A Proud Choice of Influences

FOR that is what it really was. But away back in another century, when Patricia was eight and I was six, I didn’t know what made her different from the rest of us, and I wondered how she walked safely over pitfalls that engulfed me.

There was the disgraceful episode of the kiss, to take one small instance. How did she know the right thing to do, in time ? I knew well enough afterward. Oh yes, often enough, afterward, I lived through the scene in imagination, and acted my part in it as it should have been acted. One could n’t turn the clock back by any agony of wishing; one could only provide against catastrophe ahead. To find a rule that would fit every possible emergency? The formula at last arrived at had nothing in it about ‘a decided and proud choice,’ or ‘repelling interference.’ It was, simply, Watch Patricia and do as she does.

There was a party going on in the drawing-room on the second story; the sound of carpet-balls came up to us in our nursery on the third story — a rumble like thunder in the distance, then the click of balls as they touched. When there was a party, Patricia and I, being the eldest, were allowed to go down to the drawing-room and say good-night before we went to bed.

The nurse looked us over to see that our dresses did n’t sag at one shoulder, that our stockings lay smoothly under the crossed elastic of our slippers — that we were altogether ‘fit to be seen.’ Then we took hands and went downstairs. Sally watched us go, with eyes that seemed to ask an unkind universe why they too might not have a glimpse of the gods at play; but Robin continued to shorten the stirrups of the saddle on his rocking-horse, and envied nobody.

We stood hand in hand at the door of the long drawing-room and looked in. The sight was different from anything one could find anywhere in the world to-day. So were the sounds. If we had been greeted by the clack of tongues that you will hear at your next afternoon tea, I do believe we should have turned and fled. Patricia and I had never heard anything so unlovely. Fortunate ears of the sixties — spared so many of the stridencies to come! Can one imagine now a city with no harsher birdnote than the twitter of the purple martens in the marten-house above the brewery? Not a city sparrow in all the length and breadth of the land; not a motor-horn! Little wonder if the voices in that drawing-room were soft and low-pitched.

I tugged at Patricia’s hand to hold her back. It was so very beautiful — I wanted time to look. The game was over. The balls lay quiet at the end of the room where a visiting-card was pinned to the carpet; the players were standing about in groups, ‘having conversation,’ as I whispered to Patricia— a different matter from plain talking. There was a delightful variety of bright, pretty colors; as the groups broke up and formed new groups, it was like looking into a big kaleidoscope. The ladies were ‘in low neck and short sleeves,’like ourselves. The thermometer outdoors probably stood somewhere about zero at the time, and the big house was heated solely by wood stoves; drawingroom and library, with folding doors between, depended for warmth upon what was called a dumb stove, a kind of enlargement of the stovepipe from my father’s office below. Sometimes, when we sat at our lessons in the library, — low-necked and short-sleeved even then, — I would hear my mother on the other side of the folding doors tapping on the dumb stove with her thimble as a signal for more fire; then, studying my arms with interested curiosity, I would discover myself the proud possessor of goose-flesh. Yet that night the bare arms, as I remember them, wore warmly smooth and white against the gay dresses. Not mere wisps of color, these, like the evening dresses of to-day, but satisfying, cushiony eyefuls.

I saw nothing amiss with the setting of the scene. The carpet with its big geometrical pattern, the black horsehair furniture, the what-not of seashells, the shade of wax flowers — it was all as inevitable and right as the blue of the sky and the green of the grass. It had always been there. Just now it was softened by candlelight, and glorified by those radiant beings floating about in pink and blue and corncolor and mauve and Nile green.

One in the new color, magenta, was rolling a ball to illustrate some question that had been raised about the game just over. Her stiff silk skirt made a fine ‘cheese’ as she stooped. By whirling very fast and then squatting, a little girl could make a cheese, but not one like this and not with that fine air of unconcern. When I was grown up,

I would wear skirts that ballooned of their own accord. I saw myself in half a dozen situations that called for stooping. Most alluring of the visions was one of my grown-up self at the pantry table, now on a level with my chin, busy — oh, happy me! — at the now forbidden task of skimming the cream from a pan of milk. A bouquet in its silver holder dangled from my wrist. I spoke in the fascinating manner of the young lady in magenta, barely opening my lips.

Patricia let go of my hand and we entered the room. That is to say, Patricia entered. Even at eight she entered a room — the whole of her; no astral half left dragging along uncertainly behind. Yes, Patricia was different from other children. Something in the way she was greeted as she passed from group to group — a quick look of interest and admiration — confirmed me in the belief. I followed her, pleasurably excited, but with the gone feeling about the pit of the stomach that came always with that letting go of the hand. In proportion as Patricia’s clasp was an assurance that all was right with the world, the loosing of it abandoned one to a path of lonely peril.

