coats, the odour of stale tobacco must have disturbed us, because
gradually we edged a little away, and stood on the edge of the crowd,
against an iron rail outside a billiard room. The band ceased, and went
up into the hall. We had a distinct impulse to do the next thing. What
was there to do next? What was it that the boys did when they went
down town evenings? What else did they do while we were tidying our
play-houses for the night? For here we were, longing for play, if only
we could think what to do.
I felt a hand beneath my chin, lifting my face. There, in the press,
stood my Father. Over his arm he carried my black jacket with the
Bedford cord.
“Mother thought you might be cold,” he said.
I put on the jacket, and he took Mary Elizabeth and me by the hand, and
we walked slowly back down Wisconsin Street.
“We will see Mary Elizabeth safely home first,” my Father said, and we
accompanied her to the New Family’s door.
Once in our house, it was I who proposed going to bed, and the
suggestion met with no opposition. Upstairs, I slipped the screen
from my window and leaned out in the dusk. The night, warm, fragrant,
significant, was inviting me to belong to it, was asking me, even as
bright day had asked me, what it had in common with the stuffiness and
dulness of forever watching others do things. Something hard touched my
hand. It was my birthday dollar. It had not occurred to me to spend it.
I saw my Father stroll back down the street, lighting a cigar. Below
stairs I could hear my Mother helping to put away the supper dishes.
A dozen boys raced through the alley, just on their way down town.
So long as they came home at a stated hour at night, and turned up
at table with their hands clean, who asked them where they had been?
“Where have you been?” they said to me, the moment I entered the
house--and to Delia and Calista and Margaret Amelia and Betty. We had
often talked about it. And none of us had even ridden on a load of hay.
We had a vague expectation that it would be different when we grew up.
A sickening thought came to me: _Would it be different, or was this to
be forever?_
I ran blindly down the stairs where my Mother was helping to put away
the supper dishes--in the magic of the night, helping to put away the
supper dishes.
“Mother!” I cried, “Mother! Who made it so much harder to be a girl?”
She turned and looked at me, her face startled, and touched me--I
remember how gently she touched me.
“Before you die,” she said, “it will be easier.”
I thought then that she meant that I would grow used to it. Now I know
that she meant what I meant when I woke that night, and remembered my
dolls lying out in the grass and the dew, and was not sorry, but glad:
Glad that the time was almost come--for real playthings.
XII
BIT-BIT
At the Rodmans’, who lived in a huge house on a hill, some of
the rooms had inscriptions in them--or what I should have called
mottoes--cunningly lettered and set about. Some of these were in
Margaret Amelia’s and Betty’s room, above the mirror, the bed, the
window; and there was one downstairs on a panel above the telephone.
The girls said that they had an aunt who had written them “on purpose,”
an aunt who had had stories in print. In my heart I doubted the part
about the printed stories, and so did Mary Elizabeth, but we loved
Margaret Amelia and Betty too well to let this stand between us. Also,
we were caught by the inscriptions. They were these:
FOR A CRADLE[A]
I cannot tell you who I am
Nor what I’m going to be.
You who are wise and know your ways
Tell me.
[A] Copyright, 1908, by Harper & Brothers.
FOR THE MIRROR
Look in the deep of me. What are we going to do?
If I am I, as I am, who in the world are you?
FOR AN IVORY COMB
Use me and think of spirit, and spirit yet to be.
This is the jest: Could soul touch soul if it were not for me?
FOR THE DOLL’S HOUSE
Girl-doll would be a little lamp
And shine like something new.
Boy-doll would be a telephone
And have the world speak through.
The Poet-doll would like to be
A tocsin with a tongue
To other little dolls like bells
Most sensitively rung.
The Baby-doll would be a flower,
The Dinah-doll a star,
And all--how ignominious!
Are only what they are.
WHERE THE BOUGHS TOUCH THE WINDOW
We lap on the indoor shore--the waves of the leaf mere,
We try to tell you as well as we can: We wonder what you hear?
FOR ANOTHER WINDOW
I see the stones, I see the stars,
I know not what they be.
They always say things to themselves
And now and then to me.
But when I try to look between
Big stones and little stars,
I almost know ... but what I know
Flies through the window-bars.
And downstairs, on the Telephone:
I, the absurdity,
Proving what cannot be.
Come, when you talk with me
Does it become you well
To doubt a miracle?
