Painted Windows
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Elia W. Peattie >> Painted Windows
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PAINTED WINDOWS
BY
ELIA W. PEATTIE
Will you come with me into the chamber of memory
and lift your eyes to the painted windows where the figures
and scenes of childhood appear? Perhaps by looking with
kindly eyes at those from out my past, long wished-for
visions of your own youth will appear to heal the wounds
from which you suffer, and to quiet your stormy and
restless heart.
CONTENTS
I NIGHT
II SOLITUDE
III FRIENDSHIP
IV FAME
V REMORSE
VI TRAVEL
PAINTED WINDOWS
I
NIGHT
YOUNG people believe very little
that they hear about the compen-
sations of growing old, and of living
over again in memory the events of the
past. Yet there really are these com-
pensations and pleasures, and although
they are not so vivid and breathless as
the pleasures of youth, they have some-
thing delicate and fine about them that
must be experienced to be appreciated.
Few of us would exchange our mem-
ories for those of others. They have
become a part of our personality, and
we could not part with them without
losing something of ourselves. Neither
would we part with our own particular
childhood, which, however difficult it
may have been at times, seems to each
of us more significant than the child-
hood of any one else. I can run over
in my mind certain incidents of my
childhood as if they were chapters in a
much-loved book, and when I am wake-
ful at night, or bored by a long journey,
or waiting for some one in the railway-
station, I take them out and go over
them again.
Nor is my book of memories without
its illustrations. I can see little vil-
lages, and a great city, and forests and
planted fields, and familiar faces; and
all have this advantage: they are not
fixed and without motion, like the pic-
tures in the ordinary book. People
are walking up the streets of the vil-
lage, the trees are tossing, the tall
wheat and corn in the fields salute me.
I can smell the odour of the gathered
hay, and the faces in my dream-book
smile at me.
Of all of these memories I like best
the one in the pine forest.
I was at that age when children think
of their parents as being all-powerful.
I could hardly have imagined any cir-
cumstances, however adverse, that my
father could not have met with his
strength and wisdom and skill. All chil-
dren have such a period of hero-wor-
ship, I suppose, when their father
stands out from the rest of the world
as the best and most powerful man
living. So, feeling as I did, I was made
happier than I can say when my father
decided, because I was looking pale and
had a poor appetite, to take me out of
school for a while, and carry me with
him on a driving trip. We lived in
Michigan, where there were, in the days
of which I am writing, not many rail-
roads; and when my father, who was
attorney for a number of wholesale mer-
cantile firms in Detroit, used to go
about the country collecting money due,
adjusting claims, and so on, he had no
choice but to drive.
And over what roads! Now it was
a strip of corduroy, now a piece of well-
graded elevation with clay subsoil and
gravel surface, now a neglected stretch
full of dangerous holes; and worst of
all, running through the great forests,
long pieces of road from which the
stumps had been only partly extracted,
and where the sunlight barely pene-
trated. Here the soaked earth became
little less than a quagmire.
But father was too well used to hard
journeys to fear them, and I felt that,
in going with him, I was safe from all
possible harm. The journey had all the
allurement of an adventure, for we
would not know from day to day where
we should eat our meals or sleep at
night. So, to provide against trouble,
we carried father's old red-and-blue-
checked army blankets, a bag of feed
for Sheridan, the horse, plenty of bread,
bacon, jam, coffee and prepared cream;
and we hung pails of pure water and
buttermilk from the rear of our buggy.
We had been out two weeks without
failing once to eat at a proper table or
to sleep in a comfortable bed. Some-
times we put up at the stark-looking ho-
tels that loomed, raw and uninviting,
in the larger towns; sometimes we had
the pleasure of being welcomed at a
little inn, where the host showed us a
personal hospitality; but oftener we
were forced to make ourselves "paying
guests" at some house. We cared noth-
ing whether we slept in the spare rooms
of a fine frame "residence" or crept
into bed beneath the eaves of the attic
in a log cabin. I had begun to feel that
our journey would be almost too tame
and comfortable, when one night some-
thing really happened.
Father lost his bearings. He was
hoping to reach the town of Gratiot by
nightfall, and he attempted to make a
short cut. To do this he turned into
a road that wound through a magnifi-
cent forest, at first of oak and butter-
nut, ironwood and beech, then of
densely growing pines. When we en-
tered the wood it was twilight, but no
sooner were we well within the shadow
of these sombre trees than we were
plunged in darkness, and within half an
hour this darkness deepened, so that
we could see nothing -- not even the
horse.
