Children of the night

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Copyright N°

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

II

G OOD morning ! Are the blinds drawn so that the room is dark where I sit ? The screen? Thank you. I have the old Greek feeling borne in upon me that blind eyes profane the sun. I like to be quite in the dark now that I have done with light. I do not mind being seen, exactly. I share old Milton’s vanity, who rejoiced so constantly that blindness had not disfigured him.

No, I cannot think for a little. As I told you, my thoughts are wayward as Autumn leaves, fluttering into corners and then holding high carnival before my face — changing their identity as they change places. For a moment they stop altogether and then go off like bunches of fire-crackers all lighted at once.

Amy read last night from some book which said that Faith was the eye of the soul. So 7

I have one eye — I hope. I am a sort of Cyclops if some Ulysses of doubt does not creep into my cave and “ punk it in ” as little Madeleine said of her wax dolly’s eye. Poor little mite! She used to run to her mother with her hand up feeling to see if her own eyes were not “ punking in ” too.

I tried again after you were gone yesterday, but I cannot remember anything after the fire until I was in my fourth year. We graduated that year from the theological seminary — at least, father did. John was almost two. When father and mother were married we did not expect to enter the ministry. We all boarded that last year with the Dexters, who were very, very kind to us and who loved our little mother dearly.

I remember that Mrs. Dexter used to cut for me paper plates and dust-pans which I arranged along the edge of the great, shiny library table, .while she and mother sewed by the window nearest the big fireplace. When I had not enough paper dishes to reach to the end and asked for more, they told me to “ Run away, dear ” and I had to take some from the front to finish out the row. It was S a brilliant thought, and, with modifications, has been of great assistance on many occasions since.

I used to go across the Common from Mrs. Dexter’s, on bright days, diagonally to the left and climb some stairs to the room where father and Chum studied. The trees were bare and I scuffled through the leaves with my dolly, Susie, in my arms. When my cloak was off my sleeves only came down to my elbows.

Father always set me up on a couch and tied my shoe and gave me a book to look at — a dictionary of Roman antiquities. The pictures were of gods and goddesses, and temples and graven arches and garlanded oxen — in outline only. I recognised the book long after and remembered that I had understood perfectly that the gods were not real and had been foolishly worshipped.

It seems strange that I understood what worship was at that age, quite as well as I do now. I wonder if I should be ashamed to admit it? Probably no one knows.

I remember that one day a dear little mouse ran about the room when I was in bed taking my nap. Mother did not wish me to be afraid of anything, “ except God,” she would add.

She always said how beautiful the lightning was and how soft and cunning little mice and squirrels were, but that day she ran for Mrs. Dexter and they stood up on things, with brooms, and told each other what to do. “ The poor little mousie was only hunting for his hole,” they said, but when George came to help it, he hurt it so that it died. We were so sorry !

I wrapped it in some pink paper to show it to father, but when I got there he was gone to a lecture. The door was left ajar for me so I went in and hunted for a nice place to put it. His boot seemed to be the safest, if it should wake up and want to run again.

I forgot it in the wonders of my book, but he found it when he took off his slippers to go home with me, and had more trouble about it than mother and Mrs. Dexter had.

I remember very vaguely that mother used to have a little baby in the bed and in her arms, and that when we all went to Lawrence one day to have our pictures taken, it was Alice. The sweet little face, which was hard to see in the old ambrotype, helped me always to remember her. My picture was good and Susie in my arms was best of all. John’s picture was good too — only too fat.

io

Ill

1\ZT R. NELSON called again last night but I could not see him. Amy is unhappy that I seclude myself so entirely, but even for her, dear little sister! — I cannot — yet.

The doctor says I must sit in the sunshine? I will, by and bye. Last evening, late, I walked on the verandah. It is twentyone paces, the length of it. Counting keeps the thoughts employed. I was very happy.

Do you remember how Tasso — or is it his translator? — writes about the sky? No other writer ever did it justice. Amy brought me the book and I could feel, or thought I could, the marks on the margins. I always would mark my books — the ones I expected to wear out myself. I am sorry now, but I could not know. I begged Jack not to get such extravagant editions, but he always would — prizing the “ feel ” of it, he said.

