Growing Pains (8 page)

Again he shrugged.

HAVING ONCE GONE
to my guardian for advice, I continued to do so. The ice was broken—I wrote him acknowledging my check each month and telling him my little news, dull nothings, but he troubled to comment on them. He was a busy man to be bothered writing the formal little interested notes in answer to my letters. I respected my guardian very much and had a suspicion that my going to him direct for advice had pleased him. He was Scotch, wise, handled our money with great care but had no comprehension of Art whatsoever. The camera satisfied him. He sent my board and school fees. I don’t suppose it ever occurred to him I needed clothes and painting material. I had to scrape along as best I could in these matters.

My guardian thought very highly of my big sister. I have no doubt that his consenting to let me go to San Francisco was as much for her peace as for my Art education. I was not given to good works and religious exercises like the rest of my family. I was not biddable or orthodox. I did not stick to old ways because the family had always done this or that. My guardian thought it was good for me to go away, be tamed and taught to appreciate my home. Art was as good an excuse as any.

Undoubtedly things did run smoother at home without me but, after I had been away one year, the family decided to follow me. My sister rented the old home and the three of them came to San Francisco for a year. My big sister still had a deep infatuation for Mrs. Piddington. It was really Mrs. Piddington that she wanted to see, not me.

Mrs. Piddington took a flat and we boarded with her but domestic arrangements did not run too smoothly. My sister liked bossing better than boarding, and, in a final clash, dashed off home leaving my other two sisters to follow. Almost simultaneously Frank Piddington got a better job in another city and they too left San Francisco. Then I was all alone among San Francisco’s wickedness. Mrs. Piddington handed me over to a friend of a friend of a friend, without investigating the suitability or comfort of my new quarters. The woman I was donated to was an artist. She lived in Oakland. I had to commute. I plunged wholeheartedly into my studies.

The year that my family spent in San Francisco my work had practically been at a standstill. I did attend the Art School but joined in all the family doings, excursions, picnics, explorings. No one took my work seriously. I began to get careless about myself.

Mrs. Tucket, the friend of the friend, was a widow with two children, no income and a fancy for Art. She resented that she could not give her whole time to it, was envious that I should be able to. The living arrangements of her cottage were most uncomfortable. Still, I enjoyed my independence and worked very hard. Perhaps after all the “ogle-eyed” French Professor and my big sister were right, maybe I needed the whip, needed goading and discomfort to get the best out of me. Easy, soft living might have induced laziness. The harder I worked the happier I was, and I made progress.

We were a happy bunch of students. I do not remember that we discussed Art much; as yet we had not accumulated knowledge enough to discuss. We just worked steadily, earnestly, laying our foundations. San Francisco did not have much to offer in the way of art study other than the school itself, no galleries, no picture exhibitions. Art was just beginning out West. The school was new. Students came here to make a start. Their goal was always to press further afield. San Francisco did not see the finish, only the beginning of their Art.

DURING MY SISTERS’ VISIT
I said to Alice, “Can it be possible that the entire wicked awfulness of the world is stuffed into San Francisco?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Mrs. Piddington said…” But I did not tell Alice what Mrs. Piddington said. She was a contented person, did not nose round into odd corners. This and that did not interest Alice, only the things right in the beaten path. The things she had always been accustomed to—those she clung to.

Before leaving Victoria various friends had asked of her, “Look up my cousin, look up my aunt.” Alice good naturedly always said, “Certainly,” and accepted a long list of miscellaneous lookups. People could just as well have sent a letter to ask how their friends did, or if they liked the New World. They all seemed to have come from the Old. When I said so, Alice replied that I was selfish and that people liked hearing from the mouth of an eyewitness how their relatives are. Alice was rather shy and made me go along though I was not amiable about these visits.

First we went to see the cousin of a friend. She was eighty and had an epileptic son of sixty. He had stopped development at the
age of seven or eight; mind and body were dwarfed. He had an immense head, a nondescript body, foolish little-boy legs that dangled from the chair edge as he sat in the parlour opposite to us, nursing his straw hat as if he were the visitor.

His mother said, “Shake hands with the ladies, Jumble.” (Jumble was the name he had given himself and it was very appropriate.)