"The sun doesn't get in here the
year round," said father, trying his
best to guide the horse through the
mire. So deep was the mud that it
seemed as if it literally sucked at the
legs of the horse and the wheels of the
buggy, and I began to wonder if we
should really be swallowed, and to fear
that we had met with a difficulty that
even my father could not overcome. I
can hardly make plain what a tragic
thought that was! The horse began to
give out sighs and groans, and in the
intervals of his struggles to get on, I
could feel him trembling. There was
a note of anxiety in father's voice as
he called out, with all the authority and
cheer he could command, to poor Sheri-
dan. The wind was rising, and the long
sobs of the pines made cold shivers run
up my spine. My teeth chattered,
partly from cold, but more from fright.
"What are we going to do?" I asked,
my voice quivering with tears.
"Well, we aren't going to cry, what-
ever else we do!" answered father,
rather sharply. He snatched the
lighted lantern from its place on the
dashboard and leaped out into the road.
I could hear him floundering round in
that terrible mire and soothing the
horse. The next thing I realised was
that the horse was unhitched, that fa-
ther had -- for the first time during our
journey -- laid the lash across Sheri-
dan's back, and that, with a leap of in-
dignation, the horse had reached the
firm ground of the roadside. Father
called out to him to stand still, and a
moment later I found myself being
swung from the buggy into father's
arms. He staggered along, plunging
and almost falling, and presently I, too,
stood beneath the giant pines.
"One journey more," said father,
"for our supper, and then we'll bivouac
right here."
Now that I was away from the buggy
that was so familiar to me, and that
seemed like a little movable piece of
home, I felt, as I had not felt before,
the vastness of the solitude. Above me
in the rising wind tossed the tops of the
singing trees; about me stretched the
soft blackness; and beneath the dense,
interlaced branches it was almost as
calm and still as in a room. I could see
that the clouds were breaking and the
stars beginning to come out, and that
comforted me a little.
Father was keeping up a stream of
cheerful talk.
"Now, sir," he was saying to Sheri-
dan, "stand still while I get this har-
ness off you. I'll tie you and blanket
you, and you can lie or stand as you
please. Here's your nose-bag, with
some good supper in it, and if you don't
have drink, it's not my fault. Anyway,
it isn't so long since you got a good nip
at the creek."
I was watching by the faint light of
the lantern, and noticing how unnat-
ural father and Sheridan looked. They
seemed to be blocked out in a rude kind
of way, like some wooden toys I had at
home.
"Here we are," said father, "like
Robinson Crusoes. It was hard luck
for Robinson, not having his little girl
along. He'd have had her to pick up
sticks and twigs to make a fire, and that
would have been a great help to him."
Father began breaking fallen
branches over his knee, and I groped
round and filled my arms again and
again with little fagots. So after a few
minutes we had a fine fire crackling in
a place where it could not catch the
branches of the trees. Father had
scraped the needles of the pines to-
gether in such a way that a bare rim of
earth was left all around the fire, so that
it could not spread along the ground;
and presently the coffee-pot was over
the fire and bacon was sizzling in the
frying-pan. The good, hearty odours
came out to mingle with the delicious
scent of the pines, and I, setting out
our dishes, began to feel a happiness
different from anything I had ever
known.
Pioneers and wanderers and soldiers
have joys of their own -- joys of which
I had heard often enough, for there had
been more stories told than read in our
house. But now for the first time I
knew what my grandmother and my
uncles had meant when they told me
about the way they had come into the
wilderness, and about the great happi-
ness and freedom of those first days. I,
too, felt this freedom, and it seemed to
me as if I never again wanted walls to
close in on me. All my fear was gone,
and I felt wild and glad. I could not
believe that I was only a little girl. I
felt taller even than my father.
Father's mood was like mine in a
way. He had memories to add to his
emotion, but then, on the other hand,
he lacked the sense of discovery I had,
for he had known often such feelings
as were coming to me for the first time.
When he was a young man he had been
a colporteur for the American Bible So-
ciety among the Lake Superior Indians,
and in that way had earned part of the
money for his course at the University
of Michigan; afterward he had gone
with other gold-seekers to Pike's Peak,
and had crossed the plains with oxen,
in the company of many other adven-
turers; then, when President Lincoln
called for troops, he had returned to
enlist with the Michigan men, and had
served more than three years with Mc-
Clellan and Grant.
