Life Unveiled, by a Child of the Drumlins — Chapter 2 Part II - The Roof-tree

She escaped punishment.

We had fewer playthings than children have nowadays, but for that very reason they meant more to us.

I had but two dolls in my childhood and one is still--living, I was about to say.

One was a leather-head doll, with painted cheeks, black hair, and blue, blue eyes.

But in the beginning of her career she met a strange fate--a boy much bigger than I snatched her from me and bit off her nose before my very eyes!

This was one of my earliest griefs.

I hated that boy but cherished the noseless doll for many years.

Later Kate and I had big wax dolls whose eyes would open and shut and who would cry when we pressed a little place in the pit of the stomach.

We played with them only on state occasions.

They were kept up in the “front bedroom” in a bureau drawer.

I saw them a year ago.

They had on the same scarlet wool dresses trimmed with narrow black velvet ribbon, but the dresses were moth-eaten and the dolls showed the ravages of time.

Occasionally, other relatives joining us, we had a family Christmas tree--perhaps only four or five in our childhood.

But there was always the hope of one, and when there was one, the joy recompensed for the lean years.

One Christmas tree at Aunt Lucinda’s at which some Western relatives were present, stands out vividly--the big house overflowing with people, the smell of the dinner preparing, the air of mystery of the elders as they went to and fro to the parlour with various parcels; and then, at last, when the doors swung open and we got that first glimpse of the blessed tree!

But how was my joy modified!

Making our way, pell-mell, grown-ups and children, in the eagerness to push through, someone bumped against me, driving my nose against the door-jamb.

I can feel the pain yet, and the blinding tears.

Not all the splendour of that tree could drive that pain away.

After that, in a way I had of accounting for things, I attributed a slight deflection of my nose to that bump.

I recall black walnut work-boxes for Sister and me and a writing-desk for Brother as the most elaborate and expensive gifts which as children we ever received.

Some years there were no gifts, except new clothing, which never satisfied the craving--except once--our white “moss velvet hats”--these made our hearts light as well as our heads.

When there were no presents--can one ever forget the bitter disappointment?

A trivial gift means so much to an expectant child!

All in vain were we told (as we sometimes were in advance) that no gifts could be afforded that year.

We never quite gave up hope.

But, cruel as was the disappointment, perhaps the discipline was wholesome.

One year there were crosses covered with crinkly paper bedecked with wreaths of worsted flowers, and framed in deep rustic frames.

What works of art!

Almost equal to the hanging basket made of allspice that adorned a cousin’s parlour, and to the framed pyramid of hair-flowers that hung in our own!

I still treasure a paper-covered Red Riding Hood, cut in the form of the little lass, with the wolf crouching at her feet, the text a metrical version, charmingly illustrated.

I must have had it since I was seven or eight years old.

I knew the verses “by heart,” and have heard Mother tell that I used to recite them and other long pieces in my sleep.

A bottle of oil once made a spot on the book and the paper is yellow with age, but I still cherish it and would part with many a choicer possession sooner than with this childhood treasure.

In this connection I recall that when I was perhaps in my early ’teens, the instinct of acquisition developing, I went about the house placing my name upon all my belongings--every book and picture, even on the bottoms of little toy vases, a porcelain lamb, and so on.

As to Red Riding Hood, I seemed to think it fitting to write my name in a big sprawling child’s hand, every letter a capital, with the notion, I suppose, that it would be thought that I had written it there when a child.

I even selected a date, reckoning back as well as I could, and putting it upon one of my early birthdays.

In the same way I mutilated a quaint book that had belonged to Grandpa, by writing his name on the fly leaf, and the legend, “His Book,” in what I considered an old-fashioned hand-writing.

Some years later, coming upon these evidences of my silly deception, my cheeks burned with shame, and I erased the false records.

Fondness for my own belongings did not prevent me from a cruel piece of vandalism in regard to a cherished possession of my sister’s: She had made a clove-apple by sticking a greening full of cloves, and hiding it in a cuff-box in the upstairs closet, had declared she was going to keep it till she grew up.

Laughing at her, I said it would decay, but she maintained that it would not.

On rare occasions, as if it were a religious rite, she would peep into the box and sniff at the apple, vouchsafe us a sniff also, and put it carefully away.

As it dwindled and dwindled, her attachment strengthened and strengthened.

I believe she kept it six years.

Although I had often threatened to throw it away, she never believed I would.

But one day, whether out of spite, or because of my strenuous housekeeping, I did it, probably silencing my compunctions by thinking she was too old longer to indulge in such nonsense.

But her grief and anger on learning of the loss were so moving that I was conscience-stricken, and would then have given anything to have restored the treasure.

She scorned all attempts at extenuation.

It is with real shame that I confess this misdeed--more, perhaps, than I feel for later, graver ones.

