Aunt Ebie did not look romantic, or, exactly mysterious, as I first saw her. But she puzzled me splendidly nevertheless. She was knitting some very heavy blue socks in our library, and her needles were extremely large and shining. I do not know why she had undertaken this prosaic occupation. Everybody was, to be sure, knitting socks for the soldiers at that time; but somehow aunt Ebie did not strike me as absolutely benevolent, and I doubt if she would have labored very eagerly for a soldier whom she had never seen. She desired to teach me to knit; and, as I was really afraid of her, I pretended to be anxious to learn.
I had been told that it was almost an impossibility to get her to travel even a few miles; that the excitement of change and crowds, and danger from steam and horse, made her extremely tremulous and wretched. I was the more impressed by these quavers in her because I also knew that she had sufficient strength of character to upset a kingdom, if she chose; that she could use a sceptre of keen sarcasm which made heads roll off on all sides; that there was nothing which her large, lustrous eyes could not see, and nothing they could not conceal. To think, then, that she trembled beside a steam-engine made her a problem.
She wore a quaintly round dress of lightish-brown mohair, which would not fall into graceful folds. So there she sat in the little library, knitting Titanically; and I sat alone with her, learning to round Hatteras at the heel in a swirl of contradictory impressions. I felt that she ought to have been dressed in soft dark silks, with a large, half-idle fan before her lips.
She quickly saw that I was a miniature mystery/ myself, and presently got me out into the woods. Here I came into contact with her for the first time.
She stepped along under the trees with great deliberation, holding up the inflexible mohair skirt as if it could tear on brambles or in gales, and looking around quickly and ardently at the sound of a bird-note or the glance of a squirrel-leap; her great eyes peering for a moment from their widely opened lids, and then disappearing utterly again under those white veils. Her dark brown, long lashes and broadly sweeping eyebrows were distinct against the pallor of her skin, which was so delicately clear, yet vigorous, that I felt its gleam as one feels the moon, even if I were not looking directly at her. By and by her cheeks took on a dawn-flush of beautiful pink. The perfection of her health was shown, until her last sickness, by this girlish glow of color in her wood-rambles.
Long before we had arrived at a particularly nice flower or species of moss, she knew it was to be found, and gathered it up as Fate makes a clean sweep of all its opportunities. I was almost as happy when out of doors with her as when I was with my father. She had the same eloquence in her silences; and when she spoke, it was with a sympathy that played upon one's whole perception, as a harp is swept inclusively of every string by an eager hurry of music. Still, aunt Ebie seemed to love moss and leaves as much as some people love souls, and I thought she had chosen them as the least dangerous objects of affection; whereas my father seemed most to love souls, and would have saved mine or another's at the expense of all the forests and vines of Eden.
To Miss Peabody I wrote of this visit in a manner which shows its reviving effect upon me:—
MY DEAR AUNT LIZZIE,—I like to get your letters, as they tell about everything which everybody does not do. What a pleasant time I did have with aunt Ebie Hawthorne last summer! It was last summer; and all the lovely flowers were nodding, and the sun shone with all its might, and we each took a basket and a book and stayed all the afternoon. We brought home heaps of flowers and greens. I never had such a pleasant time here in the woods. In England my nurse Fanny and I used to take long walks on Sunday through the lanes, or into the parks; and take baskets and pick baskets full of daisies, pink-and-white. Then we went into the endless lanes, long, without a single sign of house or cottage (until we came to walk so far as to come to a little village). Nobody came along in rattling gigs or carriages; on Sunday you would not meet a person. With great ditches on each side, filled with tall grass as high as yourself, if you chose to get down into it. But I used to jump across, to get wild hawthorn and rose and honeysuckle and wall-flowers, and make great bunches of them. And then the buttercups and daisies and violets in the green grass! For in the lanes there was not a sign of earth,—all high, green grass. The sun shining so hot that you could go in your house-dress but for the properness of it. But I cannot explain and you cannot imagine; you must go to the place and look for yourself, and then you will know all about it. The parks are not level at all, but are nothing but high hills all together,—dear!—so lovely to run down and roll over on, and skip rope and jump!
My father began to express his wishes in regard to provision for our aunt in case of his death; to burn old letters; and to impart to my mother and Una all that he particularly desired to say to them, among other things his dislike of biographies, and that he forbade any such matter in connection with himself in any distance of the future. This command, respected for a number of years, has been, like all such forcible and prophetic demurs, most signally set aside. It would take long to explain my own modifications of opinion from arguments of fierce resistance to the request for a biographical handling of him; and it matters, no doubt, very little. Such a man must be thoroughly known, as great saints are always sooner or later known, though endeavoring to hide their victories of holiness and charity. Certainly my father did not like to die, though he now wished to do so. My mother, later, often spoke, in consolation for us and for herself, of his dread of helpless old age; and she tried to be glad that his desire to disappear before decrepitude had been fulfilled. But such wise wishes are not carried out as we might choose. The sudden transformation which took place in my father after his coming to America was like an instant's change in the atmosphere from sunshine to dusky cold. I have never had the least difficulty in explaining it to myself.
One large item in the sum of his regrets was his unexpectedly narrowed means. It would have required a generous amount of money to put The Wayside and its grounds into the delectable order at first contemplated, to bring them into any sort of English perfection, and my parents found that they could not afford it; and so all resulted in semi-comfort and rough appearances. This narrowing of means was caused not a little by the want of veracity of a person whom my father had trusted with entire affection and a very considerable loan, about which we none of us ever heard again. A crust becomes more than proverbially dry under these circumstances.