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Wheat in the Ear

Chapter IV. — Joan's Boyhood

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Chapter IV.
Joan's Boyhood.

To the last day of her life mother blamed the christening for Joan's shortcomings; what chance had a girl with the name of a boy?

She had nothing to say in disparagement of John the Baptist, far be it from her, nor against old men. She hoped to be old herself one day, and quite expected to be deaf; but, what with Father's fad about the one, and the bungling of the other, her child had been called as no other Christian girl had been called before her. No wonder the child was tom-boyish. Who could expect otherwise? It did not occur to Mother that physical law, and her own shaping of her child's destiny, had anything to do with it.

“Johnnie” was first a term of reproach to bring Joan to a sense of what was fitting and proper in the behaviour of a little girl, when she so far forgot the page 32 conventionalities as to sit sideways on her chair, and dangle her legs over the rail, or tear up her muslin pinafore to make a tail for a kite.

Mercy shook her head. She had no doubt whatever that it was all a punishment for wishing for a boy at all.

Father laughed at fear, and prayed for the true chivalry of Johnnie, and gave it out as his fixed idea that a blending of the honour of a gentleman with the sweetness of a woman would add much to the soundness of the feminine method.

“What I think is this,” said Tom, in his strong, cheerful voice, “the word of a gentleman is his bond; he's courageous an' honourable; graft that to the patience an' gentleness of a woman, an' what have you?”

“We've her father's own girl here,” answered Janet, with conviction. “She won't stand the whip, nor yet the curb, bless her!”

Each parent created a separate world for the child, made up of staid philosophies, middle-aged experiences, and the grit of individual knowledge; but Joan, with a young soul's prerogative, went a new way of her own. So soon as she could balance herself on an unmade path, she was outside the page 33 home enclosure, incredulous of Mother's cautious fears, readily paying tumbles and scratches as toll for curiosity. The cattle were made acquaintance with in field and byre, invested with human individuality, and treated to child converse; every ethical advance made by Joan she sought to exact from the beasts, or reproved them for the lack of, in the true spirit of the dogmatic reformer, making no allowance for environment.

Before she was seven years old, Joan knew the feel of every wind that blew, and the history of every live creature about the farm. The seasons could be told by the smell of her garments, for they bore the scent of the newly-turned earth, the fresh-mown hay, or the mellow odour of clover and ripe corn. Janet dressed her in scarlet, because the colour could be seen afar; and it vexed the woman's housewifely and orderly soul that her child took so kindly to the fields. She looked for a daughter thrifty, domesticated, responsible; and the child so far scandalised her sex as to refuse a doll, and practise whistling.

It was necessary for economy's sake to keep Joan's skirts short to the knees, and her sleeves to the elbows, thus leaving bare her brown arms and legs. She was clothed in serge, and as little of that as was page 34 consistent with decorum. But for all that Joan looked picturesque. Her dark brown hair curled in short, silky waves all over her head; a red fez topped the curls, and beneath them, large, bright, grey eyes looted out with the intent gaze of Mother, and about them a suggestion of Father's humorous wrinkles. The face was small and oval, delicately tinted in brown and red; the mouth, when it was not pursed up singing, or open whistling, was set in decisive curves.

Joan had not yet emerged from the animal state; but Mother, who had made strides in civilisation, was anxious for the progress of her little woman. One day Janet took the tiny hand in her work-worn palm, and looked critically at it.

“Sakes!” she exclaimed wonderingly, “what a mite of a thing!” Then, as though a happy thought had struck her, she added ingratiatingly, “It's a hand to do beautiful needlework.”

Joan looked her mother full in the eye, then glanced at the imprisoned right hand disapprovingly; the delicate lines of the little chin began to harden.

“I never could get the way of that marvellous embroidery myself,” proceeded Mother. “A bit of muslin an' a fine needle were lost in my hands; page 35 still,” catching the sigh of relief that heaved Joan's breast, she added hastily, “when I was your age I could sew my seam.”

Joan withdrew her offending member from her mother's grasp, put it behind her, and looked steadily from under the dark curls that lay so charmingly about her forehead. Mother smiled benignly into the wondering orbs regarding her.

“Yes,” she reiterated, “I could sew my seam, and dress my doll; my doll was neat as a real lady.”

