your face most satisfyingly, save that the eaves-spout got in the way.
Also, you always inadvertently joggled the side with your knee, which
set the water wavering and wrinkled away the image. At the bottom of
this barrel invisibly rested sundry little “doll” pie-tins of clay,
a bottle, a broken window-catch, a stray key, and the bowl of a
soap-bubble pipe, cast in at odd intervals, for no reason. There were a
penny doll and a marble down there too, thrown in for sheer bravado and
bitterly regretted.
Into this dark water there had now been dropped, two days ago, a long
black hair from the tail of Mr. Branchett’s horse, Fanny. We had been
credibly informed that if you did this to a hair from a horse’s tail
and left it untouched for twenty-four hours or, to be _perfectly_ safe,
for forty-eight hours, the result would inevitably be a black snake.
We had gone to the Branchetts’ barn for the raw material and, finding
none available on the floor, we were about to risk jerking it from the
source when Delia had perceived what we needed caught in a crack of the
stall. We had abstracted the hair, and duly immersed it. Why we wished
to create a black snake, or what we purposed doing with him when we
got him created, I cannot now recall. I believe the intention to have
been primarily to see whether or not they had told us the truth--“they”
standing for the universe at large. For my part, I was still smarting
from having been detected sitting in patience with a handful of salt,
by the mouse-hole in the shed, in pursuance of another recipe which I
had picked up and trusted. Now if this new test failed....
We got an old axe-handle from the barn wherewith to probe the water.
If, however, the black snake were indeed down there, our weapon,
offensive and defensive, would hardly be long enough; so we substituted
the clothes-prop. Then we drew cuts to see who should wield it, and
the lot fell to Betty. Gentle little Betty turned quite pale with the
responsibility, but she resolutely seized the clothes-prop, and Delia
stood behind her with the axe-handle.
“Now if he comes out,” said Betty, “run for your lives. He might be a
blue racer.”
None of us knew what a blue racer might be, but we had always heard of
it as the fastest of all the creatures. A black snake, it seemed, might
easily be a blue racer. As Betty raised the clothes-prop, I, who had
instigated the experiment, weakened.
“Maybe he won’t be ready yet,” I conceded.
“If he isn’t there, I’ll never believe anything anybody tells me
again--ever,” said Delia firmly.
The clothes-prop Betty plunged to the bottom, and lifted. No struggling
black shape writhed about it. She repeated the movement, and this time
we all cried out, for she brought up the dark discoloured rag of a
sash of the penny doll, the penny doll clinging to it and immediately
dropping sullenly back again. Grown brave, Betty stirred the water, and
Delia, advancing, did the same with her axe-handle. Again and again
these were lifted, revealing nothing. At last we faced it: No snake was
there.
“So that’s a lie, too,” said Delia, brutally.
We stared at one another. I, as the one chiefly disappointed, looked
away. I looked down the street: Mr. Branchett was hoeing in his garden.
Delivery wagons were rattling by. The butter-man came whistling round
the house. Everybody seemed so busy and so _sure_. They looked as if
they knew why everything was. And to us, truth and justice and reason
and the results to be expected in this grown-up world were all a
confusion and a thorn.
As we went round the house, talking of what had happened, our eyes were
caught by a picture which should have been, and was not, of quite
casual and domestic import. On the side-porch of Delia’s house appeared
her mother, hanging out Delia’s canary.
“Good-bye,” said Delia, briefly, and fared from us, running.
We lingered for a little in the front yard. In five minutes the
curtains in Delia’s room stirred, and we saw her face appear, and
vanish. She had not waved to us--there was no need. It had overtaken
her. She, too, was “in her room.”
Delicacy dictated that we withdraw from sight, and we returned to the
back yard. As we went, Mary Elizabeth was asking:
“Is telling a lie and not feeding your canary as wicked as each other?”
It seemed incredible, and we said so.
“Well, you get shut up just as hard for both of ’em,” Mary Elizabeth
reminded us.
“Then I don’t believe any of ’em’s wicked,” said I, flatly. On which we
came back to the garden and met Grandmother Beers, with a great bunch
of sweet-peas in her hand, coming to the house.
“Wicked?” she said, in her way of soft surprise. “I didn’t know you
knew such a word.”
“It’s a word you learn at Sunday school,” I explained importantly.
