Growing Up: A Story of the Girlhood of Judith Mackenzie — Background and Themes

citing events in her own life, and the quiet story of her mother’s days.

“We are coming as soon as spring comes,” she ended, “mother is coming to get strong, and I am coming to help you and learn about your village. Beautiful Bensalem. Mother says I am learning the lessons taught out of school; but how I would like to go to school with Jean Draper in your big, queer school-room.” As she turned towards her mother, the firelight and the light in her face were all the lights in the room.

The home of these two people was in two rooms; one was the kitchen, the other was bed-room, school-room, parlor. It was a month since her mother had walked through the two rooms; several times a day Judith pushed the wheel-chair through the rooms. She called these times her mother’s excursions. Last winter her mother wiped dishes, sewed a little, and once she made cake; this winter she had done little besides teach Judith. The child was such an apt scholar that her mother said she needed no teacher—she always taught herself.

Judith loved housekeeping; she loved everything she had to do, she loved everything she was growing up to do; her mother she loved best of all.

She lived all day long in a very busy world; the pictures helped fill it.

“Now, mother, shut your eyes,” she began, gleefully.

The eyes shut themselves, the restless hands held themselves still; there would not be many more weary days, but Judith did not know that.

Judith waited a moment until she could think.

“Mother, how do pictures come?”

“Bring me that paper Don brought last night; I saw something to show you, then forgot it.”

Her mother turned the leaves of the paper and indicated the paragraph with her finger. Judith read it aloud:—

“Some years ago I chanced to meet Sir Noël Paton on the shores of a beautiful Scottish loch, all alone, with an open Bible in his hand. He put his finger between his pages, as he rose to greet me, and still kept it there as we talked. Supposing he might be devoting a quiet hour to devotional reading in the secluded spot, I made no remark on the nature of his studies; but after a few minutes he observed, with a glance downwards, ‘You see, I am getting a new picture.’ He then proceeded to explain that it was his habit, before settling down to his winter’s work, to walk about in the neighborhood of his summer residence, wherever that might be, with his Bible in his hand, seeking for an inspiration. Sometimes the inspiration came almost immediately; at others, he was weeks before he could please himself. The following spring appeared ‘The Good Shepherd,’ one of the finest of his works.”

Her mother made no remark; she often waited for Judith’s thought.

“I think Aunt Affy sees things through the Bible, mother,” said Judith, speaking her first thought.

“I see a face,” began the picture-teller, dropping down on the rug, and resting her head against the padded arm of the chair.

“You love faces,” was the quick response.

“And voices, and hands, and hair. This face I see is a _good_ face—but, then, I do not often see ugly faces—the eyes tell the truth, the lips tell the truth; perhaps it isn’t a handsome face; the forehead is low, rather square, the eye-brows dark and heavy; the eyes underneath are a kind of grayish blue, not _blue_ blue, like mine, and they are looking at me very seriously; the nose is quite a large nose, and the mouth large, too, with such splendid teeth; the upper lip is smooth, and the cheeks and chin all shaven; the hair is blackest black; now the eyes smile, and it looks like another face; I do not know which face I like better. What is the name of my picture?”

“That is a good name,” said the picture-teller, satisfied, “and who is it?”

“Our dear Cousin Don,” was the reply with loving intonation.

“Because your pictures are so true. I like to look at people and places through your eyes.”

Judith smiled, and looking a moment into the fire, began again: “A fence, an old fence, and a terrace, not green, but rather dried up, then a lawn, with a horse-chestnut, a big, big horse-chestnut tree on each side the brick path, and then up three steps to a long piazza: the house is painted white, with white shutters instead of blinds, and there are three dormer windows in the roof; these windows make the third story. I wish I could see inside, but I never did. Perhaps I shall some day. ‘Some day’ is my fairyland, and may you be there to see. That day Cousin Don came to take me walking he took me past the place; he said some day when you could spare me longer he would take me in, he wanted me to see the brown girl who lives there; but there she stood on the piazza, the door was open and she was going in; she _was_ a brown girl, all in brown with a brown hat and brown feather; a brown face too—I love browns; she happened to turn and she tossed a laugh down to Cousin Don. It was a pretty laugh, with something in it I didn’t understand; it was a laugh—that—didn’t—tell—everything. I told Don so. He said: ‘Nonsense!’ I don’t know what he meant.”

“That was Marion Kenney, and the old house on Summer Avenue,” guessed Judith’s mother, who knew the story of the brown girl from Don’s enthusiastic recitals.

Her mother’s voice was more rested; Judith pondered again.

“That was a city picture; this is a country picture. It is the beautiful, beautiful country, even if the grass is dead, and the trees bare; it is the February country in New Jersey; there are clouds, and clouds, and clouds overhead; and a brook with the sun shining on it, and a bridge with a stone wall on each side, a little bit of a stone wall, and stone arches where the water flows through; perhaps it rushes because the snow is melting so fast; there’s a garden with no flowers in it yet, but there are flower stalks, and bushes, and bushes; and a path up to the kitchen door, for the garden is down in a hollow; the kitchen shines, it is so clean, and _smells_, oh, how it does smell of graham bread, and hot molasses cake, and cup custards, and apple pie—but we can’t _smell_ in a picture,” she laughed.