Jumble leapt from his chair as if he were leaping from a housetop, skipped to the far side of the room and laid his hat down on the floor. He came running back and held out two wide short-fingered paws. We each took one and he gave us each a separate little hop which was supposed to be a bow.

“The ladies come from Canada, Jumble.”

He clapped his hands. “I like Canada. She sends pretty stamps on her letter; Jumble has a stamp book! Jumble likes stamps, he likes plum cake too! Jumble wants his tea, quick! quick!” He pattered in to the adjoining room where tea was laid, climbed into his chair and began to beat on his plate with a spoon.

“He is all I have,” sighed the woman and motioned us to follow, whispering, “I hope, my dears, you are not nervous? Jumble may have a fit during tea.”

We had never seen anything but a cat in a fit but we lied and said we were not nervous.

Jumble consumed vast wedges of plum cake but he did not have a fit.

After tea they saw us to our tram—eighty-year hobble and trot, trot of a halfwit, escorting us. Once aboard, I groaned, “Who next?”

Alice produced her list.

“Mable’s Aunt; now don’t be mean, Millie. People naturally want to hear from an eye-witness.”

“Pleasanter for them than seeing for themselves.”

Mable’s Aunt was gaunt. She lived in a drab district. She kissed us before ever we got the chance to say why we had come, but, when we said we came from Mable she fell on us again and kissed and kissed. She had never seen Mable but she had known Mable’s mother years before Mable was born. Every time we mentioned Mable’s name she jumped up and kissed us again. Needless to say she was English. In time we learned to avoid mention of Mable. That restricted conversation to the weather and Mable’s Aunt’s cat, a fine tabby. While we were grappling for fresh talk material, the Aunt said:

“Oh my dears, such a drive! Such lovely, lovely flowers!”

“Where? When?” We were eager at the turn the conversation had taken,—flowers seemed a safe pleasant topic.

“My son took me this morning. It is a long way. There were marvellous carpets of flowers, every colour, every kind. Oh my dears, such flowers!”

“My son is a doctor, visiting doctor for the ‘Last Chance.’ He takes me with him for the drive. Flowers all the way! I don’t mind waiting while he is inside. I look at the flowers.”

“What is the ‘Last Chance’?” I asked.

“Terrible, terrible, oh my dears! Thank God that you are normal, usual.” She sprang to kiss us again because we were complete, ordinary girls.

Again I asked, “What is the ‘Last Chance’?”

“A place behind bars where they put monstrosities, abnormalities while doctors decide if anything can be done for them.” She began describing cases. “Of course I’ve only seen a little through the bars.”

The little she had seen was enough to send Alice and me greenish white. We tried to lead her back to the flowers. It was no use, we took our leave.

We walked along in silence for some time. “Let’s forget it,” I said. “All the people on your list seem to have some queerness, be the same type. Suppose we lose the list!”

Alice said, “For shame, Millie. People at home want to hear about their relatives. It is selfish of you to grouse over their peculiarities!”

“Relatives’ peculiarities would do just as well in letters and only cost three cents. I’d willingly pay the stamp. They are not even relatives of our own friends. For them we might endure but for these nearly strangers why should we?”

Again Alice’s, “For shame, selfish girl!”

It happened that Mrs. Piddington had arranged a flower-picking picnic for the very next Saturday. Someone had told her of a marvellous place. You walked through Golden Gate Park and then on and on. There were fields and fields of flowers, all wild and to be had for the picking.

At last we got there only to be confronted by a great strong gate on which hung a notice “Keep Out”! The flowers were beautiful all right. Just outside the gate was a powerhouse and a reservoir. We asked permission at the office and were told we might go through the gate and gather.

“What is the big building just inside the enclosure?” asked Mrs. Piddington but just then the man was summoned back into the office.

“Last Chance,” he called over his shoulder. Alice and I looked at each other. We felt sick. “Know-it-all” old Piddington explained.
“Windows all barred! Um, doubtless it is a reformatory of some sort.”

