Life Unveiled, by a Child of the Drumlins — Chapter 3 Part II - A Child Went Forth

Another love of mine, a less responsive one, was my big willow tree.

It was only one of many trees along the creek, but oh, the difference to me!

Cows grazed in the pasture near by; spearmint grew in patches along the path; the water flowed quietly.

It was about ten minutes’ walk from home, but I was in another world when there.

Seated in the heart of the old tree, I looked out upon a scene commonplace enough to the eye--level fields and houses and distant drumlins, but ah, what inner visions!

What happy hours I have spent ensconced in that old willow!

Just a little climb (for I never could really climb a tree--I was too afraid of getting up high), and there I sat, a queen on her throne.

Safe in the tree I was not afraid of the cows.

There I read and sang, recited poetry, and dreamed dreams.

“I am monarch of all I survey,” I usually began with--the place really belonged to me.

The old farmer who came after his cows every night thought he owned the land, but I knew and the old tree knew who was the real owner.

For years, as a child and a girl, I kept tryst with this tree; and for years only the cows and I knew just where it was that I went when I stole away “to the willows,” for I guarded the exact spot jealously.

Often in going past it with others, I have feigned indifference, lest someone note its natural seat.

I wanted it all to myself.

I used to feel uneasy when I had to climb down, about supper-time; for the cows, eager for their own supper, came near the bars and insisted on coming close to me.

Although my heart beat wildly at their approach, I would try to brave it out and look them down as I had heard one should do.

On they always came, bland and peaceable.

Facing them as long as I could, ashamed to show fright, even to cows, I finally had to cut and run, and then how chagrined I felt!

Once in running from them, in my hurry to get under the fence, I flung my book ahead of me, and it went into the creek--my beloved Cathcart’s Literary Reader!

To this day its stained leaves and warped cover remind me of the fright I got from the harmless, curious cows.

“Oh, aren’t they cute, they must be twins,” was a remark Sister and I often heard, long before we knew what twins really meant.

Mother would follow such remarks with, “No, there’s eighteen months’ difference between them.

” We thought “twins” must be something pretty nice, and learned to feel the disappointment that we saw on the faces of strangers when Mother set them right.

Once at camp-meeting we were playing together, when some ladies stopped us asking, “Little girls, are you twins?

” Mother was not near.

Kate and I looked at each other and knew that our time had come to be twins.

With one accord we nodded yes, and had some few minutes of unalloyed pleasure.

Days later, while playing in our tent door, the same lady and another passed.

Pausing and noting us as we sat with our big wax dolls (they, too, dressed just alike) the one lady told the other that we were twins.

“Oh, no, there’s eighteen months’ difference between them,” said Mother, sitting near.

“But they told me they were twins,” insisted the lady.

We were covered with confusion; tears, chidings, shame, and repentance followed.

Though I am not sure whether at that time we knew what twins really meant, still we knew very well that we were not twins.

When we were perhaps ten and eleven years of age, one of our schoolmates, a child in a destitute Irish family living in the west part of the village, died of scarlet fever.

They lived in the “haunted house” on the hill--a house near which we never ventured, though Mother had repeatedly assured us there was no such thing as a haunted house.

Now, however, because of the fever, one would have thought we would have still kept our distance.

But hearing of the child’s death, Sister was bound to go there.

The dead always had a strange fascination for her; she wanted to feel the corpse--the last thing I wanted to do.

At noon Kate made me go with her to that house.

Other children accompanied us.

Awe-struck, we crept up the hill; we glanced furtively at the broken shutters of the windows from which a ghostly arm was said often to beckon.

Such poverty and squalor we had never before come in contact with.

We filed past the body of our little schoolmate (Kate touched the marble forehead), awed by the presence of Death, and uneasy at what we knew was wrong.

If the ghosts of the Board of Health of to-day could have antedated themselves and walked there, what consternation would they have felt at the presence of those children in the fever-stricken precinct!

The bereaved mother howled hysterically.

An elder sister told us they had no underclothes to put on the dead child.

Kate marched me home, enjoining strict secrecy.

Moved by the poverty and grief we had seen, with one accord we stole upstairs and purloined a suit of our best underclothes, secreting them till after dinner, when we ran with them to the house of mourning, intending then to hurry back to school.

I can see now the trimming on that little white petticoat that we stole from ourselves; we hesitated, it was such a pretty petticoat; but the need was urgent, and, somehow, we thought it must be the very best that we give to the dead child.

The family welcomed us effusively, blessing us, or asking Holy Mary to, as they immediately put our offerings to use; and still we lingered on.

Presently they asked Kate to go with them to the burial, bribing her with a nice long drive; before I knew it, it was all settled.

Kate ordered me to stop my opposition, _she was going to that funeral_.

She also persuaded, or commanded, me to give her my hat, having lent hers to the sister.

Then she made me promise to go back to school and say nothing; she would soon be home.

The “last bell” had long since rung when, bareheaded, frightened, and alone, Miss Docility ran to school, tardily repentant over the whole strange proceedings.