I know now that as one of her treasures it should have been respected.

Anything that another really loves--a toy, a bauble, an idol, a comforting superstition--why not let him keep it as long as he can?

We were a happy and harmonious family as such things go.

I do not mean that we never said a cross word to one another; such families, I fancy, exist only in Sunday-school books.

There was not always unity;

our parents sometimes differed; Father was critical and methodical;

Mother forgetful and wanting in system.

She was tried by Father’s smoking and inordinate croquet-playing, and he was tried by her procrastination; at such times fault-finding was forthcoming.

Sister and Brother had early and late unpleasantnesses; and, in our ’teens, Sister and I became less harmonious than formerly, about the time, I suppose, when we were each becoming more individual; at least, when, ceasing to be docile, I became more assertive.

But there was always the good-night kiss all around, and Kate and I went to sleep with our arms around each other as long as we were girls at home.

I do not think we could have slept had we let the sun go down upon our wrath.

I remember the first time I omitted our custom of kissing all round at night--the family and any guest staying with us.

Some strange man was there; when I had kissed Father and Mother I hesitated before the man--I was getting to be a big girl--then, putting out my hand, said a bashful good night and went upstairs with burning cheeks, wondering if it had seemed rude not to kiss him.

We were not a demonstrative family--the good-night kiss was the chief expression of affection.

I remember no fondling, no caresses after early childhood, except the habitual ones--no spontaneous overflow of affection at irregular intervals, such as I was inclined to, had the others been so minded.

Once in a great while Father would call us the sweetest pet name in the world--“darling.

” On these rare occasions I was secretly overjoyed.

Had he known the delight it gave me, I’m sure he would have said it oftener.

Mother sometimes jocosely called me “Keturah,” and when, in one of her rare playful moods, she dubbed me “Keturah Ketunk,” I liked it exceedingly.

I remember once--I was probably thirteen or fourteen--going into the bedroom to bid my parents good night, when, having kissed them, as I started to leave the bed, Father threw out his arm; and, seeing it in the half light, and thinking he did it to motion me back, I bent down and swiftly kissed him again--an unusual thing for either him or me.

No sooner had I done it than my cheeks got hot as fire: perhaps I had misunderstood his gesture; he may have just happened to stretch out his arm, and was not beckoning me at all.

Upstairs I went, torturing myself with the query which I never solved.

Whether or not he had called me back, I now know he was not sorry to get the extra kiss.

Why couldn’t I have thus comforted myself then?

I suppose I was hungry for more demonstration of affection than I got, yet ashamed to show it.

Sister, not at all demonstrative, provoked demonstration in me; the curve of her cheek, and her long eyelashes resting upon it, appealed to me as a child’s beauty appeals; I longed to kiss her at inopportune times, and sometimes did not resist.

Half annoyed at me, she thought it nonsense, I suppose.

As we grew up, when she would be fitting a dress for me, I would try to snatch kisses, sometimes calling forth her impatience, at others her laughing dexterity as she eluded me.

I

admired her prettiness, but was never jealous of her, though she could dance and skate, and do all such things, with an ease and grace I could never acquire.

Making friends more readily than I, being sociable, lively, and even-tempered, she had plenty of beaux while I had none.

But I had friends among the beaux of the other girls.

Although I did not want them for beaux, I should have been unhappy had I not had them for friends--I understood myself well enough to know that much then, though the general impression among my schoolmates was that I cared nothing for the boys.

My hypersensitiveness about the life of the affections was apparent in the way I felt when Father would bid us all good-bye: When he kissed Mother I would always turn away.

It never seemed right to look on;

perhaps, partly, because it made me want to cry; but also because it seemed as though _I had no right_.

Even to-day, if I see lovers on the stage whose acting is good enough to give the sense of reality, I find myself turning away--it seems too intimate for me to witness.

A favourite custom in our family was an annual Sunday drive in apple-blossom time.

Father would hire a team and a sort of landau which, on a pinch, would hold ten persons--an aunt’s family and ours--big baskets would be stowed under the seats, and off we would go through the country on an all-day’s drive, stopping to picnic in some grove, or by a stream.

Then on again under the blue skies, the air sweet with blossoming trees; and the tender spring green giving that hazy, twiggy look of early May.

(That line of Whitman’s--“Rich apple-blossomed earth”--always brings back those far-off May-times with those perfect childish joys.

) Then we would drive home in the twilight, singing as we went, old and young joining in the songs.

Happy children, happy parents!

I’m sure the apple blossom is an escape from the Beautiful Garden.

I never breathe its fragrance without recalling those cherished drives in the Mays that are no more.

Our parents were wisely indulgent, giving us treats and privileges as they could afford them.

We were brought up to go without a thing till it could be paid for; consequently, all of us have a horror of being in debt.

