Sheila and Others/On Being Alone in the House
ON BEING ALONE IN THE HOUSE
THERE are some joys we may as well be prepared to resign with our youth. Being alone in the house is one of them. Such an intoxication of sudden expansion and freedom used to come over me on those rare occasions when I was left in possession of the house, that I recall it as one of the most subtle and delicious experiences of my childhood. The consciousness of hidden fullness in the cupboards, and labeled stores in the cellar; of bottled sweetness and mulled ravishments, almost oppressed me with its vividness. All the secrets of the house leaped from their crannies at such times, and became my familiars. I remember a silk-crepe shawl with fringe of a prodigious length, that never saw day-light except on these occasions when I paraded my small person before the mirror, engulfed in the ample folds that clung about me as softly and caressingly as ever they had about my grandmother even on her wedding day.
The large tin box on the spare-room closet shelf contained sugared cookies, and what remained of the marble-cake made annually in a milk-pan and of an exceeding excellence. Why they should have been kept in this unnatural place, I know not, unless it were as a safeguard from mischievous fingers and tongues that loved sweetness. I never looked at this box, or appeared aware of its existence, when visiting that closet in company with Aunt Janey, but I somehow knew from the beginning that it was there. Some things are so inherently related in this world that they find each other by involuntary and subconscious means.
There was also a daguerreotype encased with some tinted and florally-embellished letters in a rosewood and pearl writing-case that reposed on the "what-not" with other sacred objects in the dim, funereal-like parlor. This picture—of an esthetic-looking young man with flowing locks and a voluminous necktie—I distinctly remember to have been shown me by the piece of inquisitiveness next in size above me, and the only possible motive that could have induced our sacrilegious scrutiny in this instance must have arisen in the knowledge that had somehow filtered into our small brains that this matter we were especially and particularly expected to know nothing of. It could not have been so many years after Emerson had written that if there were anything a teacher wished to conceal from his pupils, that thing they were particularly sure to be aware of.
It must have been from memories such as these that a vague sensation as of some long past sweetness, like the odor of dried rose leaves, came stealing over me the other day when I found myself alone in the house. Being in a whimsical humor, I yielded to the sensation, and went downstairs seeking wherewith to celebrate so unusual and unique an opportunity.
I first glanced in at the parlor. To pound on the piano with both pedals down was nothing now. The "what-not," with its treasure-laden shelves, had long ago retired to the attic, and the rosewood writing-case had, in the fullness of time, come into my own possession, containing nothing more thrilling than ancient accounts and old receipted bills.
I stepped to the library door and glanced at the row of books, some inviting, some accusing. Upon the top shelf had always been kept, in those early days, the volumes most forbidden and most desired. We rarely attained them because among the diverse attractions a houseful of forbidden joys offered, those most easily accessible in limited time, naturally invited first attention. Still I remember sundry dips into a small red volume, "News from the Invisible World," which I knew to be specially prohibited, and the accompanying spinal chills, with something of the old-time relish. But what do the top shelves offer me now? Butler's "Analogy," Paley's "Evidences," Eliza Cook's poems, placed there by the master's own hand when he finally went over the shelves last spring after my repeated threats of the second-hand man!
At the dining-room door I meditated. The nuts and raisins in the closet beyond, offered no temptation; I had put them there myself. The jam, newly opened—had I not declined the same at breakfast? True, there were the Japanese chimes in the back hall, a recent acquisition. I had often felt sure I could make a more cheerful and musical rendering than Catherine does when she summons us to dine, but my sense of the proprieties had not suffered me to make the trial in her hearing. I lifted the little padded hammer with something of the old wantonness astir in me, but the flute-like tone that answered the stroke sounded painfully loud in the conscious stillness of the house, and I was horribly afraid some of the family would come in and discover me in this undignified procedure.
I went out to the kitchen and sat down there. After all, it was the most attractive place, being the most unaccustomed. A vaguely disturbing sense, born of long experience, that I ought to go and investigate the condition of the pantries began to steal over me. I knew exactly how everything would be found there. The little bottles of extract, "all in a row," would be floury or sticky, the "leftovers" would remain in the dishes in which they had made their début on the board. It was even possible the knives would be huddled in a corner, unscoured and ashamed.
Catherine, my faithful retainer and support, is the pride of the household. She will not leave me nor forsake me, but even she has her lapses, and it is the part of domestic discretion to be oblivious at times when large virtues are in the balance. My eyes wandered to the kettle closet. The door stood ajar, and within I beheld my new aluminum "cooker" with as black a bottom as ever pot was disgraced by! It was too much. The glamour of the past gave place to indignation at the present. Smarting under the sense of Catherine's perfidy, I fell upon that kettle with much zeal and Sapolio, thereby descending to the sphere and fulfillment of my manifest destiny.
Not until hours after, and much application of brushes and soap to my suffering hands, did I realize the hardest part of this experience, the real pang, to be the disillusionment, the truth forced home to me that I shall never again know in its completeness and freshness the joy of being alone in the house.
THE END