The Child King by Rose Terry Cooke

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1886

The Child King.

By Rose Terry Cooke

"Will you go over to Nankin with me to-morrow?" asked kindly Mrs. Brown of her tired and hard-working neighbor, Mrs. Peters. "You know the Association meets there, and husband's got to go, so I thought you would like to drive over and see your Aunt Betsey."

"Oh, I should, ever so much; but Dell is going to go to a picnic to-morrow afternoon, and it'll take me the whole of the morning to iron her white dress. I've just got it washed and hung out; and there's biscuit to make, she wants 'em fresh. And"—

"O mother!" The words came before the door flew open, and in bounced a young girl of twelve, with the assurance and poise of forty, dressed in a braided costume that implied a week's hard work from somebody, her light hair banged on her low forehead, cheap rings and bracelets shining on her fingers and arms, a gilt necklace around her sallow throat over a wide frill of imitation lace, her whole air pert, tawdry, and disagreeable. She barely nodded to the minister's wife, and went on in a loud voice, "Luelle says I ought to have some little pies and some cream-cakes besides the biscuit; so I ran home to tell you."

Poor Mrs. Peters's face fell.

"I don't really see how I can, Dell. It's quite a piece of work to make cream-cakes. I can make some pie crust and fix it up for the pies."

"Oh, but I want the cream-cakes! If you make 'em to-night, the pies can wait till morning."

"But, Dell, I've got to get the breakfast and wash the dishes and make the beds and sweep, and then iron your white dress, and you know there's sights of work on it, and you want the ruffles fluted, and"—

"Oh, can't you get up real early?"

Mrs. Brown was indignant. A wise proverb cautions us not to put a finger between the bark and the tree, but she did not remember it. "Why don't you make the cake yourself, Della?" she said. "When I was your age I could make cake. Can't you?"

Della stared at her scornfully; Mrs. Peters put in her word at once. "Oh, I have never asked it of her, Mrs. Brown. Dell's delicate,"

"and she loves to go; children are children but once, and I want her to have a good time. I'll fetch it round somehow, Dell, dear. You tell Aunt Betsey, won't you, Mrs. Brown, that I wanted to see her; but I really couldn't get over. I thank you just as much."

Mrs. Brown offered no further remarks. There was a tone of aggrieved motherhood in Mrs. Peters' voice that warned her to keep silence; she said good-by, and pursuing her walk up the street, rang the bell at a handsome house standing in a well-kept yard that told its own story of wealth within. She was admitted to the parlor, and warmly welcomed by Mrs. and Miss Vincent, a wife of middle age and her sister-in-law.

But hardly had she begun to talk with her friends when the door opened, and in rushed four children of various ages, who, after nodding at the visitor, or reluctantly shaking hands, at once monopolized the conversation. In vain did Mrs. and Miss Vincent struggle to be heard.

"O Mary!" said Mrs. Vincent, "I was trying to tell Mrs. Brown"—

"Well, ma, I've got to go, I said I would, and"—

"Oh, yes! You told Will Johns you'd go, and you've got to! Just like a girl! I'd"—

"Milly, dear, I want to ask Mrs. Brown"—

"Well, Aunt Sue, I must go if Mary goes, and there's that picnic, and"—

So it went on, a perfect babel, which no present effort could silence, it had been so long the habit in this house for the elders to listen and the children to speak.

Mrs. Brown made only a short call; she went but a few steps farther to the house of a desolate woman, a widow who had lost her two children a month since with diphtheria. Mrs. Tenny burst into tears as she came into the room, and Mrs. Brown put her arms about her tenderly.

"My poor friend!" was all she could say.

"O Mrs. Brown, I can't, I can't be reconciled to it! I miss them every second. Hal used to come in so bright from school—his first year to go, you know; and Susy was always at my knee or in my lap when she was awake; and in the lonesome nights I used to listen for their soft breathing; and put out my hand to feel Susy's little tender face in the crib, and thank God I had them still, if their father had left me."

There was nothing to say to this; as of old, the mother wept for her children, and refused to be comforted. Mrs. Brown tried another course.

"They were not both taken at once?" she asked. And the mother ceased weeping for the moment to answer her, and with the pathetic garrulousness of grief entered into details.

"No. Hal came home from school one day, so tired, and said his head ached. And I tried to make him keep still on the sofa; but he was restless, and would go out in the sunshine to see the chickens. It was a hot day in May, and I couldn't make him keep a hat on; pretty soon he sort of crawled back into the kitchen, and said his 'float' was sore, and 'fings kep' goin' round an' round an' round.' Then I sent for Dr. Smith, and he gave me some medicine and a brush, and told me to put it on the inside of his throat, and rub some liniment on the outside. But Hally wouldn't let me, and he screamed and kicked so he choked up right away; I couldn't do it, it hurt him so, and he wouldn't let me if I'd wanted to.

"I meant to send Susy away; but she never would stay with anybody but me—the little precious! I never could make her. So she sickened next day, and there couldn't be anything done for her; there wasn't a day between them. And now—now—my house is like a grave all the time."

In the piteous burst of sobbing that followed, could Mrs. Brown speak the thought that filled her heart, and say, "My friend, you have fallen

into the pit which you have digged; if your children had learned to obey you in health, they might have been with you to-day?"

She could not, deeply as she felt it. The hour for counsel was past. She could only "weep with them that weep," and betake herself to the next call on her list; for Mrs. Brown was doing parish duty this afternoon.

