An Interrupted Night

Pansy

FOREWORD

AS LONG ago as I can remember there was always a radiant being who was next to my mother and father in my heart, and who seemed to me to be a sort of a combination of fairy godmother, heroine, and saint. I thought her the most beautiful, wise, and wonderful person in my world, outside of my home. I treasured her smiles, copied her ways, and listened breathlessly to all she had to say, sitting at her feet worshipfully whenever she was near; ready to run any errand for her, no matter how far.

When she came on a visit the house seemed glorified because of her presence; while she remained, life was one long holiday; when she went away it seemed as if a blight had fallen.

She had delicate features and a wonderful smile. Nobody else in the world looked just as lovely as did she. But once I found a picture of Longfellow's Evangeline in a photograph album, in exquisite classic profile, and thought it was her likeness. She was like that—if you have that old faded photograph somewhere in an old album with quaint clasps. She was wonderful!

And she was young, gracious, and very good to be with.

Later I found that other people had still other names for her. To the congregation of which her husband was pastor she was known as "Mrs. Alden." It seemed to me too grownup a name for her and made her appear more stately and sedate than she really was. I remember resenting it that these strange people should seem to have rights in her. She was mine. What were they?

She had another world in which she moved and had her being when she went from us from time to time; or when at certain hours in the day she shut herself within a room that was sacredly known as a "study," and wrote for a long time, while we all tried to keep still; and in this other world of hers she was known as "Pansy." It was a world that loved and honored her, a world that gave her homage and flowers, and wrote her letters by the hundreds each week. It was not long, too, before I had learned to preen myself like a young peacock because I "belonged" to her, and I am afraid I felt a superior pity and contempt for the thousands of other children who read her paper called "The Pansy" which she edited, but who did not "belong" to her.

As I grew still older and learned to read I devoured her stories chapter by chapter. Even sometimes page by page as they came hot from the typewriter; occasionally stealing in for an instant when she left the study, to snatch the latest page and see what happened next; or to accost her as her morning's work was done, with: "Oh, have you finished another chapter?"

She was at the height of her popularity just then, and the letters that poured in at every mail were overwhelming. Asking for her autograph and her photograph, begging for pieces of her best dress to sew into patchwork; begging for advice how to become a great author; begging for advice on every possible subject, from how to get the right kind of a husband, to how to stop biting one's nails.

And she answered them all!

It was a Herculean task. Sometimes she let us help her when she was very much rushed, but usually she kept her touch on every letter that went out—and they were thousands.

Then there was the editorship of "The Pansy," a young people's paper which was responsible for more thousands of letters from the children who had joined the Pansy Society, and who wrote to her about their faults and how to give them up, "For Jesus' Sake," which was their motto.

Sometimes I look back on her long and busy life and marvel what she has accomplished.

And such good, good times as we had together, my beloved aunt and I, as we worked with a will and left the kitchen immaculate for the next morning. Oh, she was a wonderful housekeeper! Yes, and a marvelous pastor's wife! She took the whole parish into her life and gave herself to the work. She was not a modern minister's wife, who only goes to teas and receptions, and plays bridge and attends to the social end of life, never bothering about the church. She was the real old-fashioned kind, who made calls on all the parishioners with her husband, knew every member intimately, cared for the sick, gathered the young people into her home making both a social and religious center for them with herself as leader and adviser; grew intimate with each one personally and led them to Christ; became their confidante; and loved them all as if they had been her brothers and sisters.

She was a tender, vigilant, wonderful mother, such a mother as few are privileged to have, giving without stint of her time and her strength and her love and her companionship.