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

A boy in our neighbourhood, a gay, boastful, light-hearted boy, who was always whistling on the street, got into difficulties, became entangled with low companions, and a grave charge was made against him from which he was only partly exonerated.

The first year I was away from home, in writing to me about it, Mother had said, “Howard has lost his whistle.

” How significant that was!

The merry-hearted boy was never the same after that.

These and other revelations concerning townspeople I knew made a profound impression upon me.

They were the beginnings of my plucking the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and I found it bitter.

Every taste saddened me.

The dispersion of every illusion was accompanied by a distinct pain.

I think it must always be so for those who believe that persons and things are what they seem.

The surface so smooth, so fair--incredible that beneath lie many diverse strata seldom or never seen.

Outcroppings come as a revelation, and with the shattering of an ideal--inevitable sadness and pain!

One of my vivid childhood experiences comes to me here--that of being taken through the State Prison at Auburn, and to chapel services there, and how my throat ached as those hundreds and hundreds of men in convict garb filed in and took their places!

The striped gray-and-black cloth for their suits was made at a woolen mill just outside our village.

We sat in the gallery and looked down on the men.

I have never forgotten the pain I felt, child that I was, at seeing such a mass of men branded with shame and crime, many imprisoned for life.

I wonder if my sympathy and tolerance for wrong-doing were not generated by that early experience, when I pitied them so that there was no room to condemn.

Notes of piercing sweetness sounded through that vast auditorium as a convict played on a cornet the prelude to “Watchman, tell us of the night.

” When they began singing I thought my heart would break.

A part of the men sang the questions, then another body of them the answers, all joining in the refrain.

Mother and all of us were in tears.

Always after that, at home, when we would sing that piece, that moving scene would be vividly reproduced.

Chaplain Searle preached that day, and I remember (or think I remember) his beautiful, beneficent spirit as he talked to the men.

(He used later to lecture in our village, and those impressions of him became blended with the earlier.

One of his lectures was “The Sunny Side of Life in Libby Prison.

”) We saw the men march to dinner; saw their coarse fare, and peered into their bare cells; and a great pity rose within me for their blighted lives.

To this day the sight of “Copper John”--the statue we see on the top of the prison, on driving in to Auburn--awakens the recollection of the painful emotions born that day when I first learned how hard the way of the transgressor really is.

About the only plays I ever saw, until I went away from home, were “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “Ten Nights in a Bar Room,” played in our home town, and “East Lynne” in Syracuse.

These were my only preparation for the appreciation and understanding of Booth’s “Hamlet,” which I saw my first year in Boston.

A mere child when “Uncle Tom” came to town, and too moved to do anything but cry openly, I was unmercifully tormented the next day at school by the older girls who, having witnessed my humiliation of the night before, jeered at and mimicked me.

Curiously enough, many years later, while visiting in Worcester, Massachusetts, I encountered the star of this performance at close quarters: I was taken ill while there, and the landlady of my hostess was the “Topsy” of my early remembrance.

When she learned that I had seen her as “Topsy,” she doubled her offices in my behalf: there was a distinct improvement in my toast and gruel, although her housekeeping was almost as “shifless” as “Aunt Ophelia” had complained of years before.

My first experience with remorse came when I was quite a little girl, on learning of the death of a schoolmate: One of the older girls, on seeing me weeping bitterly, looking at me coldly said, “Humph!

_you_ needn’t cry--you used to quarrel with her--you know you did.

” As though I didn’t know it only too well!

For years that girl’s twitting me of those irrevocable quarrels seemed the most unfeeling thing imaginable.

It was perhaps when I was sixteen that another schoolmate, going into a rapid decline, died of “consumption.

” During that summer I went almost daily to brush her hair; she said I did not tangle it as others did.

It was painful to see her wasting daily: that ominous cough, that sickly odour, and her pathetic hopefulness as her condition became more hopeless!

But I had a strong sense of duty then.

It was about the time, I suppose, that youthful altruism developed.

