Randolph Bourne

“ Her bright black eyes would soften; she would be weary and her hands would be dirty, but Gilbert would feel the peace that radiated from her at the sight of this freshly burnished garden. The grass would be smooth like a carpet, the flower-beds and the vegetable-garden all dark and tumbled with their upturned earth. The paths would be straight brown indented tracks, or, where they went around the house, beautifully curved tracks, with the marks of the rake on the fine earth where George had worked it over. ”

“ Sometimes she would put the tennis-net across the green lawn and play with a neighbor, darting so swiftly, like a long black bird, across the green, hitting the ball so straight and true, and blazing so fiercely with her black eyes when she missed, that Gilbert sat enthralled, motionless, until the set was over and they went in to supper. On those days he would help her mark the court, going to the little barn and watching her fill the marker with white powdery lime, and then helping her push it over the closely-mown grass. The long summer days were full of Aunt Nan. ”

“ Gilbert would stand on a chair and see dimly through rain-streaming panes, this huge slopping figure, throwing pails of water into the path. But ordinarily nothing happened in the dining-room. Sometimes in the summer, an odious snail or two would come out of the walls and leave his track across the worn carpet. In a vast closet were stored rows of jellies which Garna had put up, and which Gilbert and Olga would sometimes get a taste of, for a treat. Behind the dining-room was the cellar, gratefully warm in winter with its glowing furnace, and cool in summer with its whitewashed walls. ”

“ Once a week, a black man would come from somewhere, and spend the whole day with Aunt Nan, mowing the lawn, digging the vegetable garden, and weeding the flowers. That was a glorious day for Gilbert and for Aunt Nan. How much there was to be done! They all seemed to be wrestling with the whole yard, to turn it up, to bring it to a bright, shiny newness. At the end of the day, Gilbert would walk about the garden on the gravelly paths, with Aunt Nan to survey their handiwork. ”

“ Gilbert did not at first understand what Annie was doing in the kitchen, this queer, whitish young woman with many skirts and vast breasts, who gave a sort of growl-smile when you spoke to her, and always started incontinently, with alacrity, to do something without knowing what it was. Gilbert would come in from the garden into the fragrant kitchen on baking-day to look for cookies, and find his mother moving about, with her serious, anxious expression, while Annie sprawled about, cutting up potatoes, and listened to his mother's earnest expostulations. ”

“ If it was only with painful effort that Gilbert in his early days of church and Sunday School loved God and Jesus, whom did he love? Did he love Mother? He did not know. He loved her very much at night when he felt her protecting presence in the house, but in the daytime she was a strange being who did not seem interested in Gilbert and Olga. She spent most of her time with little brother, or, if he were asleep, she would be lying stretched across the foot of the bed, with her face in her hands. ”

“ Garna told him about it, and so did Miss Fogg, when they later had lessons in the New Testament. We must all love God very much, and especially Jesus, who had done so much for us. And in the solemn Sunday afternoons, when Gilbert was told to take his Bible and sit by the window in the back-parlor and read a chapter, he would sometimes wonder if he loved God enough, or if he loved Jesus. God was a majestic old gentleman with a white beard, reclining on white cumulus clouds, and Jesus he knew equally well as a young man in an archaic blue robe, holding a lamb in one arm, and followed by others. ”

“ During the week the grass would grow longer, the weeds shoot up in the flower-beds, the paths become bedraggled at the edges, the grass grow up rank on the lawns. But soon Saturday would come with George, and the fine renovation would take place all over again.
Aunt Nan was neat and quick in her movements. She had a cold scorn for dirty faces and dirty hands, and Gilbert sometimes became a little weary trying to satisfy her demands. He was always a little intimidated by her, but at the same time fascinated by her vibrancy, her restless passion. ”

“ Upstairs, Gilbert liked Garna's house better. The front parlor was a vast and cavernous room, the mysteries of which Gilbert penetrated only slowly. The back parlor was much more comprehensible. Here the sun shone in, and people sat and lived. When you entered the front parlor, you involuntarily lowered your voice, and you moved around subdued, as if someone had died there. Garna never opened the windows, and the shutters of the bay which looked towards the east were always kept tightly closed. ”

