That Old Time Child, Roberta by Sophie Fox Sea
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Sophie Fox Sea >> That Old Time Child, Roberta
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THAT OLD-TIME CHILD, ROBERTA
Her Home-Life on the Farm
by
SOPHIE FOX SEA
Louisville
Printed by John P. Morton and Company
1892
[Illustration: "Must I look so when I die? Boo-oo!" "I'll cross my heart,
Lil Missus, 'twuz dem drefful men dat sed 'Boo-oo!'"]
TO MY REVERED AND BELOVED FRIEND,
Mrs. Preston Pope,
I DEDICATE THIS CHILD'S STORY. IT WAS SHE WHOSE LOVE OF
CHILDREN FIRST SUGGESTED IT, AND WHOSE WORDS OF
KIND APPRECIATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT HAVE
BEEN TO ME "AS APPLES OF GOLD IN
PICTURES OF SILVER."
Roberta Marsden, or Lil Missus, as the negroes called her, for the opening
of my story dates back several years before the Civil War began, lived on
a country place in Kentucky. She was a beautiful child, and despite a few
foibles that all flesh is heir to, such a really lovable one that she was
fairly worshiped by mother, aunt and uncle, and every one of the negroes,
from old Caleb, the testy and ancient coachman, to the veriest pickaninny,
who thought it a great feat to catch hold with grimy fingers to the
fluttering strings of the little girl's white apron when she came among
them at Christmas and on other occasions to distribute sweets and more
substantial tokens.
It was a great wonder that the child was not utterly spoiled. But it
seemed that her nature reflected the love lavished on her as a mirror the
face that looks into it.
Aunt Betsy declared she did not have one selfish bone in her whole body.
I think the reason of that was, there were so many about her looking to
her for comfort in some way, that when little more than a baby in years
she fell into the habit of thinking of and caring for others almost as a
woman would.
Aunt Betsy was a rheumatic, and always ailing, and the child could not
remember the time when her beautiful, patient mamma was not very, very
sad. Although she smiled often on her little daughter, it seemed as if
there were tears right behind the smiles, just like rain-drops shining
through the rays of the sun. And when she crept close to her at night she
could feel the long lashes sweep her cheek, and they were so often wet.
The negroes on the place, especially the older ones, would grumble out
their aches and pains to the child, as if they thought she had the gift of
healing. And indeed she had, in her way.
For when old Squire split his foot open with an ax, they lived so far in
the country they couldn't get a physician every time it needed attention,
and her kind, brave mamma undertook to dress the wound herself every
morning. She would let the deft little fingers squeeze a sponge full of
tepid water over the cut as many times as it was necessary, then hold the
scissors and bandages, and help in other ways. And old Squire said the
tender, compassionate little face "ho'ped 'im as much as Miss July did."
Those that need sympathy intuitively know where to get it. It's just like
the flowers reaching out for sun and dew.
I expect the city children who read this story feel very sorry for
Roberta because she lived in the country. But they needn't be, for she was
never lonely and scarcely ever idle. The older negroes on the place said
she was like "ole missus" (that was her grandmother) in her ways. And
among other things they told about the old lady, to show how stirring she
was and what a manager, was her method of arousing the household to their
duties in the beginning of the week: "Wake up! wake up! I say. To-day's
Monday, to-morrow's Tuesday, next day's Wednesday, next day's Thursday,
then comes Friday, and Saturday will be here before you know it, and
nothing done."
Roberta didn't belong to any "mite society" nor the "little busy bees,"
where city children are trained to think of and help the poor, and she
didn't wear the badge of the "Society for Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals," as many children do nowadays. Indeed I don't expect she ever
heard there was such a society. But she was instrumental nevertheless in
doing a great deal of real practical good. O, how her eyes did flash when
she saw animals mistreated. She made beds for the cats and beds for the
dogs; and when any of the milkers struck the cows while they were milking
them, if she was near about, she would say, "Mamma says good milkers are
always gentle with the cows, for they won't give down their milk unless
you treat them kindly. And anybody can tell by the quantity of milk you
get whether you are good to them or not. If I was a cow I wouldn't give
down my milk if you struck me and hollered at me."
So she made the cruel milkers ashamed of themselves often. And she
practically established a foundling asylum for little motherless lambs and
calves; raised them herself on the bottle just like they were babies.
"O, you tootsey weetsy darlin'," I've heard her say to a bright-eyed,
gentle lamb, her especial delight. The little creature would run to her
and bleat by way of telling her it was hungry, and when she had fed it it
would rub its pretty head against her knee and look love at her, just as I
have seen babies look love at their mothers.