So, naturally, there was nothing he
did not know about making himself
comfortable in the open. He knew all
the sorrow and all the joy of the home-
less man, and now, as he cooked, he be-
gan to sing the old songs -- "Marching
Through Georgia," and "Bury Me Not
on the Lone Prairie," and "In the
Prison Cell I Sit." He had been in a
Southern prison after the Battle of the
Wilderness, and so he knew how to sing
that song with particular feeling.
I had heard war stories all my life,
though usually father told such tales in
a half-joking way, as if to make light of
everything he had gone through. But
now, as we ate there under the tossing
pines, and the wild chorus in the tree-
tops swelled like a rising sea, the spirit
of the old days came over him. He was
a good "stump speaker," and he knew
how to make a story come to life, and
never did all his simple natural gifts
show themselves better than on this
night, when he dwelt on his old cam-
paigns.
For the first time I was to look into
the heart of a kindly natured man,
forced by terrible necessity to go
through the dread experience of war.
I gained an idea of the unspeakable
homesickness of the man who leaves
his family to an unimagined fate, and
sacrifices years in the service of his
country. I saw that the mere foregoing
of roof and bed is an indescribable dis-
tress; I learned something of what the
palpitant anxiety before a battle must
be, and the quaking fear at the first
rattle of bullets, and the half-mad rush
of determination with which men force
valour into their faltering hearts; I
was made to know something of the
blight of war -- the horror of the battle-
field, the waste of bounty, the ruin of
homes.
Then, rising above this, came stories
of devotion, of brotherhood, of service
on the long, desolate marches, of cour-
age to the death of those who fought
for a cause. I began to see wherein
lay the highest joy of the soldier, and
of how little account he held himself,
if the principle for which he fought
could be preserved. I heard for the
first time the wonderful words of Lin-
coln at Gettysburg, and learned to re-
peat a part of them.
I was only eight, it is true, but emo-
tion has no age, and I understood then
as well as I ever could, what heroism
and devotion and self-forgetfulness
mean. I understood, too, the meaning
of the words "our country," and my
heart warmed to it, as in the older times
the hearts of boys and girls warmed
to the name of their king. The new
knowledge was so beautiful that I
thought then, and I think now, that
nothing could have served as so fit an
accompaniment to it as the shouting of
those pines. They sang like heroes,
and in their swaying gave me fleeting
glimpses of the stars, unbelievably
brilliant in the dusky purple sky, and
half-obscured now and then by drifting
clouds.
By and by we lay down, not far apart,
each rolled in an army blanket, frayed
with service. Our feet were to the fire
-- for it was so that soldiers lay, my fa-
ther said -- and our heads rested on
mounds of pine-needles.
Sometimes in the night I felt my fa-
ther's hand resting lightly on my shoul-
ders to see that I was covered, but in
my dreams he ceased to be my father
and became my comrade, and I was a
drummer boy, -- I had seen the play,
"The Drummer Boy of the Rappahan-
nock," -- marching forward, with set
teeth, in the face of battle.
Whatever could redeem war and
make it glorious seemed to flood my
soul. All that was highest, all that was
noble in that dreadful conflict came to
me in my sleep -- to me, the child who
had been born when my father was at
"the front." I had a strange baptism
of the spirit. I discovered sorrow and
courage, singing trees and stars. I was
never again to think that the fireside
and fireside thoughts made up the whole
of life.
My father lies with other soldiers by
the Pacific; the forest sings no more;
the old army blankets have disap-
peared; the memories of the terrible
war are fading, -- happily fading, -- but
they all live again, sometimes, in my
memory, and I am once more a child,
with thoughts as proud and fierce and
beautiful as Valkyries.
II
SOLITUDE
AMONG the pictures that I see
when I look back into the past, is
the one where I, a sullen, egotistic per-
son nine years old, stood quite alone in
the world. To he sure, there were fa-
ther and mother in the house, and there
were the other children, and not one
among them knew I was alone. The
world certainly would not have re-
garded me as friendless or orphaned.
There was nothing in my mere appear-
ance, as I started away to school in my
clean ginghams, with my well-brushed
hair, and embroidered school-bag, to
lead any one to suppose that I was a
castaway. Yet I was -- I had discovered
this fact, hidden though it might be
from others.
I was no longer loved. Father and
mother loved the other children; but not
me. I might come home at night, fairly
bursting with important news about
what had happened in class or among
my friends, and try to relate my little
histories. But did mother listen? Not
at all. She would nod like a mandarin
while I talked, or go on turning the
leaves of her book, or writing her letter.