A wretched afternoon!

As soon as school was out, I rushed up to the Post Office and in tears and penitence told it all to Father.

I can see now his growing anxiety on learning of our visit to that fever-stricken house;

and then of Kate’s having gone to the burial.

He upbraided me for not coming to him at once, but knew that, as usual, Kate had dominated me.

“Run home and tell your mother not to worry,” he said; “we will soon get track of her and see that she gets home safe.

” Mother’s distress was pitiful.

Tormenting herself and me, she rehearsed tales of Catholic funerals where they raced horses and got drunk--perhaps they would have a runaway--Kate might be thrown out--hurt, maybe killed--and perhaps we would all get the scarlet fever!

When Father came home to supper, no trace had yet been found of the funeral train, though a man had driven to the cemetery--the mourners were either driving home by some other road, or had gone on to a near-by city.

How the hours dragged!

But the joy when Father came in bringing Kate, safe and sound, her elation over the experience only a little dampened by the fear of punishment!

But she escaped it that time; and we all escaped the fever!

Although I had had to drop the study of music in early girlhood, music continued to be an important part of our home life.

Other boys and girls in our street used to gather round our organ in the winter evenings, or sit on the veranda in summer, and sing till we had to stop for hoarseness, the neighbours often calling to us for this and that favourite.

“Gathering up the Sea Shells,” “Pass under the Rod,” “Jamie’s on the Stormy Sea,” “O, Fair Dove,” “We’d Better Bide a Wee,” “I’ll Be All Smiles To-night, Love,” “Then You’ll Remember Me,” “Juanita”--a heterogeneous repertoire, the list seems interminable.

There were certain favourites we would get Father to sing--“Bonnie Doon,” “The Sword of Bunker Hill,” and “My Susanna”--songs inseparably linked with home and those happy days.

I used to sing Father to sleep Sunday afternoons.

No matter how many other songs I introduced, I always had to sing Longfellow’s “Bridge,” and “The Day Is Done.

” I was annoyed if he asked for the latter before the day _was_ done.

I liked best to sing it as the afternoon light began to fade and barely come in at the west window, just enough for me to trace the notes.

Sometimes of a Sunday evening an aunt and uncle would ask for more lively songs than those I chose, for there was a long period when I steadfastly refused to sing secular songs on the Sabbath.

At their request, I would evade and substitute; but if their insistence became too pronounced to be set aside, I would refuse point blank.

In my unregenerate days there had been a time when I had sung “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” “Nancy Lee,” “Putting on the Style,” “Father, Come Down with the Stamps,” and such worldly things, but later the little Puritan was shocked to be asked to desecrate the Sabbath with such levity.

They learned to cater to my strait-laced notions.

I am afraid I was a not very pleasant person to deal with when a question of what I considered the fitness of things was involved.

(Perhaps I am not even now.

) I strongly suspect I was a self-righteous little prig for several years.

At a later period one of the schoolboys described me to a newcomer in the town as “a nice girl, only _such_ a prim little Methodist.

” Not many weeks later, that girl and I were laughing in great glee over the description which, though it had once been true, was then hardly applicable; but I was still living on the reputation of a past phase of religious emotion.

We had a song called “Fire Bells Are Ringing,” a dramatic account of a fire on a wild winter night, the chorus ringing out with repeated cries of “Fire!

” One windy night in February as Sister and I were at the organ singing this with all the dramatic power we could summon, the wild night putting us in the mood, Father, who had been in the kitchen popping corn, came running in shouting “Fire!

” even louder than we were.

Smiling, we sang on with redoubled energy, pleased that we had put him in the spirit of acting, too.

He rushed around the room frantically shouting, “Fire!

I tell you!

Girls!

_do you hear?

_” Louder and more dramatic grew our efforts, and louder grew his cries until, a still more desperate tone in his voice, and the words, “Girls!

Get me my coat, quick!

” finally made us understand he was in earnest.

Mother, too, had thought him fooling and there he was, excited as he always got at the alarm of fire, almost in despair of making any of us take him seriously!

It was a house on the street above.

A fierce conflagration was under way.

With the high wind, the adjoining house of a neighbour was endangered, and we had an exciting time helping our friends gather together valuables and other belongings, though luckily the fire did not spread.

Ah!

the cruel, relentless sight of that burning home!

What if it was “the meanest man in town” whose house was burning down--everyone pitied him that wild night when they saw the pitiless flames.

We never associated with the neighbours on our right, except to be civil to them (and I to borrow their novels by Mary Jane Holmes--whenever I could without the knowledge of my parents).

The man was coarse and illiterate, his wife a silly, slovenly, red-haired woman who would sit on her husband’s lap on the doorstep in full view of passers-by.

But our left-hand neighbours, though shiftless and lawless, were interesting and likeable.

Great borrowers, always borrowing, they would keep our belongings till we had to go after them.

I would feel chagrined to have to ask for our own flatirons, or tack-hammer, or chopping-knife, when we needed them, but Jean, the witty daughter, would relieve my embarrassment by her ready assurance: “Certainly, Miss Genie, you are welcome to the irons; keep them as long as you like--we’ll come after them when we need them again.