Father spent a good deal (considering our circumstances) on our music, first and last, and he and Mother were ever looking forward to our advancement.

But there was always a struggle over money matters.

We had to economize and count the cost of any indulgence; but when it was decided that we could afford a given thing, how happy, almost jubilant, Father was over the expenditure!

One of the happiest hours in childhood (I was perhaps ten years old) was when, after spending the day from home, we returned at dusk and were met at the door by Father and Mother looking so excited and happy we knew something was on the carpet.

And there was!

In the sitting-room our eyes encountered a change--the furniture was rearranged, and there standing against the wall (were we awake or dreaming?

) was a brand new organ!

Our joy was unbounded, our parents’ delight no less.

How we smoothed the polished walnut case; gingerly touched the black and the white keys; fingered the stops; tried the pedals; moved the swell; and asked to have the top lifted so we could look inside!

And then Father sat down and struck a few rich chords--those chords with their variations that seemed peculiarly his own!

Soon the music teacher came in, and some neighbours, and the new organ sounded throughout our home, and doubtless in our dreams that night; and the next morning _it was still there_!

Then began the lessons.

Gradually the novelty wore away, lessons grew harder and harder.

Kate and Arthur, restless beings that they were, made only fair progress; they disliked the practice.

But, taking to it eagerly from the start, I made rather more than ordinary progress.

It was as hard to get me away from the organ as it was to get Kate and Arthur to it.

I was still very young when, one day, putting aside my exercise book, I opened the Methodist Hymnal and “picked out” one of the hymns--Boylston.

I was scared, it sounded so natural--and I had done it alone!

Mother came running in to see if it was really I who was playing.

Shortly after that, in Sunday School, the organist leaving before the close, the superintendent came to me, saying, “We want you to play the last piece.

” I tried to beg off, but no, he knew I could do it; so, in fear and trembling, I got up and played.

The treadles worked hard, and the stool was too high, so the superintendent pedalled for me, while the school rose and sang.

It didn’t take us children long to get home that Sunday.

“Genie played the organ!

Genie played the organ!

” shouted Kate and Arthur as we rushed into the house.

After that this occurred so often that my timidity before the Sunday School wore away.

This was the forerunner of a greater event: I had never touched the big organ, but as Father was chorister, we children often sat “in the choir” pretending to help sing.

One day toward the close of the service the bass singer, leaning over, whispered, “Miss R---- has gone home, you will have to play for us, Genie.

” Protesting, I looked imploringly at Father, but he only nodded and smiled encouragingly.

My heart nearly thumped itself to pieces, but the wily Basso whispered, “We’ll sing so loud, if you make a mistake they’ll never know it, and we’ll pick out one with an easy bass.

” So I undertook it.

In time, as Miss R---- dropped out more and more, I became the regular organist.

Later came piano lessons, and later still I had a teacher from a neighbouring city.

When I was developing rapidly, undergoing the physiological and emotional changes of pubescence, they unwisely put me to studying “Thorough Bass.

” A paternal aunt had been an accomplished musician, and my parents hoped I would show a like talent.

How my head used to ache over that study!

As the lessons became more complicated, I grew stupid; my health failed perceptibly and our family physician was called.

He talked with me a long time, then I was sent out of the room while he and Mother talked; then called in again, and the little black medicine-case was opened, while the Doctor folded the tiny powders that, he said, as he patted my head and called me “lassie,” were to make me strong again.

The upshot of it all was I had to drop my music, not only then, he advised, but for all time.

I had too emotional a temperament, he said, to stand the strain.

(What kind of a musician would a non-emotional person be!

) But he was wise in prohibiting it then.

I used to dignify the severe headaches which I had at that time by saying I had “brain fever.

” (Girls in the books I read had “brain fever.

”) But there was no real illness, no staying out of school, though for a time my hours were lessened.

Dropping music was a real cross to me.

Probably, had I been allowed to resume it, I should have followed that as a vocation and not cast about for another field of work.

Although discontinuing the study of music, I did not drop its practice.

Music was an important part of our home life.

I remember how cruel I once thought my parents because they would not let me go to a distant county to pick hops.

One of the schoolgirls had gone with her mother the year before, had earned a lot, and had had a “splendid time.

” As the season came round again, I “teased” to go with this girl and her mother.

I was hearing a good deal at home about economy, economy, and Nora’s account of the money she had made had fired me with the prospect of earning great sums to relieve our growing needs.

Confident, I announced my plan.

Was ever a girl so repulsed, so silenced?

They wouldn’t even hear me out.

I tried to say what Nora said, and what her mother said, but they were obdurate.

A martyr in my own eyes for a time, it was probably years before I realized what I had asked to do.

When I learned what class of young people usually engaged in such work, I understood how “out of the question” (a finality of Father’s) it had been for my parents even to discuss the project.