And, my! how she did fuss over the little negro children when they were
sick! It just kept her busy bringing them gourds of fresh water from the
spring and watching the well ones to see that they didn't purloin the
dainties she brought the sick. She actually learned how to sew, making
clothes for the pickaninnies.
And you just ought to have seen her when any of the fathers and mothers
whipped their children severely. She would fly down to the cabin, tear the
pickaninnies away and trot them up to the big house, and pet them until
they were willing to take another whipping to get the good things she gave
them.
"She's jes de very spi't ob her par," old Squire would say on those
occasions; "Dat's jest de way hees eyes useter flash out at Mis Betsy
when she cum 'twix' him an Mis July."
O, I wish I could make the little children who read this story see, as I
have seen it, the country place where Roberta Marsden was raised.
On either side fields of golden-tasseled corn, rustling in the breeze and
shimmering in the sunlight, many of the stalks so entwined with
morning-glories, pink, white, blue, and variegated, one could almost
believe fairies had been there and arrayed the yellow silken-haired corn
babies for some festival, so crowned and garlanded they were. In front of
the house were wooded slopes, where the birds sang their love songs and
chattered noisily in bird language all the day long. Those woodlands might
have been called a primeval forest, for the trees were truly there in the
earliest memory of the oldest living resident of the county.
It used to puzzle me to understand how the birds knew when it was time to
wake up and begin their matin songs, for it was so like night there.
Roberta, who was an early riser and withal a child of poetic imagination,
used to say "that the fairies woke them up." She declared she saw a little
glittering thing, with wings and wand of silver, alight on the tops of the
trees and peep through at the Darbys and Joans of the bird tribe. And she
was sure it must have told them it was time to wake up; for soon would
begin a low twitter that swelled louder and louder, as bird after bird
joined in until every family of birds was represented. From the back porch
of the house could be seen a range of blue misty hills, that Roberta
called brides. They were often enveloped in white filmy folds, like bridal
veils, and one might catch glimpses of the river from there also gliding
along between banks of green.
A giant's great glittering eye she called that; the trees on the hills
above the giant's brows, and the ferns and grasses growing on either bank
were upper and lower lashes. With a little encouragement Roberta would
have been a genuine poet.
But Aunt Betsy took such a literal view of things, she was constantly
saying to Mrs. Marsden:
"That child's imagination will get away with her, Julia, if you don't
check it. It will, indeed."
And she had a way of making the child repeat over and over again
descriptions of things that had struck her fancy, and cutting here and
there until the description didn't seem applicable at all to the places
she had seen.
"I feel just like the old woman in Mother Goose, Auntie," Roberta would
say, her eyes full of vexed tears, "when she woke up on the king's highway
and found her petticoats were cut off."
"But truth is truth, child," said Aunt Betsy.
Aunt Betsy's intensely realistic temperament could not understand that
fine, exquisite perception God had given the little girl, which enabled
her to see beauty that others, differently organized, would never see,
nor, believe was there.
The house, where four generations of Mrs. Marsden's family had lived, was
home-like, but quaint and unpretentious. It had a very solid look and was
in thorough repair, for the family were thrifty and well-to-do always.
Luxuriant vines of the Virginia creeper grew on the sides of the house and
around the pillars of the porches. Wandering tendrils hung from the eaves
and crept in the second-story windows. There was a wild-brier rose there
that had been planted by Mrs. Marsden's grandmother. It partook somewhat
of the nature of the old lady; nothing could keep it from doing its duty.
It filled the air with fragrance in its season, and was a mass of delicate
pink flower cups.
Inside of the old house were many little nooks, and each nook haunted by
the spirit of some legendary story. As is the case in all houses where
successive generations of the same family have lived and died, ghostly
visitants came at certain times, so the negroes said, rang bells softly at
dead of night, tipped across the floor with but the echo of a step,
jostled medicine bottles together and did many curious things. Roberta,
brave as she was and sensible as she was, would actually cover up her head
with the bedclothes, and nearly smother for fear she would hear the bells
and ghostly steps.
Mam' Sara was the only one of the negroes who didn't believe in ghosts.
"No, indeed, honey," she would say to Roberta, "daid fo'ks don' never cum
bak. If they gits ter Heaven, they don' wan'er, and if they gits ter de
udder place they can't. The devil won' never let 'em git away frum him,
kase he's wuk so hard ter git 'em."
The part of the house of most interest to Roberta was the parlor, where
were stored the heir-looms of the family, a spinet with all the ivory worn
off the keys, two pier-glasses with brass claws for feet, and a clock so
tall and big she actually hid in it once when she was playing "hide and go
seek" with some little visitors, who said they had seen a clock "larger."
