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Real Folks written by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

M >> Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney >> Real Folks



REAL FOLKS

by

MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY

1893







CONTENTS


I. THIS WAY, AND THAT
II. LUCLARION
III. BY STORY-RAIL: TWENTY-SIX YEARS AN HOUR
IV. AFTERWARDS IS A LONG TIME
V. HOW THE NEWS CAME TO HOMESWORTH
VI. AND
VII. WAKING UP
VIII. EAVESDROPPING IN ASPEN STREET
IX. HAZEL'S INSPIRATION
X. COCKLES AND CRAMBO
XI. MORE WITCH-WORK
XII. CRUMBS
XIII. PIECES OF WORLDS
XIV. "SESAME; AND LILIES"
XV. WITH ALL ONE'S MIGHT
XVI. SWARMING
XVII. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
XVIII. ALL AT ONCE
XIX. INSIDE
XX. NEIGHBORS AND NEXT OF KIN
XXI. THE HORSESHOE
XXII. MORNING GLORIES





I.

THIS WAY, AND THAT.


The parlor blinds were shut, and all the windows of the third-story
rooms were shaded; but the pantry window, looking out on a long low
shed, such as city houses have to keep their wood in and to dry
their clothes upon, was open; and out at this window had come two
little girls, with quiet steps and hushed voices, and carried their
books and crickets to the very further end, establishing themselves
there, where the shade of a tall, round fir tree, planted at the
foot of the yard below, fell across the building of a morning.

"It was prettier down on the bricks," Luclarion had told them. But
they thought otherwise.

"Luclarion doesn't know," said Frank. "People _don't_ know things, I
think. I wonder why, when they've got old, and ought to? It's like
the sea-shore here, I guess, only the stones are all stuck down, and
you mustn't pick up the loose ones either."

Frank touched lightly, as she spoke, the white and black and gray
bits of gravel that covered the flat roof.

"And it smells--like the pine forests!"

The sun was hot and bright upon the fir branches and along the
tar-cemented roof.

"How do you know about sea-shores and pine forests?" asked Laura,
with crushing common sense.

"I don't know; but I do," said Frank.

"You don't know anything but stories and pictures and one tree, and
a little gravel, all stuck down tight."

"I'm glad I've got one tree. And the rest of it,--why listen! It's
in the _word_, Laura. _Forest_. Doesn't that sound like thousands of
them, all fresh and rustling? And Ellen went to the sea-shore, in
that book; and picked up pebbles; and the sea came up to her feet,
just as the air comes up here, and you can't get any farther,"--said
Frank, walking to the very edge and putting one foot out over, while
the wind blew in her face up the long opening between rows of brick
houses of which theirs was in the midst upon one side.

"A great sea!" exclaimed Laura, contemptuously. "With all those
other wood-sheds right out in it, all the way down!"

"Well, there's another side to the sea; and capes, and islands,"
answered Frank, turning back. "Besides, I don't pretend it _is_; I
only think it seems a little bit like it. I'm often put in mind of
things. I don't know why."

"I'll tell you what it is like," said Laura. "It's like the gallery
at church, where the singers stand up in a row, and look down, and
all the people look up at them. I like high places. I like Cecilia,
in the 'Bracelets,' sitting at the top, behind, when her name was
called out for the prize; and 'they all made way, and she was on the
floor in an instant.' I should like to have been Cecilia!"

"Leonora was a great deal the best."

"I know it; but she don't _stand out_."

"Laura! You're just like the Pharisees! You're always wishing for
long clothes and high seats!"

"There ain't any Pharisees, nowadays," said Laura, securely. After
which, of course, there was nothing more to be insisted.

Mrs. Lake, the housekeeper, came to the middle upper window, and
moved the blind a little. Frank and Laura were behind the fir. They
saw her through the branches. She, through the farther thickness of
the tree, did not notice them.

"That was good," said Laura. "She would have beckoned us in. I hate
that forefinger of hers; it's always hushing or beckoning. It's only
two inches long. What makes us have to mind it so?"

"She puts it all into those two inches," answered Frank. "All the
_must_ there is in the house. And then you've got to."

"I wouldn't--if father wasn't sick."

"Laura," said Frank, gravely, "I don't believe father is going to
get well. What do you suppose they're letting us stay at home from
school for?"

"O, that," said Laura, "was because Mrs. Lake didn't have time to
sew the sleeves into your brown dress."

"I could have worn my gingham, Laura. What if he should die pretty
soon? I heard her tell Luclarion that there must be a change before
long. They talk in little bits, Laura, and they say it solemn."