” Formerly there had been a picket fence between our yard and theirs, along which the “myrtle” grew, and a board fence farther back, between the gardens; but, little by little, first the board fence disappeared, later the picket fence--whenever they got out of kindling wood they would take a board here, a picket there (usually early in the morning, or late at night).

In time both fences were down, and only the “myrtle” in front and the pie-plant bed and berry bushes in the rear marked the division between our yards.

Mother would try shaming them out of it by wondering (to them) who could be carrying off our fence boards, and the wily Jean would reply, “It’s a shame, Mrs. Arnold, such people ought to have something done to them,” when perhaps that very morning Mother had seen her slip out, knock off a picket or two, and hustle with it into the woodshed.

But the whole family had a way with them that was irresistible, and they were kindness itself when any one was sick or in trouble.

A slack housekeeper, the mother of the family, proud as Lucifer, was a remarkable character.

She reared a large family, all “smart as whips,” but inclined to waywardness of one kind and another--the boys handsome and debonair, but profane and given to drink, yet more gentlemanly when drunk than many are when sober.

Although we lived near them all their lives, the young men never spoke to Sister and me after we reached our ’teens without prefixing our names with “Miss,” and lifting their hats.

If they stood at the wood-pile (perhaps sawing some of our fence-boards!

) when we went to the well, they would bid us a courteous good morning, always cutting short their profanity, if indulging in it at the time.

I admired their chivalrous manners, their good looks, and their witty talk, even though knowing less admirable things about them.

The father, a crafty man, with no visible means of support, lived mostly by his wits.

He was handsome, and humorous in a droll way.

Never lifting his hand to help his over-worked wife, he would yet say ingratiatingly, “Mother, I don’t like to see you work so hard--we are not worthy of it.

” And she, knowing how lazy he was, how it was all talk, would beam on him, proud of his good looks--the handsome father of her handsome sons--pleased with the affectionate protestations that he shouted in her deaf ears.

She never criticized him or her sons to others; but sometimes her lips would shut in an emphatic way and her eyes say unutterable things if she thought herself unobserved; but the face she turned to others was innocent of all this.

How her eyes would shine as she watched her sons start out of the house, well dressed, with manly carriage, and that air of distinction that never wholly left them!

and when they came home intoxicated, how fertile she was in resources to get them quietly out of sight; how apt in concealing the loquacity induced by a lesser degree of intoxication!

An incident in her earlier days put her on a pedestal in my regard.

Jean, her daughter, a fiery girl with coal-black eyes and hair was witty and irresponsible, as I have said, but energetic and warm-hearted.

The neighbours knew her to be capable of escapades of which her doting mother was innocent!

More than once she had been seen creeping down the slanting veranda-roof and down the porch pillars, from which she dropped softly to the ground.

But no one dared acquaint her mother with the fact.

In the course of time Jean was missing.

Her brother traced her to a neighbouring town, and going to the hotel where she and her lover were staying, so arranged it that when they came into the dining-room, there he sat confronting them!

Equal to the occasion, Jean, I’ll wager, showed no embarrassment, and though her brother was bursting with rage and shame, he, too, was mindful not to make a scene.

But what a dinner it must have been!

Yet I can imagine that Jean kept the conversation going in her inimitable way.

Dinner over, she asked her brother when he was going home.

“Just as soon as you can get your things packed,” Dick said significantly.

Knowing the Norton blood was up, she made the best of it and returned with him.

After that she stayed closely at home.

People in general did not know of her elopement, nor of the fact that she was to become a mother.

Both she and her mother kept secluded for months.

I wish I knew just how old her mother’s youngest child was when Jean’s child was born.

My impression is that he was at least three or four years old.

Nevertheless, it is stated as a fact, and was generally believed in the village, that at the birth of Jean’s baby, Mrs. Norton, its grandmother, put the baby to her own breast, and, by sheer force of will causing the milk to flow, brought up the child at her breast!

He always called her “Mamma,” and his own mother by her given name;

and although after a time, the fact of his parentage was learned, the family pride was saved to a great degree.

People tacitly accepted the child as Jean’s youngest brother, and he himself thought he was until quite a lad.

Not having learned of all this till years after it occurred, the impression it made upon me was far less pronounced than when I learned about a certain girl, nearer my own age, who “went wrong.

” But I did not learn of this little tragedy till a year or two afterward, although when I did, I was so sorry for the girl that there was no room for blame, and I was glad to know that Mother, knowing it all along, had befriended her; I loved my mother the more for it.

But how incredible that such a thing had happened to one I actually knew!

I used to wonder how she could go on living and acting like other folk; how she could meet that young man on the street; how she could fulfil her daily tasks.

Divining what she must secretly have suffered, I felt sure her keenest grief must come from knowing that she was not as good as people thought her.

I used to wish that she knew I knew of it, and that Mother had known it all the time, and yet that we felt the same toward her.

I was sure that would have been a comfort to her.