Joan glanced quickly at a dilapidated object on the couch; from under a rakish and ragged hat the acquaintance leered knowingly. Joan shifted her position, interposing her small person between it and her mother. Janet, with some difficulty, repressed a smile, much enamoured of the small culprit before her. She smoothed her apron, passed her hand over her hair, then followed up the impression she had made.

“My mother did not believe in too much play. ‘Work first and play after,’ she used to say; and, when I was restless and impatient for the fields, she wöuld pin me to her knee, dearie—pin me till I had finished my seam.”

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Joan stood on tiptoe and brought the anxious face above her on a level with her own.

“How miser'ble you must have been; I'm sorry for you.” Then, imprinting a sympathetic kiss with her rosy lips, she bounded out into the sunshine.

Mercy joined her mistress, and the two watched her gambols.

“Children is the climax o' misfortune. Man an' marriage is affliction; but by grace an' good muscles a woman may fight through; for a man knows when he meets his master, an' havin' met her, he tempers his tyranny with humility—tempers his tyranny with humility,” repeated Mercy, who had read something like it somewhere, and loved high-sounding words.

“But you'll temper me with something that isn't humility,” interrupted her mistress tartly; “get indoors—do.”

Mercy cast a reproachful look at Janet—a long, lingering, offended, lover-like look—and, squaring her shoulders, strode kitchenward. She made a good deal of clatter there for about an hour; then she flicked at the cat viciously with a duster.

“They are a burden and a bitterness, the sowers page 37 of a whirlwind. The unborn millions will be the ruin of the country.”

She fixed the cat with her eye, and, although puss knew Mercy's ways, and, on the whole, bore with them well, this aspersion was a little too much; there was a limit even to a cat's endurance. She drew up her head, blinked in Mercy's condemning face disdainfully, then turned majestically and left the room.

“Mercy's jealous!” said Mother to herself smilingly, as she proceeded to tidy things.

There was no regret in her face when she thought of the unlittered room of the olden days, she sighed to remember. She gazed with shining eyes at the evidences of her possession; the sun-hat on the lobby peg, the doll upon the sofa, a gleam of a bright-hued sash; a buckle of a tiny shoe in the work-basket, broken doll's tea-cups, a posie jammed into a jug, and a scarlet frock airing in the sunshine.

She sat down now, and while she plied a rapid needle, thought of the look on Father's face when he sat opposite, and their young princess came bounding in and kissed him, and sat upon his knee, and twined her arm about his neck, looking over at page 38 Mother half shyly, half coyly, in a manner which said, “This is my Father, he belongs to me,” when Mother gently hints that she is getting too big to be nursed. She could see the half-abashed, half-defiant glance of the child when she was told she must not romp, nor be rude, nor shout, nor scream, nor say “I won't,” nor climb trees, nor play in the mud, because she was a little girl; but must always be gentle and obedient, and grow with the wisdom of a serpent, and harmlessness of a dove, to pleasure Father and Mother. All that was imperative, and more, for the world demands from its women honesty, purity, loyalty, tenderness; a girl must dawn upon the world, “where the brook and river meet,” with sweet surprise in her eyes; she must be wise without experience to walk through rough and miry ways, unblemished and unhurt, and in the evening of her days, depart with grace and faith.

At present Joan showed no marked predilection for woman's mission; she dearly liked having it out with her aggressors, and hit back with spontaneous and genuine relish. Father said, let her alone, it showed a manly spirit; if women blacked each other's eyes oftener, they would blacken one another's reputation less with their tongues. Mother page 39 looked doubtful and shook her head. Mercy bided her time.

If one waits long enough for an opportunity, it is sure to overtake one, and is frequently unappreciated because it finds us with a changed mind; but Joan's tomboyism had excited durable feelings in Mercy's square breast, and when her chance of reproving arrived, she seized it.

The cat had regained its equanimity, and Mother, her sewing done, had gone to watch the shearing. Mercy, her face shining from her afternoon ablutions, sat with folded arms resting till it was time to prepare the evening meal. Mercy was never more unapproachable than at this hour; her freshly-starched dress seemed to bristle with the consciousness of its purity. She was alert for warfare, and glowered at nothing in particular in a truly formidable manner.

Presently her quick ear caught the faintest creaking of the kitchen door. She turned with the agility of a cat watching for a mouse. A dripping object stood in the doorway, two interrogative eyes peered from beneath a tangle of damp hair.

Mercy rose slowly and squared herself, her hands upon her hips.