“ But when Gilbert was seven years old, Garna gave him a beautiful thick black Bible, with his name—Gilbert Shotwell Harden—stamped on the cover in golden letters. Besides, it did not appeal to him to grub along for a prize. Far better to have things, glorious, imposing, come to you out of the blue sky! Once Aunt Shotwell promised him fifty cents if he would learn the Westminster Catechism, but Gilbert never got farther than "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." ”

“ Sunday School was a neutral, colorless event in his life. Every Sunday as they left the Sunday School, each child would receive a little leaflet; those who had known their golden texts would get a card with a golden star on it. Gilbert always cried a little if he lost his card while running home, and he cherished his leaflet for a day or two. But he never tried to read it, and he soon mislaid his golden star. Good boys, after they had gotten a prodigious number of golden stars, were each supposed to receive as a reward a Bible all of his own. ”

“ Outside, just at the top of the pillars, ran a narrow ledge. Gilbert's imagination would perform perilous adventures along that ledge. You would walk along, along, and around the back and up the other side, dizzily perched above the congregation, clinging to the brass rail, and you would come to the choir behind the minister's desk. From the ledge to the choir was a gap of a few feet, but Gilbert saw himself jumping it, and his heart would beat faster. And then he would return painfully, exhilaratedly, around that ledge, holding on so tightly. ”

“ Mother was always distressed that you did not obey her; she was always distressed about what to do with you. She would implore you to be good, and you would be good with a certain chilly haughtiness, because it seemed somewhat humiliating to see Mother so distressed and uncertain. Olga did not usually obey, but kicked and screamed. Gilbert soon got the habit of ignoring his mother's expressed desires and wearing out her decisiveness. Then he would be left alone to follow his own desires.
That yard, which Aunt Nan loved so much, was for Gilbert a domain, a principality. ”

“ Gilbert thought this was one of the most satisfactory spots in the whole world. At your right was the window looking down through the black-walnut trees to the street below; just behind you sat Garna, busily knitting or sewing; you had all the flat, shiny surface of the lid to make your puzzles on, or practise or draw on; your legs hung down over the chintz-box, high above the ground; you were shut in to the most delicious privacy. At the back of the secretaire were innumerable compartments and pigeon-holes in which Garna kept her letters and papers ”

“ Beyond the trees lay the green, unbroken lawn, covered with velvety grass that even the lawn-mower could not keep from growing thick and soft like a carpet. The lawn went straight up towards the neighbor's fence, but just before it reached there it turned into a long flower-bed, with rose-bushes and tangled flowery vines that climbed over and pretended that there was no fence there at all. To the right, and up near the street corner of the yard were three more lordly pines set in a triangle, which Gilbert had promptly named "Three Trees Grove." ”

“ Gilbert's house, however, afforded few excitements. Garna's big room you did not often enter, though you might on Sunday while she was putting on her veil and bonnet to take you to church. Gilbert did not care very much how the rest of the family got to church, but it was one of the most important things in his life that he should go with Garna. At nine o'clock the church-bell would begin to ring, gayly, quickly, sometimes the long peals almost falling over each other in their eagerness. ”

“ And all along the front of the yard, close to the house, ran a white wooden fence just within which was a line of graceful black-walnut trees, with their thin green clustered leaves and the green nuts which fell in heaps on the ground. Aunt Nan and Gilbert would collect them in sacks and put them in the barn. There they would grow all black, so that you could strip off the covering and find the crinkled nutshell within. ”

“ On certain days, when he happened to look at the sky, he would see just that pale infinite blue into which you could look on and on and never reach the end. When it was really blue or cloudy, it curved comfortingly over you, near and definite like a bowl. ”

“ The barn was now full of rakes and hoes and wheel- barrows, but there were deep bins where still remained a peck or two of oats and a measure, and there was a manger which swung back and forth from the stall to the bin, so you could fill it and then turn it in to the horse. Gilbert wished that there were still horses to play with, but it was fun turning the manger and making Olga and Ethel pretend to be horses. ”