Things were better the next morning. Both Laura and Bill were very gay and obviously determined to see that I was happy. We ate in the sunny kitchen from the gay breakfast service that Alicia Allison had given Laura for a wedding gift, and breakfast was delicious: fruit and muffins, bacon, strawberry preserves, and coffee blended with hot milk. Bill teased me a little, wondering if I had blacked any more little boys’ eyes for the reason that I had blacked Danny’s; Laura thought that my new blue robe was very becoming, and she and Bill agreed over my head that I was really growing up to be a very pretty girl. Everything was delightful and it should have remained that way except that the dark streak within me refused to be propitiated.
When Bill had gone off to the university and Laura and I had finished the dishes, she gave me a new book, bought especially for me, and suggested that I read while she looked up some references that Bill needed for his thesis. It was then that I wondered, not in so many words, but quite pointedly, if Bill had not sufficient academic aptitude to do his own research.
That brought the first flare to my sister’s eyes and she assured me of Bill’s brilliance and of her own gratitude that she was able in a small way to help him in an effort that meant so much to both of them. She said something about the fact that Father had considered Bill the ablest student he had known in years, and seeing that she was angry already, I dug my claws in deeper and told her that Uncle Haskell said that Father was a man of “middle-class values.”
Then she really did throw out sparks. “You tell Uncle Haskell,” she said angrily, “that if by ‘middle-class values’ he means a sense of integrity, a willingness to contribute to society rather than to be a leech, then Father is, indeed, a man of ‘middle-class values.’ Uncle Haskell should talk of values—if he has any at all, they are of the shoddiest sort. I think it’s high time,” she added furiously, “that Father marries Alicia and gets you away from Uncle Haskell’s influence.”
It had never occurred to me that there was a remote possibility of Father’s marrying Alicia. Father was married to Mother and that was the way things were and should always be, world without end, and I thought that Laura should be heartily ashamed of herself for the remark she had just made.
“If Father marries Alicia—if Father marries any woman in this world, I’ll never go home again; never, as long as I live. I should think that you would love Mother enough to feel that way too,” I added accusingly.
If I had known how tired and unwell Laura was feeling at that time, I surely would have been kinder. But I had no interest in anyone’s feelings save my own, and for the first time, I deliberately tried to hurt the feelings of the person I loved above all others.
Laura grew almost hysterical with tears and anger as she defended her own love for Mother and her wish to see Father with a companion of whom Mother would have approved. “I don’t know what has happened to you, Julie,” she sobbed, wiping her eyes. “You have always been such a darling child. What has got into you?”
I was miserable by that time, ashamed and sorry. “I don’t know,” I wailed, “unless it’s because I’m standing where the brook and river meet.”
Then Laura said, “Oh, good Heavens,” in a tone that suggested I had said something completely idiotic, and she laughed at the same time she was crying in such a way that I was at first deeply offended and then frightened. It was an unhappy morning.
We smoothed each other’s feelings, of course, and the visit was not quite spoiled. But it was a disappointment, a dreary, heartbreaking disappointment, and when we kissed one another good-bye the morning I left, we were both heavy with the certainty that we had lost something precious.
Bill took me to the station that morning, a very grave young man and unusually kind. He explained that if Laura had seemed a little sharp, a little unlike herself, it was because she was not well, that she was nervous and perhaps a little anxious in her first pregnancy. He told me that she loved me very much, that she was going to name the baby “Julie” if it was a girl, that the three of us would back Aunt Cordelia into a corner and persuade her that the French “Julie” was quite as legal as the Roman “Julia.” There wasn’t a word about my share of the blame for which I had no excuse except a childish jealousy. My sense of guilt was very deep when I boarded the train for my journey home.