Roberta was a very amiable child, but old Squire said she "wuz techus
erbout sum things." And the old clock must have been one of the things.
The chairs were brought from Virginia on the backs of mules, and the
covers on them embroidered by the little girl's grandmother. The same busy
hands that superintended the manufacture of those piles of linen sheets
stored away in the presses above stairs, and the counterpanes woven with
the American eagle in the center, bunches of hollyhocks and sweet pea in
the corners, and trumpet vines running along the edges.
The paper on the walls of the parlor was a curiosity. It was imported from
England many, many years before Roberta's mother was born, because her
grandfather saw a room somewhere, I think in Baltimore, that had similar
paper, and he took such a fancy to it he ordered some from the same place.
The paper was wrought in great panels, with life-size figures of orientals
in the center. They were terrible looking men, the children thought. They
had swarthy skins and beards down to their waists, and fierce eyes that
flashed out beneath their turbans with a fe-fo-fi-fum look.
Those fierce eyes were the cause of no little alarm, I can assure you,
when darkness swooped down upon Roberta and Polly and Dilsy, playing
Lady-come-to-see in the old parlor in childlike unconsciousness of the
passage of time. Polly, the imp, would always insist upon singing "Lady
Jane Grey," as they tiptoed backward out of the room. They did not dare to
look away, for fear those terrible men would fly at them when they were
not looking and throttle them with their long, bony fingers, so they
joined hands and sung as they tiptoed backward:
Lady Jane Grey, she went to church for to pray;
She went to the stile and there rested awhile;
She went to the door and there rested a little more;
She went up the aisle and there rested awhile;
She looked up; she looked down;
She saw a corpse lie on the ground;
She said to the sexton, must I look so
When I die? Boo, boo!
Now when they came to the last part it was always Polly who stretched open
her eyes till they looked like an owl's great round eyes, and jumped at
Roberta and Dilsy and hollered "Boo, boo!" Although they knew it was
coming they were awfully scared, and would break loose and run, screaming
like mad things, into the sitting-room, really believing the orientals
were after them. They had made believe it so many times, and Polly had
said so many times, "I'll cross my heart, Lil Missus, 'twuz dem drefful
men dat sed 'boo-oo'; I seed thar lips muven; you don' ketch me in thar no
mo'," they had come to really believe it. They had heard the story of the
children who played wolf, and a wolf did sure enough come and devour them.
As many times as they had played Lady Jane Grey they were always worse
scared the last time than ever before. The sitting-room was a cozy place
when they got there, panting for breath after their fright in the parlor.
In one of the deep window recesses Roberta had set up her entire doll
family to housekeeping. She was very fond of her dolls. The mother
instinct in her was developed very early. She had wax dolls and china
dolls and rag dolls. Mrs. Marsden painted features on the rag dolls, and
they looked very natural. There was Miss Prim and Miss Slim, Mrs. Jolly
and Mrs. Folly, Miss Snappy and Miss Happy, named from their different
expressions. Roberta had the quaintest way of talking to her dolls. She
had caught some of Aunt Betsy's old-time ideas:
"Straighter, my dears, straighter. One's spine should never touch the back
of a chair," and, "Don't rest your elbows on the table while you are
eating; my great-grandmother used to keep cushions stuffed with pins to
slip under the children's elbows," etc.
Her favorite dolls were the figures cut out of the fashion plates of
Godey's Lady's Book. She was an artist with her fingers, if there was a
pair of scissors in them. So she took sheets of different colored
tissue-paper, cut dresses, and fitted them nicely on her dolls. Each doll
had a variety.
I believe she thought her dolls looked cosier at the dinner-table than
anywhere else, and she kept them sitting there a great deal. Sometimes
Polly, who seemed born to make trouble, would roll her eyes at the dolls
and say, "You iz de greedes' things. Whar iz you gwiner to put it?"
Then, of course, Roberta would feel obliged to take some notice of their
sitting at the table so long: "Come, get down now, dears. Little ladies
should _not_ appear greedy."
Roberta was very much like some mothers of real children, who will wink at
what their little ones do at one time, and, if a neighbor drops in at
another, who is not of the same way of thinking, scold the poor children
for doing those very things they had winked at before. But Roberta did not
have it in her heart to scold anybody much, not even that impish Polly,
who would go around after she had provoked her little mistress beyond
endurance, sniffling and singing in a dolorous tone,
Whar she goes en how she fars,
Nobody knows en nobody kyars.
and invariably wind up by getting the very playthings she wanted from
Roberta as a peace offering.
