Читать книгу Clearing in the West. My Own Story - Nellie Letitia McClung - Страница 5

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My memory of our old house is somewhat shadowy, but I know that smoked hams hung from the rafters in the kitchen, and from one corner were suspended brown festoons of dried apples, done by a paring-machine which went around the neighborhood. The walls of all the rooms were white-washed, and only the big log beams that held up the ceiling were left in their natural state. The floors were pine boards and were scrubbed every week, using very little soap, for soap yellowed the wood. Elbow grease was the thing! The heating was done by a huge cookstove, with a high oven, in the kitchen and a round heater in the front room which had a drum upstairs to collect and radiate heat to the bedrooms. Seats near either stove were much prized for the outer area was very cold when the north wind swept down from the Georgian Bay.

The floor had lengths of rag carpet in pale stripes and there were red and brown mats, hooked in circles and triangles. The inside doors were home-made ones and had buttons of wood instead of latches. The two front windows had hand-knitted curtains, done by mother, in a fern pattern and paper lace valentines were hung on them.

Two pictures, I remember very well, “Winter,” and “Autumn.” Two beautiful women—“Autumn,” wreathed with red leaves and purple fruit, and “Winter,” dressed in white fur with holly berries on her cap. “Winter,” with her soft eyes was my ideal of beauty and I determined to be just like her when I grew up, if it could be arranged. These prints were given as premiums with the Montreal Family Herald and Weekly Star, and there were really four in the series, for I had seen “Spring,” and “Summer,” at my aunt Ellen’s house. There was a steel engraving of the Battle of Waterloo, which I did not like. In it, Wellington and Blucher on their horses, were shaking hands across the bodies of the slain. Dead men and horses carpeted the field, and one young fellow was trying to raise his head, and his face was full of pain. Jack said, I was crazy to cry about it, for the dead men and this wounded one were all Frenchmen and our enemies and it served them right; but even so, he could not explain away the dead horses.

There was another horrible black and white print, “The Stag at Bay,” of a poor tired stag with his back to a rock, facing a pack of fierce and snarling hounds. He was trapped, and beaten with no hope of escape, but he was still fighting.

There was one pretty chromo called “The Old Mill Stream,” which showed a rapid stream, the mill-race, bright blue in color, from which a beautiful dog, a big tawny fellow, had just saved a little girl, with golden curls and pantalettes, from drowning. She lay on the grass very wet and pale, but her mother was running across the green with outstretched arms.

There was another colored picture of a girl in a long white nightie, and golden hair holding herself out of the water by hanging tightly to a wooden cross set in a rock. White gulls flew overhead, and I knew she was cold and wet.

I was taken to Sunday-school in Chatsworth, by Elizabeth and Annie Stevenson, who made a chair and carried me when I got tired. Annie was a lovely girl, who wore a hat with plumes and seemed to belong to us.

The Sunday-school was held in the church, with green baize curtains to divide the classes. But there was no room for the “Busy Bees,” one Sunday so we were taken across the road to the parsonage parlor, and the minister’s wife told us about “Moses,” who had a little bed of switches smeared with tar, to keep out the water, and was put in the river for safe keeping; and then she took our collection, one copper each, tied in a knot in our handkerchiefs. It took quite a while to extract the coins, because we had chewed the knots. Six cents was the day’s receipts. We stood around her when she played her little organ, which had white teeth all right, but no high top like the “instruments” in Holland. And she asked us all to come back, and told us the school had grown, so we would come there every Sunday now, and we were glad. When I went home, and released the big story about “Moses,” being put in the river, I was disappointed to find they all knew it!

I received a small card each Sunday with a verse set in a little frame of flowers, and there was a hope held out that four small cards would be rewarded with a big one, but I never was able to put it to the test for I could not keep the little cards. They got lost.

My first time to be in church was at a revival meeting held at the Sauble, where Rev. Mr. Read, the Methodist minister of Chatsworth, was holding special services and when father and mother went one night, they had to take me for it seemed there was no way of leaving me. My mother, being a Scotch Presbyterian, did not hold with revival services and testimony meetings and confessions, but father was an out-and-out Methodist, and had experienced the strange “warming of the heart,” that John Wesley wrote about in his Journal.

We were late for the meeting and the altar call was sounding when we entered, and crowds of people were pressing forward; and as many more came in when we did, we found ourselves among the seekers, and we knelt there with the others. Mr. Read put his hand on my head and said no child was too young to be reconciled to God, and he was glad to receive the lambs of the flock. I was the only child at the altar and I liked him very much for being so friendly.

He was a tall man with brown whiskers and a cheerful face. He moved his ears when he talked which I thought very clever of him. I had a trick too, just learned that day from my brother Will. I could shut one eye and keep the other one wide open, and I thought he might like to see me do it. So when an old man who stuttered, was giving his testimony and holding back the meeting with everyone getting impatient, I kept my one eye on the minister and the other one shut.

Mother said after we went home, that Mr. Read was too light a man to be preaching the gospel, for when poor old Samuel Norton was speaking he actually began to laugh, though he had tried to turn it into a cough. My father was loyal to the minister and said there was no harm in a laugh at any time, and it would be better if there were more laughter in the churches.

But mother refused to accept this, and said, there was a time to laugh and it was not in the church. I didn’t like to hear Mr. Read criticized, so I said I wanted to go again for I wanted to make my peace with God, and that stopped the argument. Mother was ready to talk to me then, and tried to explain what it meant to be a Christian. She said, I would have to stop mocking people; for that was my besetting sin; though it was not so much my fault, she said, as it was the fault of older people who encouraged me and laughed at me. I knew who the older people were and I was sorry that I had drawn my father into another argument.