Mrs. Wilcox dropped in a moment yesterday, — of course I don’t mind her, — and asked ii if I did not wish I had always been blind ; — not in those words exactly, but “ didn’t I think it would be easier not to have known what sight was, than to have lost it ” ! I felt like a man who told father there was no chloroform when his leg was cut off, and that people who spoke of it invariably asked if it hurt!

Here I sit all day long, thanking God for every leaf and shadow and insect I ever saw ! Do you remember the shadows of the ripples in the brook at the foot of the Arnold hill? Not the ripples, but their shadows on the grey and creamy pebbles in the bed of the stream? When I was a little girl I used to take my book or my tatting and creep under the bridge in the hot summer days. Half a dozen planks formed the bridge and when teams drove over I held a paper, umbrella-wise, to keep off the dust. I selected an Eastern rug for Edith’s wedding gift, because it had the colours of those shaded pebbles. The thought of them now gives me a thrill of pleasure.

Last night I thought how beautiful the fishscales were, and of the different edges they had, then of the red-tipped lichens, and the mossy green of the elm-trunk on the corner 12 by Dr. Allen’s, and the patch of raspberry bushes along the old corduroy road up in the Gore, whose stems were such an exquisite shade of lavender — covered with a lavender bloom, if stems have bloom.

Not to have seen! It would be annihilation.

Yes. They told me the sermon was about Bartimaeus, but I would not listen. I know Bartimaeus better than Mr. Nelson does. I had a long talk with him the other night, just pretending, as the children say. He told me how it seemed when he first looked about.

He thinks he would be blind the first half of his life rather than the last — if he must be at all. I did not agree with him. I prefer to have seen things first and have them to think about. He insists that he had more to think about before he could see, than after. He says he did not think so very much. He and the other men who begged on his corner used to make fun of people who pitied them. He admitted, when I reminded him, that he was quite in earnest about being cured of his blindness as soon as he heard that there was a man coming along who could do it.

Colours puzzled him most, and he had to learn not to feel of things. For a long time 13 feeling was more satisfactory than looking, because then he could compare objects with those he had known before. He did not know his own dog without feeling him over. He reminded me that people with plenty of eyes often told each other to “ feel and see ” how thick or heavy an object was, which he had always been able to do.

Besides, he did not know how to work, and it was hard to be thrown, at his time of life, on his own resources. He went hungry to bed oftener than he had done when he was blind. Of course, he could not foresee that, when he asked to have his eyes opened.

Amy has had a letter from the Burtons in New York, and they beg so hard that she will come to them for a day or two next week that I am urging her to go. I dare not think how I shall miss her, but I do not mean to let her shut herself up with me — besides, I have you.

No, don’t you remember? Amy was not born until after we left Newton — the year before father died.

Father went to Newton as soon as he had finished at the Seminary. I was almost five. That moving was the most delightful ex- 14 perience ! I do not remember any details except that I sat for some weeks on the floor behind the sofa and had a great many strange and usually sacred things to play with — boxes of shells and little red pease with black eyes from mother’s India home. John was there too, and Alice, who must not creep away or put shells in her mouth or ears or anywhere. I felt a weight of responsibility and I must have taken good care of her, for there came a feeling of spiritual pride which has always warned me at intervals that perfection would quite unfit me for Heaven if Heaven be only for the poor in spirit.

When everything was in order, we had to leave the shells and inlaid boxes in the beautiful parlour by the front door into which we must not go alone, unless we had company, because the carpet was new, and the room was too cold. I did not want to go, either. Mother’s Aunt Hoyt was hung in there, over the tall mantle of white wood that looked as if it was made of spools of thread, painted. She hadn’t any frame yet but we were going to get her one — perhaps with wedding fees. She hung by hooks in her shoulder-blades and never, never took her eyes off me. Wherever I went she watched me, even behind chairs, and 15 directly under her. She could see without bending her head the least bit. I wondered what she wanted, and why she did not look at the others. She might know that I hadn’t her frame!

She must be like God, I thought, watching to see “ every naughty thing I did ” — only He always rolled his eyes to look in corners.