“Come over here and tell me about it,” she invited, and led the way
toward the Eating Apple tree. And she sat down in the swing! Of course
whatever difference of condition exists between your grandmother and
yourself vanishes when she sits down casually in your swing.
My Grandmother Beers was a little woman, whose years, in England, in
“New York state,” and in her adopted Middle West, had brought her
only peace within, though much had beset her from without. She loved
Four-o’clocks, and royal purple. When she said “royal purple,” it was
as if the words were queens. She was among the few who sympathized
with my longing to own a blue or red or green jar from a drug store
window. We had first understood each other in a matter of window-sill
food: This would be a crust, or a bit of baked apple, or a cracker
which I used to lay behind the dining-room window-shutter--the
closed one. For in the house at evening it was warm and light and
Just-had-your-supper, while outside it was dark and damp and big, and I
conceived that it must be lonely and hungry. The Dark was like a great
helpless something, filling the air and not wanting particularly to
be there. Surely It would much rather be light, with voices and three
meals, than the Dark, with nobody and no food. So I used to set out a
little offering, and once my Grandmother Beers had caught me paying
tribute.
“Once something _did_ come and get it,” I defended myself over my
shoulder, and before she could say a word.
“Likely enough, likely enough, child,” she assented, and did not chide
me.
Neither did she chide me when once she surprised me into mentioning the
Little Things, who had the use of my playthings when I was not there.
It was one dusk when she had come upon me setting my toy cupboard to
rights, and had commended me. And I had explained that it was so the
Little Things could find the toys when they came, that night and every
night, to play with them. I remember that all she did was to squeeze my
hand; but I felt that I was wholly understood.
What child of us--of Us Who Were--will ever forget the joy of having
an older one enter into our games? I used to sit in church and tell
off the grown folk by this possibility in them--“She’d play with
you--she wouldn’t--she would--he would--they wouldn’t”--an ancient
declension of the human race, perfectly recognized by children, but
never given its proper due.... I shall never forget the out-door romps
with my Father, when he stooped, with his hands on his knees, and then
ran _at_ me; or when he held me while I walked the picket fence; or
set me in the Eating Apple tree; nor can I forget the delight of the
play-house that he built for me, _with a shelf around_.... And always I
shall remember, too, how my Mother would play “Lost.” We used to curl
on the sofa, taking with us some small store of fruit and cookies,
wrap up in blankets and shawls, put up an umbrella--possibly two of
them--and there we were, lost in the deep woods. We had been crossing
the forest--night had overtaken us--we had climbed in a thick-leaved
tree--it was raining--the woods were infested by bears and wolves--we
had a little food, possibly enough to stave off starvation till
daylight. Then came by the beasts of the forest, wonderful, human
beasts, who passed at the foot of our tree, and with whom we talked
long and friendly--and differently for each one--and ended by sharing
with them our food. We scraped acquaintance with birds in neighbouring
nests, the stars were only across a street of sky, the Dark did its
part by hiding us. Sometimes, yet, when I see a fat, idle sofa in, say,
an hotel corridor, I cannot help thinking as I pass: “What a wonderful
place to play Lost.” I daresay that some day I shall put up my umbrella
and sit down and play it.
Well--Grandmother Beers was one who knew how to play with us, and I was
always half expecting her to propose a new game. But that day, as she
sat in the swing, her eyes were not twinkling at the corners.
“What does it mean?” she asked us. “What does ‘wicked’ mean?”
“It’s what you aren’t to be,” I took the brunt of the reply, because I
was the relative of the questioner.
“Why not?” asked Grandmother.
Why not? Oh, we all knew that. We responded instantly, and out came
the results of the training of all the families.
“Because your mother and father say you can’t,” said Betty Rodman.
“Because it makes your mother feel bad,” said Calista.
“Because God don’t want us to,” said I.
“Delia says,” Betty added, “it’s because, if you are, when you grow up
people won’t think anything of you.”
Grandmother Beers held her sweet-peas to her face.
“If,” she said after a moment, “you wanted to do something wicked more
than you ever wanted to do anything in the world--as much as you’d want
a drink to-morrow if you hadn’t had one to-day--and if nobody ever
knew--would any of those reasons keep you from doing it?”