The children were silent for a few minutes. Frank sat looking
through the fir-tree at the far-off flecks of blue.

Mr. Shiere had been ill a long time. They could hardly think, now,
what it would seem again not to have a sick father; and they had had
no mother for several years,--many out of their short remembrance of
life. Mrs. Lake had kept the house, and mended their clothes, and
held up her forefinger at them. Even when Mr. Shiere was well, he
had been a reserved man, much absorbed in business since his wife's
death, he had been a very sad man. He loved his children, but he was
very little with them. Frank and Laura could not feel the shock and
loss that children feel when death comes and robs them suddenly of a
close companionship.

"What do you suppose would happen then?" asked Laura, after awhile.
"We shouldn't be anybody's children."

"Yes, we should," said Frank; "we should be God's.'

"Everybody else is that,--_besides_," said Laura.

"We shall have black silk pantalets again, I suppose,"--she began,
afresh, looking down at her white ones with double crimped
ruffles,--"and Mrs. Gibbs will come in and help, and we shall have
to pipe and overcast."

"O, Laura, how nice it was ever so long ago!" cried Frank, suddenly,
never heeding the pantalets, "when mother sent us out to ask company
to tea,--that pleasant Saturday, you know,--and made lace pelerines
for our dolls while we were gone! It's horrid, when other girls have
mothers, only to have a _housekeeper_! And pretty soon we sha'n't
have anything, only a little corner, away back, that we can't hardly
recollect."

"They'll do something with us; they always do," said Laura,
composedly.

The children of this world, even _as_ children, are wisest in their
generation. Frank believed they would be God's children; she could
not see exactly what was to come of that, though, practically. Laura
knew that people always did something; something would be sure to
be done with them. She was not frightened; she was even a little
curious.

A head came up at the corner of the shed behind them, a pair of
shoulders,--high, square, turned forward; a pair of arms, long
thence to the elbows, as they say women's are who might be good
nurses of children; the hands held on to the sides of the steep
steps that led up from the bricked yard. The young woman's face was
thin and strong; two great, clear, hazel eyes looked straight out,
like arrow shots; it was a clear, undeviating glance; it never
wandered, or searched, or wavered, any more than a sunbeam; it
struck full upon whatever was there; it struck _through_ many things
that were transparent to their quality. She had square, white,
strong teeth, that set together like the faces of a die; they showed
easily when she spoke, but the lips closed over them absolutely and
firmly. Yet they were pleasant lips, and had a smile in them that
never went quite out; it lay in all the muscles of the mouth and
chin; it lay behind, in the living spirit that had moulded to itself
the muscles.

This was Luclarion.

"Your Aunt Oldways and Mrs. Oferr have come. Hurry in!"

Now Mrs. Oldways was only an uncle's wife; Mrs. Oferr was their
father's sister. But Mrs. Oferr was a rich woman who lived in New
York, and who came on grand and potent, with a scarf or a pair of
shoe-bows for each of the children in her big trunk, and a hundred
and one suggestions for their ordering and behavior at her tongue's
end, once a year. Mrs. Oldways lived up in the country, and was
"aunt" to half the neighborhood at home, and turned into an aunt
instantly, wherever she went and found children. If there were no
children, perhaps older folks did not call her by the name, but they
felt the special human kinship that is of no-blood or law, but is
next to motherhood in the spirit.

Mrs. Oferr found the open pantry window, before the children had
got in.

"Out there!" she exclaimed, "in the eyes of all the neighbors in the
circumstances of the family! Who does, or _don't_ look after you?"

"Hearts'-sake!" came up the pleasant tones of Mrs. Oldways from
behind, "how can they help it? There isn't any other out-doors. If
they were down at Homesworth now, there'd be the lilac garden and
the old chestnuts, and the seat under the wall. Poor little souls!"
she added, pitifully, as she lifted them in, and kissed them. "It's
well they can take any comfort. Let 'em have all there is."

Mrs. Oferr drew the blinds, and closed the window.

Frank and Laura remembered the strangeness of that day all their
lives. How they sat, shy and silent, while Luclarion brought in cake
and wine; how Mrs. Oferr sat in the large morocco easy-chair and
took some; and Mrs. Oldways lifted Laura, great girl as she was,
into her lap first, and broke a slice for her; how Mrs. Oldways went
up-stairs to Mrs. Lake, and then down into the kitchen to do
something that was needed; and Mrs. Oferr, after she had visited her
brother, lay down in the spare chamber for a nap, tired with her
long journey from New York, though it had been by boat and cars,
while there was a long staging from Homesworth down to Nashua, on
Mrs. Oldways' route. Mrs. Oldways, however, was "used," she said,
"to stepping round." It was the sitting that had tired her.