I remembered, too, how the same bright-eyed Nora had soon left school; how she changed in manner; became coarsened;

drifted out of our lives.

Strange how, years after, children become aware of the safeguards thrown around them in youth!

With this awareness, what a feeling of gratitude wells up within one toward the parents who have surrounded them with such wise and loving care!

How one longs to fly home and tell them of it; yet how reticent are we, how chary of expressing this gratitude!

One of the deepest of my early griefs was when we first learned what it was as a family to be separated; when Brother, who was a printer, went to Colorado to work.

We had been so closely bound together.

I realized the anxiety of our parents, divined the loneliness Arthur would feel, and what it would mean to lose him from the home.

What interesting and humorous letters he wrote us, with the homesickness sometimes peeping through!

How we read and re-read them!

He stayed away less than a year.

Shall I ever forget the day he came back?

His clothes had become shabby; he was stained with travel, but I almost devoured him with my eyes.

How good his voice sounded--every well-known tone; every gesture; and his laugh--my heart was like to burst.

And, oh, the joy, the security, the blessed feeling that night, to know we were all together again under the home roof!

I used to resort to various devices to keep Arthur at home in the evening, which sometimes worked, sometimes not.

The most effectual was to slip away from the supper table while the rest were still seated, under the pretext of wishing to try a new piece, thus getting him under the spell of the music while he was filling the stoves and bringing in water, so he would be drawn in spite of himself into the sitting-room.

Once there, he would hang around and read, often appearing indifferent when I knew he was not.

When he would get up to go, after I had held him as long as I could, how my heart would sink as the door closed and his steps sounded fainter and fainter on “stoop” and sidewalk!

But I would keep on playing long enough so as not to make it too apparent to the others what I had been up to, though they were doubtless as well aware of my motive as I. Sometimes he would say, on going out, “Well, I’ve got to go now”--his way of thanking me for playing.

Even when he was doing his best, there was always more or less anxiety until Brother would come home at night.

No matter what I was reading, when ten o’clock came, unless he had come, I felt an anxious pang.

All of us felt it, though it was seldom mentioned.

Mother sometimes spoke of it, or her sighs betrayed it, but as a rule we hid our anxiety under an assumed cheerfulness.

I would listen when the steps came on the veranda to see if there were two walking, or only Father.

Then if Father came alone, he would ask with apparent lightness, “Is Arthur home yet?

” and I would hasten to answer, “No, not yet,” just to forestall Mother’s sadder negative with its accompanying sigh.

Then we would all fall to talking to cover our fears.

But when he did come, how we strove to conceal the delight that our fears had been unfounded!

Putting up my books, but not too quickly, lest he be aware that I was trying to reward him for coming home early, I would go to the organ, and after making a pretense by first playing some indifferent thing, would play and sing the songs he liked best.

Oh, the safe housed feeling, when we could say good night to one another, and not have to lie awake listening for Brother’s footsteps that came so late sometimes, and sometimes not at all!

After such nights of watching, Sister and I would peep into his room in the morning, to see if perchance he had come after we had fallen asleep.

And when his bed was untouched--the dread and fear of what may have befallen him!

Brother was always good company.

He is witty, and easily moved by humour or pathos.

Once stir his worthy emotions and his better nature comes to the surface, though he resists being stirred as long as he can.

A fond father, he is, on the whole, a wise one, except when his temper, or his infirmity, gets the better of him.

Like our dear, testy grandfather in disposition, he reacts in much the same way, yet, with all his impatience, shows surprising tolerance with certain vagaries and eccentricities in others who, being the victims of hereditary and constitutional handicaps, are “gey ill to live with.

” Love for his children is one of his strongest traits.

A few months ago, when a maternal uncle, an alcoholic, died, Brother took his own little son to the uncle’s coffin and there, telling the child what a promising youth the uncle had been, explained to him that drink had been his ruination.

He wrote me that he had made the child (only three years old) understand it all; and then had made him promise that he would never touch alcohol in any form.

Poor, tempted, struggling soul!

Whitman has expressed tenderly and understandingly the feelings that always well up in me at the thought of my brother’s struggles and defeats--“Vivas for those who have failed!

” Such need pity, help, and credit far more than we are wont to give.

Bobbie Burns knew whereof he spoke when he reminded us: What’s done we partly may compute, But know not what’s resisted.

Father and Mother still have hope in Brother’s ultimate victory[2]--such faith, and such optimism, combined with such tenderness and forgiveness!

I know of nothing more God-like than these attributes as I have seen them exemplified in the daily lives of my parents.

“Like as a father pitieth his children”--what a perfect example I have known of this infinite, compassionate love!

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The victory came some years after this was written.

My brother now knows the triumph of him “who ruleth his spirit.

” CHAPTER III