We consulted one another’s look, and shifted. We knew how thirsty that
would be. Already we were thirsty, in thinking about it.
“If I were in your places,” Grandmother said, “I’m not sure those
reasons would keep me. I rather think they wouldn’t,--always.”
We stared at her. It was true that they didn’t always keep us. Were
not two of us “in our rooms” even now?
Grandmother leaned forward--I know how the shadows of the apple leaves
fell on her black lace cap and how the pink sweet-peas were reflected
in her delicate face.
“Suppose,” she said, “that instead of any of those reasons, somebody
gave you this reason: That the earth is a great flower--a flower that
has never _really_ blossomed yet. And that when it blossoms, life is
going to be more beautiful than we have ever dreamed, or than fairy
stories have ever pretended. And suppose our doing one way, and not
another, makes the flower come a little nearer to blossoming. But our
doing the other way puts back the time when it can blossom. _Then_
which would you want to do?”
Oh, make it grow, make it grow, we all cried--and I felt a secret
relief: Grandmother was playing a game with us, after all.
“And suppose that everything made a difference to it,” she went on,
“every little thing--from telling a lie, on down to going to get a
drink for somebody and drinking first yourself out in the kitchen.
Suppose that everything made a difference, from hurting somebody on
purpose, down to making up the bed and pulling the bed-spread tight so
that the wrinkles in the blanket won’t show....”
At this we looked at one another in some consternation. How did
Grandmother know....
“Until after a while,” she said, “you should find out that
everything--loving, going to school, playing, working, bathing,
sleeping, were all just to make this flower grow. Wouldn’t it be fun to
help?”
Yes. Oh, yes, we were all agreed about that. It would be great fun to
help.
“Well, then suppose,” said Grandmother, “that as you helped, you found
out something else: That in each of you, say, where your heart is, or
where your breath is, there was a flower trying to blossom too! And
that only as you helped the earth flower to blossom could your flower
blossom. And that your doing one way would make your flower droop its
head and grow dark and shrivel up. But your doing the other way would
make it grow, and turn beautiful colours--so that bye and bye every one
of your bodies would be just a sheath for this flower. Which way _then_
would you rather do?”
Oh, make it grow, make it grow, we said again.
And Mary Elizabeth added longingly:--
“Wouldn’t it be fun if it was true?”
“It is true,” said Grandmother Beers.
She sat there, softly smiling over her pink sweet-peas. We looked at
her silently. Then I remembered that her face had always seemed to me
to be somehow _light within_. Maybe it was her flower showing through!
“Grandmother!” I cried, “is it true--is it true?”
“It is true,” she repeated. “And whether the earth flower and other
people’s flowers and your flower are to bloom or not is what living is
about. And everything makes a difference. Isn’t that a good reason for
not being ‘wicked’?”
We all looked up in her face, something in us leaping and answering to
what she said. And I know that we understood.
“Oh,” Mary Elizabeth whispered presently to Betty, “hurry home and tell
Margaret Amelia. It’ll make it so much easier when she comes out to her
supper.”
* * * * *
That night, on the porch alone with Mother and Father, I inquired into
something that still was not clear.
“But how can you _tell_ which things are wicked? And which ones are
wrong and which things are right?”
Father put out his hand and touched my hand. He was looking at me with
a look that I knew--and his smile for me is like no other smile that I
have ever known.
“Something will tell you,” he said, “always.”
“Always?” I doubted.
“Always,” he said. “There will be other voices. But if you listen,
something will tell you always. And it is all you need.”
I looked at Mother. And by her nod and her quiet look I perceived that
all this had been known about for a long time.
“That is why Grandma Bard is coming to live with us,” she said, “not
just because we wanted her, but because--_that_ said so.”
In us all a flower--and something saying something! And the earth
flower trying to blossom.... I looked down the street: At Mr. Branchett
walking in his garden, at the lights shining from windows, at the
folk sauntering on the sidewalk, and toward town where the band
was playing. We all knew about this together then. _This_ was why
everything was! And there were years and years to make it come true.
What if I, alone among them all, had never found out?
XIV
KING
There was a certain white sugar bear and a red candy strawberry which
we had been charged not to eat, because the strawberry was a nameless
scarlet and the bear, left from Christmas, was a very soiled bear. We
had all looked at these two things longingly, had even on occasion
nibbled them a bit. There came a day when I crept under my bed and ate
them both.