Father’s study was at the head of the stairs, beyond a darkish corner and near the Attic door. Be sure and make a capital A for the Attic please, it gives a classic flavour to any building if one remembers. We always fell down when we ran up to show him dead birds or pullets’ eggs. John forgot to step up the last stair, and I ran up one too many. Alice always came behind. I do not recall that we ever fell down those particular stairs.

The sitting-room was under the study, and the bedroom opened off it, on the east side toward the garden, which was down hill. Alice and I slept in the trundle-bed. The big bed swallowed it in the day time. Sometimes, when our father was away, we could not get it out, it stuck so, and we had to get into the big bed till he came.

It used to take a very long time to get undressed at night, and longer still to get 16 dressed in the morning. I dreaded the dressing when I got into bed at night. Some of my clothes were sure to be lost after John had scrabbled them over to find his.

The kitchen was next to the sitting-room. We ate in the dining-room end of it. I had to hold my knife in the hand toward the wood-shed door and have done so ever since. When company came and I had to sit on the other side of the table, and try my very best to “ act like a little lady,” I always held it in the wrong hand and had to be corrected. John had to hold his knife in the hand toward the pantry door, and got left-handed. They might have known!

I forgot the bear in the corner of the bedroom behind the big bed. I was always sure he was a she-bear, like the ones that ate up so many poor little Bible children — whose mammas had not told them how to be polite to people. When it was light he did not show. He — or she — never really came toward us, but he would get up on his hind legs ready to start. I can see him this moment !

When I got too scared and he just began to take the first step with one of his hind legs, and his eyes had started, I used to call out very quickly, that I was thirsty or too 17 hot. As soon as the door was opened I could see that he was only a corner. I tried to keep Alice awake, so they would not blame me for waking her up.

I have hardly, since, prayed to God with such agony of appeal as when I used to beg that a crack might be left in that door ! I rejoice that the time has come when bears are not bug-bears: when they submit to being hugged.

IV

T DO not wonder you forget the order in -1* which we came. You see, I was born before we went to Andover, John during father’s first summer vacation and Alice just before he graduated — Margaret and Hal and Amy all came later, Amy after Alice died. Sometimes I grow confused myself.

Amy promised to write Mrs. Burton that she would come for a few days, and Mr. Nelson is to spend the evening with us to-night. It seems he has some church matters to consult me about! I feel unusually brave to-day. Mrs. Arthur Hammond called with her little boy and I couldn’t refuse to see her. She and Margaret were in college together. I was there with them one year, but I was a low-down “ special ” and lived off the Campus, so that I did not know her well. She asked if I should not like to “ put my hand on the baby’s face to see how he looked — whether he was like her.”

I fear I did choke a bit at that, but she did not notice it. I told her, No, that I had not yet learned to make out much by touching things — and she did not insist. She added as a half apology, that she had forgotten my trouble was so recent. A few years’ time, more or less, is rather a slight matter.

I had a foolish fear, all the while, that the child was looking at me. There is something about a child’s eyes that has always awed me. Hal and Arthur had a way of looking over my shoulder, as if they saw something which I could not, especially at night.

Any physical deformity or abnormity seems to fascinate a child. Mother used to tell me not to look at Mr. Walter’s thumb that was cut off, but I just had to, to see if it was not perhaps grown out since I saw it before. It took the whole dinner hour sometimes to get a good look. If my faith and good will had availed it would have grown again.

Once Mr. Walters asked Hal, I remember, how old John was. He thought a moment and said, “ He’ll be eight next June if he lasts .” Mother exclaimed at that, but he said very stolidly and seriously “ Alice didn’t.”

After the first break, there always seems to 20 be an “if ” with every one, and a silent, if not spoken, “ Alice didn’t.”

When we were little children father often came in to kiss us good-night after mother had given us the finishing touches. I remember that one night when the snow was piled in masses all about the house, and there were broken wreaths and trailing garlands of frostflowers on the window panes, glistening in the moonlight, he said, “ Now think of all the little squirrels and rabbits snuggled in their holes and go to sleep.”

From that time to this I pray nightly for all the little creatures tucked away in their nests, and worry about the naughty ones that are prowling about out-doors.