We did not understand all of them, but we liked them. And I am sure now
that the inscriptions were partly responsible for the fact that in a
little time, with Mary Elizabeth and me to give them encouragement,
everything, indoors and out, had something to say to us. These things
we did not confide to the others, not even to Margaret Amelia and
Betty who, when we stood still to spell out the inscriptions, waited
a respectful length of time and then plucked at our aprons and said:
“Come on till we show you something,” which was usually merely a crass
excuse to get us away.
So Mary Elizabeth and I discovered, by comparing notes, that at night
our Clothes on the chair by the bed would say: “We are so tired. Don’t
look at us--we feel so limp.”
And the Night would say: “What a long time the Day had you, and how he
made you work. Now rest and forget and stop being you, till morning.”
Sleep would say: “Here I come. Let me in your brain and I will pull
your eyes shut, like little blinds.”
And in the morning the Stairs would say: “Come! We are all here,
stooping, ready for you to step down on our shoulders.”
Breakfast would say: “Now I’m going to be you--now I’m going to be you!
And I have to be cross or nice, just as you are.”
Every fire that warmed us, every tree that shaded us, every path that
we took, all these “answered back” and were familiars. Everything spoke
to us, save only one. And this one thing was Work. Our playthings in
the cupboard would talk to us all day long _until_ the moment that we
were told to put them in order, and then instantly they all fell into
silence. Pulling weeds in the four o’clock bed, straightening books,
tidying the outdoor play-house--it was always the same. Whatever we
worked at kept silent.
It was on a June morning, when the outdoors was so busy and beautiful
that it was like a golden bee buried in a golden rose, that I finally
refused outright to pick up a brown sunhat and some other things in
the middle of the floor. Everything outdoors and in was smiling and
calling, and to do a task was like going to bed, so far as the joy of
the day was concerned. This I could not explain, but I said that I
would not do the task, and this was high treason.
Sitting in a straight-backed chair all alone for half an hour
thereafter--the usual capital punishment--was like cutting off the head
of the beautiful Hour that I had meant to have. And I tried to think
it out. Why, in an otherwise wonderful world, did Work have to come and
spoil everything?
I do not recall that I came to any conclusion. How could I, at a time
that was still teaching the Hebraic doctrine that work is a curse,
instead of the new gospel--always dimly divined by children before our
teaching has corrupted them,--that being busy is being alive, and that
all work may be play if only we are shown how to pick out the kind that
is play to us, and that doing nothing is a kind of death.
And while I sat there alone on that straight-backed chair, I wish that
I, as I am now, might have called in Mary Elizabeth, whom I could see
drearily polishing the New Family’s lamp-chimneys, and that I might
have told the story of Bit-bit.
* * * * *
Bit-bit, the smallest thing in the world, sat on the slipperiest edge
of the highest mountain in the farthest land, weaving a little garment
of sweet-grass. Then out of the valley a great Deev arose and leaned
his elbows on the highest mountain and said what he thought--which is
always a dangerous business.
[Illustration: “THEN OUT OF THE VALLEY A GREAT DEEV AROSE.”]
“Bit-bit,” said the Deev, “how dare you make up my sweet-grass so
disgustin’ extravagant?”
(It is almost impossible for a Deev to say his _ing’s_.)
“Deevy dear,” said Bit-bit, without looking up from his work, “I have
to make a garment to help clothe the world. Don’t wrinkle up my plan.
And _don’t_ put your elbows on the table.”
“About my elbows,” said the Deev, “you are perfectly right, though
Deevs always do that with their elbows. But as to that garment,” he
added, “I’d like to know why you have to help clothe the world?”
“Deevy dear,” said Bit-bit, still not looking up from his work, “I have
to do so, because it’s this kind of a world. _Please_ don’t wrinkle up
things.”
“I,” said the Deev, plainly, “will now show you what kind of a world
this really is. And I rather think I’ll destroy you with a great
destruction.”
Then the Deev took the highest mountain and he tied its streams and
cataracts together to make a harness, and he named the mountain new,
and he drove it all up and down the earth. And he cried behind it:
“Ho, Rhumbthumberland, steed of the clouds, trample the world into
trifles and plough it up for play. Bit-bit is being taught his lesson.”
From dawn he did this until the sky forgot pink and remembered only
blue and until the sun grew so hot that it took even the sky’s
attention, and the Deev himself was ready to drop. And then he pulled
on the reins and Rhumbthumberland, steed of the clouds, stopped
trampling and let the Deev lean his elbows on his back. And there,
right between the Deev’s elbows, sat Bit-bit, weaving his garment of
sweet-grass.
