When I Was a Little Girl/Chapter 16
XVI
THE WALK
“What's the latest you ever stayed up?” Delia demanded of Mary Elizabeth and me.
“I sat up till ten o'clock once when my aunt was coming,” I boasted.
“Once I was on a train that got in at twelve o'clock,” said Mary Elizabeth, thoughtfully, “but I was asleep till the train got in. Would you call that sitting up till twelve o'clock?”
On the whole, Delia and I decided that you could not impartially call it so, and Mary Elizabeth conceded the point. Her next best experience was dated at only half past nine.
“I was up till eleven o'clock lots of times.” Delia threw out carelessly.
We regarded her with awe. Here was another glory for her list. Already we knew that she had slept in a sleeping car, patted an elephant, and swum four strokes.
“What's the earliest you ever got up?” Delia pursued.
Here, too, we proved to have nothing to compete with the order of Delia’s risings. However, this might yet be mended. There seemed never to be the same household ban on getting up early that there was on staying up late.
“Let's get up some morning before four o'clock and take a walk,” I suggested.
“My brother got up at half past three once,” Mary Elizabeth announced.
“Well,” I said, “let's get up at half past three. Let's do it to-morrow morning.”
Mary Elizabeth and I had stretched a string from a little bell at the head of her bed to a little bell at the head of my bed. This the authorities permitted us to ring so long as there was discernible a light, or any other fixed signal, at the two windows; and also after seven o'clock in the morning. But of course the time when we both longed most frantically to pull the cord was when either woke at night and lay alone in the darkness. In the night I used to put my hand on the string and think how, by a touch, I could waken Mary Elizabeth, just as if she were in my room, just as if we were hand in hand. I used to think what joy it would be if all little children on the same side of the ocean were similarly provided, and if no one interfered. A little code of signals arose in my mind, a kind of secret code which should be heard by nobody save those for whom they were intended—for sick children, for frightened children, for children just having a bad dream, for motherless children, for cold or tired or lonely children, for all children sleepless for any cause. I used to wish that little signals like this could be rung for all unhappy children, night or day. Why, with all their inventions, had not grown people invented this? Of course they would never make things any harder for us than they could help (we thought). But why had they not done this thing to make things easier?
The half past three proposal was unanimously vetoed within doors: We might rise at five o'clock, no earlier. This somewhat took edge from the adventure, but we accepted it as next best. Delia was to be waked by an alarm clock. Mary Elizabeth and I felt that, by some mysterious means, we could waken ourselves; and we two agreed to call each other, so to say, by the bells.
When I did waken, it was still quite dark, and when I had found light and a clock, I saw that it was only a little after three. As I had gone to bed at seven, I was wide awake at three; and it occurred to me that I would stay up till time to call Mary Elizabeth. This would be at half past four. Besides, stopping up then presented an undoubted advantage: It enabled me to skip my bath. Clearly I could not, with courtesy, risk rousing the household with many waters.
I dressed in the dark, braided my own hair in the dark—by now I could do this save that the plait, when I brought it over my shoulder, still would assume a jog—and sat down by the open window. It was one of the large nights . . . for some nights are undeniably larger than others. When I was on the street with my hand in a grown-up hand, the night was invariably bounded by trees, fences, houses, lawns, horse-blocks, and the like. But when I stepped to the door alone at night, I always noticed that it stretched endlessly away. So it was now. I could slip out the screen, as I had discovered earlier in the season when I had felt the need of feeding a nest of house-wrens in the bird-house below my sill—and I took out the screen now, and leaned out in the darkness. The stars seemed very near—I am always glad that I did not know how far away they are, for they looked so friendly near. If only, I used to think, the clouds would form behind the stars and leave them all shiny and blurry bright in the rain. What were they? How came they to be in our world’s sky?
I suppose that I had been ten minutes at the window that morning when I saw a light briefly flash in Mary Elizabeth’s window. Instantly, I softly pulled my bell. She answered, and then I could see her, dim in the window once more dark.
“It isn't time yet!” she called softly—our houses were very near.
“Not yet,” I answered, “but I'm going to stay up.”
Mary Elizabeth briefly considered this.
“What for?” she propounded.
I had not thought what for.
“To why to be up early,” I answered confidently. “I'm all dressed.”
The defence must have carried conviction.
“I will, too,” Mary Elizabeth concluded.
She disappeared and, after a suitable time, reappeared at the window, presumably fully clothed. I detached the bell from my bed and sat with it in my hand, and I found afterward that she had done the same. From time to time we each gave the cord a slight, ecstatic pull. The whole mystery of the great night lay in those gentle signals.
It is unfortunate to have to confess that, after a time, the mystery palled. But it did. Stars, wide, dark, moonless lawn, empty street, all these blurred and merged in a single impression. This was one of chilliness. Even calling through the night at intervals, and at the imminent risk of being heard, lost its charm, because after a little while there was nothing left to call. “How still it is!” and “Nobody but us is up in town,” and “Won't Delia be mad?” lose their edge when repeated for about the third time each. Moreover, I was obliged to face a new foe: I was getting sleepy.
Without undue disturbance of the cord, I managed to consult the clock once more. It was five minutes of four. There remained more than an hour to wait! It was I who capitulated.
“Mary Elizabeth,” I said waveringly, “would you care very much if I was to lay down just a little to rest my eyes?”
“No, I wouldn't care,” came with significant alacrity. “I will, too.”
I lay down on the covers and pulled a comforter about me. As I drifted off I remember wondering how the dark ever kept awake all night. For it was awake. To know that one had only to listen.
We all had a signal which we called a “trill,” made by tongue and teeth, with almost the force of a boy and a blade of grass. This, produced furiously beneath my window, was what wakened me. Delia stood between the two houses, engaged with such absorption in manufacturing this sound that she failed to see me at the window. A moment after I had hailed her, Mary Elizabeth appeared at her window, looking distinctly distraught.
Seeing us fully dressed, Delia’s indignation increased.
“Why didn't you leave me know you were up?” she demanded shrilly. “It's a quarter past five. I been out here fifteen minutes.”
We were assuring her guiltily that we would be right down when there came an interruption.
“Delia!”
Delia’s father, in a gray bath-robe, stood at an upper window of their house across the street.
“What do you mean by waking up the whole neighbourhood?” he inquired, not without reason. “Now I want you to come home.”
“We were going walking,” Delia reminded him.
“You are coming home at once after this proceeding,” Delia’s father assured her. “No more words please, Delia.”
He disappeared from the window. Delia moved reluctantly across the street. As she went, she threw a resentful glance at Mary Elizabeth and me, each.
“I’m sorry, Delia!” we called softly in chorus. She made no reply. Mary Elizabeth and I were left staring at each other down our bell-rope, no longer taut, but limp, as we had left it earlier . . . Even in that stress, the unearthly sweetness of the morning smote me—the early sun, the early shadows. It all looked so exactly as if it had expected you not to be looking. This is the look of outdoors that, now, will most quickly take me back.
“It wouldn’t be fair to go walking without Delia,” said Mary Elizabeth, abruptly and positively.
“No,” I agreed, with equal decision. Then, “We might as well go back to bed,” I pursued the subject further.
“Let’s,” said Mary Elizabeth.