A Child's Tragedy

— It was a tragedy of the spirit, concerning which she never made confession to those whose heedlessness brought it to pass ; yet it has always seemed to her as if the subsequent years have been more or less, in one way or another, under the influence of that sharp experience whereby she made direct personal acquaintance with the dread blight insincerity. She was far too young to know by what term to characterize professions that are belied by actions ; but looking back upon a scene so vividly and keenly remembered that it might have taken place yesterday, she understands, as no psychologist could ever set forth, that ideas may exist in full force independent of language.

It was but a trifle that taught her the bitter lesson of distrust, — the veriest trifle, it must have been, in the opinion of the grown-up world about her ; but to many grown people the heart of a child is an unsuspected mystery, and therefore are they often ruthless unawares. Unquestionably, it had been the experience of this child, now and then, to be teased with a jest obscuring the truth ; but she had easily learned, as most children do, to estimate such practices justly. To find herself deceived in unmistakable earnest gave a shock not alone to her heart, but to her intellectual powers as well, for it was then that the faculty of reflection came into conscious play.

She was a meditative child, shy and reticent, yet it happened to her, as not infrequently it does happen to children of her temperament, to fall ardently in love. The object of this infantile passion was a girl of twenty, who had hardly the faintest appreciation of the child’s undemonstrative depth of devotion : it is clear, indeed, in the light of after-years, that this devotion was much of a bore to the gay young visitor, who came to talk with older people of affairs not to be discussed iu the presence of little pitchers. It chanced, one day, that this particular Little Pitcher was standing with ears attent, — having no companions of her own age, — while the goddess of her idolatry was being attired for some social function that was to take place in the afternoon. All the ladies of the household were in attendance on the toilette, and it may be assumed that there was free traffic of opinions on topics not immediately connected with the articles of adornment, for suddenly the child was asked —with what furtive interchange of significant glances may be imagined — to go and find some flowers wherewith to deck Salome’s hair. No second bidding was needed, this being a child who expressed herself by actions rather than by words, and away she sped, immeasurably happy to serve the beautiful creature enshrined in her shy affections.

Now there were no garden flowers about the home she dwelt in at that time, for the place was new, and the grounds were given over to a waste of weeds ; but this ready worshiper of beauty in whatever guise must have won — and loved — “the secret of a weed’s plain heart,” so well she knew how to seek the obscure blooms hid in the rank midsummer tangle. Through diligent heed, each hand was presently full of such insignificant buds and blossoms as the parched season spares, when, by a fateful chance, she espied, amid a little wilderness of bents, the blue wonder of the great solitary banner-blossom put forth by the groundtrailing pea, beautiful in her eyes beyond all the flowers of the field. Once or twice before, in her short span of life, she bad found this infrequent bloom, —infrequent, that is, within the precincts that hedged her round ; and now, what with its rarity and its appealing glory of “ heaven’s own blue,” there arose in her untried heart a fierce struggle between her desire for the splendid flower and her love for the beautiful Salome. It may be that the struggle was the fiercer because Salome was absent, and the flower so vividly present.

Slowly back to the house she walked in an anguish of conflict ; for she recognized clearly that if she withheld the flower, she must, under the circumstances, forego the delight and glory of its exhibition ; she could possess the treasure only in a selfish secrecy. Nevertheless, she found no strength against the temptation to keep the banner-blossom for herself, until she had presented the poor little knot of weedy bloom ostentatiously displayed in her left hand, while her light hand held the flower she so prized well out of sight behind her back : but the moment Salome’s eyes lighted upon the inadequate tribute offered at her shrine, the doom of the blue bannerblossom was surely sealed. The child loved the flower none the less, but she loved Salome more. Penitent, ashamed, and glad, all at once, she exhibited the rarity. Was she so much to blame in that she was fain to have it seem as if she bad reserved it to enhance its value by surprise ? At least she was distinctly conscious that the surrender, though voluntary, was a sacrifice ; but the meed of admiration bestowed upon the flower soothed the irrepressible regret the sacrifice cost her, for her inexperience failed to penetrate the perfunctory nature of the praise she had elicited. Neither did she suspect that her return was inopportune : but she must have interrupted a conversation far more interesting than the “ wildings of nature,” for she was speedily bidden to “ run and play.” She would have pleaded to remain, hut having achieved one conquest over herself, she maintained the mastery, and departed in meek obedience, though in no mood to run and play ; she had passed through one of those crises of the soul, the effect of which is to subdue the animal spirits. Yet it was not depression she felt, but a sort of chastened joy, that she would have called the approval of conscience had she been old enough for introspection and mistress of befitting language.

But this serenity of spirit was not to endure : in an ill-starred moment the child was moved to return to the scene of her victory over self. Salome was gone, and gone were all the others ; but on the floor, where they had fallen unheeded at Salome’s feet, lay the little carefully sought bunch of blossomed weeds, the dear blue bannerblossom in their midst, cruelly trampled and bruised ! And the child’s heart quaked with the instant perception that she had made a needless sacrifice.

Whether or not she wept memory hears no testimony ; but the pang she suffered was of no transient duration, For it was not alone the needlessness of her sacrifice that smote her with a startling certainty : she saw, as if through sudden and blinding light, that her innocent trust had been imposed upon ; that the true intent of sending her to seek for flowers had been to secure a riddance of the Little Pitcher. Her impeccable elders, she was shrewdly aware, enjoyed many privileges denied to childhood, and of these privileges the right to disguise the truth might be one ; but the exercise of such a right had wounded her sense of personal dignity, a sentiment infancy may entertain distinctly long before its name is known. For of course it was not possible that a child of her tender age should define to herself an impression so intense and soul-searching that it has furnished her food for thought through all the after-years ; it was her later development that translated it into words, while she pondered at recurrent intervals that ineradicable memory. But the conclusions she deduced without the intervention of language were none the less inevitable and immediate ; whereof the result was that she ceased from that moment to love Salome the Beautiful. She remembers that, subsequently, she was punished time and again for repelling the overtures of the whilom enchantress, but she never gave up the secret of her disillusionment, — too deep a sorrow for a young child’s puzzled intelligence to explain. Thus it came to pass, as one of the direful sequences of this small tragedy, that she was called to suffer much anguish of spirit under the imputation of lack of heart.

Through all the after-years, in garden, field, or woodland, the big blue bannerblossom of the ground - trailing pea has worn for her eyes a meek, appealing look of mingled comprehension and reproach.