Something of my horror of those painted saints must have been in time swallowed up by curiosity, for I remember that when I was ten, a year after mother’s return with our new brother and sister, I attempted to transform one of the boys into a saint, according to my unfading recollection of my stepfather’s paintings, by draping his shoulders with some old yellow flannel that hung upon the clothes-line. It was out on the wide lawn, and Cyrus was deep in his Latin book, lying under the great butternut tree. Three-year-old Rob, Uncle Horace’s son, was there, for Uncle Horace had married late in life, when one would no more have expected tender emotions to develop in him than one would have expected one of our Druid-like old Norway pines to blossom with wild roses, and his young wife had died, leaving him an infant son.
I draped the folds of yellow flannel about them in as stately a fashion as I could, but I must confess that there was no semblance of sainthood about them, nor even anything cherubic, as one might have expected of their baby faces. They insisted upon thinking I meant them to play king, and strutted about with grotesque airs. Loveday came out and reproved me sharply for having vain imaginations, and for not having forgotten the heathenish pictures; for to my shamefaced astonishment, she understood just what I was doing.
Dear Loveday! our spiritual, as well as our temporal welfare lay very near her heart. Perhaps the relation she bore to us could scarcely be understood outside of New England, and at that time even it was a survival of the customs of an earlier date—to say nothing of the fact that Loveday was unique. She was ignorant, she was full of prejudices and crude notions, and yet there has sometimes come to me, in these later years, a doubt whether Loveday’s ignorance, with the intuitions with which love lighted it—love to God and man—were not better than all the wisdom of the schools.
She had been the “hired girl” when she was twenty; at forty she was the housekeeper, and the reins of domestic management, always held somewhat slackly in grandma’s gentle hands, had slipped, almost without any one’s consciousness, into hers.
And Hiram Nute still continued to woo her, as he had done twenty years before. “He hadn’t never slacked up a mite on his courtin’,” Loveday herself admitted. And our “hired man” was relieved of the tasks of churning, taking in the clothes and chopping wood, during Hiram’s periodical visits, for Loveday would never permit him to come unless he made himself useful.
She said matrimony was an ordinance of the Lord, but there ’peared to be consid’able many that was ready to serve him that way compared to them that was ready to do their duty just where he had sot ’em. And as for seein’ them blessed young ones brought up on saleratus bread and slim morals, she couldn’t do it. This was by no means intended as a reflection upon grandma, but upon the “back folks,” whom Palmyra was forced to depend upon for “help.”
Grandma’s hands were wholly filled now by the care of grandpa, whose feebleness increased year by year, and also, alas! by mother’s need of her constant attention, for a delicacy of the lungs had developed in our mother, and her strength failed rapidly. She took her illness lightly, declaring that it was only the result of the change from the sunny south of France to bleak New England air. But even on the healthful Palmyra hills we knew the meaning of that dread word, consumption, and we older children understood when the neighbors whispered it to each other with bated breath.
Perhaps it may have been vague thoughts of that country to which I knew my mother was going soon, that made my mind revert to the painted saints. In spite of the ill-success of my first experiments, and in spite of Loveday’s rebuke—for I was a wilful young person in those days—I took advantage of Cyrus’ absorption in his book to try to make for him a costume similar to that in the pictures.
The shadows of the butternut tree were heavy; one shaft of yellow sunset light pierced them and fell directly upon the boy. Finally, becoming aware that I was dressing him in some fantastic way, he arose with—not a scowl, even at thirteen Cyrus was too dignified to scowl—but a sternly rebuking expression upon his face.
The shadows were heavy, as I have said, and the shaft of light was dazzling. In the one moment that he stood there I saw, with a thrill of mingled triumph and dismay, that I had evolved one of the painted saints. But not one of them had such a face as this! Of course, my later understanding comes to my aid in interpreting its expression, but it struck my childish mind with a sense of awe.