12 Those child transgressions

My mother could never quite believe that I was not meant for the realms above. So sure was she of my early demise that I began to be a little impatient for the heavenly event. I used to imagine myself setting forth in great state in the Little White Hearse—for of course I was much too big to be taken away in a hack. After that I would flit about in a variety of wings, doing nothing in particular, for my imagination failed me completely when it came to a working programme in Paradise. It was really quite a jolly game, that helped me immensely when I was bored with living cooped up in the house while other children whooped and hollered around the village pump. My greatest disappointment centred in that pastime. If only I might have trampled that delicious mud, I felt that even death would not be too big a price. My second disappointment was God.

God kept a very jealous eye on wilful children. That I was a victim of this pestiferous sin I discovered one lovely morning when the sun was a bristling disk in the sky, and the local children especially merry, splashing through the puddles. Of course, I could not go out. There was a cold wind, my mother said, and if I caught a chill, what might not happen! It was all very sad. But, I thought to myself, just to open the window and hang out for a moment would hardly amount to a very heinous sin. It was a thrilling experience—I even yelled a little, just to show that after all I was not lacking in social graces. Perhaps I wriggled. At any rate, down came the window with a terrifying clop right on my wicked neck!

My screams brought mother on the run. No doubt she was frightened and envisioned who knows what injuries. When she saw that nothing much was amiss, however, her temper, always quick, rose to the occasion.

‘Now you see how God punishes naughty girls!’ she cried. ‘Perhaps, after this, you’ll do as you’re told!’

Well, for the most part, I always did. My mother had a sharp tongue as well as a sharp eye. That I did not so much resent—mamma had so many soft moments. But that God should plunk the window down on my neck struck me as both ungentlemanly and unjust. From that day I had no use for the Deity. The angels were exempt from this condemnation—they seemed to be a cheerful lot with cheerful duties. And Jesus, the perennial Christmas Babe who later had to die for the sins of the world wrung many tears from my heart. I could never understand why God treated him so badly—except that God was just that kind of diety.

But though my mother was apprehensive that every season was my last (and who can blame her, when I was the only one of her babies born in those arduous years to survive infancy, and then only to fall prey to awful sickness) it was no excuse for ignorance. I had to learn a multitude of poems and prayers and scriptural verses. That was not very difficult if the words had a musical sound and a fitting rhythm. ‘Lift up your heads, O ye hills’ and ‘Yea, though ye slay me, yet will I believe in Him’—such phrases had a fascination for me, entirely apart from any meaning. And of all the many sacred verses, I loved best the lyric passage:

Dröttin blessi mig or mína
Morgun kveld og nött or, dag,
Dröttin vevji vaengi sína
Mig um lífs of salar hag.

A beautiful conception of a divinity (which I never connected with an anthropomorphic God) that enfolded every living being in protective wings of love.

It was fun to learn these things, even if it seemed a little silly to roll them off so regularly every night. Where I rebelled, with sad consequences, was at the business of learning to read. Not that I was not thrilled with the general idea, but when my mother brought out the old yellow-paged family Bible for a text-book I struck for liberty and licence. I would not learn to read that musty volume. Besides, my mother’s choice was sadly inept.

‘And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.’

Slowly and seriously my mother read, her slender finger tracing the words for me. Simple little words that brought a curious chill and as swift rebellion to my mind.

‘Now, child,’ said she, ‘see how far you can go. Spell out the letters, and it won’t be hard.’

Bleakly I looked at her. Well, let the heavens fall and all dark doom swallow me up—my mind was set. ‘I won’t read,’ I said. ‘I won’t read a single word, mamma.’

I think she would have been less surprised if I had bitten her.

‘You won’t read?’ she repeated helplessly, and, snatching at saving reason, quickly asked, ‘Are you sick? Does your head ache?’

‘No, mamma, I am not sick.’

‘What’s the matter with you then? Stop being silly and do as you are told.’