I sat beside a window on the green mohair seat and stared out at the countryside, all but lost in a gray mist of rain. I thought of Laura having a baby, and I wondered if it hurt dreadfully and considered the possibility that she might die. And how, I thought, could I live the rest of my life remembering how she had tried to make me happy in all the little ways she could, and how I had repaid her with snide and cruel remarks that had possibly destroyed all the love she had felt for me. Finally I covered my face with my hands and shook with the misery pent up inside me.
A gray-haired, blue-uniformed conductor had looked at me kindly when he took my ticket, and after a while he came back, bringing me a chocolate bar bulging with almonds. He sat down in the seat beside me when I thanked him tearfully, and he patted my shoulder.
“Maybe it would help to talk about it,” he said gently. “I’ve raised five little girls to womanhood; like as not I’ll be able to understand.”
To my surprise, I told him all about it, this stranger whom I would probably never see again. I had to tell someone, and I knew that it would shame me terribly to tell either Father or Aunt Cordelia. And so I talked and talked, sometimes between sobs, and although it didn’t bring me peace of mind, it somehow helped for me to put my guilt feelings into words.
The conductor nodded often during my story and when I was through, he was silent for a long time. He pursed his lips thoughtfully and tapped the fingers of his left hand against the arm of the seat.
Finally he spoke, almost as if to himself. “It happens the world over—we love ourselves more than we do the one we say we love. We all want to be Number One; we’ve got to be Number One or nothing! We can’t see that we could make ourselves loved and needed in the Number Two, or Three, or Four spot. No sir, we’ve got to be Number One, and if we can’t make it, we’ll rip and tear at the loved one till we’ve ruined every smidgin of love that was ever there.” He sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you, little lady.”
He had to leave me then to go about his duties, and he didn’t return to my seat until it was almost time for the train to pull into the station where Father would be waiting for me. Then he leaned down and spoke to me almost in a whisper. “I believe that, was I you, I’d try growing up a little and giving some thought about what I could do for my big sister from the Number Three or Four spot.”
The last days of that summer were troubled ones for me. I wondered if I had ripped and torn at Laura as the conductor had said people did, the world over, if I had destroyed all her love for me because of my anger at being somewhere other than in the “Number One spot.” I recalled all the brattish things I had said, though I wanted to forget them. The little Cathedral of Four Silver Birches became my hideaway during those troubled days, and the tears I shed were those of the true penitent.
Aunt Cordelia noticed my preoccupation, and she was unusually kind. “Laura is young and healthy and under good medical care, Julia. I don’t think that we need to be fearful. In a few weeks she will be as happy as your mother used to be after each of you was born.”
I nodded, but the dreariness inside me was undiminished. Even when Father called us early one morning in September to tell us that Laura and Bill had a little daughter, that Laura was well and happy, that the baby was healthy and beautiful—even then, I crawled off to my cathedral and wept because I didn’t believe that Laura could ever really love me again.
A new year of school had begun and each day Aunt Cordelia and I marched off to the white schoolhouse, sometimes joined by Danny and Carlotta, all of us employing our diaphragms in deep breathing and obediently fixing our thoughts upon the beauty of September skies and the glory of wild asters and goldenrod—sometimes wi
th sly grins at one another. Once again I lost my identity as Aunt Cordelia’s niece, put my mind upon the tasks she set for me, avoided Aggie Kilpin, became a devoted friend and then an avowed enemy of Carlotta Berry. But this year was different; I missed Chris sharply when I looked at the empty seat beside Danny, and I grieved, even as I learned to find the area and circumference of a circle, for my big sister’s love which I was sure that I had lost forever.
Another telephone call came on the sixth of September. I shall never forget the date for it was the day of my return to happiness. Aunt Cordelia answered the telephone. I heard her address someone as “William”—that would be Bill, of course—heard her ask about Laura and the baby, heard her say thoughtfully that yes, she thought it could be arranged; no, the schoolwork could be made up easily; yes, she felt that it would be a good thing for both girls. Then she called me to the telephone and Bill’s voice, now grown very dear to me, told me that the baby’s name was “Julie,” that Laura was home from the hospital, that he had wanted to hire a woman to help her with the baby, but that Laura had said no, she wanted her sister with her for the next few days. He asked me if I would come, and I began to cry and told him between hiccoughs that, yes, I would be there.
