Just opposite our house, and across the green meadow, was a shady grove, where, in the spring-time, the singing birds made their nests, and where, when the breath of winter was on the snow-clad hills, Lizzie, Carrie, and I, and our taller, stronger brothers dragged our sleds, dashing swiftly down the steep hill, and away over the ice-covered valley below. Truly, ours was a joyous childhood, and ours a happy home; for never elsewhere fell the summer’s golden sunlight so softly, and never was music sweeter than was the murmur of the dancing water-brook which ran past our door, and down the long green lane, losing itself at last in the dim old woods, which stretched away to the westward, seeming to my childish imagination the boundary line between this world and the next.
In the deep shadow of those woods I have sat alone for many an hour, watching the white, feathery clouds as they glimmered through the dense foliage which hung above my head, and musing, I scarcely knew of what. Strange fancies filled my brain and oftentimes, as I sat there in the hazy light of an autumnal afternoon, there came and talked with me myriads of little people, unseen, it is true, but still real to me, who knew and called them all by name. There, on a mossy bank, beneath a wide-spreading grape-vine, with the running brook at my feet, I felt the first longings for fame, though I did not thus designate it then. I only knew that I wanted a name, which should live when I was gone—a name of which my mother should be proud. It had been to me a day of peculiar trial. At school everything had gone wrong. Accidentally I had discovered that I possessed a talent for rhyming; and so, because I preferred filling my slate with verses, instead of proving on it that four times twenty were eighty, and that eighty, divided by twenty, equalled four, my teacher must needs find fault with me, calling me “lazy,” and compelling me to sit between two hateful boys, with warty hands, who for the remainder of the afternoon amused themselves by sitting inconveniently near to me, and by telling me how big my eyes and feet were. I hardly think I should now mind that mode of punishment, provided I could choose the boys, but I did then, and in the worst of humors, I started for home, where other annoyances awaited me. Sally, the housemaid, scolded me for upsetting a pan of milk on her clean pantry shelf, calling me “the carelessest young one she ever saw,” and predicting that “I’d one day come to the gallus if I didn’t mend my ways.”
Juliet, my oldest sister, scolded me for wearing without her consent her shell side-comb, which, in climbing through a hole in the plastering of the schoolhouse, I accidentally broke. Grandmother scolded me for mounting to the top of her high chest of drawers to see what was in them; and to crown all, when, towards sunset, I came in from a romp in the barn, with my yellow hair flying all over my face, my dress burst open, my pantalet split from the top downward, and my sun-bonnet hanging down my back, my mother reproved me severely, telling me I was “a sight to behold.” This was my usual style of dress, and I didn’t think any one need interfere; so, when she wondered if there ever was another such child, and bade me look at myself in the glass, asking if “I didn’t think I was a beautiful object,” my heart came up in my throat, and with the angry response that “I couldn’t help my looks—I didn’t make myself,” I started through the door, and running down the long lane to the grape-vine, my favorite resort, I threw myself upon the ground, and burying my face in the tall grass, wept bitterly, wishing I had never been born, or, being born, that the ban of ugliness were not upon me.
Mother doesn’t love me, I thought—nobody loves me; and then I wished that I could die, for I had heard that the first dead of a family, no matter how unprepossessing they had been in life, were sure to be the best beloved in the memory of the living. To die, then, that I might be loved was all I asked for, as I lay there weeping alone, and thinking in my childish grief that never before was a girl, nine summers old, so wretched as myself. And then, in my imagination, I went through with a mental rehearsal of my own obsequies, fancying that I was dead, but still possessing the faculty of knowing all that passed around me.
With an involuntary shudder, I crossed my hands upon my bosom, stretched my feet upon the mossy bank, and closed my eyes to the fading sunlight, which I was never to see again. I knew they would lay me in the parlor, and on my forehead I felt the gentle breeze as it came through the open window, lifting the folds of the muslin curtain which shaded it. Throughout the house was a deep hush, and in my mother’s voice there was a heartbroken tone, which I had never heard before, and which thrilled me with joy, for it said that I was loved at last. Then I thought how lonely they would be as day by day went and came, and I came no more among them. “They will miss the little ugly face,” I said, and on my cheek my own hot tears fell as I thought how Lizzie would mourn for me in the dark night time, weeping that I was not by her side, but sleeping in a narrow coffin, which I hoped would be a handsome one with satin hangings, as I had seen at the funeral of a rich neighbor’s fair young bride. I did not want them to strew my pillow with roses as they did hers—for I knew they would not accord with my thin, plain face. In the distance I heard the sound of the tolling bell, and I saw the subdued expression on the faces of my school companions as they listened breathlessly, counting at last the nine quick strokes, which would tell to a stranger that ’twas only a child who was gone.
Then came the funeral, the roll of wheels, the tread of many feet, the hum of voices, the prayer, the hymn, in which I longed to join, but dared not for appearances’ sake, and then, one by one, they stole up for a last farewell, lifting my baby brother and bidding him look upon the sister he would never know save by the grassy mound where they would tell him she was buried. I knew when Lizzie bent over me by the convulsive sob and burning kiss which she pressed upon my lips, and divining her inmost thoughts, I fancied she was wishing that no harsh word had ever passed between us In my heart I longed to tell her how freely I forgave her, but ere I had time to do so, she stepped aside, while an older, a wrinkled hand was laid upon my forehead, and my aged grandmother murmured, “Poor little Rosa, far better that I should die, than that she, so young, should be laid in the lonesome grave.”
Instantly the dark grave loomed up before me, so dark and dreary that I shrank from being put there. I could not die; I was afraid to sleep with the silent dead. I would far rather live, even though I lived unloved forever. And then, softly in my ear, a spirit friend whispered, “Be great and good—get to yourself a name of which they shall be proud—make them love you for your deeds, rather than your looks, and when, in the future, strangers shall ask concerning you, ‘Who is she?’ let it be their pride to answer, ‘My daughter,’ or ‘My sister.’” Older and wiser heads than mine would have said it was Ambition, which thus counselled with me, but I questioned her not of her name. I only knew that her words were sweet and soothing, and I treasured them in my heart, pondering upon them until I fell asleep, unconscious that the daylight was fast declining, and that the heavy dew was falling upon my uncovered head.
Meantime at home many inquiries were being made concerning my whereabouts, and when, at last, night came on, and I was still away, my oldest brother was sent in quest of me down the long lane where I was last seen by Lizzie, who had attempted to follow me, but had desisted through fear of being called a tag. I was just dreaming that the trumpet of fame was sounding forth my name, when, alas! I awoke to find it was only brother Charlie, making the woods resound with “Rosa Lee! Where are you? Why don’t you answer?”
Of course I was disappointed,—who wouldn’t be?—and in a fit of obstinacy I determined not to reply, but to make him think I was lost—then see how he’d feel! But on this point I was not to be gratified, for failing of finding me in the lane, he made straight for the grape-vine, where he stumbled over me as I lay, this time feigning sleep, to see what he would do. Seizing me by the shoulder, he exclaimed, “You are a pretty bird, scaring us out of a year’s growth. Mother’ll scold you well for this.”
But he was mistaken, for mother’s manner towards me was greatly changed. The torn pantalet and the chewed bonnet-strings were all forgotten, and in the kindest tone she asked, “If I were not cold, and why I went to sleep on the grass.” There were tears in my eyes, but I winked hard and forced them back, until Lizzie brought me a piece of custard pie (my special favorite) which, she said, “she had saved for me, because she knew how much I loved it.”