It was a bed with slats. In the slat immediately above my head there
was a knot-hole. Knot-hole, slat, the pattern of the ticking on the
mattress, all remain graven on the moment. It was the first time that
I had actually been conscious of--indeed, had almost _heard_--the
fighting going on within me.
Something was saying: “Oh, eat it, eat it. What do you care? It won’t
kill you. It may not even make you sick. It is good. Eat it.”
And something else, something gentle, insistent, steady, kept saying
over and over in exactly the same tone, and so that I did not know
whether the warning came from within or without:--
“It must not be eaten. It must not be eaten. It must not be eaten.”
But after a little, as I ate, this voice ceased.
Nobody knew that I had eaten the forbidden bear and strawberry.
Grandmother Beers squeezed my hand just the same. Mother was as tender
as always. And Father--his kind eyes and some little jest with me were
almost more than I could bear. I remember spending the evening near
them, with something sore about the whole time. From the moment that it
began to get dark the presence of bear and strawberry came and fastened
themselves upon me, so that I delayed bed-going even more than usual,
and interminably prolonged undressing.
Then there came the moment when Mother sat beside me.
“Don’t ask God for anything,” she always said to me. “Just shut
your eyes and think of his lovingness being here, close, close,
close--breathing with you like your breath. Don’t ask him for anything.”
But that night I scrambled into bed.
“Not to-night, Mother,” I said.
She never said anything when I said that. She kissed me and went away.
_Then!_
There I was, face to face with it at last. What was it that had told me
to eat the bear and the strawberry? What was it that had told me that
these must not be eaten? What had made me obey one and not the other?
Who was it that spoke to me like that?
I shut my eyes and thought of the voice that had told me to eat, and it
felt like the sore feeling in me and like the lump in my throat, and
like unhappiness.
I thought of the other gentle voice that had spoken and had kept
speaking and at last had gone away--and suddenly, with my eyes shut, I
was thinking of something like lovingness, close, close, breathing with
me like my breath.
So now I have made a story for that night. It is late, I know. But
perhaps it is not too late.
* * * * *
Once upon a time a beautiful present was given to a little boy named
Hazen. It was not a tent or a launch or a tree-top house or a pretend
aeroplane, but it was a little glass casket. And it was the most
wonderful little casket of all the kinds of caskets that there are.
For in the casket was a little live thing, somewhat like a fairy and
somewhat like a spirit, and so beautiful that everyone wanted one too.
Now the little fairy (that was like a spirit) was held fast in the
casket, which was tightly sealed. And when the casket was given to
Hazen, the Giver said:--
“Hazen dear, until you get that little spirit free, you cannot be wise
or really good or loved or beautiful. But after you get her free you
shall be all four. And nobody can free her but you yourself, though you
may ask anybody and everybody to tell you how.”
Now Hazen’s father was a king. And it chanced that while Hazen was yet
a little boy, the king of a neighbour country came and took Hazen’s
father’s kingdom, and killed all the court--for that was the way
neighbour countries did in those days, not knowing that neighbours are
nearly one’s own family. They took little Hazen prisoner and carried
him to the conquering king’s court, and they did it in such a hurry
that he had not time to take anything with him. All his belongings--his
tops, his football, his books, and his bank, had to be left behind,
and among the things that were left was Hazen’s little glass casket,
forgotten on a closet shelf, upstairs in the castle. And the castle
was shut up and left as it was, because the conquering king thought
that maybe he might like sometime to give to his little daughter,
the Princess Vista, this castle, which stood on the very summit of a
sovereign mountain and commanded a great deal of the world.
In the court of the conquering king poor little Hazen grew up, and he
was not wise or _really_ good or loved or beautiful, and he forgot
about the casket or thought of it only as a dream, and he did not know
that he was a prince. He was a poor little furnace boy and kitchen-fire
builder in the king’s palace, and he slept in the basement and did
nothing from morning till night but attend to drafts and dampers. He
did not see the king at all, and he had never even caught a glimpse of
the king’s little daughter, the Princess Vista.
* * * * *
One morning before daylight Hazen was awakened by the alarm-in-a-basin
at the head of his cot--for he was always so tired that just an alarm
never wakened him at all, but set in a brazen basin an alarm would
waken _anybody_. He dressed and hurried through the long, dim passages
that led to the kitchens, and there he kindled the fires and tended the
drafts and shovelled the coal that should cook the king’s breakfast.