“Thunders of spring,” cried the Deev, “aren’t you destroyed with a
great destruction?”
But Bit-bit never looked up, he was so busy.
“Has anything happened?” he asked politely, however, not wishing to
seem indifferent to the Deev’s agitation--though secretly, in his
little head, he hated having people plunge at him with their eyebrows
up and expect him to act surprised too. When they did that, it always
made him savage-calm.
“The world is trampled into trifles and ploughed up for play,” said
the exasperated Deev, “_that’s_ what’s happened. How dare you pay no
attention?”
“Deevy dear,” said Bit-bit, still not looking up from his task, “I
have to work, whether it’s this kind of a world or not. I _wish_ you
wouldn’t wrinkle up things.”
Then the Deev’s will ran round and round in his own head like a fly
trying to escape from a dark hole--that is the way of the will of all
Deevs--and pretty soon his will got out and went buzzle-buzzle-buzzle,
which is no proper sound for anybody’s will to make. And when it did
that, the Deev went off and got a river, and he climbed up on top of
Rhumbthumberland and he swung the river about his head like a ribbon
and then let it fall from the heights like a lady’s scarf, and then he
held down one end with his great boot and the other end he emptied into
the horizon. From the time of the heat of the sun he did this until
the shadows were set free from the west and lengthened over the land,
shaking their long hair, and then he lifted his foot and let the river
slip and it trailed off into the horizon and flowed each way.
“_Now_ then!” said the Deev, disgustingly pompous.
But when he looked down, there, sitting on his own great foot, high and
dry and pleasant, was Bit-bit, weaving his garment of sweet-grass and
saying:
“Deevy dear, a river washed me up here and I was so busy I didn’t have
time to get down.”
The Deev stood still, thinking, and his thoughts flew in and out like
birds, but always they seemed to fly against window-panes in the air,
through which there was no passing. And the Deev said, in his head:
“Is there nothing in this created cosmos that will stop this little
scrap from working to clothe the world? Or must I play Deev in earnest?”
And that was what he finally decided to do. So he said things to his
arms, and his arms hardened into stuff like steel, and spread out like
mighty wings. And with these the Deev began to beat the air. And he
beat it and beat it until it frothed. It frothed like white-of-egg and
like cream and like the mid-waters of torrents, frothed a mighty froth,
such as I supposed could never be. And when the froth was stiff enough
to stand alone, the Deev took his steel-wing arm for a ladle, and he
began to spread the froth upon the earth. And he spread and spread
until the whole earth was like an enormous chocolate cake, thick with
white frosting--one layer, two layers, three layers, disgustingly
extravagant, so that the little Deevs, if there had been any, would
never have got the dish scraped. Only there wasn’t any dish, so they
needn’t have minded.
And when he had it all spread on, the Deev stood up and dropped his
steel arms down--and even they were tired at the elbow, like any true,
egg-beating arm--and he looked down at the great cake he had made.
And there, on the top of the frosting, which was already beginning to
harden, was sitting Bit-bit, weaving his garment of sweet-grass and
talking about the weather:
“I think there is going to be a storm,” said Bit-bit, “the air around
here has been so disgustingly hard to breathe.”
Then, very absently, the Deev let the steel out of his arms and made
them get over being wings, and, in a place so deep in his own head that
nothing had ever been thought there before, he _thought_:
“There is more to this than I ever knew there is to anything.”
So he leaned over, all knee-deep in the frosting as he was, and he said:
“Bit-bit, say a great truth and a real answer: What is the reason that
my little ways don’t bother you? Or kill you? Or keep you from making
your garment of sweet-grass?”
“Why,” said Bit-bit, in surprise, but never looking up from his work,
“Deevy dear, that’s easy. I’m much, much, _much_ too busy.”
“Scrap of a thing,” said the Deev, “too busy to mind cataracts and an
earth trampled to trifles and then frosted with all the air there is?”
“Too busy,” assented Bit-bit, snapping off his thread. “And now I _do_
hope you are not going to wrinkle up things any more.”
“No,” said the Deev, with decision, “I ain’t.” (Deevs are always
ungrammatical when you take them by surprise.) And he added very
shrewdly, for he was a keen Deev and if he saw that he could learn,
he was willing to learn, which is three parts of all wisdom: “Little
scrap, teach me to do a witchcraft. Teach me to work.”
