Edith Black - A Princess in Calico

She stood at her bedroom window before going downstairs to take up the burden of a new day. She was just seventeen, but they did not keep any account of anniversaries at Hickory Farm. The sun had given her a loving glance as he lifted his bright old face above the horizon, but her father was too busy and careworn to remember, and, since her mother had gone away, there was no one else. She had read of the birthdays of other girls, full of strange, sweet surprises, and tender thoughts – but those were girls with mothers. A smile like a stray beam of sunshine drifted over her troubled young face, at the thought of the second Mrs Harding stopping for one instant in her round of ponderous toil to note the fact that one of her family had reached another milestone in life’s journey. Certainly not on washing day, when every energy was absorbed in the elimination of impurity from her household linen, and life looked grotesque and hazy through clouds of soapy steam.

She heard her father now putting on the heavy pots of water, and then watched him cross the chip-yard to the barn. How bent and old he looked. Did he ever repent of his step? she wondered. Life could not be much to him any more than it was to her, and he had known her mother! Oh! why could he not have waited? She would soon have been old enough to keep house for him.

The minister had spoken the day before of a heaven where people were, presumably, to find their height of enjoyment in an eternity of rest. She supposed that was the best of it. Old Mrs Goodenough was always sighing for rest, and Deacon Croaker prayed every week to be set free from the trials and tribulations of this present evil world, and brought into everlasting peace. An endless passivity seemed a dreary outlook to her active soul, which was sighing to plume its cramped wings, and soar among the endless possibilities of earth: it seemed strange that there should be no wonders to explore in heaven. Well, death was sure, anyway, and after all there was nothing in life – her life – but hard work, an ever-recurring round of the same thing. She thought she could have stood it better if there had been variety. Death was sure to come, sometime, but people lived to be eighty, and she was so very young. Still, perhaps monotony might prove as fatal as heart failure. She thought it would with her – she was so terribly tired. Ever since she could remember she had looked out of this same window as the sun rose, and wondered if something would happen to her as it did to other girls, but the day went past in the same dull routine. So many plates to wash, and the darning basket seemed to grow larger each year, and the babies were so heavy. She had read somewhere that ‘all earnest, pure, unselfish men who lived their lives well, helped to form the hero – God let none of them be wasted. A thousand unrecorded patriots helped to make Wellington.’ It seemed to her Wellington had the best of it.

‘Help me git dressed, P’liney,’ demanded Lemuel, her youngest step-brother, from his trundle bed. ‘You’re loiterin’. Why ain’t you down helping mar? Mar’ll be awful cross with you. She always is wash days. Hi! you’ll git it!’ and he endeavoured to suspend himself from a chair by his braces.

‘Come and get your face washed, Lemuel. Now don’t wiggle. You know you’ve got to say your prayers before you can go down.’

‘Can’t be bovvered,’ retorted that worthy, as he squirmed into his jacket like an eel, and darted past her. ‘I’m as hungry as Wobinson Crusoe, an’ I’m goin’ to tell mar how you’re loiterin’.’

She followed him sadly. She had forgotten to say her own.

‘Fifteen minutes late,’ said Mrs Harding severely, as she entered the kitchen. ‘You’ll hev to be extry spry to make up. There’s pertaters to be fried, an’ the children’s lunches to put up, an’ John Alexander’s lost his jography – I believe that boy’d lose his head if it twarn’t glued to his shoulders. There’s a button off Stephen’s collar, an’ Susan Ann wants her hair curled, an’ Polly’s frettin’ to be taken up. It beats me how that child does fret – I believe I’ll put her to sleep with you after this – I’m that beat out I can hardly stand.’

‘Here, Leander, go and call your father, or you’ll be late for school again, an’ your teacher’ll be sending in more complaints. ‘Bout all them teachers is good for anyway – settin’ like ladies twiddling at the leaves of a book, an’ thinkin’ themselves somethin’ fine because they know a few words of Latin, an’ can figure with an x . Algebry is all very fine in its way, but I guess plain arithmetic is good enough for most folks. It’s all I was brought up on, an’ the multiplication table has kept me on a level with the majority.’

Pauline smiled to herself, as she cut generous slices of pumpkin pie to go with the doughnuts and bread and butter in the different dinner pails. That was just what tired her; being ‘on a level with the majority.’

The long morning wore itself away. Pauline toiled bravely over the endless array of pinafores which the youthful Hardings managed to make unpresentable in a week.

‘Monotony even in gingham!’ she murmured; for Polly’s were all of pink check, Lemuel’s blue, and Leander’s a dull brown.

‘Saves sortin’,’ had been the brief response, when she had suggested varying the colours in order to cultivate the æsthetic instinct in the wearers.

‘But, Mrs Harding,’ she remonstrated, ‘they say now that it is possible for even wall-paper to lower the moral tone of a child, and lead to crime – ’

Her step-mother turned on her a look of withering scorn.

‘If your hifalutin’ people mean to say that if I don’t get papering to suit their notions, I will make my boys thieves an’ liars, then it’s well for us the walls is covered with sensible green paint that’ll wash. To-morrow is killing time, an’ next week we must try out the tallow. You can be as æsthetic as you’re a mind to with the head-cheese and candles.’

Pauline never attempted after that to elevate the moral tone of her step-brothers.

Her father came in at supper-time with a letter. He handed it over to her as she sat beside him.

‘It’s from your uncle Robert, my dear, in Boston. His folks think it’s time they got to know their cousin.’

‘Well, I hope they’re not comin’ trailin’ down here with their city airs,’ said Mrs Harding shortly. ‘I’ve got enough people under my feet as it is.’

‘You needn’t worry, mother, I don’t think Sleepy Hollow would suit Robert’s family – they’re pretty lively, I take it, and up with the times. They’d find us small potatoes not worth the hoeing.’ He sighed as he spoke. Did he remember how Pauline’s mother had drooped and died from this very dulness? Was he glad to have her child escape?

‘Well, I don’t see how there’s any other way for them to get acquainted,’ retorted his wife. ‘Pawliney can’t be spared to go trapesing up to Boston. Her head’s as full of nonsense now as an egg is of meat, an’ she wouldn’t know a broom from a clothes-wringer after she’d been philandering round a couple of months with people that are never satisfied unless they’re peeking into something they can’t understand.’

‘But I guess we’ll have to spare Pauline,’ said Mr Harding. ‘She has been a good girl, and she deserves a holiday.’ He patted Pauline’s hand kindly.

‘Oh, of course!’ sniffed Mrs Harding in high dudgeon; ‘some folks must always have what they cry for. I can be kep’ awake nights with the baby, and work like a slave in the day time, but that doesn’t signify as long as Pawliney gets to her grand relations.’