How they were told not to go out any more, or to run up and
down-stairs; and how they sat in the front windows, looking out
through the green slats at so much of the street world as they could
see in strips; how they obtained surreptitious bits of bread from
dinner, and opened a bit of the sash, and shoved out crumbs under
the blinds for the pigeons that flew down upon the sidewalk; how
they wondered what kind of a day it was in other houses, where there
were not circumstances in the family, where children played, and
fathers were not ill, but came and went to and from their stores;
and where two aunts had not come, both at once, from great ways off,
to wait for something strange and awful that was likely to befall.

When they were taken in, at bedtime, to kiss their father and say
good-night, there was something portentous in the stillness there;
in the look of the sick man, raised high against the pillows, and
turning his eyes wistfully toward them, with no slightest movement
of the head; in the waiting aspect of all things,--the appearance as
of everybody being to sit up all night except themselves.

Edward Shiere brought his children close to him with the magnetism
of that look; they bent down to receive his kiss and his good-night,
so long and solemn. He had not been in the way of talking to them
about religion in his life. He had only insisted on their truth and
obedience; that was the beginning of all religion. Now it was given
him in the hour of his death what he should speak; and because he
had never said many such words to them before, they fell like the
very touch of the Holy Ghost upon their young spirits now,--

"Love God, and keep His commandments. Good-by."

In the morning, when they woke, Mrs. Lake was in their room, talking
in a low voice with Mrs. Oferr, who stood by an open bureau. They
heard Luclarion dusting down the stairs.

Who was taking care of their father?

They did not ask. In the night, he had been taken care of. It was
morning with him, now, also.

Mrs. Lake and Mrs. Oferr were calculating,--about black pantalets,
and other things.

This story is not with the details of their early orphan life. When
Edward Shiere was buried came family consultations. The two aunts
were the nearest friends. Nobody thought of Mr. Titus Oldways. He
never was counted. He was Mrs. Shiere's uncle,--Aunt Oldways'
uncle-in-law, therefore, and grand-uncle to these children. But
Titus Oldways never took up any family responsibilities; he had been
shy of them all his single, solitary life. He seemed to think he
could not drop them as he could other things, if he did not find
them satisfactory. Besides, what would he know about two young
girls?

He saw the death in the paper, and came to the funeral; then he went
away again to his house in Greenley Street at the far West End, and
to his stiff old housekeeper, Mrs. Froke, who knew his stiff old
ways. And, turning his back on everybody, everybody forgot all about
him. Except as now and then, at intervals of years, there broke out
here or there, at some distant point in some family crisis, a sudden
recollection from which would spring a half suggestion, "Why,
there's Uncle Titus! If he was only,"--or, "if he would only,"--and
there it ended. Much as it might be with a housewife, who says of
some stored-away possession forty times, perhaps, before it ever
turns out available, "Why, there's that old gray taffety! If it were
only green, now!" or, "If there were three or four yards more of
it!"

Uncle Titus was just Uncle Titus, neither more nor less; so Mrs.
Oferr and Aunt Oldways consulted about their own measures and
materials; and never reckoned the old taffety at all. There was
money enough to clothe and educate; little more.

"I will take home _one_," said Mrs. Oferr, distinctly.

So, they were to be separated?

They did not realize what this was, however. They were told of
letters and visits; of sweet country-living, of city sights and
pleasures; of kittens and birds' nests, and the great barns; of
music and dancing lessons, and little parties,--"by-and-by, when it
was proper."

"Let me go to Homesworth," whispered Frank to Aunt Oldways.

Laura gravitated as surely to the streets and shops, and the great
school of young ladies.

"One taken and the other left," quoted Luclarion, over the packing
of the two small trunks.

"We're both going," says Laura, surprised. "_One_ taken? Where?"

"Where the carcass is," answered Luclarion.

"There's one thing you'll have to see to for yourselves. I can't
pack it. It won't go into the trunks."

"What, Luclarion?"

"What your father said to you that night."

They were silent. Presently Frank answered, softly,--"I hope I
shan't forget that."

Laura, the pause once broken, remarked, rather glibly, that she "was
afraid there wouldn't be much chance to recollect things at Aunt
Oferr's."

"She isn't exactly what I call a heavenly-minded woman," said
Luclarion, quietly.

"She is very much _occupied_," replied Laura, grandly taking up the
Oferr style. "She visits a great deal, and she goes out in the
carriage. You have to change your dress every day for dinner, and
I'm to take French lessons."

The absurd little sinner was actually proud of her magnificent
temptations. She was only a child. Men and women never are, of
course.

"I'm afraid it will be pretty hard to remember," repeated Laura,
with condescension.

"_That's_ your stump!"

Luclarion fixed the steadfast arrow of her look straight upon her,
and drew the bow with this twang.




II.

LUCLARION.


How Mrs. Grapp ever came to, was the wonder. Her having the baby was
nothing. Her having the name for it was the astonishment.

Her own name was Lucy; her husband's Luther: that, perhaps,
accounted for the first syllable; afterwards, whether her mind
lapsed off into combinations of such outshining appellatives as
"Clara" and "Marion," or whether Mr. Grapp having played the
clarionet, and wooed her sweetly with it in her youth, had anything
to do with it, cannot be told; but in those prescriptive days of
quiet which followed the domestic advent, the name did somehow grow
together in the fancy of Mrs. Luther; and in due time the life-atom
which had been born indistinguishable into the natural world, was
baptized into the Christian Church as "Luclarion" Grapp.
Thenceforth, and no wonder, it took to itself a very especial
individuality, and became what this story will partly tell.

Marcus Grapp, who had the start of Luclarion in this "meander,"--as
their father called the vale of tears,--by just two years' time, and
was y-_clipped_, by everybody but his mother "Mark,"--in his turn,
as they grew old together, cut his sister down to "Luke." Then
Luther Grapp called them both "The Apostles." And not far wrong;
since if ever the kingdom of heaven does send forth its
Apostles--nay, its little Christs--into the work on earth, in these
days, it is as little children into loving homes.

The Apostles got up early one autumn morning, when Mark was about
six years old, and Luke four. They crept out of their small
trundle-bed in their mother's room adjoining the great kitchen, and
made their way out softly to the warm wide hearth.

There were new shoes, a pair apiece, brought home from the Mills the
night before, set under the little crickets in the corners. These
had got into their dreams, somehow, and into the red rooster's first
halloo from the end room roof, and into the streak of pale daylight
that just stirred and lifted the darkness, and showed doors and
windows, but not yet the blue meeting-houses on the yellow
wall-paper, by which they always knew when it was really morning;
and while Mrs. Grapp was taking that last beguiling nap in which one
is conscious that one means to get up presently, and rests so
sweetly on one's good intentions, letting the hazy mirage of the
day's work that is to be done play along the horizon of dim thoughts
with its unrisen activities,--two little flannel night-gowns were
cuddled in small heaps by the chimney-side, little bare feet were
trying themselves into the new shoes, and lifting themselves up,
crippled with two inches of stout string between the heels.

Then the shoes were turned into spans of horses, and chirruped and
trotted softly into their cricket-stables; and then--what else was
there to do, until the strings were cut, and the flannel night-gowns
taken off?

It was so still out here, in the big, busy, day-time room; it was
like getting back where the world had not begun; surely one must do
something wonderful with the materials all lying round, and such an
opportunity as that.

It was old-time then, when kitchens had fire-places; or rather the
house was chiefly fire-place, in front of and about which was more
or less of kitchen-space. In the deep fire-place lay a huge mound of
gray ashes, a Vesuvius, under which red bowels of fire lay hidden.
In one corner of the chimney leaned an iron bar, used sometimes in
some forgotten, old fashioned way, across dogs or pothooks,--who
knows now? At any rate, there it always was.

Mark, ambitious, put all his little strength to it this morning and
drew it down, carefully, without much clatter, on the hearth. Then
he thought how it would turn red under those ashes, where the big
coals were, and how it would shine and sparkle when he pulled it out
again, like the red-hot, hissing iron Jack-the-Giant-Killer struck
into the one-eyed monster's eye. So he shoved it in; and forgot it
there, while he told Luke--very much twisted and dislocated, and
misjoined--the leading incidents of the giant story; and then lapsed
off, by some queer association, into the Scripture narrative of
Joseph and his brethren, who "pulled his red coat off, and put him
in a _fit_, and left him there."

"And then what?" says Luke.

"Then,--O, my iron's done! See here, Luke!"--and taking it prudently
with the tongs, he pulled back the rod, till the glowing end, a foot
or more of live, palpitating, flamy red, lay out upon the broad open
bricks.

"There, Luke! You daresn't put your foot on _that_!"

Dear little Luke, who wouldn't, at even four years old, be dared!

And dear little white, tender, pink-and-lily foot!

The next instant, a shriek of pain shot through Mrs. Grapp's ears,
and sent her out of her dreams and out of her bed, and with one
single impulse into the kitchen, with her own bare feet, and in her
night-gown.

The little foot had only touched; a dainty, timid, yet most
resolute touch; but the sweet flesh shriveled, and the fierce
anguish ran up every fibre of the baby body, to the very heart and
brain.

"O! O, O!" came the long, pitiful, shivering cries, as the mother
gathered her in her arms.

"What is it? What did you do? How came you to?" And all the while
she moved quickly here and there, to cupboard and press-drawer,
holding the child fast, and picking up as she could with one hand,
cotton wool, and sweet-oil flask, and old linen bits; and so she
bound it up, saying still, every now and again, as all she could
say,--"What _did_ you do? How came you to?"

Till, in a little lull of the fearful smart, as the air was shut
away, and the oil felt momentarily cool upon the ache, Luke answered
her,--

"He hed I dare-hn't, and ho I did!"

"You little fool!"

The rough word was half reaction of relief, that the child could
speak at all, half horrible spasm of all her own motherly nerves
that thrilled through and through with every pang that touched the
little frame, hers also. Mothers never do part bonds with babies
they have borne. Until the day they die, each quiver of their life
goes back straight to the heart beside which it began.

"You Marcus! What did you mean?"

"I meant she darsn't; and she no business to 'a dars't," said Mark,
pale with remorse and fright, but standing up stiff and manful, with
bare common sense, when brought to bay. And then he marched away
into his mother's bedroom, plunged his head down into the clothes,
and cried,--harder than Luclarion.

Nobody wore any new shoes that day; Mark for a punishment,--though
he flouted at the penalty as such, with an, "I guess you'd see me!"
And there were many days before poor little Luclarion could wear any
shoes at all.

The foot got well, however, without hindrance. But Luke was the same
little fool as ever; that was not burnt out. She would never be
"dared" to anything.

They called it "stumps" as they grew older. They played "stumps" all
through the barns and woods and meadows; over walls and rocks, and
rafters and house-roofs. But the burnt foot saved Luke's neck scores
of times, doubtless. Mark remembered it; he never "stumped" her to
any certain hurt, or where he could not lead the way himself.

The mischief they got into and out of is no part of my story; but
one day something happened--things do happen as far back in lives as
that--which gave Luclarion her clew to the world.

They had got into the best parlor,--that sacred place of the New
England farm-house, that is only entered by the high-priests
themselves on solemn festivals, weddings and burials, Thanksgivings
and quiltings; or devoutly, now and then to set the shrine in order,
shut the blinds again, and so depart, leaving it to gather the gloom
and grandeur that things and places and people do when they are good
for nothing else.

The children had been left alone; for their mother had gone to a
sewing society, and Grashy, the girl, was up-stairs in her
kitchen-chamber-bedroom, with a nail over the door-latch to keep
them out while she "fixed over" her best gown.

"Le's play Lake Ontario," says Marcus.

Now Lake Ontario, however they had pitched upon it, stood with them
for all the waters that are upon the face of the earth, and all the
confusion and peril of them. To play it, they turned the room into
one vast shipwreck, of upset and piled up chairs, stools, boxes,
buckets, and what else they could lay hands on; and among and over
them they navigated their difficult and hilarious way. By no means
were they to touch the floor; that was the Lake,--that were to
drown.

It was Columbus sometimes; sometimes it was Captain Cook; to-day, it
was no less than Jason sailing after the golden fleece.

Out of odd volumes in the garret, and out of "best books" taken down
from the secretary in the "settin'-room," and put into their hands,
with charges, of a Sunday, to keep them still, they had got these
things, jumbled into strange far-off and near fantasies in their
childish minds. "Lake Ontario" included and connected all.

"I'll tell you what it is," said Marcus, tumbling up against the
parlor door and an idea at once. "In here!"

"What?" asked Luke, breathless, without looking up, and paddling
with the shovel, from an inverted rocking-chair.

"The golden thing! Hush!"

At this moment Grashy came into the kitchen, took a little tin
kettle from a nail over the dresser, and her sun-bonnet from another
behind the door, and made her way through the apartment as well as
she could for bristling chair-legs, with exemplary placidity. She
was used to "Lake Ontario."

"Don't get into any mischief, you Apostles," was her injunction.
"I'm goin' down to Miss Ruddock's for some 'east."