Then there were Sundays, which were quite another kind of time, as different as layer cake from sponge cake: With breakfast late, and mustn’t-jump-rope, and the living-room somehow different, the Out-of-doors moved farther off, our play-house not waiting for us but acting1 busy at something else in which we had no part; the swing hanging useless as it did when we were away from home and thought about it in the night; bells ringing as if it were their day; until we were almost homesick to hear the grocer’s cart rattle2 behind the white horse.
There were school half holidays when the sun shone as it never shone before, and we could not decide how to spend the time, and to look ahead seemed a glorious year before dark.
There were the real holidays—Christmas148 and the Fourth and Birthdays, which didn’t seem like days of time at all, but were like fairies of time, not living in any clock.
And Company-time, when we were not to go in certain rooms, or sing in the hall, and when all downstairs seemed unable to romp3 with us.
And Vacation-time, when 9 o’clock and 1 o’clock and 4 o’clock meant nothing, and the face of the clock never warned or threatened and the hands never dragged, and Saturday no longer stood out but sank into insignificance4, and the days ran like sands.
All these times there were when life grew different and either let us in farther than ever before or else left us out altogether. But almost the strangest and best of these was house-cleaning time.
Screens out, so that the windows looked like faces and not like masks! The couch under the Cooking-apple tree! We used to lie on the couch and look up in the boughs5 and wish that they would leave it there forever. What was the rule that made them take it in? Mattresses8 in the backyard to jump on and lie on and stare up from, so differently, into the blue. Rugs like rooms, opening out into an adjoining pansy149 bed. Chairs set about on the grass, as if at last people had come to understand, as we had always understood, that the Outdoors is a real place to be in, and not just a place to pass through to get somewhere else. If only, if only some day they had brought the piano out on the lawn! To have done one’s practising out there, just as if a piano were born, not made! But they never did that, and we were thankful enough for the things that they did do. When Saturday came, I found with relief that they had still the parlour and one bedroom left to do. I had been afraid that by then these would be restored to the usual dry and dustless order.
In the open window of the empty sitting-room9 I was sitting negligently10 that morning, when I saw Mr. Britt going by. He was as old as anyone I knew in the world—Mr. Britt must have been fifty. I never thought of him as folks at all. There were the other neighbours, all dark-haired and quick and busy at the usual human errands; and then there was Mr. Britt, leaving his fruit trees and his rose bushes to go down to his office in the Court House. He had white hair, a long square white beard, and he carried a stick with a crook11 in the handle. I150 watched him pityingly. His life was all done, as tidy as a sewed seam, as sure as a learned lesson. All lived out, a piece at a time, just as I planned mine. How immeasurably long it had taken him; what a slow business it must have seemed to him; how very old he was!
At our gate he stopped. Mr. Britt’s face was pink, and there were pleasant wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and when he talked, he seemed to think about you.
“Moving?” he inquired.
“House-cleaning,” I explained with importance.
“Fine day of it,” he commented and went on. He always sighed a little when he spoke12, not in sorrow; but in a certain weariness.
In forty-two years I should be as old as that. Forty-two years—more than five life-times, as I knew them.
I was still looking after him, trying to think it through—a number as vast as the sky of stars was vast—when round the corner, across the street, the Rodman girls appeared. (“Margaret and Betty Rodman?” my mother used to inquire pointedly13 when I said “the Rodman girls.”) In their wake was their little brother, Harold. I hailed them joyously14.
151 “Come on over! It’s house-cleaning.”
“We were,” admitted Betty, as they ran. “We saw the things out in the yard, and we asked right off. We can stay a whole hour.”
“Can’t we get Mary Gilbraith to tell us when it’s an hour?” Margaret Amelia suggested as they came in at the gate. “Then we won’t have to remember.”
Mary Gilbraith stood beating a curtain, and we called to her. She nodded her head, wound in a brown veil.
“Sure,” she said. “And don’t you children track up them clean floors inside there.”
I glanced over my shoulder into the empty room.
“Shall I get down,” I inquired of my guests, “or will you get up?”