At that Bit-bit laid down his task in a minute.
“What do you want to make?” he asked.
The Deev thought for a moment.
“I want to make a palace and a garden and a moat for _me_,” said he.
“I’m tired campin’ around in the air.”
“If that’s all,” said Bit-bit, “I’m afraid I can’t help you. I thought
you wanted to work. Out of all the work there is in the world I should
think of another one if I were you, Deevy.”
“Well, then, I want to make a golden court dress for _me_, all
embroidered and flowered and buttoned and gored and spliced,” said the
Deev, or whatever these things are called in the clothing of Deevs;
“I want to make one. I’m tired goin’ around in rompers.” (It wasn’t
rompers, really, but it was what Deevs wear instead, and you wouldn’t
know the name, even if I told you.)
“Excuse me,” said Bit-bit, frankly, “I won’t waste time like that.
Don’t you want to _work_?”
“Yes,” said the Deev, “I do. Maybe I don’t know what work is.”
“Maybe you don’t,” agreed Bit-bit. “But I can fix that. I’m going for a
walk now, and there’s just room for you. Come along.”
So they started off, and it was good walking, for by now the sun had
dried up all the frosting; and the Deev trotted at Bit-bit’s heels,
and they made a very funny pair. So funny that Almost Everything
watched them go by, and couldn’t leave off watching them go by, and so
followed them all the way. Which was what Bit-bit had _thought_ would
happen. And when he got to a good place, Bit-bit stood still and told
the Deev to turn round. And there they were, staring face to face with
Almost Everything: Deserts and towns and men and women and children and
laws and governments and railroads and factories and forests and food
and drink.
“There’s your work,” said Bit-bit, carelessly.
“Where?” asked the Deev, just like other folks.
“_Where?_” repeated Bit-bit, nearly peevish. “Look at this desert
that’s come along behind us. Why don’t you swing a river over your
head--you _could_ do that, couldn’t you, Deevy?--and make things grow
on that desert, and let people live on it, and turn ’em into folks? Why
don’t you?”
“It ain’t amusin’ enough,” said the Deev.
(Deevs are often ungrammatical when they don’t take pains; and this
Deev wasn’t taking _any_ pains.)
“Well,” said Bit-bit, “then look at this town that has come along
behind us, full of dirt and disease and laziness and worse. Why
don’t you harness up a mountain--you _could_ do that, couldn’t you,
Deevy?--and plough up the earth and trample it down and let people live
as they were meant to live, and turn them into folks? Why don’t you?”
“It couldn’t be done that way,” said the Deev, very much excited and
disgustingly certain.
“Well,” said Bit-bit, “then look at the men and women and children that
have come along behind us. What about them--what about _them_? Why
don’t you make your arms steel and act as if you had wings, and beat
the world into a better place for them to live, instead of making a
cake of it. You could do it, Deevy--_anybody_ could do that.”
“Yes,” said the Deev, “I could do that. But it don’t appeal to me.”
(Deevs are always ungrammatical when they are being emphatic, and now
the Deev was being very emphatic. He was a keen Deev, but he would only
learn what he wanted to learn.)
“Deevy _dear_,” cried Bit-bit, in distress because the Deev was such a
disgusting creature, “then at least do get some sweet-grass and make a
little garment to help clothe the world?”
“What’s the use?” said the Deev. “Let it go naked. It’s always been
that way.”
So, since the Deev would not learn the work witchcraft, Bit-bit,
very sorrowful, stood up and said a great truth and made a real
answer--which is always a dangerous business.
“You will, you will, you will do these things,” he cried, “because it’s
that kind of a world.”
And then the Deev, who had all along been getting more and more
annoyed, pieced together his will and his ideas and his annoyance, and
they all went buzzle-buzzle-buzzle together till they made an act. And
the act was that he stepped sidewise into space, and he picked up the
earth and put it between his knees, and he cracked it hard enough so
that it should have fallen into uncountable bits.
“It’s my nut,” said the Deev, “and now I’m going to eat it up.”
But lo, from the old shell there came out a fair new kernel of a world,
so lustrous and lovely that the Deev was blinded and hid his eyes.
Only first he had seen how the deserts were flowing with rivers and
the towns were grown fair under willing hands for men and women and
children to live there. And there, with Almost Everything, sat Bit-bit
in his place, weaving a little garment of sweet-grass to clothe some
mite of the world.
“Now this time try not to wrinkle things all up, Deev,” said Bit-bit.