“I can—in your pictures,” said her mother, echoing the laugh very softly.

“And the dearest old sitting-room—Aunt Rody will call it ‘the room’ as if it were the only room in the house; there’s a rag carpet on the floor—Aunt Rody _dotes_ on rag carpets; so would I if it were not for the endless sewing of the rags—and there’s a chair with rockers, and on the top of the back of it a gilded house and trees almost rubbed off, and on the back a calico cushion tied on with red dress braid, and a calico cushion in the bottom, and the dearest old lady sits in it and sews, and talks, and reads the Bible and the magazines; there’s a chair without rockers for the old lady who never rocks or does easy pleasant things, and hates it when other people, especially little girls, do any easy pleasant thing; and there’s another chair, like an office chair, with a leather cushion for the dear old man with a rosy face like a rosy apple, and a bald head on the top, and long white whiskers that he keeps so nice they shine like silver, and make you never mind when he wants to kiss you; and there’s a high mantel with a whole world of curious things on it that came out of a hundred years ago, and a lounge with a shaggy dog on a cushion on one end of it—how Aunt Rody _lets_ him is a wonder to me—and a round table with piles of the ‘New York Observer’ on it. And just now the sweetest lady in the world in her wine-colored wrapper is lying on the lounge and the little girl in blue is flying about helping Aunt Affy and Aunt Rody get supper—O, mother,” with a break in her voice, “how I _ache_ to get you there and take care of you there; Cousin Don says it is the best place in the world for you and me,—we would grow fresh and green and send out oxygen like all the green things in Bensalem. I think I’d like to grow green and send out oxygen.”

“Judith, you and I are always in the best place—for us.”

“Then,” said Judith, laughing, “I’d like a place not quite so good for us—only just as good as Bensalem.”

“When I was a little girl, thirty years ago, the room was just the same, only Doodles was another Doodles, and Aunt Affy’s curls were not gray, and Uncle Cephas was not bald or white—his whiskers were red then, and he was there off and on—and the other aunties came and went—and Aunt Becky died—the friskiest Aunt Becky that ever lived. I want my little girl to grow up in the dear old house, with not a stain of the world upon her; I want to think of my little girl there with Uncle Cephas and Aunt Affy.”

Judith understood; her mother had told her she would be there without her mother; but that was to be years hence—sorrow was a long, long way off to-night to the girl who must hope or her heart would break; she brought her mother’s fingers to her lips and kissed them; she did not worry her mother now-a-days even by kissing her lips or hair.

Cousin Don said to her that afternoon he took her to walk that she must not hang over her mother, or kiss the life out of her, and above all, never cry or moan when she talked about leaving her “alone.” “Nothing makes her so strong as to see you brave,” he said, watching the effect of his caution upon her listening face.

She had tried to be brave ever since.

“You can make pictures and see me there, mother,” she said brightly, with a catch in her breath.

“I do—when I lie awake in the night, and give thanks.”

“Tell me over again about when you were a little girl, there,” she coaxed.

Over and over again she had listened to the ever-new story of her mother’s childhood and youth in Bensalem; Aunt Rody was the dragon, Aunt Affy the angel, Uncle Cephas a helper in every difficulty, and all the village a world where something strange and fascinating was always happening.

“It was a very happy home for me when my father died and my mother took me there; she died before I was twelve; and then twelve years I was Aunt Affy’s girl; then your father took me away,” her mother said with the memory of the years in her voice and eyes.

“I wonder if somebody will come and take me away, or whether I shall stay forever and ever like Aunt Affy and Aunt Rody,” Judith wondered in her expectant voice.

“If somebody comes—if our Father in Heaven sends somebody as good and gentle and wise as your own father, I shall be glad of it up in Heaven, I think. You do not remember your father; in his picture he is like Don—Don is your father’s brother’s son; your fathers were much alike. Your father was only a clerk, his salary was never large; Don’s father was a business man, he died rich and left his only son a fortune; but your father and I never longed for money—Don has always given me money as his father did; he said you and I had a right to it. It has never been hard to take money from Don—he will be always kind to you; he thinks he has a right to you; you are the only children of the two brothers; they were only two—they never had a sister. Now you know all about your ancestry on both sides, I think; your grandfather and grandmother Mackenzie were born in Scotland; they died before you were born. Aunt Affy will be always telling you about the ‘Sparrow girls.’ My mother was a Sparrow girl. Just a year ago we were in that dear old home.”

“I was twelve then—I had my birthday there; perhaps I shall have another birthday there in April. Aunt Affy wants us to come so much. I can take better care of you now because I am older and I must not have lessons to make you tired; we will have a long vacation; I will only write poems for you and you needn’t even take the trouble to make the measure right. Aunt Rody said I was a silly baby to be always hanging about you; but she will see how I have grown up. Don says I am a little woman. Now I’ll tell you a picture. Shut your eyes, again.”

The tear-blinded eyes were shut again; Judith had been looking into the fire as she talked; she was afraid to look up into her mother’s eyes. It was being brave to look into the fire.