They would get up, and they did so. We three just fitted the sill, with Harold looking wistfully upward.
“Go find a nice stick,” Margaret Amelia advised him maternally15.
“What’ll we play?” I was pursuing politely. “Pretend?” I intimated. Because of course there is nothing that is quite so much fun as152 pretend. “Or real?” I conceded the alternative its second place.
“Pretend what?” Betty wanted to know.
“Well, what difference does that make?” I inquired scornfully. “We can decide that after.”
However, we duly weighed the respective merits of Lost-in-the-Woods, Cave-in-the Middle-of-the-World, and Invisible, a selection always involving ceremony.
“Harold can’t play any of them,” Margaret Amelia remembered regretfully. “He don’t stay lost nor invisible—he wriggles16. And Cave scares him.”
We considered what to do with Harold, and at last mine was the inspiration—no doubt because I was on the home field. In a fence corner I had a play-house, roofed level with the fence top. From my sand-pile (sand boxes came later—mine was a corner of the garden sacred to me) we brought tin pails of earth which we emptied about the little boy, gradually covering his fat legs and nicely packing his plaid skirt. Then we got him a baking-powder can cover for a cutter and a handleless spoon, and we went away. He was infinitely17 content.
Free, we were drawn19 irresistibly20 back to the out-of-doors furniture. We jumped in the middle of the mattresses lying in the grass, we hung the comforters and quilts in long overlapping21 rows on the clothes line and ran from one end to the other within that tent-like enclosure. Margaret Amelia arranged herself languidly on the Brussels couch that ordinarily stood in the upstairs hall piled with leather-bound reports, but now, scales falling from our eyes, we saw to be the bank of a stream whereon Maid Marian reclined; but while Betty and I were trying to decide which should be Robin22 Hood23 and which Alan-a-dale (alas, for our chivalry24 ... we were both holding out to be Robin) Maid Marian settled it by dancing down the stair carpet which made a hallway half across the lawn. We followed her. The terminus brought us back to the parlour window. We stepped on the coping and stared inside. This was our parlour! Yet it looked no more like the formal room which we seldom entered than a fairy looks like a mortal. Many and many a time an empty room is so much more a154 suggestive, haunted, beckoning25 place than ever it becomes after its furniture gets it into bondage26. Rooms are often free, beautiful creatures before they are saddled and bridled27 with alien lives and with upholstery, and hitched28 for lumbering29, permanent uses. I felt this vaguely30 even then.
“It’s like the cloth in the store,” I observed, balancing on my stomach on the sill. “It’s heaps prettier before it’s made up into clothes.”
“How funny,” said Margaret Amelia. “I like the trimming on, and the pretty buttons.”
“Let’s play,” I said hurriedly; for I had seen in her eyes that look which always comes into eyes whose owners have just called an idea “funny.”
“Very well. But,” said Betty, frankly31, “I’m awful sick of playing Pretend. You always want to play that. We played that last time anyhow. Let’s play Store. Let’s play,” she said, with sudden zest32, “Furniture Store, outdoors.”
The whole lawn became the ground floor for our shop. Forthwith we arranged the aisles33 of chairs, stopping to sit in this one and that “to taste the difference.” To sit in the patent155 upholstered rocker, close to the flowering currant bush fragrant34 with spicy35, yellow buds was like being somewhere else.
“This looks like the pictures of greenhouses,” said Margaret Amelia, dragging a willow36 chair to the Bridal Wreath at the fork in the brick walk. She idled there for a moment.
“Emily Broom says that when they moved she rode right through town on their velvet37 lounge on the dray,” she volunteered.
We pictured it mutely. Something like that had been a dream of mine. Now and then, I had walked backward on the street to watch a furniture wagon38 delivering a new chair that rocked idle and unoccupied in the box. I always marvelled39 at the unimaginativeness of the driver which kept him on the wagon seat.
“We’ve never moved,” I confessed regretfully.
“We did,” said Betty, “but they piled everything up so good there wasn’t anything left to sit on. I rode with the driver—but his seat wasn’t very high,” she added, less in the interest of truth than with a lingering resentment40.
