Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

Not many children can boast of having two homes; some, alas! have hardly one. But we actually had two abiding-places, both of which were so dear to us that we loved them equally. First, there was Green Peace. When our mother first came to the place, and saw the fair garden, and the house with its lawn and its shadowing trees, she gave it this name, half in sport; and the title clung to it always.

The house itself was pleasant. The original building, nearly two hundred years old, was low and squat, with low-studded rooms, and great posts in the corners, and small many-paned windows. As I recall it now, it consisted largely of cupboards,—the queerest cupboards that ever were; some square and some three-cornered, and others of no shape

Maud.

at all. They were squeezed into staircase walls, they lurked beside chimneys, they were down near the floor, they were close beneath the ceiling. It was as if a child had built the house for the express purpose of playing hide-and-seek in it. Ah, how we children did play hide-and-seek there! To lie curled up in the darkest corner of the “twisty” cupboard, that went burrowing in under the front stairs,—to lie curled up there, eating an apple, and hear the chase go clattering and thumping by, that was a sensation!

Then the stairs! There was not very much of them, for a tall man standing on the ground floor could touch the top step with his hand. But they had a great deal of variety; no two steps went the same way: they seemed to have fallen out with one another, and never to have “made up” again. When you had once learned how to go up and down, it was very well, except in the dark; and even then you had only to remember that you must tread on the farther side of the first two steps, and on the hither side of the next three, and in the middle of four after, and then you were near the top or the bottom, as the case might be, and could scramble or jump for it. But it was not well for strangers to go up and down those stairs.

There was another flight that was even more perilous, but our father had it boarded over, as he thought it unsafe for any one to use. One always had a shiver in passing through a certain dark passage, when one felt boards instead of plaster under one’s hand, and knew that behind those boards lurked the hidden staircase. There was something uncanny about it,—

Perhaps the legend of the hidden staircase was all the more awful because it was never told.

Just to the right of the school-room, a door opened into the new part of the house which our father had built. The first room was the great dining-room; and very great it was. On the floor was a wonderful carpet, all in one piece, which was made in France, and had belonged to Joseph Bonaparte, a brother of the great Emperor. In the middle was a medallion of Napoleon and Marie Louise, with sun-rays about them; then came a great circle, with strange beasts on it ramping and roaring (only they roared silently); and then a plain space, and in the corners birds and fishes such as never were seen in air or sea. Yes, that was a carpet! It was here we danced the wonderful dances. We hopped round and round the circle, and we stamped on the beasts and the fishes; but it was not good manners to step on the Emperor and Empress,—one must go round them. Here our mother sang to us; but the singing belongs to another chapter.

The great dining-room had a roof all to itself,—a flat roof, covered with tar and gravel, and railed in; so that one could lie on one’s face and kick one’s heels, pick out white pebbles, and punch the bubbles of tar all hot in the sun.

But, after all, we did not stay in the house much. Why should we, with the garden calling us out with its thousand voices? On each side of the house lay an oval lawn, green as emerald. One lawn had the laburnum-tree, where at the right time of year we sat under a shower of fragrant gold; the other had the three hawthorn-trees, one with white blossoms, another with pink, and a third with deep red, rose-like flowers. Other trees were there, but I do not remember them. Directly in front of the house stood two giant Balm-of-Gilead trees, towering over the low-roofed dwelling. These trees were favorites of ours, for at a certain time they dropped down to us thousands and thousands of sticky catkins, full of the most charming, silky cotton. We called them the “cottonwool-trees,” and loved them tenderly. Then, between the trees, a flight of steps plunged down to the green-house. A curious place this was,—summer-house, hot-house, and bowling-alley, all in one. The summer-house part was not very interesting, being all filled with seeds and pots and dry bulbs, and the like. But from it a swing-door opened into Elysium! Here the air was soft and balmy, and full of the smell of roses. One went down two steps, and there were the roses themselves! Great vines trained along the walls, heavy with long white or yellow or tea-colored buds,—I remember no red ones. Mr. Arrow, the gardener, never let us touch the roses, and he never gave us a bud; but when a rose was fully open, showing its golden heart, he would often pick it for us, with a sigh, but a kind look too. Mr. Arrow was an Englishman, stout and red-faced. Julia made a rhyme about him once, beginning,—

Midway in the long glass-covered building was a tiny oval pond, lined with green moss. I think it once had goldfish in it, but they did not thrive. When Mr. Arrow was gone to dinner, it was pleasant to fill the brass syringe with water from this pond, and squirt at the roses, and feel the heavy drops plashing back in one’s upturned face. Sometimes a child fell into the pond; but as the water was only four or five inches deep, no harm was done, save to stockings and petticoats.

