out the first time I was alone with a sleeping baby. I begged boldly to
go outdoors, and Mother would have consented, but Aunt Barker said that
a man was painting the lattice and that I would in every probability
lean against the lattice, or brush the paint pots, or try to get a
drink at the pump, which, I gathered, splashed everybody for miles
around. So I sat in a patent rocker, and the only rift in a world of
black cloud was that, by rocking far enough, the patent rocker could be
made to give forth a wholly delectable squeak. Of course fate swiftly
descended; I was bidden discontinue the squeak, and nothing remained to
me.
Then we went to Grandma Bard’s. I did not in the least know why, but
the little rag-carpeted sitting-room, the singing kettle on the back of
the coal stove, the scarlet geraniums on the window, the fascinating
picture on the clock door, all entertained me at once. Grandma Bard
wore a black lace cap, and she bade me sit by her and instantly gave
me a peppermint drop from the pocket of her black sateen apron. She
asked me no questions, but while she talked with Mother, she laid
together two rose-coloured--rose-coloured!--bits of her patchwork and
quietly handed them to me to baste--none of your close stitches, only
basting! Then she folded a newspaper and asked me to cut it and scallop
it for her cupboard shelf. Then she found a handful of hickory nuts and
brought me the tack-hammer and a flat-iron....
“Oh, Mother, let’s _not_ go yet,” I heard myself saying.
Going home--a delicate business, because stepping on any crack meant
being poisoned forthwith--I tried to think it out: What was it that
Mother and Grandma Bard knew that the rest didn’t know? I gave it up.
All I could think of was that they seemed to know me.
“Isn’t Grandma Bard just grand?” I observed fervently.
“I’m afraid,” Mother said thoughtfully, “that sometimes she has rather
a hard time to get on.”
I was still turning this in my mind as we passed the wood yard. The
wood yard was a series of vacant lots where some mysterious person
piled cords and cords of wood, which smelled sweet and green and gave
out cool breaths. Sometimes the gasoline wood-cutter worked in there,
and we would watch till it had gone, and then steal in and bring away a
baking-powder can full of sawdust. We never knew quite what to do with
this sawdust. It was not desirable for mud-pies, and there was nothing
that we knew of to be stuffed with it. Yet when we could, we always
saved it. Perhaps it gave us an excuse to go into the wood yard, at
which we always peeped as we went by. This day, I lagged a few steps
behind and looked in, expectant of the same vague thing that we always
expected, and never defined--a bonfire, a robber, an open cave, some
changed aspect, I did not know what. And over by the sawdust pile, I
saw, stepping about, a little girl in a reddish dress--a little girl
whom I had never seen before. She looked up and saw me stand staring at
her; and her gaze was so clear and direct that I felt obliged to say
something in defence of my intrusion.
“Hello,” I said.
Her face suddenly brightened. “Hello,” she replied, and after a moment
she added: “I thought you was going to say ‘how de do.’”