Sometimes I would be so tired from work at home that I could hardly drag myself up the hill, and I dreaded the depressing environment.

When she died they sent for me to dress her hair.

She had requested it.

That seemed more than I could do.

(I have never been able to conquer my repugnance to touching a dead body.

) But there was no way out of it.

After the task was done, with which there was no one to help me except her brother, who was no help at all, I stayed and got supper for the invalid parents, and did other little things round the house, waiting for someone to come in who would stay the night.

But no one came.

I could not leave those helpless parents alone, so sent word home that I was going to stay, at the same time sending for a schoolmate to come and bear me company.

We had Louisa M. Alcott’s “Old-Fashioned Girl” to read, and proceeded to pass the night sitting up in the room next to the one where our dead schoolmate lay.

The girl’s brother (the same who years before had bitten off the nose of my leatherhead doll), kept coming into the room and lamenting his sister’s death; then, going into the parlour, he would weep over the body, groaning and reproaching himself noisily for his past unkindness.

The wildness of his grief, which came in paroxysms, was terrible.

I pitied him, but it was a relief when he calmed down and went to bed.

Late in the evening the undertaker came and was alone in the parlour a long time.

On coming out he asked who was going to stay over night.

Lizzie and I told him we were.

“But what grown person, I mean.

” On learning that there was no one else, he scrutinized us a moment, then said to me, “If you will step in here, I will show you what I wish you to do.

” Wondering, I followed him and learned that at midnight I was to remove the cloth from the face, moisten it in a solution, replace it, “taking care to press it well down on the eyes and around the nose and lips.

” I have forgotten what else we had to do, but remember that I had to remove the folded hands from across the chest.

(I did it by taking hold of the nightgown sleeves at the wrist.

How startled I was at the spring the arms gave as I let go the sleeves!

) He added that if I did it at midnight, and again at three or four o’clock in the morning, it would answer.

I have done much harder things since, but never remember undertaking anything that seemed more of an ordeal than that was then--our dead schoolmate, my shrinking at the feel of a corpse, the mere staying up in this remote house that night, no neighbours within call, we two girls, with the sick parents and the remorse-stricken brother--no one to give us moral support--small wonder that I quailed!

But it had to be done.

My companion, less self-contained, and terrified on learning what was required, began to be hysterical.

It was not easy to get her interested in the book, but we read on and on, taking turns through the long hours, our feverish excitement increasing as the dread hour approached.

How loud the clock ticked!

how every little sound about the house smote our ears!

how furtively we kept glancing at the time, pretending not to be thinking of it!

how our voices trembled!

We both started in affright as the clock began to strike twelve!

Lizzie held the lamp while I did as I had been instructed.

Poor girls!

They seem like someone else, not I and another.

She trembled and nearly dropped the lamp; and when it was done, we almost ran from the room.

It was no vulgar fear of the corpse; it was the general gruesomeness, our loneliness, and all that--the uncanny, tiny little mother, a mere skeleton; the Quilp-like father--everything added to our shuddering dread.

No sooner had we closed the creaking folding-doors and were back in the sitting-room than my companion, heaving a sigh of relief, said, “Now let’s go and have something to eat.

” I could have screamed outright--“Eat _now!

_ after that experience!

” My hands felt contaminated, even after repeated washings.

I begged her to wait awhile.

So Miss Alcott still diverted us till I felt I could go and eat.

After that we grew cheerful, even hilarious, and then felt guilty for laughing in that house of mourning.

Long hours passed in talking and reading till we had to go in that dread room again.

Finally morning came, and with it a neighbour who relieved us.

Going home in the early dawn, the queer look of the quiet streets, the physical weariness, combined with the night’s experiences, made me feel years older.

Stealing up the steps at home and creeping into the hammock on the veranda, I slept until the opening of doors and windows in the house announced the family astir.

Perhaps a year after the death of this girl, another schoolmate died of the same disease--a brilliant, beautiful girl with smouldering dark eyes, a girl of great promise, who had made a brave fight for life.