“Stitchy Branchett told me,” contributed Margaret Amelia, “once he set on the top step of the step ladder on one of their dray loads.”
156 “I don’t believe it,” I announced flatly. “It’d tip and pitch him off.”
“He said he did,” Margaret Amelia held. “Betty heard him. Didn’t he, Betty? Who I don’t believe is Joe Richmond. He says he went to sleep on a mattress7 on the dray when they moved. He couldn’t of.”
“Course he couldn’t of,” we all affirmed.
“Delia says they’ve moved six times that she can remember of and she’s rode on every load,” I repeated.
We all looked enviously41 across at Delia’s house. Then, moved by a common impulse, we scrambled42 back to make the most of our own advantages, such as they were.
At last the ground floor of the furniture store was all arranged, and the two show windows set with the choicest pieces to face the street. And when we were ready to open the place to the general public, we sat on the edge of the well curb43 and surveyed our results.
“Now let’s start,” said Margaret Amelia.
At that instant—the precision with which these things happen is almost conscious—Mary Gilbraith briefly44 put her head out the kitchen window.
157 “It’s just edgin’ on ’leven,” she announced. “You children keep your feet off them mattresses.”
We stared at one another. This was incredible. Margaret Amelia and Betty had just come. We had hardly tasted what the morning might have held. Our place of business was only at this moment ready for us. We had just meant to begin.
There was no appeal. We went down the garden path for Harold. He sat where we had left him, somewhat drowsy45 in the warm sun, patting an enormous mound46 of moist earth. Busy with our own wrongs, we picked him up and stood him on his feet without warning him. An indignant roar broke from him.
Some stirring of pity for our common plight48 may have animated49 us—I do not remember. But he was hurried off. I went with them to the fence, gave them last tag as became an hostess, stood on the gate as it swung shut, experienced the fine jar and bang of its closing, and then hung wistfully across it, looking for the unknown.
158 The elm and maple50 shadows moved pleasantly on the cream-coloured brick walk whose depths of tone were more uneven51 than the shadows. An oriole was calling, hanging back downward from a little bough6. Somebody’s dog came by, looked up at me, wagged his tail, and hurried on about his business. Looking after him, I saw Mr. Britt coming slowly home with his mail. At our gate he stopped.
“Playing something?” he inquired.
Welcoming any sympathy, I told him how we had just got ready to play when it was time to stop. He nodded with some unexpected understanding, closing his eyes briefly.
“That’s it,” he said. “We all just get ready when it’s time to stop. Fine day of it,” he added, and sighed and went on.
I stared after him. Could it be possible that his life had not seemed long to him? That he felt as if he had hardly begun? I dismissed this as utterly52 improbable. Fifty years!
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1
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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2
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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3
romp
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| n.欢闹；v.嬉闹玩笑 | |
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4
insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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5
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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6
bough
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| n.大树枝，主枝 | |
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7
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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mattresses
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| 褥垫，床垫( mattress的名词复数 ) | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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10
negligently
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11
crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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12
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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13
pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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14
joyously
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| ad.快乐地, 高兴地 | |
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15
maternally
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16
wriggles
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| n.蠕动，扭动( wriggle的名词复数 )v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的第三人称单数 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等） | |
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17
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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18
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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19
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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20
irresistibly
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| adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地 | |
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21
overlapping
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| adj./n.交迭（的） | |
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robin
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| n.知更鸟，红襟鸟 | |
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23
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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24
chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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25
beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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26
bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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27
bridled
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| 给…套龙头( bridle的过去式和过去分词 )； 控制； 昂首表示轻蔑（或怨忿等）； 动怒，生气 | |
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28
hitched
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| （免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上 | |
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29
lumbering
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| n.采伐林木 | |
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30
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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31
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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32
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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33
aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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34
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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35
spicy
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| adj.加香料的；辛辣的，有风味的 | |
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36
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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37
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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38
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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39
marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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40
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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41
enviously
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| adv.满怀嫉妒地 | |
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42
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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43
curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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44
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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45
drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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46
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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47
wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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49
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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50
maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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51
uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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52
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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