She might as well have spoken to a stone: neither argument nor reprimand moved me. I was wicked, I knew, and resigned to an evil fate, but not to reading such mischievous stuff. That fate, in the guise of a dark cupboard under the stairs quickly befell me. It was frightfully black, and I was sure that a thousand mice were nibbling in the corners. I sat there with my sins and waited for eternity to pass. I did not cry. I just sat there listening to the imaginary mice, and wondering how long it would be until they had eaten everything else, and would begin on me.

At least a hundred years had dragged by when I heard my father come home, and the next moment found myself hauled up before him in all my dusty iniquity. Said my indignant mother, when the chronicle of my unconscionable revolt ended, ‘Now, young lady, perhaps you’ll think differently, and obey like a sensible child.’

To which I instantly replied—quite as though she had pressed a button and released a prepared answer: ‘Now I’ll never learn to read, mother.’

It may have been her unfailing sense of humour which saved me from further pressure, which undoubtedly would have had a serious psychological effect. Or there may have been something in my strained white face that actually frightened her. She was never one to understand mental complexes or straitened emotional states. So now, rather than cope with something at once ridiculous and incredible, for I was usually obedient and completely ruled by her influence, she left me where I was, disgraced and contemptible, and hurried to the kitchen. Father said nothing, and quietly slipped out of the house. When he returned there was a whimsical smile on his face, and in his hand a small pink book. Quite as though nothing unusual were afoot, he exhibited his purchase so that I should see in all its shining wonder the fine frontispiece. There, bold as you please, stood a chubby little chap with a bundle on a stick jauntily perched over one shoulder. His cap sat crookedly, and his round face beamed. He was utterly adorable, and I promptly fell in love with him.

‘This is Master Neils,’ father told me. ‘A gay young fellow, with adventure in his soul. He is setting forth to see the world. Now, how would you like to join in the journey, little miss?’

I was already upon his knees, my eyes glued to the charming creature. I was speechless for the thumping in my breast.

‘Ah, I see that you do,’ said papa. ‘Well, then, you must learn to read. That, my dear, is the very best way to journey about the world.’

Thus was I saved, and, needless to say, I loved that little pink book above any other. It was not only my key to dreams, but a passport into a kingdom of understanding that has to do with charities to which the Marthas of this world remain for ever blind. I was to remember that trifling incident many times, and out of it grew the perception that, like liberty, true benevolence is a quality of mind.

That my mother had assumed the role of a commanding executive in our household was not exactly her fault. By nature she was gay and instinctively averse from conventional strictures that loom so all-important to the average woman. There was no sacred order in her house. If the weekly paper arrived in the midst of washday she would let the water cool and read the serial with no qualms whatsoever. Water could always be reheated, but enthusiasm, once cooled, was stale as a dry herring. We had our meals at the prescribed hours, although, for herself, she cherished no such boresome ritual. No one ever had less interest in food. How she managed to keep so healthy on such sketchy fare is still a mystery. ‘If I’m not hungry, why should I eat?’ she would say, and sit down with a cup of poisonously strong coffee and her endless knitting. It was the same with clothes. Now, why should she bundle up against the weather, when she never took a chill? In zero weather she hung out the steaming wash, dressed in nothing warmer than a cotton gown and undergarments made from carefully bleached flour sacking. ‘Well, what of it?’ she would parry. She never caught cold, and, besides, was immune to all diseases.

For her children, it was another story. I, at least, was swaddled in clothes, made to eat when I had no appetite, and, it now seems to me, actually was coddled into the invalidism she meant to avoid. Indeed, it became a kind of sin for me to even think of behaving like other children—a frightful challenge to evil fate even to dream of being well. I suspect there was a wide streak of jealous possessiveness in her character which fixed upon the one thing the world could not snatch from her—the affection of her children. Yet even in this she was not altogether successful. In my case, at least, it was papa who figured actively in my infant brooding. For no matter how gentle and kind mamma might be, and everlastingly concerned for my health, I knew quite well that it was papa who came nearer to understanding me. That this incipient understanding was not permitted to grow and outlast childhood was, I think, my mother’s fault. In the end, she weaned me completely away, made an alien of the parent whose vagaries I share, and, as I now know, diverted my normal instincts into channels of activity for which I had no natural talents.