I must not forget to tell you about Roberta's Sunday School for little
negro children. If the child didn't always keep perfect order and make the
headway she would have liked, it wasn't because she didn't try. Her whole
heart was in the work. She really was very intelligent, and Aunt Betsy
said, "If there was such a thing as anybody being born in this world a
Christian, she believed Roberta was." I think she must have had the germ
of object teaching--that is the fad now--in her nature, she could paint
such vivid mental pictures to convey an idea. Once she was telling Polly
about God's punishment of sinners, and Polly said, "Lawdy, Lil Missus, I
feel dem blazes creepen' all over me dis minit." She had a great deal to
contend with, almost as much as Mrs. Marsden had, in getting the older
negroes to come in to prayers. Nine times out of ten, when she rang the
bell for them Sunday morning, Squire would put his head in the door and
say:
"Mis July, dat deviles hoss dun played me dat same trick ergin. He dun
lade down in de mud en roll ober en ober. 'T will take me clar up ter de
time to start ter chech ter git dat mud orf him, en hard wurk at dat. Dat
hoss knows ez well when Sad-day night comes ez you duz. Jes' de way he dun
las' week when I hetch him in de plow: lay down en groan lak he sick enuff
ter die, ter keep fum worken'; en half hour arfter I turn him luse
frolerken lak er colt--jes' kicken' up his heels, I kin tell you."
"Why not drive some of the others, Uncle Squire, so you can come in to
prayers?"
"I dun turn em all out, en dey's gorn, de Lord unly knows whar. If I'd
unly know'd it en time now. But I'll show 'im--I'll show 'im. I gwiner be
mity solid wid 'im, en mebbe heel larn arfter while dat he aint his own
master."
At other times it was a mule.
"Mis July, dat mule dun tore down dat rock fence ergin. I bounter fix it
or de stock will git out en go orf, you knows dat ez well az I duz. Dat
mule's yours, en you kin do what you please wid him, but ef he 'longter me
I'd sell him de fus chance I git. Dat mule nuff ter mek er man strike hees
gran-daddy."
Now, it was a well-known fact that Mrs. Marsden had tried several times to
sell the mule, and old Squire had always declared "the mule was the most
valuable animal on the place, and it was just giving him away to sell him
at the price offered."
Polly was Squire's granddaughter, and inherited his want of reverence for
sacred things. She was very, very trying, especially on one occasion I
will tell you about.
Roberta gathered the children together, took her Catechism and primer,
and went down to the summer-house. She noticed that Polly's expression was
sulky, and that she was rolling her eyes at Dilsy. But Polly was always
tormenting Dilsy. Dilsy was a little hunchback negro, that everybody but
Polly felt sorry for and tried to turn the soft side of life to.
Roberta was not much discouraged by Polly's actions, still she knew it was
a great deal pleasanter to teach her when she was in a good humor, and
concluded to resort to a strategy to mollify her.
The child was a close observer of nature, and knew how indispensable to
germinate seed was a mellow, rightly prepared soil, and what service
sunshine and timely rainfalls were to growing crops. So she intuitively
drew an analogy in her childish way between the soil the plow-man turns
over and the human heart.
Now, if there was one thing that Polly delighted in more than another it
was the game of "Chick-a-mie, chick-a-mie, craney-crow."
So the children joined hands and moved around and around in a circle,
singing:
"Chick-a-mie, chick-a-mie, craney-crow,
Went to the well to wash my toe,
When I got back my chickens was gone.
What o'clock is it, old Buzzard?"
Then they would fly around looking for the chickens. At least all of them
but Polly would. Polly always took the part of old Buzzard, so she could
flop down in Dilsy's seat, although she knew she would have to get right
up.
Somehow, that evening Roberta's strategy did not seem to have accomplished
its object, judging from Polly's expression. Still she hoped for the best.
Polly was the biggest, so she always begun with her.
"Who made you, Polly?"
No answer immediately; then,
"Dunno fur sarten, spec' 't wuz Gord."
A lump gathered in the child's throat. Her bump of reverence was so
largely developed it distressed her to see a want of it in others; she
said "it hurt her feelings."
She passed it by, however, and ventured on another.
"What else did God make?"
"Dunno fur sarten, never seed 'im wuken'."
"For shame, Polly! God made all things. Say 'God made all things.'"
"No, never. Never made Dilsy thar. Dilsy nuffin' but er scrap he throw'd
erway when he got fru cutten' out de grow'd-up ones."