“I see a room up-stairs, a room with a slanting roof and only one window; the window looks down into the garden; it has a green paper shade tied up with a cord; there is a strip of rag-carpet before the bed, that is all the carpet there is; and there’s a funny old wash-stand with a blue bowl sunk down into a hole on the top, and a towel on the rail of the wash-stand with a red border—in winter a pipe comes up in the stove-pipe hole from the big stove in the sitting-room, but there’s ice in the pitcher very often; there’s a bureau with a cracked looking-glass on the top, an old bureau, everything is old but the little girl kneeling on the rag-carpet rug beside the bed, with her head on the red and white quilt, saying her prayers. That little girl is _you_, mother, a sweet, obedient little girl, that hasn’t a will of her own, and tempers, and tantrums like me.”

“I like to think that sweet little girl is you.”

“Then it _is_ me; I’ve grown sweet in a hurry,” Judith laughed, “and left all my tempers and tantrums far behind.”

“There’s another T to go with them—_temptations_—through which you grow strong.”

Not seeming to heed, but in reality holding her mother’s thought in her heart Judith ran merrily on: “And I see a church, with a little green in front, and posts to hitch the horses, the two church doors are wide open, for in the picture it is Sunday morning; Aunt Rody is in the head of a pew in the body of the church, and Aunt Affy sits next, and Uncle Cephas is next the door, and there’s a girl between Aunt Affy and Uncle Cephas, a girl fifteen years old and her hair is braided, not in long, babyish curls—”

“Oh, my little girl, wear your curls as long as you can, because mother loves them,” her mother urged, bending forward to touch the soft, bright hair.

“Then her hair _is_ curled, and she is trying to be good and listen. Perhaps she likes sermons—she looks so; in the picture the sermon is like the Bible stories you tell me when we read together—I _wish_ ministers told Bible stories. And there’s the sweetest singing; it is like Marion Kenney’s singing; she sings like a bird, Don says; there are girls and boys all over the church, for the minister in the picture knows how to tell Bible stories to boys and girls and make them as real as the people and things in Summer Avenue and Bensalem; just as naughty and just as good. Jean Draper is there—in the pew behind me. Why, mother,” bringing herself back to the present and turning to look into her mother’s face, “Jean Draper was never in the steam cars, or on a ferry-boat in all her life—she has never been in New York or any where, only to Dunellen, which they call ‘town,’ and she walks there, or rides with her father. She wants to go somewhere as much as I want to go to boarding-school. It’s the dream of her life, as boarding-school is my dream.”

“Aunt Affy and Cousin Don will decide about boarding-school. Cousin Don and I have talked about it, and I will tell Aunt Affy what I think about it,” her mother decided with an unusual touch of firmness.

“But I wouldn’t leave _you_, mother, for all the boarding-schools in the world.”

“And I wouldn’t let you for all the schools in the world.”

“Well, it’s only a dream, like Jean Draper’s outing. You like pictures better than dreams. I think Don’s friend, Roger Kenney, is the minister in the pulpit; Don said he had preached there almost all winter, coming home every Tuesday—Monday he visits the people. Don is sure Bensalem will give him a call. Uncle Cephas likes him so much, and Uncle Cephas is an elder. Now, here’s another picture: on the same side of the street as the church, with only the church-yard and the locust grove between, it is the dear, dainty Queen Anne parsonage—only two years old, and so new and pretty; Jean Draper went with me through it—there was nobody there then—and nobody has lived there all this year; there’s a furnace in the cellar like a city house, and a bay-window in the study, and a pretty hall with stained-glass windows, and a cunning kitchen, a cunning sitting-room, and sliding doors into the parlor, and a piazza in the front, and at the side—and out every window is the beautiful country. I hope I may go again. Mother, you like this picture?” she asked earnestly, “that house is another dream of mine. O, mother,” with a comical little cry, “I’m so full of dreams, I’m full to bursting.”

“I like that picture. I like to think of Don’s friend there living a strong life; he has no worldly ambition. Don says it has been wholly rooted out of him. He was very fine in college, working beyond his strength—eaten up with ambition. Then he had an experience; Don said the fountains of the great deep were broken up in him, and he came out of it another man—as humble and teachable as any child. Don is afraid he will go there and be satisfied to stay.”

“Now, here’s another face,” said Judith, with a new reverence for Don’s friend: “brown eyes, and a brown curly beard, and a brown head, with laughing eyes, unless he is talking about grave things—he doesn’t make you afraid to be good, but to love to. Still, I am so afraid he will _talk_ to me some day and ask me questions; I don’t know how to answer questions. Now, you know, I mean Don’s friend, Mr. Kenney.”

“Your pictures are very cheery. I hope you may tell some to poor old Aunt Rody.”

“I shall never dare. She snaps at me. She shuts me up and makes me forget what I want to say. Her eyes go _through_ me. I don’t love Aunt Rody; I don’t _want_ to love Aunt Rody. She doesn’t like baby girls,” contended Judith, shaking her yellow head. “She doesn’t like me and Doodles. We are shaggy and a nuisance.”

“You will not always stay a baby girl.”