Mrs. Tibbetts was very glad to see her. "And how are you all to-day?" asked the minister's wife.

"Oh, we're reasonably well, all but Nellie; she got thrown down at the rink, last night, and sprained her ankle badly. I've expected something like that would happen to her."

"Don't you think it is a bad place for girls to go, anyway?" asked Mrs. Brown.

"Land, yes! But all the young folks are possessed to go, and you can't stop 'em. All sorts of people go there, and they talk to everybody, and get familiar-like with folks you wouldn't have them know. There's about as much harm in a rink as there is in a rum-hole; but it makes about as much money; so you can't stop them; nobody can."

"Why do you let your girls go there?"

"Mercy! I can't help their going. Girls are as headstrong as pigs; the more you pull them one way, the more they go the other way. I've always wanted my children to have a good time while they were young; there's trouble enough ahead of 'em; so I've let 'em run, and 'tisn't to be expected that I can stop them now."

There was no controverting that point, so Mrs. Brown said no more.

The next house was Mr. Meeker's. Mrs. Meeker stood at the window, watching with anxious eyes her oldest son, who was experimenting with a new bicycle.

"O Mrs. Brown," she said, looking over her shoulder, "come in, do; I can't go away a minute from the window. I'm so afraid Charley'll fall and hurt him. He's been crazy after a bicycle, and Mr. Meeker didn't know how to get one for him—they're real costly—and I begged and begged him not to buy one, for I knew well I shouldn't have a minute's peace while he was off with it; but the boy wanted it, and that's enough. What he wants, he's got to have. We're behind with the taxes, and I'm fixing over my old clothes rather than ask John for a cent; but Charley's got the length of his father's foot, as folks say, and I don't know why he shouldn't have. Boys must be boys, you know, and I never did believe in making images of them, to do just so and be prim and proper all their days. Oh, o-h, there! I thought he was off that time, but he wasn't. I do believe my nerves will be worn out with that bicycle. Don't go!"

"I won't stay now, Mrs. Meeker. I know you want to watch Charley. I'll come some other time."

So, quite unattended, Mrs. Brown found her way to the door, and went on to the next house, where Miss Sophronia Packard lived all alone and took in sewing. Mrs. Brown made the usual civil inquiries, and then Miss Sophronia opened the conversation.

"I see you came from Mrs. Meeker's; well, I do pity that woman; she hasn't a minute's peace for those children. And here's Mrs. Bunnell, next door, is just as bad, though she hasn't but one; but her May is headstrong, now I tell you. Why, she goes all the time; if 'tisn't a dance, it's a picnic, or a ride, or a sail. She's as impudent as a bumble-bee, and as quarrelsome as a wren; but she isn't of any use in the world, as I see, but to plague her ma. Why, the other day Mrs. Bunnell found out that May was going over to Norwalk in a buggy with a young fellow, at eight o'clock in the evening, calculating to come home by moonlight between one and two in the morning, and naturally she set her feet down that May shouldn't go. She didn't know the fellow; but she knew very well that it was unseemly for a girl of fifteen to go off that way with any young man, and so she told May; but, if you'll believe it, Mrs. Brown, that piece just put on her sack and bonnet and walked out of the door, and off with her 'fellow'! If I'd been her ma, she'd got a locked door in her face when she came home."

"O Miss Sophronia, do you think that would have helped the matter? A father's house ought never to be closed on a child, any more than our Father's, least of all when the child's faults are the result of the parent's folly and weakness."

"Well, may be there's something in that; but it does seem to me that something ought to be done when a girl flies right in her ma's face like that!"

"I'm afraid it is too late to do much at May's age, but pray for her."

"Land! you don't suppose Mrs. Bunnell thinks May needs praying for? Why, she thinks she's just about perfection. If you should so much as hint about praying for her, I guess you'd raise a muss right off."

Mrs. Brown tried to control her face, but found it hard. Miss Sophronia's air of fine scorn was irresistible. She changed the subject by saying, "I am sorry Mrs. Phelps has gone away. I meant to have called on her."

"Well, you can if you want to; she is not gone," said Miss Sophronia, in an acrid tone.

"Not gone! Why, she had wanted so much to see her sister, I thought nothing would hinder her."

"I know it; she hadn't seen Mrs. King for three years; but Marian went and asked two girls and the brother of one of them to come this week and stay till after the Fourth, and Mrs. Phelps wasn't going to leave them there alone. Besides that, her hired girl is not competent to do for company; but that's the fashion, the children rule nowadays. I feel thankful every day that I haven't any youngsters a walking over me, and making a door-mat of me! Not but that I might be like Miss Perkins, to be sure, if I'd a nephew. I stepped in there the other day, and if that woman wasn't to going round the keeping room on all fours with her sister's boy astride of her back, and she a saying, 'Oh, do stop Sammy! I'm so tired,' and he a whipping her up and screaming, 'Go 'long hossy! Go 'long hossy!' And she did go 'long, till I picked him up with a jerk, and set him down hard on the nearest chair. My! didn't he yell, and wasn't she mad? But I'm glad I did it!"

That night Mrs. Brown detailed all that she had seen and heard in her round of calls, to her husband, as they sat together by the study fire. His face clouded darkly; but he did not tell her what heavy thoughts pierced the future, and saw, as in a vision, impending trouble for the land and the people that he loved. All that he did when his revery was ended was to draw a deep sigh, and repeat in melancholy tones one text from the Scripture, that was his counsel for both lives, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child."

And let all the people say, Amen.—Rose Terry Cooke, in the Congregationalist.