Yes. I worry about them, but I am sure that if I were a creature myself I should prowl all night. To be out in the wild night alone, has been for years, in my mind, the very supreme of freedom. I revel in the thought till I am giddy.

Do you remember in the Centaur that Macareus says of his youth, “ I bounded whither I would, a blind and chainless life ” ? And that the very blindness seems an added 21 freedom? It is as if sight were a restriction, involving limitation and responsibility.

The idea is quite comprehensible to me now. I find myself, shut out from my old employments and necessarily a part of the general social impedimenta, accepting release from old duties as one of the compensations; and with release from duty comes a sort of recklessness. Not physically but mentally comes the temptation to “ bound whither I will, a blind and chainless life.”

Things which would have shocked me, when I had only time to glance at them in passing, I do not fear to think now. There seems to be no condemning Presence — only the Darkness — “ that absolute darkness which is the pity of the gods.” I seem to be enfolded in it — protected and cherished by it.

V

T HEY all went to Mrs. Carton’s to tea last night, and I sat on the porch in the moonlight — at least, I thought I was in the moonlight until they came home and told me that clouds had gathered, and it was so dark Amy had torn her dress upon a wire.

I had been quite happy. A cricket chirruped so near me that I did not dare move for fear of crushing it. I do not wonder that the Japanese buy little insect creatures in cages to sing for them. Katy-dids would be a real comfort to me if Arthur had not said once that they seemed to repeat Hal’s “ Alice didn’t.” I love them now, but they seem always to be mourning for our little dead sister, and when I listen to them sometimes, a tear comes — a blind tear that seems almost an impertinence. I think of her more than I have done before.

When the cricket found me too stupid and crept off to bed, I amused myself with inventing a Club. Yes, a real Club. The members of it are all blind but I think you might call it a literary club. We have several literary people in it, and enough others to admire them properly. They are too busy to admire each other much.

There is Milton, of course, and Homer, and Isaac and Ossian and old Polyphemus, who is bound over to keep the peace and promises not to throw islands at people.

Samson is a member, and Justice and Cupid and Nydia and Hope and Faith. I cannot remember them all, nor tell the order in which they have been enrolled.

Charity applied for admission, but she is not blind, so of course we could not let her in. Her own sisters black-balled her. I am not quite sure that Justice is stone-blind, but she says she is, and after admitting her as a charter member we cannot very well raise questions as to her eligibility or her credentials.

Speaking of “ stone-blind ” reminds me of sand-blind and Shakspeare’s high-gravel blind. I wonder which is positive and which superlative. I must break myself of worrying about words and what they come from. It is a bad habit when one cannot hunt in dictionaries one’s self.

John used to call me a dictionary fiend. That sort of devil is in a fair way to be starved out of me now. Do you remember Lamb’s Poor Tobin who did not regret his sight so much for the weightier kinds of reading as because he “missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine or a light pamphlet ” ?

Now we shall have time for a lot of biography. Don’t, I beg, let me ramble off with that silly Club !

I must go back a little, and you will have to rearrange later. When I was a little less than six years old Mrs. Boynton, whom we dearly loved, happened to be down at our house one night and to invite me to go home with her to sleep. It had been my fondest ambition to stay away from home for a whole night. There was a flavour of recklessness about the thought which exhilarated me. I had never been allowed to do so, but Mrs. Boynton seemed to possess a magic influence that won the day, though even she had to plead.

We had a delightful evening and I got to bed without any touch of homesickness — though I wished Alice had come too. Before 25

I fell asleep I felt a twinge of it, and even suggested going home and coming some other night, but it was too late. In the night I awoke and cried. Not willing to hurt Mrs. Boynton’s feelings I told her that I was very happy with her, but I thought it “ would be pleasanter to die at home.”

My spirits revived in the morning, and I had some real dough of my very own — dark blue dough, I can see it now, — and was rolling out pie crusts on a chair with a broken knife handle for a rolling pin, when father dashed up through the snow banks and said I must leave my beautiful pies and come home with him quickly to see my baby sister.

Of all nights in the world! I never liked Mrs. Boynton so well after that, although I knew she could not help it. In my vexation I told John that “ it was just like her ” — which was the worst that could be said of anybody.