We scuttled under the barred windows, Alice and I trying to draw our party over towards a little hill away from the building. The hill was lightly wooded and a sunny little path ran through the wood. Flowers were everywhere—also snakes! They lay in the path sunning themselves and slowly wriggled out of our way quivering the grass at the path side. You had to watch your feet for fear of treading on one. Alice and I could not help throwing scared glances behind at the brick, bar-windowed building. Shadowy forms moved on the other side of the bars. We clothed them in Mable’s Aunt’s describings.

There were not many big trees in the wood. It was all low scrub bush. You could see over the top of it. I was leading on the path. I had been giving one of my backward, fearful glances at “Last Chance” and turned front suddenly. I was at the brink of a great hole several yards around. My foot hung over the hole. With a fearful scream I backed onto the rest of the party. They scolded and were furious with me.

“Look for yourselves, then!”

They did and screamed as hard as I.

The hole was several feet deep. It was filled with a slithering moil of snakes, coiling and uncoiling. Had my lifted foot taken one more step, I should have plunged headlong among the snakes and I should have gone mad! Mrs. Piddington was too horrified even to faint. She yelled out, “I’ve been told there are ‘rattlers’ this side of the park too!” Turning aside, we broke into mad running, helter skelter through the thicket heading for the open. Snakes writhed over and under the scrub to get out of our way. The flowers of our gathering were thrown far and wide. Horrible,
horrible! Our nerves prickled and we sobbed with hurrying. We passed the “Last Chance” with scarcely one glance and rushed through the gate, coming back empty-handed. We did not even see the flowers along the way, our minds were too full of snakes.

“Girls,” I cried, “I want to go back to Canada. California can have her flowers, her sunshine and her snakes. I don’t like San Francisco. I want to go home.”

But when my sisters did go back to Victoria I was not with them. I was stuck to the Art School.

THE WOMAN WHO
was supposed to have assumed Mrs. Piddington’s custody of me bodily and morally ignored everything connected with me except the board money I paid. I was her income. I had to be made to stretch over herself, her two children and myself. The capacity of my check was so severely taxed by all our wants that towards the end of the month it wore gossamer and ceased altogether. Then we lived for the last few days of each month on scraps fried on my spirit lamp to economize kitchen fuel.

The woman’s children (a girl of six and a boy of four) any mother might have been proud of, but she referred to them as “my encumbrances” because they prevented her from devoting her entire time to Art. Mrs. Tucket was jealous of my youngness, jealous of my freedom. An Art dealer had once praised a sketch done by her and from that time she knew no peace from the longing which possessed her to give her life, all of it, to Art.

The boy Kirkby, aged four, and I were great chums. He was at my heels every moment I was in the house—a loving little fellow who had two deep terrors—blood and music. The sight of blood would turn the child dead white, one note of music would send him running outdoors away anywhere from the sound, his
hands to his ears. He angrily resented my guitar; pushing it out of my lap he would climb in himself and, reaching his hand to my forehead, would say, “I feel a story in there, tell it.” It was a surprise to his mother and to me, after a few months, instead of pushing away the guitar he would sidle up, pat the instrument, and say, “I like her a little now, sing!”

Mrs. Tucket had health notions, all based on economy. Uninterrupted passage of air through the cottage was one. She said it nourished as much as food. All the inner doors of the house were removed, there was no privacy whatever. No hangings were at the windows, no cushions on chairs or couch. The beds were hard and had coverings inadequate for such cyclonic surges of wind as swept in and out of the rooms. No comfort was in that cottage.

Mrs. Tucket had, too, absolute faith in a greasy pack of fortune-telling cards. She foretold every event (after it had happened).
After
Kirkby had cut his head open she knew he was going to be cut.
After
Anna got the measles she knew the child had been exposed. When I missed the ferry boat she said the cards had foretold it (but so had the clock). After the dealer had praised her sketch she vowed that she had been prepared because the cards indicated someone would. She was angry because I laughed and would not have my cards read. I got so sick of being haunted by the ace of spades and the queen of hearts that I suggested we read a book aloud after the children were in bed at night. Mrs. Tucket read well but chose depressing books, delighting in deathbed scenes and broken love affairs. She would lay the book down on the table and sob into her handkerchief. It embarrassed me so much that I said, “S’pose we find a good merry funeral story to cheer us up!” Then she was offended and said I was without romance or sentiment.