FATHER AND MOTHER

I felt a certain silent intimacy with my father. This was due to the fact that we were both highly sensitized emotionally, but not morally. I received the impression that there was more space in father for the practices of a free spirit. It seems to me that we both avoided the house because it was such a good place, ruled by order and righteousness. Nothing could be changed in it, least of all mother, who loved us with a consuming affection. I did not know the name of the sensation at the time, but I always came into it feeling like a prodigal son. I remember some such expression on father’s face shot with humor. I cannot think what we had been doing; probably nothing reprehensible; but I was full of secret stuff not to be exposed to her, because I never could tell what she would approve. Father knew and was silent for the same reason.

She was literally a religious woman. She believed in the Christian religion without tears. She could perform her spiritual duties on a cold collar and keep the Commandments without praying or fasting. I have always thought she might have been a trifle short on the Beatitudes, because she practiced them with less emotion than any other person I have ever known. She had resignation and endurance to a remarkable degree, but she was sublimely deficient in humility. My memory of her, revived by the wit of a mature mind, is that she was admirably conscious of her own worth and standing before the Lord, though I never heard her testify in an experience meeting, which was one of the pious diversions of saints in those days.

Father was spiritually minded, but only intermittently religious, during which periods he far outstripped mother in the bloom and beauty of his virtues. But he frequently fell back into original sin, where he seemed to belong; but was never comfortable, poor soul. He would invariably rise by the means of the most spectacular repentance. I have observed that these acrobatic souls belong to men with more histrionic talent than ordinary saints have. This is the reason why they are more beloved even if they are less dependable. I am certain mother loved father more than she could have loved a better man. It is the quality of goodness in women, not a weakness.

Mother used to pass into silence sometimes. She became inaccessible. No tears, going about her duties with a certain sweet quietness as if she was walking more softly before the Lord than usual and hoped this would do some good.

I still think I was right in my impressions of these periods. My feeling was that something grand was going on. I distinctly felt the presence of God everywhere. My lid came off in this mysteriously electric atmosphere. I suppose it is the same sensation formerly enjoyed by emotional people when they shouted during divine services. I hoped for some change in the methodical routine of things, and did not get it. When the hero of the house fell from grace he disappeared. He was not. But I was quarantined by the tightening of the ligaments of all mother’s virtues and obliged to practice my rectitudes more scrupulously than usual. No escape to the terrace outside. And the house felt like a church--terribly hallowed.

But when father emerged from the dark pit of his transgression, haggard with that look of noble repentance remorse imparts to the male countenance, I beheld him with awe and speechless admiration, having no knowledge of the cause of this moral grandeur or that so much eloquence covered delinquency.

I have a dim candle-lit memory of one of these scenes which took place in mother’s room when I was a very small child. Glowing logs upon the hearth that cast a red radiance over the bare white boards of the floor. A candle lighted upon the candle-stand like the faintest flickering flame in this darkness. Stiff blue calico curtains drawn back from the windows and primly tied. A clear cold night outside and stars shining through the symmetrical angle of these curtains. Mother sitting in her corner, pale as peace and righteousness, hair black and smoothly coiled, skirts arranged just so. Hands folded, her large gray eyes slightly raised, very peaceful, as if she gazed upon her cross and knew she could bear it. I sat in my small split-bottomed chair, hands clasped around the arms of this chair, elbows sticking out, fair hair glowing like the fringe of innocence in this rich darkness, copper-toed shoes shining, head barely high enough above the window-sill to see the stars.

But I was not looking at the stars. I was wearing my church manners and watching mother’s face as one consults the clock when it is time for services to begin. I had been in these family altar services before and knew that one was at hand now because the big Bible lay upon the candle-stand. This Book was never opened except upon great spiritual occasions or when the pastor called. Mother dispensed her daily Scriptures from a smaller, well-worn volume.

There was a step outside, coming with a long crunching stride. The stars twinkled with that giggling sense of humor they may have acquired from watching the doings of men for so many ages. The door was thrust open. A blast of icy wind entered. The flame of the candle flickered, as if this was no place for a good little candle. I vibrated. My dear father, whom I had not seen for days, strode in, you may say, upon this blast. But I restrained my natural affections, as one does when a solemn ceremony is about to begin. Why this ceremony I did not know, but once in so often it had to be performed, because it seemed to greatly enhance father and to refresh and gladden mother.

Father was a pallid and noble figure, somewhat disheveled, like a long-legged eagle that has recently weathered a high wind. He took one sweeping glance around, caught my adoring eyes upturned, and discarded them as a bagatelle in this momentous situation. Mother merely ceased to bat her eyes, gaze still fixed upon her cross. Let the mountains fall upon her, let the waters of all the seas roll over her, she would not be moved except by decent repentance!

Well, he must go through with it as usual, is what I know now father decided after that momentary survey, and kept his pace to the big rickety chair beside the candle-stand. He let himself down into it like a god overtaken in a fault, glanced distastefully at the Bible and emitted the sigh of a bellows. My breast heaved in suspense. I knew that my father would presently become a man of the Lord and open the Book. These were the only occasions when he was associated in my mind with our God. I coveted the experience. What I did not know was that he dreaded the blasphemy demanded of him. He had his feelings and Adam’s modesty when his sin would be dying hard in him. Then some emotion would overcome him; maybe a man’s grateful memories of this invincibly good woman who could not be made to forsake him. What was God’s opinion of him compared to her dear wishes? Such a foolish little she demanded in exchange for all she gave. Something like this I know passed through his mind. Then he would open the Book, turn to the Psalms, taste a few until he struck one with the right note, not too revealing, something vague and nobly sung. That night he read this one:

‘Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. And enter not into judgment with thy servant.’

He was ever a man quickly moved to the left or right in the moral world. Give him a full glass, a roistering companion, and he could race with the devil himself. Give him the noblest words of penitence and he could produce the accompanying remorseful emotions. He could shrive himself with the dignity and majesty of a saint. So now for the moment he was every whit David broken by his transgression. Grief descended upon him and shook him like a blessing:

‘Hear me speedily, O Lord: my spirit faileth,’ he read on woefully. ‘Hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.’ And so on until he came to the end.

I did not understand, but I felt the wind of sorrow blowing from the eloquent lips of my father. I was bursting with emotion, my lips primped, my eyes fixed upon him full of tears. The one thing that restrained me was mother’s inscrutable face. She not only understood the Psalm but the man who was reading it. She simply used this method to change the scenes of his singularly adaptable spirit.

‘Let us pray,’ he rumbled in a choked voice.

I have a lively recollection of this prayer. It was a good one. Very few people have the real gift of prayer, and then only under the emotional pressure of remorse. I have heard the ring of platform oratory many a time in the prayer of a saint who had nothing but his congregation’s sins of which to repent. Father, splendidly poised on one knee, recited a psalm of his own to the Lord, not so good as David’s but along the same line. He cast his iniquities from him in sentences that clashed like bright swords. Sobs shook him. I was also deeply moved, as I am to this day by great music of powerful prayers. Kneeling like a little rag doll, very low before my chair, I accompanied him with sounds of grief, meows of a kitten saint, decently repressed until, casting a watery glance through my fingers, I saw father wiping his face on the blue window curtains. This was too much. I keened my nose and let out a wail that steadied the great mourner and ended his petition.