None of this my loving mother meant to do. She was always pathetically eager to plan some happiness for us, to join in the gaiety, however tired she might be. Those early years of unrelieved privation had concentrated into one unbearable memory. Her small son weeping out his heart because on Christmas Eve, when he had set out so stoutly through the storm to attend the church concert, there was not even so much as a red apple on the tree for him. She had not wanted him to go, but he had argued so defensively out of his child’s high faith. He had been so good and did not God love good children? He had watched little sister while mamma worked and tried his best to wait on papa, who was sick in bed. Oh, there would be something on the Christ Child’s lovely tree for him—he would not be forgotten because he was little and shy and so very poor.

So now, when things were a little easier—when there was sometimes as much as seven dollars in the weekly pay envelope—why, she naturally was determined to make the most of every festival. My birthday was always a great occasion. I think it marked a sort of conquest over the fear that dogged her mind. I might be doomed, as one doctor had hinted to perish before I ever reached the teens, but each birthday was a milestone conquered. There was one particular birthday I shall never forget. I think I was seven or thereabout. Years did not mean so much, nor do they yet. At any rate, on this occasion mother had set her mind on a big party, a real Icelandic splurge. How hard she worked, God love her. What piles of her paper-thin and widely famed pancakes she made. How fine her fig cake looked in its gleaming brown frosting with the golden flecks winking gemlike on its proud head. What delicious odours teased my curious nose when the Icelandic coffee-bread came from the hot oven. Oh, it was a gallant time, let me tell you!

Nor was that the whole of it. Deep mysteries were brewing. I was sent to bed and enjoined to stay there on pain of severe displeasure, while mother remained in the dim secrecy of the dining-room. She was sewing something I must not see, that I quickly surmised, and squirmed and tossed with curiosity. As a rule I was not given to snooping, for I had scarcely any interest in the events of the common round. The world of my own imagination was much more intriguing and thrice as real. But this was a time of testing for which I had no strength. There came a moment on the day preceding the party when, black guilt on my soul, I decided to break the stern commandment. I actually opened mamma’s bureau drawer!

If my heart sank in sore disappointment over what I then discovered, I quickly acknowledged that I probably deserved it. I had been very, very wicked, and wickedness brought its own reward. What I discovered was a huge doll, dressed in a marvellous creation of old rose and yellow silk. Yes, there, before my guilty eyes lay the treasure my mother had been creating. A doll!

How little I wanted a doll! I had hoped it was a dress, or even a new pinafore—but a doll! With tears of mortification and shame streaking my face, I fled back to my corner. Oh, how was I to meet the horrible experience that awaited me? Mamma would expect me to be so thrilled. And at the moment it seemed to me I should never be happy again. Dolls were such stupid things. I had no mothering instincts whatsoever. Never, in my entire childhood, did the game of motherhood enter my head. I had squads of paper dolls, it is true, but these were amenable personages. Sometimes they were a congregation, harangued by a fat brown fellow who reminded me of a country preacher I had seen. Sometimes they formed a company headed for adventure. They were, in fact, characters that acted out my fluent tales. They were people, and I loved them, but what was I to do with a huge yellow-headed thing of sawdust and porcelain?

Another horrid thought assailed me. Mother might expect me to keep the creature in the little wicker carriage I had received last Christmas. That would be the end of everything. Almost since the beginning it had served as a bed for my two cats. They had been dear, fluffy kittens when it arrived, and had quickly learned to sleep stretched out like little gentlemen, each on his pillow, one at the foot, the other at the head. Now much too large to share the coveted bed, they fought for its possession, the victor still taking his siesta stretched full length and purring loudly. Cats were the joy of my life. I loved them for their grace and independence. I respected them because they brooked no discourtesy and gave their affection only where it was deserved. They were my unfailing confidants, and I never doubted they understood me, and thoroughly appreciated the yarns I spun for them.