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“Hallo!” said a small voice ingratiatingly.

“Hall-o!” responded a triumphant bass.

“I felled in,” apologised the treble; “I've got wet.”

“Wet?” queried Mercy sardonically. “Not wet?”

The dripping head nodded emphatically.

Mercy strode forward, lifted the drenched object as she would a drowned kitten, and carried her into the bathroom; here, depositing her in the bath, she stripped and treated her to a vigorous rubbing with a coarse towel; then, still without a word, robed the child in her night-dress and carried her to bed, and, sat down, a threatening figure, by the bedside.

Joan glanced at the open window lovingly, at the patch of sunlight on the floor, and then at her silent jailor.

“I was swimming a duck,” remarked Joan, in an explanatory way; “such a dee wee duck. It wanted to go in. Its mother is a hen, an' couldn't teach it.”

Mercy leant forward, the afternoon light shining full on her hard-featured face, revealing with pitiless truth the lines that an unloved childhood and page 41 youth had drawn. Her look would have repelled most children, and Joan was somewhat abashed.

“Say something,” she pleaded; “you frighten me.”

Mercy drew her breath deeply.

“Johnnie Jefferies,” she said, with unutterable scorn condensed into the word “Johnnie,” “I have never pined for children, but I wish that for one hour I could be your mother.”

“Why?” faltered the young person addressed, not detecting any maternal tenderness in Mercy's glance.

“I've got my reasons,” replied Mercy meaningly, “and my hand itches to express ‘em.”

Joan tucked the bedclothes well round her, and changed her tactics.

“It wasn't my bes' frock; I've got lots more,” she suggested anxiously.

Mercy never less personified her name. She rose in judgment. The unfettered and lawless one slunk a little lower under the bedclothes, but never for a moment removing her gaze.

“You've got lots more. Unto him that hath shall be given; there ain't no limit to your privileges!” gasped Mercy. “When I was your age I page 42 had one frock—an' only one—a solitary, only one— without any connections. A lone frock, dingy an' thin, to say nothink of scragginess. I wore it week in an' week out, an' it were washed o' Saturday nights to be clean o' Sundays. I ran my errants in it, an' did my devotions in it; it were turned top to bottom when the bottom got thin, an' then turned bottom to top. When the colour faded on the right side it were turned to the wrong, an' when the wrong side grew shabby it were turned right side out agen. When I growed out of it, the tuck were let out at the bottom, an' when I growed out o' that my grandmother just put on a false hem. I hadn't got no mother to pamper me; I hadn't ne'er a one,” reiterated Mercy, with a gulp, as though trying to swallow the unfair distribution of things. “An' when the wind blew, I knew it No purple an' fine linen covered me; an' the heat o' summer got in through the holes, an' the cold o' winter likewise.”

Joan felt dazed, and slipped up a little from the bedclothes in sympathy for the image just presented. She blinked hard to meet Mercy's glance with impersonal interest.

“Only one frock, and no mother. Didn't page 43 you never have no farver, too?” she returned politely.

Mercy snorted so loudly that Joan went down under it instantly, eyes and all. When her ears once more reached the surface she gathered the following:

“Gaol cut his hanky-pankys short. No longer as a roaring lion might he seek whom he could devour. Prize your privileges, Miss Joan. Be an honour to the noble sect, an' don't bring the hairs of that gentle lamb your mother with sorrow to the grave; for Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. Think of ‘how doth the little busy bee,’ an' curtail your disposition to be wilful.”

Joan was greatly impressed; she lay still for fully two minutes after Mercy left her, staring fixedly at the door. Then she sighed deeply and sat up. The discourse had left a distinct impression that Mercy's father was a lion caged up somewhere, and that Satan didn't like little girls. Her imagination adhered to the last conclusion, and, pondering it with her chin between her hands, she brightened suddenly, and knelt up in bed. With the face and smile of a coquette cajoling her lover, she first looked up; then, recollecting, re-adjusted her attitude and looked down.

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“Dee Satan,” she murmured sweetly, “the duck I falled in with was a very weeny one, an' if you'll please not find any more mischuff for my idle hands to do, I'll be a good girl—but I like to do it.”

Feeling that she had set herself right with the powers of evil, she lay down with a satisfied sigh and went to sleep.

Father, who had been arrested on the threshold by his child's prayer, went downstairs thoughtfully to talk to Mother.