The Little Fig-tree Stories

by Mary Hallock Foote

Had Jack been old enough to know the story of Undine, he might have fancied that he saw her, on those winter mornings, and I am sure he would have wanted to fetch her in and warm her and dry her icy tears.

The spare-room mantelpiece was high. Jack could see only the tops of things upon it, even by walking far back into the room; but of a morning, mounted on the pillows of the great four-poster, he could explore the mantel’s treasures, which never varied nor changed places. There was the whole length and pattern of the tall silver-plated candlesticks and the snuffers in their tray; the Indian box of birch-bark overlaid with porcupine quills, which held concealed riches of shells and coral and dark sea beans; there was the centre vase of Derbyshire spar, two dolphins wreathing their tails to support a bacchante’s bowl crowned with grape leaves. In winter this vase held an arrangement of dried immortelles, yellow and pink and crimson, and some that verged upon magenta and should have been cast out as an offense to the whole; but grandmother had for flowers a charity that embraced every sin of color they were capable of. When her daughters grew up and put on airs of superior taste, they protested against these stiff mementos; but she was mildly inflexible; she continued to gather and to dry her “everlastings,” with faithful recognition of their prickly virtues. She was not one to slight old friends for a trifling mistake in color, though Art should put forth her edict and call them naught.

In the northeast corner of the room stood a great invalid chair, dressed, like a woman, in white dimity that came down to the floor all round. The plump feather cushion had an apron, as little Jack called it, which fell in neat gathers in front. The high stuffed sides projected, forming comfortable corners where a languid head might rest.

Here the pale young mothers of the family “sat up” for the first time to have their hair braided, or to receive the visits of friends; here, in last illnesses, a wan face sinking back showed the truth of the doctor’s verdict.

White dimity, alternating with a dark-red reps in winter, covered the seats of the fiddle-backed mahogany chairs. White marseilles or dimity covers were on the washstand, and the tall bureau had a swinging glass that rocked back against the wall and showed little Jack a picture of himself walking into a steep background of the room—a small chap in kilts, with a face somewhat out of drawing and of a bluish color; the floor, too, had a queer slant like the deck of a rolling vessel. But with all its faults, this presentation of himself in the glass was an appearance much sought after by Jack, even to the climbing on chairs to attain it.

When grandmother came to her home as a bride, the four-poster was in full panoply of high puffed feather-bed, valance and canopy and curtains of white dimity, “English” blankets, quilted silk comforter, and counterpane of heavy marseilles, in a bygone pattern. No pillow shams were seen in the house; its fashions never changed. The best pillow-cases were plain linen, hemstitched,—smooth as satin with much use, as Jack’s mother remembered them,—and the slender initials, in an old-fashioned hand, above the hem, had faded sympathetically to a pale yellow-brown.

Some of the house linen had come down from great-grandmother’s trousseau. It bore her maiden initials, E. B., in letters that were like the marking on old silver of that time; the gracious old Quaker names, sacred to the memory of gentle women and good housewives whose virtues would read like the last chapter of Proverbs, the words of King Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him.

It was only after the daughters of the house grew up and were married and came home on visits with their children, that the spare bedroom fell into common use, and new fashions intruded as the old things wore out.

When Jack’s mother was a child, it still kept its solemn and festal character of birth and marriage and death chamber; and in times less vital it was set apart for such guests as the family delighted to honor. Little girls were not allowed to stray in there by themselves; even when sent to the room on errands, they went and came with a certain awe of the empty room’s cold dignity.

But at the semi-annual house-cleaning, when every closet and bureau drawer resigned itself to the season’s intrusive spirit of research, the spare room’s kindly mysteries were given to the light. The children could look on and touch and handle and ask questions; and thus began their acquaintance with such relics as had not been consigned to the darker oblivion of the garret, or suffered change through the family passion for “making over.”