"For shame, Polly! Don't you know everybody has to be little and grow up."
"No, never! Adam and Eve wuz born'd grow'd up."
"Well, that was because they were the first people on earth, and there was
nobody to be papa and mamma for 'em, and take care of 'em, when they were
little."
"Dat's like Dilsy thar. Dilsy never had no daddy."
"Well, Polly, you haven't answered my question yet. Say 'God made all
things.'"
"No, never! God never made mammy's twins--no mo' dan he made Dilsy thar.
Dey iz prezak like dem monkeys I seed de time I went en town ter de
circus."
Now Polly was not an impartial judge of the twins, for she had been
installed as their nurse, and she hated to nurse.
"For shame, Polly! Those nice little babies. And then, besides, as God
made all things, he made monkeys too, of course."
"No, never! You can't make me berleeve dat. Gord nerver wase hees valerbel
time maken' monkeys."
That was the "last straw that broke the camel's back." After trying so
hard to be patient, and especially as she knew it was nothing but pure
contrariness in Polly, for only the Sunday before she had answered every
question correctly, and added some pious interpolations exceedingly
gratifying to her young teacher.
So she got up, went to her refractory pupil, and lifted her forefinger by
way of giving emphasis to her words.
But Polly, recognizing that her little mistress's temperature was rising,
felt a proportionate rise in her own, rolled her eyes till nothing but the
whites were visible, and stuck her lower lip out.
It would be impossible to conceive of a creature uglier or more
aggravating looking than Polly, when she did that way.
In a flash, down came Roberta's little soft pink palm on her cheek.
Mrs. Marsden happened to be passing on her way to the quarters to visit a
sick servant, and witnessed the performance. She was amused, but worried
too, that Roberta had allowed herself to be so provoked, for it almost
made a farce of the whole thing; and she knew how much in earnest her
little daughter really was. The child's flushed cheeks and flashing eyes
brought back, O so vividly! another face and another pair of flashing orbs
so like hers. There were tears in Mrs. Marsden's eyes when she went in the
summer-house and took her seat on the bench that circled around it.
"Did you strike Polly, daughter?"
"Yes 'em, Mamma."
"What did you strike her for, daughter?"
"She wouldn't say her lesson, Mamma, and she knew it all the time. And she
rolled her eyes at me so, and stuck out her lip and looked so ugly, I just
couldn't help it, that's all."
"I am sorry, daughter, that you gave way to your temper so. For remember,
you are only the sower that plants the seed, and God takes care of all the
rest. If you really try to teach Polly, and she won't be taught, you
mustn't make a personal thing of it, but just leave it with God. Then,
again, daughter, unless you practice self-control, teaching others is a
farce. I know Polly has been very trying, indeed. But I want you to show a
real forgiving spirit, as one should always show when one is working for
the Master. I want you to tell Polly you are sorry you struck her. For you
are sorry, I know--I see it in your face."
A kind of staccato snuffle was heard in the direction of Polly.
Roberta gave another look at the surly, unprepossessing countenance, then
said, in a low voice:
"I will, Mamma, if you will let me hide my face in your lap while I am
saying it."
"But why hide your face in my lap, daughter?"
"Because--because--Mamma--I am afraid--if she looks at me as she did
before, that I will slap her again. I don't believe I could keep from it
this evening; I am all out of sorts."
Afterwards that observation of Polly's, "Dilsy never had no daddy," caused
Roberta no little thought. Really, she was no better off than Dilsy, she
reasoned, for of course the child did not take in the full significance of
the imp's meaning. Nobody ever told her that her papa was dead. Indeed she
had been taught to pray for him every night. She felt sure he was living.
But, where? Why did he not come home and pet her, like other little girls'
papas she knew--pet her, and make her beautiful, sad mother smile
sometimes. For it seemed to the child that she grew sadder and sadder all
the time. There was nobody she could talk to about him, for her mamma's
eyes filled with tears at any chance allusion to him. Aunt Betsy nearly
snapped her head off when she asked her a question, and Uncle Squire,
chatty as he was upon every other subject, would squint his eyes in a
knowing way, puff out his cheeks, and answer, "Lay o'ers ter ketch
meddlers." Yes, there was one person she was sure she could coax into
telling her why her papa never came home to see them all, and that was
dear, good Mam' Sarah, the weaver. When Aunt Betsy scolded Mam' Sarah, she
would get down on the floor by Aunt Betsy and hug her tight around the
knees and say, "God love you, Mistiss," to show her she wasn't mad at her
for scolding her. That was "religion," mamma said. Aunt Betsy would cry,
and say: