28 Darker reason
The season closed, and almost immediately I found myself in the thick of domestic calamities. And what maddening calamities they were to us girls! In reckless autumnal burgeoning, our poor mothers produced a new crop of babies. To no one’s joy, that we could see. It was nature, and the will of God and had to be endured.
Nature be damned, said we, fierce as fishwives. If other laws of nature were circumvented and controlled, why should generation be the one exception? Why indeed, thought we, glaring at each other helplessly. Tilly always mild, demurred a little at such brazenness. It really wasn’t nice to talk about such things, perhaps we might not have been born if people had been too wise.
‘So what?’ demanded I. ‘What difference would it make?’ Of all the crazy things peddled out to us, the craziest, to me, was the feeble twaddle about being grateful for the gift of life. Who could be grateful for bleak existence full of misery and deprivation? My own lot was beside the point. Before human beings could be expected to render thanks for the burden of life, it should be something better than the miserable scramble we saw all about us. Something less cruel than history portrayed. What was more, said I, waxing furiously oratorical, if that kind of craziness hadn’t been stuffed into people’s heads they wouldn’t have made themselves paupers by having children they couldn’t decently feed! Even children who weren’t fit to live!
Whereupon I could have bitten my careless tongue. Tilly looked so crushed. The Rhinertson baby, which, fortunately had died—some said it was mercifully permitted to die—had been hideously misshapen. Scarcely human. And other whispers had revived ancient scandal. Mrs. Rhinertson had herself to blame, the wise protested. What could you expect, when you married your own uncle! It was no wonder the children were puny _s why, every one could see that the little girl who preceded this—this mishap—wasn’t normal. The child was nearly four, and couldn’t speak a word! Buzz, buzz, buzz, wherever two or three gathered. Poor Tilly, meanwhile, creeping through her duties like a timid little mouse, her soft blue eyes apologetic and ashamed.
Laura frankly raged, a state of mind I understood quite thoroughly. Whatever hope she may have entertained of financial assistance was completely blasted. Doctor’s bills and a new baby were hardly the sort of inducements which would persuade her stepfather to invest in her education.
‘It is crazy!’ Laura shouted. ‘Nobody wanted that baby—least of all, mamma. I can’t stand it! Everything gets worse and worse. Somehow, I’ll get away. I’d rather starve trying to make something of myself. There’s nothing for me at home. Nothing, nothing, nothing. It’s a holy mess, and I’m getting out. What’s more, if I ever get ahead, I’ll see to it little Elma gets a chance.’
Minnie Nelson, though less bitter, was just as resentful. Theirs was a happy, moderately comfortable home, where goodwill and a natural love of music created a cheerful atmosphere. They were all good-looking, and good-natured, and even the littlest tot sang as gaily as a wren. Just the same, there were too many of them, Minnie contended, as dourly as her blithe soul permitted. ‘The kids are smart, but what good does it do if they can’t even get music lessons.’
None too cheerfully, I mulled this over as I sewed the tiny garments for our own prospective blessing. Sewed them well, since sew I must, for mamma’s eyesight was seriously affected. No angel of mercy, resentment worked like yeast in my mind.
Whirling the old machine, I thought of the millions of women committed to this sort of thing, world without end. To drudgery, and pinching, and those niggardly economies that stifle the spirit and slay all hope.
To what conceivable end, I wonder. Was it so important to perpetuate this dreary existence? If so, important to whom? To the churches, that they might have these miserables on whom to practise humiliating charity? To the State, that it might extort tithes and services? To the ‘Big Bosses,’ whom little Sam hated so fiercely?
Oh, I had listened to his reviling with attentive ears, despite my seeming indifference. Something of the hope he placed in his sacred unions was at least partially clear. But how effective could union protection of labourers hope to become, with the market glutted with unskilled workers? It was all very confusing, and beyond my depths, yet one thing was certain: all that fine balderdash about the glory of motherhood could stand a bit of cool dissecting. All that mother-child glorification that ended in the cradle. It was time, it seemed to me, that the serious thought should embrace the future of those hallowed infants. A kiss or two in infancy was meagre compensation for a lifetime of bitter bread!
I had seen many broken creatures, had heard so much that was woeful and sad. I thought of Big Tom, sitting of a summer night, watching the sunset with brooding, lustreless eyes, his whole expression so darkly withdrawn as to put me in mind of a passing hearse. What did he mourn, sitting there? What once fair dream lay dead in his heart?
That was the tormenting thought that drove me for comfort to the quiet hills, to the small, green coulees, where the sun dappled the tender grass with dancing motes of gold. It was there, and not in any church, that God became a reality, a living, healing influence, that eased my troubled mind. Here, in the quiet hills, where little swift creatures sped on soundless feet and the whirr of tiny wings ascending conspired to create a sense of joyous purposes, it was not so hard to think, with Tennyson:
That nothing walks on aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God has made the pile complete;
not so hard to apply to my own small need, the poet’s fine dreaming:
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
But in my spirit will I dwell,
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
For though my lips may breath adieu,
I cannot think the thing farewell.