Aunt Cordelia found one of my old dolls that evening, and she showed me how to protect an infant’s head and back; she told me what an extra pillow could mean in a new mother’s chair and how a flower on a luncheon tray could make a plain bowl of soup something of a treat for a convalescent.
When I went to my room that night the world was a better and brighter place, and I was controlled by a new discipline which I imposed sternly upon myself.
“Bill is in the Number One spot, and don’t forget it, Julie Trelling. And the baby is in the Number Two spot.” I hesitated at that point, and then drew the hair-cloth shirt a little tighter. Father was in the Number Three spot, one had just as well admit it. But when I thought of Chris preceding me as Number Four, I balked. Chris could share that place, I supposed, but that was all. There was a limit to my humility.
When I burrowed down between my white sheets that night, I breathed deeply of happiness. I wished that I could tell the old conductor how wise I had grown; I thought of how much more than an almond chocolate bar he had given me.
4
My twelfth year, we supposed, would be my last one with Aunt Cordelia, since I would be entering high school the next year and be going into town to live with Father; therefore Aunt Cordelia agreed that I might have a birthday party that spring and the talk among the girls at school centered for a period of several weeks upon the social event of the season. Word of it got to Aggie Kilpin, who still sat in the center of a wide circle of peasants during the noon hour; Aggie gleefully told me that yes, kid, she would be coming to my party too. I didn’t think she would.
Alicia Allison sent me a box of tiny pink notes and matching envelopes on which I could write, “Miss Julie Trelling requests the pleasure,” and so on. I spent a happy and satisfying hour in preparing these notes and addressing each tiny envelope. Aunt Cordelia had said, “Boys and girls, or just girls?” when I had suggested the party, and I had decided in favor of just girls, including some of the girls from town. Since she hadn’t demurred at the exclusion of boys, I rather hoped that she would not notice one other omission. She did, of course. Ruffling through the little pile of envelopes, she said quietly, “Julia, you have forgotten to include Agnes.”
“Oh, Aunt Cordelia, I can’t. I simply can’t have Aggie. She would spoil the whole party. You know that.”
“She knows about your party, Julia, and it has been something she’s looked forward to for weeks. You can’t do this to another child; it would be too cruel.”
“I can’t invite her. I simply can’t have the town girls thinking that she is my friend. I’m sorry for Aggie, awfully sorry, but let’s face it, Aunt Cordelia: Aggie smells.”
Aunt Cordelia sighed. “Julia, that child has been in my classroom since she was five; that means she’s been there almost ten years, and she has stood at my desk, learning nothing, but giving off a more unbearable stench each year. I know Agnes very well; I know that she’s smelly as you say, but I also know that if you stab her, she feels pain. I can’t encourage cruelty on your part.”
I shook my head. “I’d rather not have a party if I have to ask her,” I said shortly.
“That’s up to you, Julia; think it over,” Aunt Cordelia answered.
I made my decision. The little pink envelopes went into the wastebasket, and I had to tell all the girls at school that there would be no party. There was general indignation directed toward Aunt Cordelia, indignation coming from my closest friends, from some of their mothers, even from Aggie, who muttered that Miss Cordelia was mean to Julie, never once suspecting that she herself was the cause of all our broken plans.
Aunt Cordelia maintained her usual calm. No one of us was fool enough to believe that she would change her mind though the whole school should rise in mutiny. Her only nod to our disappointment was a casual remark that, although the party had been cancelled, there would be birthday cake for everyone, a remark that delighted the boys, who had not been especially pained at the disappointment of the girls in the first place.