Her mother, who was given to doing things in a theatrical way, asked four of us girls to be honorary pall-bearers--to dress in white and follow the casket in and out of the church.

At the house the general gloom and our own grief had been a strain on us, but as we got into the carriage we calmed down from our weeping and were trying to get in condition to face the ordeal at the church when, just as we were driving through the main street, without any warning, one of us _broke into laughter_!

Two others followed in sympathy, the fourth girl looking so disgusted that it made us laugh the more.

Finally she gave way, too, and we were all in a state of uncontrolled, unreasoning mirth!

Although the carriage was closed, we feared the driver would hear us, or people in the street catch a glimpse of us.

Our efforts at self-control were painful in the extreme.

What would Ruth think if she could know of our conduct?

But everything we tried to say only made matters worse.

When the carriage drove into the churchyard, we were still in a pitiable plight, and how we ever mastered ourselves enough to step out and walk past the by-standers and on into the church behind the casket is something I marvel at even yet.

But we had had our escape-valve, and now everything was done “decently and in order.

” Long after that, we thought with remorse of our conduct, not understanding how blameless we were--how wrong it was to subject a group of impressionable girls to such an emotional strain.

I recall some by-word meetings which I think had some share in my development at a plastic period.

They were conducted by the wife of the Presbyterian minister, their object being to help us refrain from the use of slang.

That minister’s wife seems to me, even yet, the most beautiful woman I ever saw--tall, slender, with a queenly carriage, the smoothest, creamiest skin, bewitching dimples, jet black hair and eyes, and slender white hands.

On the street she wore a heavy veil, and when she lifted it as she came into the meetings, it was like the unveiling of a beautiful statue.

She had a silvery voice, so different from any voice I had heard.

In fact, she seemed a little too bright and good for everyday life.

We children idolized her.

Some of our playmates would not go to her meetings, and spitefully told us she was “proud”; wore a veil to preserve her complexion; never ate butter; and nearly starved herself to keep slender; but, resenting these rude charges against our divinity, we continued her willing devotees.

How good she used to talk to us!

She began her prayers with “Dear Father,” praying easily as she stood before us, as though talking to a loved parent.

She listened to our confessions of what by-words we had been betrayed into saying during the week, smiling brilliantly at times, looking grieved at other disclosures, and sometimes shocked, but always encouraging us to try harder the next week.

The by-words permitted were, “Oh!

” “Oh, my!

” “Oh, dear!

” and “Oh, dear me!

”--these with varying intensity were the legitimate outlets for the various experiences and emotions of our lives!

All others we must strive to keep from saying, “with the aid of our Heavenly Father.

” I think “Grief!

” was the word with which I kicked over the traces the oftenest;

but her reproving smile was not a hard punishment; and it was such a delight to see her approval when we could make a good confession.

It was an excellent influence she shed, not the least of which was due to her beauty.

My aversion to slang (except when “right off the bat”) is probably due to those early by-word meetings.

Although the hands of this woman strongly appealed to me by their beauty and delicacy, my mother’s appealed more powerfully--the whole woman in her seems typified in her hands.

Not small, nor especially white, they are well-formed, and, in spite of a life filled with work, are soft, yet firm, strong, capable, and tender.

Even as a child I seemed aware of her emotion, as well as her strength, in them.

I used to like to clasp them--such a warm, sustaining grasp!

And I liked to open them and look at the palms.

She has a hollow palm (something like my own), and all the mounds are full and elastic--a warm, soft, brooding handclasp peculiarly her own.

In my emotional nature I am more like Mother, in mental make-up more like Father.

Sister’s hands are more like Father’s, yet her physical type in general, and her mental, is more like Mother’s. From Mother she and Brother get their fairer skin, while mine is the brunette shade, like Father’s. How mysterious it all is!

How complex!

--“Mate and make beget such different issues!

” CHAPTER IV