The bowling-alley was divided by a low partition from the hot-house, so that when we went to play at planets we breathed the same soft, perfumed air. The planets were the balls. The biggest one was Uranus; then came Saturn, and so on down to Mercury, a little dot of a ball. They were of some dark, hard, foreign wood, very smooth, with a dusky polish. It was a great delight to roll them, either over the smooth floor, against the ninepins, or along the rack at the side. When one rolled Uranus or Jupiter, it sounded like thunder,—Olympian thunder, suggestive of angry gods. Then the musical tinkle of the pins, as they clinked and fell together! Sometimes they were British soldiers, and we the Continentals, firing the “iron six-pounder” from the other end of the battle-field. Sometimes, regardless of dates, we introduced artillery into the Trojan war, and Hector bowled Achilles off his legs, or vice versa.

The bowling-alley was also used for other sports. It was here that Flossy gave a grand party for Cotchy, her precious Maltese cat. All the cat-owning little girls in the neighborhood were invited, and about twelve came, each bringing her pet in a basket. Cotchy was beautifully dressed in a cherry-colored ribbon, which set off her gray, satiny coat to perfection. She received her guests with much dignity, but was not inclined to do much toward entertaining them. Flossy tried to make the twelve cats play with one another, but they were shy on first acquaintance, and a little stiff. Perhaps Flossy did not in those days know the proper etiquette for introducing cats, though since then she has studied all kinds of etiquette thoroughly. But the little girls enjoyed themselves, if the cats did not, and there was a great deal of chattering and comparing notes. Then came the feast, which consisted of milk and fish-bones; and next every cat had her nose buttered by way of dessert. Altogether, the party was voted a great success.

Below, and on both sides of the green-house, the fertile ground was set thick with fruit-trees, our father’s special pride. The pears and peaches of Green Peace were known far and wide; I have never seen such peaches since, nor is it only the halo of childish recollection that shines around them, for others bear the same testimony. Crimson-glowing, golden-hearted, smooth and perfect as a baby’s cheek, each one was a thing of wonder and beauty; and when you ate one, you ate summer and sunshine. Our father gave us a great deal of fruit, but we were never allowed to take it ourselves without permission; indeed, I doubt if it ever occurred to us to do so. One of us still remembers the thrill of horror she felt when a little girl who had come to spend the afternoon picked up a fallen peach and ate it, without asking leave. It seemed a dreadful thing not to know that the garden was a field of honor. As to the proverbial sweetness of stolen fruit, we knew nothing about it. The fruit was sweet enough from our dear father’s hand, and, as I said, he gave us plenty of it.

How was it, I wonder, that this sense of honor seemed sometimes to stay in the garden and not always to come into the house?

For as I write, the thought comes to me of a day when Laura was found with her feet sticking out of the sugar-barrel, into which she had fallen head foremost while trying to get a lump of sugar. She has never eaten a lump of sugar, save in her tea, since that day. Also, it is recorded of Flossy and Julia, that, being one day at the Institution, they found the store-room open, and went in, against the law. There was a beautiful polished tank, which appeared to be full of rich brown syrup. Julia and Flossy liked syrup; so each filled a mug, and then they counted one, two, three, and each took a good draught,—and it was train-oil!

But in both these cases the culprits were hardly out of babyhood; so perhaps they had not yet learned about the “broad stone of honor,” on which it is good to set one’s feet.

I must not leave the garden without speaking of the cherry-trees. These must have been planted by early settlers, perhaps by the same hand that planned the crooked stairs and quaint cupboards of the old house,—enormous trees, gnarled and twisted like ancient apple-trees, and as sturdy as they. They had been grafted—whether by our father’s or some earlier hand I know not—with the finest varieties of “white-hearts” and “black-hearts,” and they bore amazing quantities of cherries. These attracted flocks of birds, which our father in vain tried to frighten away with scarecrows. Once he put the cat in a bird-cage, and hung her up in the white-heart tree; but the birds soon found that she could not get at them, and poor pussy was so miserable that she was quickly released.