That was Margaret. Two years later Hal was born. I do not remember any of the particulars, only he was baptised at home and not at church because some of the church people thought four children enough for a minister on a small salary “ and war prices.” I did not 26 know at the time why he was not taken to the church like John and Alice.

Whenever I hear those Bates children go by, I think how I used to take care of Margaret and Hal — Hallie we called him. A mother would have been thought lacking in natural affection in those days, who called a baby by its bare name.

We had a new second-hand baby carriage for him. There were no Indian “ buggies ” then. It had two wheels and a handle in front to pull it by, and a cross-stick to hold on to. This came out easily, but we could stick it back through the hole, and when it was lost father could make another. There was an iron brace that held it up in front when no one was drawing it. Alice and John usually went along to help in case of emergency.

We had four-plank walks with wide cracks running lengthwise. When the wheels got into them, or ran off the edge plank, the baby always fell out and we had a great mess. Folks had to run out of houses — cross as bears sometimes — and get us picked up.

If we forgot, the least minute, and let go, the whole thing went over behind and the 27 handle stuck straight up in -the air. It was harder to find the baby then, than when we tipped it over sidewise — or sideways, which is it?

VI

TV/T ISS AMES? I was sure it was your step. I am glad you are come, though I am not lonely. Mr. Nelson comes every morning now that Amy is away. I wonder that I hesitated so long to see him.

A long letter came at noon. She is having a delightful time. She has met an old friend of ours at Mrs. Burton’s, a Mr. Kennedy who has some title which I forget. We knew him quite intimately during John’s college days and Jack loved him very dearly. Indeed, Jack always insisted that he admired me. Husbands do not like to admit that they had no rivals. He went to India for some business firm soon after we were married and has never been home since. Jack and I hoped to see him when we were there but failed somehow.

Amy admires him extremely. I am amused ^ and surprised at her enthusiasm. I am glad " she went.

Yes, the Club met last night. Thank you for reminding me. I had a long talk with 29

Nydia which I must tell you about sometime. It reminded me of one day in London when the fog was so dense that people could not find their way. Even the policemen had to beg the blind beggars to lead them about.

Two new names are on our waiting list, Romney Leigh and Mr. Rochester. We are not sure that they will care to join without Aurora and Jane. The committee will find out before we vote.

Homer saw me home — if I may use the old phrase. We sat for a while, talking on the swing-house steps, as Jack and I used to do. He says he was only joking about the Trojan War and never expected to be taken so seriously. Helen and Paris were down in Egypt all that while. “ Do you suppose Paris was so popular,” he asked, “ that the Trojans would coop themselves up within their little walls for ten years, to help him keep another man’s wife — not fairly come by, at that — with CEnone’s friends all up in arms against him?

“ Besides,” he went on, “ it did not matter what Trojans would do. Did I suppose the Greeks would go off and fight ten years for a huzzy like Helen and leave their own wives, Clytemnestra and the rest, to show what 30 mice were likely to do when the cat was away ? ”

He says he is really proud to have made up such an interesting story about people who were all fools on both sides, and to make so many people believe it to be true.

I told him that our American Confucius said no one could fool all the people all the time. He laughed and said:

“ It has been done.”

What should we do if we could not “ pretend ” ! I am crying this moment — but nonsense does me good. What learned critic is it, who says there really is not truth enough to satisfy our cravings — when we sift it all out ? Then he adds that it “ would be madness to deny ourselves the resources of the imagination.”

I may as well get what pleasure I can out of the Club.

This morning I somehow fell to thinking of little Josey Palmer, who has probably smaller Joseys of her own by this time. When she had learned to walk she insisted upon going with her father everywhere. He was a Professor of Greek, and so absent-minded that he never noticed her. She amused herself by 31 walking behind him and trying to step in his footprints. They were a funny pair, going back and forth to the Academy, which stretched across the end of the long straight road, like the arms of a great cross lying against the foot of old Mount Equinox. Mrs. Palmer had so many other babies she never missed her, and she kept it up for years, until at last the family awoke to the fact that she had acquired a very extraordinary gait, stretching her little legs far ahead with every step, and halting a bit as she brought up the other foot.