One of the cats seemed especially addicted to solemn philosophy. He used to sit at my knees, his green eyes fixed on the middle distance, and purr in a professional rumble as I gabbled on. ‘Yes, yes, that’s a likely tale, my child,’ he seemed to be purring, ‘but oh, what glamorous mysteries my inner vision beholds, to which you, poor dear, are blind as the blindest mouse!’

Naturally, it was to Gráni I now poured out my woeful confession.

‘I have been very, very bad,’ I told him, rubbing his elastic back. ‘I have been snooping in mamma’s bureau—a thing even papa hesitates to do. And what did I get for my courage, do you suppose? A doll! A stiff, wretched doll!’

Next morning I slept late, and was wakened by the entrance of mamma and a woman friend who was helping with the party. They came in smiling, and mamma, bending to kiss me, said, ‘God bless you, dear, on this and every birthday.’ Then, with tender pride, she brought from behind her back the big blonde doll in all its silken splendour. It was the moment I never forgot. I was so utterly ashamed I could only gaze at her speechless. Which fetched the coals upon my head. With the happiest expression, mamma turned to her friend.

‘Bless her little heart—she’s absolutely overcome!’ she said. ‘Dear little soul—she never had a pretty doll before.’

What a worm I felt. How dearly I should have loved to confess and cry out my wickedness. Instead, I hugged the beastly doll, and stupidly blinked my eyes. No doubt I looked a stolid simpleton. I was so often accused of letting the cat get my tongue that I have no doubt whatever that my queer silences were usually interpreted as a lack of intelligence. I sometimes think I must have been rather stupid in those years of recurrent illness. I remember so little of the actual daily happening around me, and yet I was always acutely aware of moods, and while I sat so stolidly in my place I never missed a single oddity of behaviour in the occasional visitor. Voices, gestures, a colourful phrase even though meaningless at the time, these stayed with me. So, too, I might be in the grip of some undefined emotion, and, like the wind out of a clear sky, thoughts undreamed before would swoop across my mind. So now I suddenly perceived with incontestable reason that truthfulness was not always a virtue. I could not now hurt mamma’s feelings just to give myself the relief of confessing what I had done and how mistaken she was in her good intentions. Mamma was a great stickler for truth, for speaking her mind, and not giving any false impressions. Just the same, I knew now what papa meant when he argued that kindness was much more important than the conceits of a Puritan conscience. Not, of course, that I put it to myself in those words. I just decided that I would do as papa often did—say nothing, and let truth take care of itself.

How I scowled at that yellow-headed doll when the women moved off, cheerfully satisfied, as adults generally were with all their mistaken efforts on behalf of children. How I hated the smiling beauty. How disgusted I was to have to parade it as my dear treasure before the guests that night. Truly a time of hemlock retribution. Still, truth compels me to admit that everything was not gall and wormwood. In fact, delicious excitement triumphed so soon as the odious courtesy was off my mind. So many little gifts were showered upon me—even a bright new dollar, which I was permitted to hold for a minute or two. Later it would go for cod-liver oil, but now it was mine, and how rich I felt. Indeed, everything went off remarkably well, until Mrs. Swainson, mamma’s best friend, brought her young son Johnny, who, quaking but obedient, handed me a mysterious package. Now, Johnny was a very nice boy, for whom I had a deep, though secret affection. He was almost as easy to play with as Gráni, my cat. We were really the best of companions, and therefore understood that our attachment was not to be flaunted under adult noses. Yet, here he was, made to hand me this gift, with every one looking on, and I must open the package. When the paper came off, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. Dear me! here was a treasure. I simply couldn’t credit my vision. Think of it! There on the rustly paper lay a silver-plated belt such as Icelandic women wear on their national dress, and it was set with my blue birth stones.

‘Now, picture that!’ a laughing voice exclaimed. ‘The little lover brings his dear the bridal belt. Now, surely he gets a kiss for it!’