The only people I had ever mocked were mother’s two aunts, who lived in Holland—two thin old ladies who owned the “instruments,” who dressed in black silk made with tight bodies and full skirts, and wore mutches, and knit with flashing steel needles. They came to visit us once a year anyway and when that happened, father took to the barn. He always had peas to flail when the aunts came.

I loved to listen to them and get their stories, just as they told them, which was not always easy, for the aunts to save time talked both at once. On account of the bad roads in Holland, they did not get out much, and when they did they talked without a pause. I sat near them, drinking in every word and they often said I was a nice quiet child. When I had gathered a good earful I made my way to the barn to tell my father, and with two bright straws for knitting-needles, I relayed what I could remember, and so well received was my recital, I often stayed out until I was nearly frozen. It was not only their words, but their peculiar accent that gave my recital merit. They had a queer droning way of speaking.

But now, having renounced the world, I knew I would have to give this up. I must not mock my mother’s aunts! I hoped they would not come soon, not until I was stronger in the faith, for the pleasure of seeing my father lean on his flail and laugh until his eyes ran with tears, was hard to forego, and I knew so many of their stories now, it seemed too bad to waste them. There were times when I looked back, like the children of Israel, and longed for my degenerate days.

The catechism helped to keep my spirits aflame. In it I seemed to have had special mention. “What is your name?” was one question, early in the book. “M or N,” was the answer, so I hoped from that, that I was numbered with the blest and for the time, at least, continued in the way.

It was a mellow evening in early autumn, for the apples were ripe on the trees behind the milkhouse, their bright red globes gleaming in the gray-green leaves, and there was a smell of ripening grain in the air, and a blue haze dulled the horizon, and blotted out the hills.

I was being taken down to the lower meadow by Lizzie, the good angel of my childhood, for this was the evening when the pigs were being killed, and my heart was ready to break. Not that I had a pet pig or cared about the pigs as individuals. I was a little afraid of pigs, and thought they were greedy, ill-mannered brutes, but even so, I felt they had a right to live, or at least to die without pain.

All day I knew what was coming! The pigs were being starved for the killing, and they squealed in their pens and quarrelled among themselves. The hole was dug for the barrel, which would be filled with boiling water from the boiler set on stones with wood laid under. The gruesome scaffold had been erected, and the whole farmyard had been changed from a friendly playground, to a place of evil.

We walked over the hill behind the house just as the sun was dipping into the mist of evening, and a queer green light came into the upper and eastern sky. Lizzie’s hand was very comforting in mine now that my world had gone wrong, and the sorrows of life were overflowing. She told me she had a new pattern for a dress for me, with a little scalloped collar, which would be edged with turkey-red, and the tie-backs would have scalloped ends, and the dress would have red pearl buttons, with one on each pocket.

We sat beside the little stream just before it lost itself in the meadow, and she found stovepipe grass for me to piece together into a chain.

She thought that by taking me over the hill the sounds would not come through, but just as I had almost forgotten why we had come, in my delight and surprise at the honey sandwiches which she had produced from under her coat—the terrible cry came drilling through the hill, and tore through us like a thousand poisoned arrows. I knew then, that life was a place of horror, in spite of flowers and trees, and streams, and I flung myself down on the grass and cried my heart out in an agony of helplessness. I remember how she put her two kind hands over my ears, but that piercing cry came in at every pore of my body.

Lizzie told me God made pigs for meat for people. They were of no other use and if they were all let live there would be pigs everywhere, and how would I like that? But I asked her why they had to suffer like this; why didn’t God make them like trees or grain? They didn’t squeal when they were cut down. God could have done that, if He wanted to. He made everything. Lizzie admitted she did not know why there had to be such pain in the world; she said she often wondered, but it wasn’t right to criticize God, His ways were always right. But I was rebellious. I didn’t think much of the world, and I was through with being a Christian. I didn’t love God, and I was going to be like uncle Abner and not care for anything, but just having a good time. I’d go to the dances when I grew up, and put hair-oil on my hair and stay out late. And I would mock the aunts, I would mock them worse than ever, and I didn’t care how soon they came, and I was through with Sunday-school and would burn my tickets.

Lizzie did not try to stem my outburst. She let me rave on and in the raving I found relief. I knew my words were wild and wicked, but in some way they restored me. Wild words were safe with Lizzie; she would never remember them against anybody; they fell around her like dust that is blown away. Every family needs one member who has the gift of listening, and forgetting.

It was quite dark when we got home, and Lizzie led me around to the front door and we went upstairs. The house was heavy with the smell of rendering lard, which reminded me there would be doughnuts tomorrow and I resolved I wouldn’t eat one—or at least very few of them. Mother came up to see me after I had gone to bed and told me the pigs’ suffering was all over in a minute, and I must put it all out of my mind. Father knew exactly how to kill a pig with the least possible amount of suffering, and he just hated to do it too; when he was a little boy in Ireland he always ran away to the bog when the pigs were killed, but now he knew it had to be done and he always did it himself, just to be sure it was done quickly. I was glad to know that he hated to do it, for I adored my father and couldn’t bear to think him cruel. I ate the remainder of the honey sandwiches and went to sleep.

People who write about their own family usually tell much of family tyranny and misunderstanding, and in the minds of many, parents and children are natural enemies, but I have not much to say about parental oppression. My people were hard-working folk, greatly concerned with the problems of making a living, tired many a time with the day’s work and perplexed with life’s cares, but they were never too tired or busy to comfort a sad little heart, or do their best to direct a lost young pilgrim back to the highway of happiness.