Father never interfered with Aunt Cordelia’s disciplinary measures, but I think that he felt a little sorry for me at this time. He came out and took me for a long drive the night before my birthday, and he brought me a silver pen and a quire of good white paper in a leather box, material for the stories I wanted to write. Alicia sent me a gift too, a beautifully bound volume of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poems. In a little note Alicia said, “There is something about you, Julie, that reminds me of Millay’s early poems; read them now and save the darker ones for later years.” She had placed her note in the book so that it opened to the lines:“God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Your heart!”
And turning a few pages, I found lines that mirrored an ache and longing I had so often felt when the beauty around my woods cathedral was too intense, when the need to grasp and keep loveliness left me with a sense of desolate frustration.
“Thy winds, thy wide gray skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with color! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, world, I cannot get thee close enough!”
When I was through, my eyes were wet and I loved not only Millay but Alicia and Laura and Aunt Cordelia—almost everyone in the world except poor little Aggie Kilpin.
Compassion was not yet aroused within me, and the better nature that loved poetry and beauty was completely overshadowed the day of my twelfth birthday. Aunt Cordelia drove her car to school that morning because she was taking the two huge angel-food cakes that she had baked and iced the night before. I was invited to cut the cakes at noon and after sliding each piece on a napkin, to place my birthday offering on each pupil’s desk. It was a poor substitute for a party, and most of the girls felt as downcast and low spirited that noon as I did.
But not Aggie. She grinned in delight when I placed the cake before her, and she clambered out of her seat when she saw the rest of us preparing to go outside.
“I won’t be queen today, kid,” she garbled eagerly. “I’m goin’ to set by you ’cause it’s your birthday. I’m goin’ to be your best friend.”
And then I did it, a thing one does not forget. I turned on an innocent human being in fury, and I threw Aggie’s love for me back into her simple, uncomprehending face.
“Don’t you dare follow me, Aggie; don’t you dare come near me,” I told her, and I didn’t care in the least what measures of discipline Aunt Cordelia might think up for me. I flashed a hostile look toward Aunt Cordelia as I strode past her desk, and I noticed that she looked quite tired and a little drawn. She said nothing to me, but she held out her hand to Aggie.
; “Would you like to go with the little children and me, Agnes? We’re going out to the woods to get a bunch of wildflowers for Julia’s birthday.”
Aggie seemed to be afraid of me after that. She would grin timidly at me and nod her head as if encouraging me to be kind. Sometimes in shame, I returned her smile, but it was always a weak thing, and Aggie was never reassured. I did not read Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poems during those last few weeks of school; belatedly, I had a miserable feeling that the gentle young poet would not have liked me.
It was a hot, dry summer that year, and in early August, when the heat seemed almost unbearable, we heard that Agnes Kilpin was very ill with a fever resulting from the infection of a cut foot for which she had received no medical attention. Aunt Cordelia immediately drove up to the Kilpins’, taking ice and cool fruit drinks with her. That evening she told me something of the condition in which she had found Aggie and of the futility of trying to help her.
“I wanted to bathe the poor child and put clean sheets on her bed, but Mrs. Kilpin wouldn’t allow me to touch her—said she wasn’t going to have her girl catch pneumonia by having a bath.” Aunt Cordelia closed her eyes briefly in exasperation. “Afraid of pneumonia, but not of filth and the agony of heat and fever. I wanted to tie that woman up outside the room and see to it that Agnes was cared for properly—for just once in her life.”
A few days later on a hot Sunday when tempers were shorter than usual, Aunt Cordelia and I had one of our not infrequent clashes. She had given my room a quick inspection after church that morning, and had found its condition unsatisfactory.
“You will put your books and clothing in their proper places, Julia, and you will dust the room, including—especially including—the windowsills, which I find absolutely white with dust. And understand this, Julia: no lady has a right to that title unless she is not only clean of body and clothing, but is equally clean in her surroundings. Never let it be said that you have grown up in my home and have been so remiss as to throw your discarded underclothing under the bed—which is exactly where I found yours just now.”