Gracious goodness! Kiss Johnny—kiss my good friend! Frantically my glances swept the grown-up faces. Oh, were such fools ever! How could they ask me to do such a thing to a decent little boy! I did not have to look at Johnny to know how horrified he was—how he would hate me if I let him be thus humiliated. A stout female with a determined expression edged closer. I did not wait for the mischief I knew she contemplated. With a muffled squeal, I bolted from the scene. Laughter pursued me, horrid peals of merriment that brought a nervous dew out on my skin.

Thanks to mamma, who, at that moment, announced that the table was spread, I got away. With no thought to the fine feast I was missing, I tore up the stairs, my one conscious desire to hide away for ever. Mamma’s room had a big closet, and I would creep into that, I thought, and then it occurred to me that such an obvious place was worse than none. There was no other hiding place—but wait! There was! After all, I wasn’t very big, and that old-fashioned washstand of mamma’s stood waist high. I could easily squeeze into that.

When I wrenched open the double doors, I saw something that so astonished me and enthralled me that every fear fled. It was a blue paper box, parading four full rows of fat chocolate pigs with beautiful pink eyes! No need to tell me whose gift this was. Only papa would have thought of such a delightfully useless present. Why, I didn’t even eat candy. I could play with my darling fat pigs, and in due course give each away as the sacrificial spirit moved me. I was so thrilled at the rosy prospect that I forgot Johnny. I forgot the party I was missing. I just sat there in utter bliss, twelve pink-eyed porkers on the floor before me, happy as a herdsman on a sunny hill, when papa himself came to find me. ‘Dear me, whatever have you there?’ said he, his eyes twinkling. ‘Now, why should any one give sweets to a child that doesn’t eat them?’

‘Because that’s why!’ I shouted. And, somehow, we perfectly understood each other.

—

There was another time when papa turned disappointment to joy. It was Christmas, and mamma, still convinced that her birthday gift had been a huge success, gave me two little dolls—one dressed in the Icelandic national costume, the other like a sailor. As often happened, she was much too busy to notice my lack of enthusiasm. Anyway, she had taken such pains with the little dress, how could any child be other than pleased? And now she was making the Christmas chocolate. My sister Anna was there, now a pretty teen-age girl who sang in the church choir and seemed to me a paragon of all the maidenly graces. She had brought her guitar, and very likely would sing a duet with brother Minty in the course of the evening. Every one was very gay, and made a fuss over my novel presents. And no wonder, for the little dolls had each a tiny chair with a real plush bottom! Yet I hung about with a sober face, saying nothing whatsoever.

‘Well! Well!’ papa suddenly exclaimed. ‘I don’t wonder you look thoughtful, Lalla. A bride and groom on your hands, without a moment’s warning. Now, what do you say to a wedding?’

‘A wedding! But, papa—what to do for a minister?’ I queried, eager enough, now that a game was to be played.

‘Tut tut! Fetch my frock coat, and you shall see,’ papa answered. Sure enough, when he had donned the old Prince Albert and set his face in a serious mould, papa might easily have passed for ‘His Reverence.’ Unless, of course, you caught the sly twinkle in his eye. But the dolls never guessed. Very eloquently, he read them the marriage service, with every one gathered round, and when all was done mamma’s Christmas chocolate did double service. We toasted the bridal pair in the first cup, and drank the second to celebrate a happy Icelandic Jule.

It was all very jolly. The dolls were set on a shelf near the little tree, and when we had sampled every one of mamma’s culinary marvels, we drew up our chairs in a ring while papa lighted the candles. The coal-oil lamp was dimmed and while the little golden flames leaped and flickered upon the sweet green branches, we sang the old old songs of the dear Christ Child and his holy maiden mother. And, sitting there in utter quietness, mamma’s face was somehow changed—as though in this moment of blessed peace all the tenderness she hid in her heart were shining through the flesh. I should like to have told her how radiant she seemed, but for that I had no words. I could only cling to her hand when she came, that night, as always, to wish me good rest, to say, with old-world grace: ‘God grant you good night!’