What I said was of no importance to
her.
Father was even less interested. He
frankly told me to keep still, and went
on with the accounts in which he was
so absurdly interested, or examined
"papers" -- stupid-looking things done
on legal cap, which he brought home
with him from the office. No one kissed
me when I started away in the morn-
ing; no one kissed me when I came home
at night. I went to bed unkissed. I
felt myself to be a lonely and misunder-
stood child -- perhaps even an adopted
one.
Why, I knew a little girl who, when
she went up to her room at night, found
the bedclothes turned back, and the
shade drawn, and a screen placed so as
to keep off drafts. And her mother
brushed her hair twenty minutes by the
clock each night, to make it glossy; and
then she sat by her bed and sang softly
till the girl fell asleep.
I not only had to open my own bed,
but the beds for the other children, and
although I sometimes felt my mother's
hand tucking in the bedclothes round
me, she never stooped and kissed me on
the brow and said, "Bless you, my
child." No one, in all my experience,
had said, "Bless you, my child." When
the girl I have spoken of came into the
room, her mother reached out her arms
and said, before everybody, "Here
comes my dear little girl." When I
came into a room, I was usually told to
do something for somebody. It was
"Please see if the fire needs more
wood," or "Let the cat in, please," or
"I'd like you to weed the pansy bed be-
fore supper-time."
In these circumstances, life hardly
seemed worth living. I decided that I
had made a mistake in choosing my
family. It did not appreciate me, and
it failed to make my young life glad.
I knew my young life ought to be glad.
And it was not. It was drab, as drab
as Toot's old rain-coat.
Toot was "our coloured boy." That
is the way we described him. Father
had brought him home from the war,
and had sent him to school, and then
apprenticed him to a miller. Toot did
"chores" for his board and clothes,
but was soon to be his own man, and to
be paid money by the miller, and to
marry Tulula Darthula Jones, a nice
coloured girl who lived with the Cut-
lers.
The time had been when Toot had
been my self-appointed slave. Almost
my first recollections were of his carry-
ing me out to see the train pass, and
saying, "Toot, toot!" in imitation of
the locomotive; so, although he had
rather a splendid name, I called him
"Toot," and the whole town followed
my example. Yes, the time had been
when Toot saw me safe to school, and
slipped little red apples into my pocket,
and took me out while he milked the
cow, and told me stories and sang me
plantation songs. Now, when he passed,
he only nodded. When I spoke to him
about his not giving me any more ap-
ples, he said:
"Ah reckon they're your pa's ap-
ples, missy. Why, fo' goodness' sake,
don' yo' he'p yo'se'f?"
But I did not want to help myself.
I wanted to be helped -- not because I
was lazy, but because I wanted to be
adored. I was really a sort of fairy
princess, -- misplaced, of course, in a
stupid republic, -- and I wanted life con-
ducted on a fairy-princess basis. It was
a game I wished to play, but it was one
I could not play alone, and not a soul
could I find who seemed inclined to play
it with me.
Well, things went from bad to worse.
I decided that if mother no longer loved
me, I would no longer tell her things.
So I did not. I got a hundred in spell-
ing for twelve days running, and did
not tell her! I broke Edna Grantham's
mother's water-pitcher, and kept the
fact a secret. The secret was, indeed,
as sharp-edged as the pieces of the
broken pitcher had been; I cried under
the bedclothes, thinking how sorry Mrs.
Grantham had been, and that mother
really ought to know. Only what was
the use? I no longer looked to her to
help me out of my troubles.
I had no need now to have father and
mother tell me to hurry up and finish
my chatter, for I kept all that hap-
pened to myself. I had a new "intimate
friend," and did not so much as men-
tion her. I wrote a poem and showed
it to my teacher, but not to my unin-
terested parents. And when I climbed
the stairs at night to my room, I swelled
with loneliness and anguish and resent-
ment, and the hot tears came to my eyes
as I heard father and mother laughing
and talking together and paying no at-
tention to my misery. I could hear
Toot, who used to be making all sorts
of little presents for me, whistling as
he brought in the wood and water, and
then "cleaned up" to go to see his
Tulula, with never a thought of me.
And I said to myself that the best thing
I could do was to grow up and get
away from a place where I was no
longer wanted.
No one noticed my sufferings further
than sometimes to say impatiently,
"What makes you act so strange,
child?" And to that, of course, I an-
swered nothing, for what I had to say
would not, I felt, be understood.