A little fuss was made over both of us. Here were the friends and acquaintances of every day, some of them nursery intimates, but all changed, somehow, by being at a party; our own mother looked not so approachable as when in ‘high neck and long sleeves.’ Here was even our doctor. Being a favorite with him, I had to wait to be taken upon his knee and have my checks rubbed into rosiness, and in this way I got behind Patricia in our progress around the room.

When I caught up to her, I saw at once that something had happened.

There she stood, that little maiden of the sixties, the unmoved centre of a teacup tempest. I can see her yet, — her slimness, her straightness, her pretty color, her willfully curved lips, — above all, her evident indifference to the exclamations that were pelting her from every side like a flurry of soft March snow.

‘What! Won’t kiss Mr. Fitzhugh! O Patricia! Oh, poor Mr. Fitzhugh!’

I looked at Mr. Fitzhugh. He made me think of our dough-men before they were put into the oven. I did n’t wonder that she would n’t kiss him. His mouth was — well, not the kind one wants to kiss. But he was lame, and were not lame people good? In the storybooks, where they abounded plentifully, they were all, all good, and only the wicked were unkind to them.

I looked at Patricia. Was n’t it wicked to be unkind to lame people? But already she had lost interest in Mr. Fitzhugh — her choice had been made. She had shaken hands with him; she had wiped the impression unobtrusively off upon her skirt; now her eyes were turned to the piano, where the young lady in magenta was beginning to play ‘La Cracovienne’ with the soft pedal down. Her eyes rested upon the left hand of the player, and from a certain hint of brooding in their expression, I knew that the bass was all wrong.

‘Never mind. Here comes Janie. She will give me a kiss, I know. A nice sweet kiss; maybe two, three, four.’ He made the sound of four kisses. ‘Janie and I are good friends. Are n’t we, Janie?’

‘Ye-es.’ (To myself, ‘He’s lame.’) ‘But if you don’t mind, I think I’d rather just shake hands.’ (‘I can’t kiss him.’)

Another chorus of ‘What! Not kiss Mr. Fitzhugh! Oh, poor Mr. Fitzhugh!’ Always, please remember, in the soft voices of eighteen-sixty-one.

(‘Can I kiss him? No, I can’t. But he’s lame.’)

‘You too, Janie! Who would have believed you could be so cruel! Look at poor Mr. Fitzhugh! Only see how sad he looks!’

Yes, there was no doubt about it. He was looking sad. And he was lame. To be cruel to the lame!

(‘Now, if you shut your eyes and hurry up, perhaps you can do it. Now, now.’)

It was done.

It was hard to do. Had n’t a little girl some reason to expect approval? But that beautiful, rainbow-colored group had led her on to her undoing, only to turn upon her now with looks and exclamations more shocked than before.

‘Janie! Janie! You little coquette! Coming down from the nursery with your kisses all made up, and then pretending to be too coy to give them! Pretending you would n’t, when all the time you meant to!’

I turned to Mr. Fitzhugh. He was grinning — an odious grin.

Down dropped my head upon the sofa; hot, shut eyes pressed close against the slippery coolness of its horsehair.

I could feel a fluttering of the air like a flock of butterflies closing in upon me; there was a soft humming, half pity, half mocking laughter. Then the iambic of a lame footstep. At that I straightened up and stood at bay.

I must have breathed Patricia’s name, for she stopped trying to reconcile the bass and treble of ‘La Cracovienne’ and came to me. I wish I could describe how she did it. Straight as the dart of a sailboat — and the circle closing me in parted as naturally as the water at the bow. It was an instinctive movement, altogether free from aggressiveness, but — nobody touched me.

‘We can’t stay any longer, Janie. Mother ’s beckoning to us.’

For once the signal was welcome. As our parents kissed us good-night, their cheerfulness impressed me as a strange thing. If they knew how their child had been disgraced!

I crept up the dimly lighted stairs beside Patricia, crushed and silent. Her hold of my hand was the only comfort she tried to give. Pity would have come amiss just then. I wanted nothing more to do with pity, my own or another’s. It was a mistake. If I had refused to listen to its appeal, like Patricia, I might now have been walking with my head held up like hers.

Only once she spoke.

‘If I were you, I would n’t pay any attention to what young ladies say. They ’re like that — in society. Society’s silly.’

And then we were back in the dear, safe nursery, where treachery was unknown. And Robin had just finished shortening his second stirrup, so I knew that hours and days could not have passed since we left him busy with the first.