I perceive that we shall not get to the summer home in this chapter; but I must say a word about the Institution for the Blind, which was within a few minutes’ walk of Green Peace.

Many of our happiest hours were spent in this pleasant place, the home of patient cheerfulness and earnest work. We often went to play with the blind children when our lessons and theirs were over, and they came trooping out into the sunny playground. I do not think it occurred to us to pity these boys and girls deprived of one of the chief sources of pleasure in life; they were so happy, so merry, that we took their blindness as a matter of course.

Our father often gave us baskets of fruit to take to them. That was a great pleasure. We loved to turn the great globe in the hall, and, shutting our eyes, pass our fingers over the raised surfaces, trying to find different places. We often “played blind,” and tried to read the great books with raised print, but never succeeded that I remember. The printing-office was a wonderful place to linger in; and one could often get pieces of marbled paper, which was valuable in the paper-doll world. Then there was the gymnasium, with its hanging rings, and its wonderful tilt, which went up so high that it took one’s breath away. Just beyond the gymnasium, were some small rooms, in which were stored worn-out pianos, disabled after years of service under practising fingers. It was very good fun to play on a worn-out piano. There were always a good many notes that really sounded, and they had quite individual sounds, not like those of common pianos; then there were some notes that buzzed, and some that growled, and some that made no noise at all; and one could poke in under the cover, and twang the strings, and play with the chamois-leather things that went flop (we have since learned that they are called hammers), and sometimes pull them out, though that seemed wicked.

Then there was the matron’s room, where we were always made welcome by the sweet and gracious woman who still makes sunshine in that place by her lovely presence. Dear Miss M—— was never out of patience with our pranks, had always a picture-book or a flower or a curiosity to show us, and often a story to tell when a spare half-hour came. For her did Flossy and Julia act their most thrilling tragedies, no other spectators being admitted. To her did Harry and Laura confide their infant joys and woes. Other friends will have a chapter to themselves, but it seems most fitting to speak of this friend here, in telling of the home she has made bright for over fifty years.

Over the way from the Institution stood the workshop, where blind men and women, many of them graduates of the Institution, made mattresses and pillows, mats and brooms. This was another favorite haunt of ours. There was a stuffy but not unpleasant smell of feathers and hemp about the place. I should know that smell if I met it in Siberia! There were coils of rope, sometimes so large that one could squat down and hide in the middle, piles of hemp, and dark mysterious bins full of curled hair, white and black. There was a dreadful mystery about the black-hair bin; the little ones ran past it, with their heads turned away. But they never told what it was, and one of them never knew.

But the crowning joy of the workshop was the feather-room,—a long room, with smooth, clean floor; along one side of it were divisions, like the stalls in a stable, and each division was half filled with feathers. Boy and girl readers will understand what a joy this must have been,—to sit down in the feathers, and let them cover you up to the neck, and be a setting hen! or to lie at full length, and be a traveller lost in the snow,—Harry making it snow feathers till you were all covered up, and then turning into the faithful hound and dragging you out! or to play the game of “Winds,” and blow the feathers about the room! But old Margaret did not allow this last game, and we could do it only when she happened to go out for a moment, which was not very often. Old Margaret was the presiding genius of the feather-room, a half-blind woman, who kept the feathers in order and helped to sew up the pillows and mattresses. She was always kind to us, and let us rake feathers with the great wooden rake as much as we would. Later, when Laura was perhaps ten years old, she used to go and read to old Margaret. Mrs. Browning’s poems were making a new world for the child at that time, and she never felt a moment’s doubt about the old woman’s enjoying them: in after years doubts did occur to her.

It was probably a quaint picture, if any one had looked in upon it: the long, low room, with the feather-heaps, white and dusky gray; the half-blind, withered crone, nodding over her knitting, and the little earnest child, throwing her whole soul into “The Romaunt of the Page,” or the “Rhyme of the Duchess May.”

The first sound of the words carries me back through the years to the feather-room and old blind Margaret.