“I must say, you’ve been doing things disgustingly inhuman.”
So after that the Deev was left camping about in the air, trying to
make for himself new witchcrafts. And there he is to this day, being
a disgusting creature generally, and _only_ those who are as busy as
Bit-bit are safe from him.
XIII
WHY
There was a day when Mary Elizabeth and Delia and Calista and Betty
and I sat under the Eating Apple tree and had no spirit to enter upon
anything. Margaret Amelia was not with us, and her absence left us
relaxed and without initiative; for it was not as if she had gone to
the City, or to have her dress tried on, or her hair washed, or as if
she were absorbed in any real occupation. Her absence was due to none
of these things. Margaret Amelia was in disgrace. She was, in fact,
confined in her room with every expectation of remaining there until
supper time.
“What’d she do?” we had breathlessly inquired of Betty when she had
appeared alone with her tidings.
“Well,” replied Betty, “it’s her paper dolls and her button-house. She
always leaves ’em around. She set up her button-house all over the rug
in the parlour--you know, the rug that its patterns make rooms? An’
she had her paper dolls living in it. That was this morning--and we
forgot ’em. And after dinner, while we’re outdoors, the minister came.
And he walked into the buttons and onto the glass dangler off the lamp
that we used for a folding-doors. And he slid a long ways on it. And he
scrushed it,” Betty concluded resentfully. “And now she’s in her room.”
We pondered it. There was justice there, we saw that. But shut Margaret
Amelia in a room! It was as ignominious as caging a captain.
“Did she cry?” we indelicately demanded.
“Awful,” said Betty. “She wouldn’t of cared if it had only been
raining,” she added.
We looked hard at the sky. We should have been willing to have it rain
to make lighter Margaret Amelia’s durance, and sympathy could go no
further. But there was not a cloud.
It was Mary Elizabeth who questioned the whole matter.
“How,” said she, “does it do any good to shut her up in her room?”
We had never thought of this. We stared wonderingly at Mary Elizabeth.
Being shut in your room was a part of the state of not being grown up.
When you grew up, you shut others in their rooms or let them out, as
you ruled the occasion to require. There was Grandmother Beers, for
instance, coming out the door with scissors in her hands and going
toward her sweet-pea bed. Once she must have shut Mother in her room.
Mother!
Delia was incurably a defender of things as they are. Whenever I am
tempted to feel that guardians of an out-worn order must know better
than they seem to know, I remember Delia. Delia was born reactionary,
even as she was born brunette.
“Why,” said she with finality, “that’s the way they punish you.”
Taken as a fact and not as a philosophy, there was no question about
this.
“I was shut in one for pinching Frankie Ames,” I acknowledged.
“I was in one for getting iron-rust on my skirt,” said Calista, “and
for being awful cross when my bath was, and for putting sugar on the
stove to get the nice smell.”
“I was in one for telling a lie,” Betty admitted reluctantly. “And
Margaret Amelia was in one for wading in the creek. She was in a
downstairs one. And I took a chair round outside to help her out--but
she wouldn’t do it.”
“Pooh! I was in one lots of times,” Delia capped it. And, as usual,
we looked at her with respect as having experiences far transcending
our own. “I’ll be in one again if I don’t go home and take care of my
canary,” she added. “Mamma said I would.”
“Putting sugar on the stove isn’t as wicked as telling a lie, is it?”
Mary Elizabeth inquired.
We weighed it. On the whole, we were inclined to think that it was not
so wicked, “though,” Delia put in, “you do notice the sugar more.”
“Why do they shut you in the same way for the different wickeds?” Mary
Elizabeth demanded.
None of us knew, but it was Delia who had the theory.
“Well,” she said, “you’ve _got_ to know you’re wicked. It don’t make
any difference how wicked. Because you stop anyhow.”
“No, you don’t,” Betty said decidedly, “you’re always getting a new
thing to be shut in about. Before you mean to,” she added perplexedly.
Mary Elizabeth looked away at Grandmother Beers, snipping sweet-peas.
Abruptly, Mary Elizabeth threw herself on the grass and stared up
through the branches of the Eating Apple tree, and then laid her arms
straight along her sides, and began luxuriously to roll down a little
slope. The inquiry was too complex to continue.
“Let’s go see if the horse-tail hair is a snake yet,” she proposed,
sitting up at the foot of the slope.
“I’ll have to do my canary,” said Delia, but she sprang up with the
rest of us, and we went round to the rain-water barrel.