Suddenly a Thought spoke to him. It said:--
“Hazen, you are not wise, or _really_ good, or loved, or beautiful. Why
don’t you become so?”
“I,” Hazen thought back sadly, “_I_ become these things? Impossible!”
and he went on shovelling coal.
But still the Thought spoke to him, and said the same thing over and
over so many times that at last he was obliged to listen and even to
answer.
“What would I do to be like that?” he asked almost impatiently.
“First go up in the king’s library,” said the Thought.
So when the fires were roaring and the dampers were right, Hazen went
softly up the stair and through the quiet lower rooms of the palace,
for it was very early in the morning, and no one was stirring. Hazen
had been so seldom above stairs that he did not even know where the
library was and by mistake he opened successively the doors to the
great banquet room, the state drawing rooms, a morning room, and even
the king’s audience chamber before at last he chanced on the door of
the library.
The king’s library was a room as wide as a lawn and as high as a tree,
and it was filled with books, and the shelves were thrown out to make
alcoves, so that the books were as thick as leaves on branches, and the
whole room was pleasant, like something good to do. It was impossible
for little Hazen, furnace boy though he was, to be in that great place
of books without taking one down. So he took at random a big leather
book with a picture on the cover, and he went toward a deep window-seat.
Nothing could have exceeded his surprise and terror when he perceived
the window-seat to be occupied. And nothing could have exceeded his
wonder and delight when he saw who occupied it. She was a little girl
of barely his own age, and her lovely waving hair fell over her soft
blue gown from which her little blue slippers were peeping. She, too,
had a great book in her arms, and over the top of this she was looking
straight at Hazen in extreme disapproval.
“Will you have the goodness,” she said--speaking very slowly and most
_freezing_ cold--“to ’splain what you are doing in my father’s library?”
At these words Hazen’s little knees should have shaken, for he
understood that this was the Princess Vista herself. But instead, he
was so possessed by the beauty and charm of the little princess that
there was no room for fear. Though he had never in his life been taught
to bow, yet the blood of his father the king, and of _his_ father the
king, and of _his_ father the king, and so on, over and over, stirred
in him and he bowed like the prince he was-but-didn’t-know-it.
“Oh, princess,” he said, “I want to be wise and _really_ good and loved
and beautiful, and I have come to the king’s library to find out how to
do it.”
“Who are you, that want so many ’surd things?” asked the princess,
curiously.
“I am the furnace boy,” said the poor prince, “and my other name is
Hazen.”
At this the princess laughed aloud--for when he had bowed she had
fancied that he might be at least the servant to some nobleman at the
court, too poor to keep his foot-page in livery.
“The furnace boy indeed!” she cried. “And handling my father’s books.
If you had what you ’serve, you’d be put in pwison.”
At that Hazen bowed again very sadly, and was about to put back his
book when footsteps sounded in the hall, and nursery governesses and
chamberlains and foot-pages and lackeys and many whose names are as
dust came running down the stairs, all looking for the princess. And
the princess, who was not frightened, was suddenly sorry for little
Hazen, who was.
“Listen,” she said, “you bow so nicely that you may hide in that alcove
and I will not tell them that you are there. But don’t you come here
to-morrow morning when I come to read my book, or I can’t tell _what_
will happen.”
Hazen had just time to slip in the alcove when all the nursery
governesses, chamberlains, foot-pages, and those whose names are as
dust burst in the room.
“I was just coming,” said the princess, haughtily.
But when she was gone, Hazen, in his safe alcove, did not once look at
his big leather book. He did not even open it. Instead he sat staring
at the floor, and thinking and thinking and thinking of the princess.
And it was as if his mind were opened, and as if all the princess
thoughts in the world were running in, one after another.
Presently, when it was time for the palace to be awake, he stirred
and rose and returned the book to its place, and in the midst of his
princess thoughts he found himself face to face with a great mirror.
And there he saw that, not only was he not beautiful, but that his
cheek and his clothes were all blackened from the coal. And then he
thought that he would die of shame; first, because the princess had
seen him looking so, and second, because he looked so, whether she had
seen him or not.