4532030Poems — Young GrandmotherAntoinette Quinby Scudder
POEMS
YOUNG GRANDMOTHER
The summer that I spent with my grandfather In the white house the maple trees among Seems a faint nightmare now—the looming terror Of rooms that looked so wide and high and long
The shallow mirrors reaching to the ceiling Their gilded grapes and vine-leaves tarnished all, The mantelpiece upborne by marble Satyrs, The dark old portraits frowning from the wall
The chandeliers their thousand prisms dangling Like icicles upon a windless night, The cat-tail rushes standing up so stiffly From the huge jars of cloudy blue and white.
Grandfather seldom noticed me; a silent Grey man was he, and always sitting by His tall carved desk beneath the oriel window That stared down at him like a great round eye.
My two great-aunts—yes, both of them were maidens,— Stiff-waisted, thin, with locks of yellow-grey Looped smoothly over ears of shape patrician, And high cheekbones where withered rose-tints lay.
I heard them sometimes talk of my grandmother Long dead—a tender creature April-souled For play and laughter meant, who feared the silence And gloom as flowers fear the winter cold.
They said "Poor thing, she never had her girlhood, Scarcely sixteen when she became a bride, And then the children came so close together Till when the youngest one was born she died."
To me she was a myth I rarely thought of, Unreal, for all grandmothers that I knew Were wrinkled white-haired ladies. So the time passed, And I was rather sad and lonely too
Until one day at sunset I was going To fetch the croquet things off from the green And where the maples cast their deepest shadow I met a girl I ne'er before had seen.
And she was very tall and very slender, With quaintly snooded locks of darkest brown, Beneath arched brows her eyes shone golden-hazel, She wore a crocus-tinted muslin gown
And gathered high above her dainty ankles, Provokingly, a seashell gleam of flesh I glimpsed between the narrow, silken ribbons Criss-crossed upon her stockings' snowy mesh.
She did not speak, but from her eager glances And smile I guessed she wanted me to play. Lightly she touched my shoulder with her fingers, Then fleet as any fawn she sped away.
I pelted after, but though quick and nimble, Not like that swift enchantress could I run. We circled the great bed where gladioli Stood up lance-straight in challenge to the sun.
Past the low fence where coral-honeysuckle Glowed fiery sweet, and tall blue larkspurs peered Out of the yellow tangle of the cosmos, And always she'd evade me when I neared
Her fluttering skirts. We scampered helter-skelter Across the croquet-lawn where balls still lay Between the lurching wickets. I remember How she looked back and laughed. And then, away
Down to the lofty hedge along whose greenness Cherokee roses glimmered foamy white, And flashed around it. But when I had followed Through the small gateway she had vanished quite.
I called and searched and called again, but nowhere That airy, flashing presence could I see— My great-aunts found me crying by the roadside When through the thickening dusk they sought for me.
But when I told them of my strange playfellow, Her hazel eyes and snooded locks of brown, And cheek like a white rose the sun has darkened, Her mauve-lined scarf and crocus-colored gown,
I saw them both turn pale. They watched each other With furtive eyes, though not a word they said— They made me drink a glass of cherry cordial And eat a cooky ere I went to bed.
My playmate did not come again. But only After long years had passed with joy and teen, I understood at last why I must never, No, never tell Grandfather what I'd seen.