How many errant tears I wept into the tender grass on those quiet slopes, stirred to the quick by so many illusive images that teased the mind, carried far beyond my own fears into the wider sea of universal experience. For that was the queer thing in me no one understood. I could never free myself from the tentacles of the eternal years. I wanted to be happy, but demanded a happiness that had some deeper meaning than creature enjoyments that die on a breath, leaving only dull ashes behind. I had seen too much of ash heaps!
Where to seek such an excellent state was a mystery. I only knew that life without purpose, joy without meaning, was a betrayal of those inner impulses of the soul that linked all mankind, living and dead. It was not an intellectual concept, nor any idea gleaned from prose. It was something that flowed through me when I lay on the grass on that old hill-side, watching the tangled clouds, or the low, winding valley that unrolled to the dark blue water of the bay. Something out of the elements themselves, that seemed to carry my thoughts backward into other times, where the forgotten dead had joyed and sorrowed. Always the one thought I carried away, the one abiding determination: to keep, against the world, my own little fragment of that mysterious quality in man which gives him the power to dream.
Something else I discovered. These thoughts of mine were unwelcome and annoying to others. It was queer, and definitely boring, to speak of anything so vague as a haunting feeling of kinship with ages past. It was sheer affectation to utter anything save moth-eaten commonplaces. Yet people read, I supposed; suffered, without complaint, the homilies of scribes. They went to church, and, apparently, listened to scriptural passages that rolled like grandest organ music. Yet none of this coloured their speech, dignified the structure of their mental images. And for any one else to attempt a poetic phrase, however spontaneous, was as shockingly out of place as to breathe the name of God.
Oh, I had mote than enough to learn. Much that was paradoxical and depressing to the eager thing in my mind, enhungered for intelligent revelation. Consequently, I burrowed deeper into my protective shell, adopting as best I could the facile insincerities that pass for thought and feeling.
Fortunately, the business of living devoured so much time that these moody speculations were hardly more than an occasional luxury. A new baby makes more work than a dozen adults. It seemed to me that I was always rushing about buying nipples, bottles, lime water, peppermint, and goodness knows what not.
The buying of groceries, every sort of errand, had to be done, all of which ate up the precious hours. Hours I needed for study and the important business of making my graduation address. Believe me, that took a shred of ingenuity and anxious thought.
Papa had given me two dollars, with which I was determined to uphold the family honour. Fortune favoured me. I found some dotted Swiss marked down to twenty-five cents the yard. With five yards safe in the crook of my arm, and three spools of thread in my pocket, I raced for Woolworth’s, to purchase a fearsome tangle of lace and insertion. Thus committed, I must, forsooth, treadle miles and miles of intricate stitching, mostly by lamplight, to the tune of many a headache and sundry crimps in the erstwhile valuable legs. The dress eventually emerged, flatteringly, and mightily pleasing to vanity. Thought I, triumphantly, how proud mamma would be of me. Why, even my aunt would take no shame, and perhaps my cousin would think me less the gawky lout. Unless the cloudy mirror lied to console me, I really looked quite nice.
When the brave day dawned, however, not a single relative was present to commend me. Not a soul. Though long since I had meticulously peddled out my five tickets. To further deepen the hurt, what I had most set my heart upon, for which I had striven to reach the highest standing—the valedictory—was denied at the last moment.
It chanced we had a singer in the class. So Gladys represented our school by warbling, ‘Go, Pretty Rose,’ and the world must wag along without my painstaking wisdom. To make everything quite perfect, I developed an infection in my right foot, and thought I should never squeeze into my adorable new slippers.
By the time I reached the high school the pain was so intense I wondered how I should drag through the ordeal of endless speeches, endless chatter, of girls whose parents beamed enraptured from the benches. Endless exhortations to youth, standing at the portals of a rosy future!
What did I care for those fine-sounding words just then! How could I believe in a rosy future when not a soul cared a fig whether I had acquitted myself well or ill. When every nerve in my body ached with longing for some tiny gesture of pleased affection, how should I credit the goodwill of the fortuitous world, painted so grandly by glib little gentlemen vestured like penguins?
I was not quite alone, I discovered. Where my own failed me, a friend came to the rescue. Carl was there to pilot me, sweet and kind and patient with my limping. For that I must always love him! For being there; for understanding, without comment, the source of my depression. And if I cried a little when I stole to bed that night, it was less for the hurt in my heart than the dear knowledge that a good friend is sufficient unto any ill day.