One morning in June I left home with
my resentment burning fiercely within
me. I had not cared for the things we
had for breakfast, for I was half-ill
with fretting and with the closeness of
the day, but my lack of appetite had
been passed by with the remark that
any one was likely not to have an ap-
petite on such a close day. But I was
so languid, and so averse to taking up
the usual round of things, that I begged
mother to let me stay at home. She
shook her head decidedly.
"You've been out of school too many
days already this term," she said.
"Run along now, or you'll he late!"
"Please --" I began, for my head
really was whirling, although, quite as
much, perhaps, from my perversity as
from any other cause. Mother turned
on me one of her "lastword" glances.
"Go to school without another word,"
she said, quietly.
I knew that quiet tone, and I went.
And now I was sure that all was over
between my parents and myself. I be-
gan to wonder if I need really wait till
I was grown up before leaving home.
So miserably absorbed was I in think-
ing of this, and in pitying myself with
a consuming pity, that everything at
school seemed to pass like the shadow
of a dream. I blundered in whatever
I tried to do, was sharply scolded for
not hearing the teacher until she had
spoken my name three times, and was
holding on to myself desperately in my
effort to keep back a flood of tears,
when I became aware that something
was happening.
There suddenly was a perfect silence
in the room -- the sort of silence that
makes the heart beat too fast. The
mist swimming before me did not, I per-
ceived, come from my own eyes, but
from the changing colour of the air, the
usual transparency of which was being
tinged with yellow. The sultriness of
the day was deepening, and seemed to
carry a threat with it.
"Something is going to happen,"
thought I, and over the whole room
spread the same conviction. Electric
currents seemed to snap from one con-
sciousness to another. We dropped our
books, and turned our eyes toward the
western windows, to look upon a
changed world. It was as if we peered
through yellow glass. In the sky soft-
looking, tawny clouds came tumbling
along like playful cats -- or tigers. A
moment later we saw that they were
not playful, but angry; they stretched
out claws, and snarled as they did so.
One claw reached the tall chimneys of
the schoolhouse, another tapped at the
cupola, one was thrust through the wall
near where I sat.
Then it grew black, and there was a
bellowing all about us, so that the com-
mands of the teacher and the screams
of the children barely could be heard.
I knew little or nothing. My shoulder
was stinging, something had hit me on
the side of the head, my eyes were full
of dust and mortar, and my feet were
carrying me with the others along the
corridor, down the two flights of wide
stairs. I do not think we pushed each
other or were reckless. My recollec-
tion is only of many shadowy figures
flying on with sure feet out of the build-
ing that seemed to be falling in upon us.
Presently we were out on the land-
ing before the door, with one more
flight of steps before us, that reached
to the street. Something so strong that
it might not be denied gathered me up
in invisible arms, whirled me round
once or twice and dropped me, not un-
gently, in the middle of the road. And
then, as I struggled to my knees and,
wiping the dust from my eyes, looked
up, I saw dozens of others being lifted
in the same way, and blown off into the
yard or the street. The larger ones
were trying to hold on to the smaller,
and the teachers were endeavouring to
keep the children from going out of the
building, but their efforts were of no
avail. The children came on, and were
blown about like leaves.
Then I saw what looked like a high
yellow wall advancing upon me -- a roar-
ing and fearsome mass of driven dust,
sticks, debris. It came over me that my
own home might be there, in strips and
fragments, to beat me down and kill
me; and with the thought came a swift
little vision out of my geography of the
Arabs in a sand-storm on the desert. I
gathered up my fluttering dress skirt,
held it tight about my head, and lay flat
upon the ground.
It seemed as if a long time passed,
a time in which I knew very little ex-
cept that I was fighting for my breath
as I never had fought for anything.
There were more hurts and bruises
now, but they did not matter. Just to
draw my own breath in my own way
seemed to be the only thing in the
world that was of any account. And
then there was a shaft of flame, an ear-
splitting roar, and the rain was upon
us in sheets, in streams, in visible riv-
ers.
I imagined that it would last a long
time, and wondered in a daze how I
could get home in a rain like that --
for I should have to face it. I could
see that in a few seconds the gutters
had begun to race, the road where I
lay was a stream, and then -- then the
rain ceased. Never was anything so
astonishing. The sky came out blue,
tattered rags of cloud raced across it,
and I had time to conclude that, whip-
ped and almost breathless though I
was, I was still alive.