Caro and I bore up as best we could, and the Peon and David stood by us nobly. David, indeed, was ready to fight his idol’s battles with Cousin Jane herself. In fact, he grew up with a lack of respect for that excellent lady which tempted her to assume the role of a prophet, in which capacity she dwelt at large on the penitentiary as David’s ultimate place of residence. Caro always responded to these prognostications that, if Davy went to the penimtentium, she would go, too, as soon as she was big enough, and keep house for him, and make the cook give them ice-cream every day that came. And so the matter rested.
III
In Make-Believe
It is four years since I wrote those last words. Not long after, Caro went away to school. David went North to college that year, and was only coming home for the regular holidays. He still held to his boyhood preference, and was determined to be a scientific farmer: and since the Peon and I were to have him with us always, we wanted him to have a few years quite away from us in which to make his own adjustments to life. So they left us the same week, David with all a boy’s love to hold him back, and a young man’s eagerness to urge him away; and Caro in as nearly easterly weather as her sunny nature ever experienced.
It was Cousin Jane who first decided on Caro’s banishment. For the sake of her own peace of mind she had of late years resigned the child almost entirely to me; but every now and then she had what Caro called a “qualm spell.” During these painful periods Caro resided with the Grackles, strictly, not even coming over to take lunch with me. She arose at five and extinguished her light at nine; and pinned on the wall beside her bureau, in Cousin Jane’s firm handwriting, was a schedule of useful occupations for each of the intervening sixteen hours.
She had so much time for devotions, so much for meals, so much for school, for study, for “domestic occupations,” for “improving and useful reading,” and for “practical sewing.” Cousin Jane never allowed precious time wasted on fancy work; and if she thought it was all like the awful things she had in her parlor I don’t in the least blame her for thinking it wicked.
However, Caro’s time was laid out for her as exactly as the squares on a checker-board. She fed the chickens, argued with the old biddies who wanted to “set” in the wrong place, and wheedled the arrogant old Buff Orpington, who ruled the hens and Cousin Jane with ease and contempt, into doing whatever she wanted of him. She made butter that drew near-smiles to Cousin Jane’s stiff lips, and evolved cakes that called forth lectures to Cousin Chad on the sin of gluttony. She sewed, without a murmur, or a particle of trimming, undergarments of good, reliable, ever-wearing domestic. She was always foresighted enough to make ample allowance for their shrinking when washed; whereby she both pleased Cousin Jane and insured an excellent fit for little black Josie when she returned to us with a halo of virtue above her red-brown curls. She read history till she could put me to the blush. She washed the best tea-cups and the Persian cat. She dusted the parlor daily. And from her early childhood she made irreproachable jam.
It really was excellent training for her; thorough good discipline, as Cousin Jane would say; especially as it was interspersed with “spells of Bird-Cornering,” during which she sojourned with the Peon and me. For the period of discipline always followed an accustomed round. It began with a Cousin Jane all severity, lynx-eyed to drag poor Caro’s delinquencies to light and overcome them by unsparing criticism. But Caro has always made play of everything, finding by the talisman of her own happy heart the hidden beauty, or laughter, of the ugliest and solemnest things. She did all Cousin Jane found for her to do—which is saying a good deal—not only cheerfully, but with whole-souled delight, as if it were her very meat and drink. Doing it that way, she did it beyond criticism; and Cousin Jane would begin to relax, unwillingly, unable to find a flaw, yet with an uneasy feeling that something must be wrong, or Caro couldn’t possibly be enjoying herself so much. When she set herself to mortify Caro’s girlish vanity the child met her more than half-way. She did her best to “slick” her curls, and donned shapeless gingham aprons as joyously as though they were made of jewels and lace. Cousin Jane would find herself being mollified to the point of indulgence in spite of herself; and about that time Caro would come flying into the yard at Bird Corners and drop fluttering beside me, her eyes shining with the pure joy of living and the love of living things.
“I’m back again, Mammy Lil,” she would laugh, whirling about on one toe. “Cousin Jane hasn’t scolded me for four days, and yesterday she almost patted my head; so I knew she thought I’d had training enough for the present, and I’d be coming back home in a jiffy. They’re so good to me in their funny way I’m most ashamed to be glad to come home to you—but I am, all the same. Where’s Josie? I’ve made three new petticoats and a night gown for her, out of muslin strong enough to climb trees.”
The truth was that when Caro came back to me it was because Cousin Jane had detected in her own soul symptoms of the child’s being made an idol: she had to get rid of her to recover her own moral poise. But she still intended to do her full duty by her: so when Caro was fifteen she was sent to boarding school, to remain at least five years. By that time Cousin Jane hoped to have re-established her own imperturbability without unduly exposing her charge to the dangerous influences of Bird Corners.
We had a battle royal concerning the school she should go to, and to this day Cousin Jane thinks she won. She really has no more idea about schools than a chinquapin worm, living fat and contented in its own sufficient little world; and I knew she’d be for sending the child to some fifth-rate country “college” where she’d be taught poor music and worse French, and be worked to death learning things the way they aren’t. So I wrote, ostentatiously, for the catalogue of one of the most exclusive, nonsensical, and extravagant “finishing schools”; and privately ordered sent to Cousin Jane one from the school I wished Caro to attend. It was a sensible place where she’d be taken care of, and given a chance to grow up to the best of herself in body and mind. I plead for the finishing school, and sniffed diligently at the other, even advocating the dreaded “college” as preferable; whereby I had the comfort of having Caro sent where I wanted her, with Cousin Jane’s mind so definitely set on keeping her there that I knew her education was provided for.