Orange Grove (Wall)/Chapter 11
"Thought is deeper than all speech;
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto our souls is taught."
"Oh, for the tongue of au angel," soliloquized Milly one autumn afternoon when alone, as she sup posed, but Kate was just within hearing.
"' You little wicked minx to be covetin' what you ca.n't have and what wouldn't do you no good. 'Spose you was an angel, what would it amount to? 'Spose I should turn into one, for all the preachin' there is about it, I guess they'd want me to turn into a sinner again and make 'em somethin' good to eat, for I couldn't do that and be flyin' up into heaven every minute. That's the way with these folks that preach so much, they don't do more'n other folks when it comes to practice, 'cause they are always thinkin' of some great thing that's a goin' to be done sometime, nobody knows when nor who's a goin' to do it."
"I didn't say I wished I was an angel, but that I had the tongue of an angel to give utterance to my thoughts and feelings, and I should be happier."
"So you would, but I'm doubtful whether angels have tongues. That kind o'talk they have, I b'lieve, ain't done by word of mouth. I'll toll you what makes me think of angels most of anything I know of, and that is soap suds. When I'm a washin' and the suds is a flyin', why it 'pears to me I could write poetry, there's somethin' so mighty inspirin' in 'em. All them little bubbles look so pure and white, it seems to me there must be an angel imprisoned in every one on 'em, and I want to let 'em out."
It is sometimes a rest and diversion to meet with a person so careless of the future and satisfied with the present in all its phases, especially when mingled with so much common sense as Kate displayed.
To Milly's weary brain it brought relief, the friction of the contact being just what she needed. Kate found enough to amuse her in the few sentences she had just written in the form of an essay, and submitted to her judgment as if she were a chosen friend to advise, instead of a thoughtless humorist.
"I always knew you'd turn into a parson or philosopher 'fore you got through. You are sentimental enough to write a whole budget of novels, but you ain't got the romance, or fun, or somethin' to carry it on with, such as knockin'—a feller down for sport. You'd make it too sober. I'll warrant you'd have deaths enough in it to plant a seminary. You like fun as well as anybody when it's ready made for you, but you don't know how to make it. Now 'spose you and I should go in company, I'd make a hero out of Sykes' and you could make a dozen out of Miss Rosalind, and we'd smash up a great business under the firm of 'Milly & Kate, wholesale and retail book-makers.' it would be well enough to have a little moralizin' now and then by way of spice. Read what you've been writin', maybe it'll do for one of Sykes' sermons. We'll have your book to start with, and the title of it shall be, The novel that never was written.'"
"Life is fragmentary"—
"Just as true as the Bible. All cut up into washin' and bakin', brewin' and mendin', and nothin' but the little odd bits and ends left to ourselves. Sometimes a spare minute to take a pinch o' snuff."
"Here and there a thought is struck off, clearly illustrating to our own minds the idea we would wish to present, but meeting the counter current of another soul"—
"That's just it exactly. When I lived at Syke's I went up garret one night after somethin' in the dark and was just thinkin' how nice it was not to have to light myself round as other folks do, when I stepped into a coal-hod on the stair, and down I come, coal and all, and such a racket you never did hear. It was right over the front stairs, and there was company in the parlor, and they come runnin' out, and one on'em said, 'The devil's in the house!' 'No he ain't,' says I, 'nothin' but his image. I stepped into a coal hod and fell down, that's what's the matter.' Sykes stretched up his long neck, and says he, 'did it hurt the hod?' When I was thinkin' what if I had broke my neck and its loss to the world, he was thinkin' how much the hod cost, as if that was the most consequence. Go on."
"A careless word or deed may inflict a wound, on some sensitive soul that time can never heal, and a sympathizing look may lighten the sorrow of the broken-hearted spirit that shall send it rejoicing on its way."
"That's true as the four gospels. I washed out my old apron once and hung it on a pile of wood in the back yard to dry, and thought nothin'. It was a bright, moony night, and pretty soon, Sykes, white as a ghost, come runnin' in, pantin' for breath. 'Why Sykes,' says I, 'what's the matter with you, you look like a scart owl.' 'Oh,' says he, 'I've seen a Jew without a head.' 'A Jew without a head,' says I, 'I never heard o' such a thing.' 'Well,' says he, 'I've heard on 'em, but I never see one afore, and I'm afraid he'll steal all our pork.' Now Sykes loved pork and beans.
"'Never you fear,' says I, 'I'll see that you always have pork enough.' An' he looked up so grateful to think he'd always have pork enough, but I see he was kind o' frightened and kept lookin' round as if he thought somethin' was after him, and so I thought I'd just look and see what it was that scart the poor fellow so. 'Mercy on us,' says I, 'that's an old maid's husband!' He stared open his big eyes, and says he, 'I thought old maids didn't have any husband!' jest as honest now as a Methodis' deacon."
"I wonder if you ever had a serious thought in your life."
"I guess if you'd had a broken foot as I have you'd not be askin' me that question. Walter, he undertook to talk to me but I got round him slick. When you was gone away last winter and I slipped on the ice hangin' out clothes, he was in the kitchen when I come in, and says I, 'Oh dear, I thought I was dead when I started to get up, as much as ever I thought anything in the world.' 'No you didn't' says he, 'how did you suppose you could stir if you were dead?' 'Why not,' says I, 'as well as for a hen to fly round after her head is cut off?' 'Didn't you want the priest sent for,' says he, 'to confess your sins, but I guess you wouldn't have cheated him, though he might have been glad of your money.' 'The priest,' says I, 'I could bite his head off, and he never'd know it.' 'Well,' says he, 'you needn't think you can ever deceive me, for I can always detect you.' Thinks I to myself, 'old feller, you'd better not be too sure. I'll make you take that back just as sure as I'm Kate Drummond, and you are an honest boy."
"How extravagant you are to call a little sprain a broken foot."
"None of your moralizin' now, let me tell my story. I wanted your help, but I couldn't have it, and s© I took Amelia, and it did her a wonderful deal of good. She was quite waked up about it. You know Walter has a weak spot in the good side of his character. He could be very easily imposed upon by beggars, he's so afraid of turnin' off somebody that's needy, so I knew how I could work him. I jest borrowed an old gray wig and found a pair of spettacle bows without any eyes, and I jest pasted on some green paper and covered 'em with isinglass, so they looked jest like green glasses. I asked Mrs. Claremont's leave to go out that evenin', and you know she always lets me go when I want to, and Amelia was to tend the door. I got her to draw up a paper representin' me as a deaf and dumb woman, and she was to take it to the family. I'd no thought when I asked her she'd be willin' to do it, but she fell right in with it. I guess she was glad of somethin' for a change. So I rigged myself up in some old rags, and the wig and spettacles, and an old hood I've got laid away in the attic for such occasions, and knocked at the side door. Amelia opened it, and carried the paper into the parlor, and pretty soon come runnin' back, mighty tickled. Mr. Livingston was there and told her she'd better not leave me alone a great while. I 'spose he was afraid I should steal somethin'. Pretty soon Walter came out and then went back and got the rest. 'I believe I shall give her half a dollar,' says he, 'if she should be really sufferin' I never should forgive myself.'
Miss Rosalind was as moody as a broomstick, and didn't say a word to let a body know what she thought, but Mr. Livingston suspected me at first sight I know. There Couldn't nobody deceive him. He took a lamp and come to hold it in my face, and then I thought I was gone for, but I turned from him and drew my tatters closer round me and heaved an involuntary sigh. 'Oh don't' says Walter, 'likely she's got some feelings left yet,' and he come and slipped the half dollar into my hand. I wanted to be so grateful for it that I started too quick and one of my isinglass eyes dropped out, and I put my hand up to my eyes to cover 'em so he wouldn't see it.
"'It always seems as if such poor creatures couldn't express their gratitude enough,' says he, 'I don't believe they could be so deceitful as that.' I wanted to laugh then, but I could have held in if it hadn't been for somethin' else. A big boy was goin' by under the window singin' out at the top of his voice, 'Pop goes the weasel,' when a little boy, passin' by at the same time, cried out still louder, 'Where did he pop to, I want to see him?' Then I couldn't help laughin', but as I had got the half dollar I didn't care. But you never did see anybody so cut up as Walter, when he found he was the only dupe there was. At first he thought Amelia was as ignorant as him,—and she played another trick on him. I reckon he always thought she wans't very smart, and as for that may be all the rest on us thought so too, but I tell you, I guess Amelia knows more'n we was thinkin' for. He looked right straight at her in the eye, and says he, 'Amelia, did you know that was Kate?' And she looked right straight at him in the eye, and says she, 'Kate, is that Kate! Isn't she really a deaf and dumb woman?' just as innocent now as if she just come from among angels. He was staggered then, he didn't know what to make of it. I heard 'em talkin' a long time in the parlor about it. He thought it was wrong to impose on a body's sensibilities so 'cause it harden's 'em to real sufferin'. That's true I 'spose, but I wan't goin' to be cheated out of my fun. Mr. Livingston told him a good many anecdotes of how the beggin' classes in Europe grow rich in this way that he had seen. I 'spose that's the reason he couldn't be cheated."
"Mr. Livingston has been about the world too much to be easily deceived. I guess he would prove a match for you anytime."
"A match for me! ha, I'd like to serve a joke on him fust rate. But he ain't one o' these familiar sort o' folks that you don't mind speakin' to any time. I always feel as if I must stand on ceremony when I'm speakin' to him."
"I am glad if there is anybody you stand in deference to. It's a pity you couldn't be in awe of him all the time, and be brought into some kind of system."
"I hope you don't think I'm afraid of him. With eyes as gentle as a purrin' cat's, he makes a body feel when he's lookin' at 'em so kind o' soft and tender that they don't want to use any rough words. But I'd like to have him try his hand on me to bring me into system, wouldn't I have a gay time."
"No danger of his trying. He knows it would be a hopeless task."
"I 'spose you think I'm too awfully depraved to have any hopes of. It tickles me to see these folks that pretend to be saints, when I guess if they could show their 'count books they'd find some as big sins set down agin 'em as ever I did. Why there's your aunt, I know all about her for I lived next house to her 'fore you ever see her, and I think you must have been pretty near a saint to live with her as you did, she was a perfect torment to her husband and he was ditto, and so that wan't no matter. Now seein' you like to puzzle over such things, which do you think is most christian like, to take this world fat and easy as I do, and the next world for all the good we can get out of it; or, I don't know much about what's in the Bible, but I believe there's a sort of a story there that described her' about makin' broad prayers and long faces while their hearts are far off; pray like a hypocrite, and fret like a scold?"
"Don't go to raking that up, let it be dead and buried. I don't like to think of it."
"You don't get rid o' me that way. What's all your thinkin' goin' to amount to if you can't answer a simple question? Now I know which I should rather do. I'd rather take my chance of gettin' to heaven through a bright sunshiny track right straight ahead than to go up a dark lane full of sour faces and wry tempers, the scapegoat of a multitude of sins."
"You talk as if every body was of that class because you happen to know of one."
"Happen to know of one! I could name a hundred. There's Mrs. Greenwood, a very saint as the world goes, snappin' at every innocent frolic a child has, and wantin' to harness a cross on to 'em as soon as they can run alone, so as to save 'cm from purgatory I 'spose, but I'd go there first."
"Well, I know she doesn't understand children's nature at all, and so far as that goes, very few people do. They seem to forget that they have been children, whose wants and wills should be regarded as much as grown people's. I do not believe there is a class wronged more than they are."
"Now you begin to talk sense. But when you go to smoothin' over everything that's done under long-faced professions you don't do right, Milly."
"I don't try to smooth it over. You go into such extravagant phrases it is of no use to try to talk or reason with you. I always stood up for children because it is in their training this fretfulness begins. If parents were always pleasant to each other, as well as to every member of the family, their children would catch the same spirit, instead of growing up in this fretful way of speaking, a habit it is hard to get out of, when really no ill is meant by it."
"Ah, you hypocrite! What good is all your prayin' and preachin' goin' to do if a body ain't no better for it? Now you see it's this forcin' natur' out of her course in not lettin' the little ones enjoy themselves 'cause it's good for 'em to be crossed, that makes 'em so sour when they get well broke in."
"It will do very well for you to talk, Kate, who never had any experience. Perhaps if you had half a dozen children to take care of they would sometimes be crossed when they ought not to be, and you might lose your temper occasionally. That would not make it right, to be sure, but it shows how much easier it is to preach than to practice."
"Any body'd think you'd had as many children as the old woman that lived in a shoe to hear you talk, as if you knew all about 'em. I want talkin' about myself who don't pretend to be anything but an old sinner, I want you to tell me wherein good folks differ from bad ones."
"What a question! Your own observation ought to tell you that."
"So it does to my way of thinkin'. I've tried all the afternoon to get your notion about it, and ain't no wiser now than I was when I begun. I 'spose when you get that tongue you wanted, you'll tell me."
"It don't make any difference whether I tell you or, not, you'll be just as light-headed. I should have to go over so much ground to do justice to both sides you'd have no patience to hear me half through."
"That's a fact. You'd have to begin at Genesis and explain how it happened that Cain killed his brother without being so wicked as to do it."
"When a person becomes so perverted as Cain was, I admit that the sin committed assumes a very different character in his eyes from what it appears to one who is pure and innocent. Stop Kate, hear me through. I am not defending him, I only say that if Cain and Abel were so different naturally, it is unfair to expect one would be just as good as the other with the same effort. So it is in all other cases."
"I'm for havin' good folks better'n bad ones. That's necessary for society to stand on. Knock out that underpinnin' and what comes 'on us all?"
"I never supposed you cared whether it stood up or fell down."
"I guesa you'd find 'twould fall down pretty quick if there wan't no such folks as me to hold it up. There never'll any good come of your writin', and more'n all that you'll burn it all up when you get it done.
"I have a chapter here on that subject, called the 'Philosophy of Writing.' It gives a few of the reasons why some people think so much more than others."
"Common sense could tell that, because they do nothin' but dream as you do, spinnin' cobwebs that I have to keep brushin' down."
"The world suffers for no lack of books; and as the motive spring is oftener the need of the writer to express his thoughts and develope himself thus, than of the world for the knowledge so communicated, possibly he who withholds his works from, publication may be the greatest benefactor of the two, since he must incorporate his ideas into his own practical life in order to answer that great want of his soul which another supplies by the response of some other soul to this vibrating chord of human sympathy, which in its sweetness dispels that intense earnestness whereby its unuttered aspirations carve out some noble action as the expression of its ideal. In these two classes may be embraced the whole world."
"That's the biggest whopper that ever was told."
"Why?"
"You've made it out that the whole world writes, and I never writ a word in my life. I don't think you know yourself what you tried to make out there."
"I guess I did not word that just as I meant to have it understood, but let me read the next and see if it does not explain it. That last sentence did not belong there; it ought to have been placed after the next paragraph."
"That's what I call turnin' round in a pint dish. You try to get off somethin' that'll make a great flourish, and when you get through you are just where you was when you begun, not a bit bigger place to turn round in."
"You must hear the next, and you'll see what I meant. 'One represents the literary class, the thinkers, people who seek a law for every event and a principle for every act, thus separating themselves from the masses, the people of action, who go forward to perform whatever their hands find to do without any settled law or principle to guide them. Yet these last have the dim outlines of some undefined emotion which language fails them to express, but to which they can readily respond when clearly represented by the former class. So one acts as a supplement to the other.'"
"There now, stop there, and don't go to gettin' off any more big words. The trouble with you is that when you've said somethin' sensible you spile it all by goin' into somethin' you don't know nothin' about, and that the king of England nor his court fool couldn't understand. What you said there last is just my sentiments, that these folks that think so much and pretend to be so knowin' ain't the ones that does the work. And just as you said, them that does the work know just as much after all only they don't know how to express it. Now you see that first big sentence you got off wa'nt clear; but its most tea time, and I must leave you to your destruction, only don't set the house a fire with your novel, cause we shall want somewhere to stay, and can't turn into angels and fly away as you want to."
Milly looked out at her window upon the meadows where the cattle were grazing in quiet content, and the misty shadows were resting on the hill-sides, she listened to the song of the birds and inhaled the fragrance of the lilac as the gentle breeze bore it upward, then crossed her hands upon the window sill and laid her head upon them. Angels came and blessed her, and her spirit turned with yearning toward that beatified state where self is known no more, and the higher language of the soul shall make itself understood without the feeble power of human lips to give it utterance.
It was the overshadowing of the divine Presence coming to minister to that humble one meekly bowing before His throne, and impart knowledge for which she thirsted, but which tongue could never express.
She was one of those of whom it is written, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." A priestess in his temple, He revealed himself to her as a just and upright judge, full of mercy and love, from whom the most guilty need not shrink if they come in penitence and prayer, and to whom the righteous can come only as they acknowledge the need of the injunction, "Watch and pray lest ye enter into temptation."
Lapsing into a state of half unconsciousness the outward world glided from her senses, and Mrs. Claremont, missing her from the place she was accustomed to fill, an event of rare occurrence, went to her chamber, and laying her hand gently on her shoulder, was met with a warm embrace as Milly raised her hands involuntarily ere consciousness returned, and whispered, "Mother!"