Raspberry-Down-the-Cellar

I

AUNT AUGUSTA swims in the Pacific now, and Uncle August, holding the extra-big Turkish towel, stands on the shore, watching. When it looks to him as if his wife were parallel to the big rock and the cypress tree on the Clinton estate, he cups his hands to his mouth: ‘Enough is enough, Augusta. Come back!’

Measuring distance from the shore is often deceiving, and, too, August is inclined to cheat a little, but not Augusta. She goes serenely on, holding her majestic head with its great pile of silver hair well above the water. She knows every stroke, but the old-fashioned breast stroke, with the head up and the one-to-four leisurely motion, — hands at chest, extended, flung to the sides, and then drawn close to the body, — pleases her most.

When she is directly opposite the cypress tree, she makes a wide circle and comes back to the little fretful figure on the shore, a good half mile away. As soon as her legs scrape the hard sand bottom, the firm magnificent six feet of her rises from the water, and without one backward glance at the alluring Pacific, without once playing with the waves that lap her abdomen, her knees, her toes, she takes her snowy towel from her husband.

‘That was fine, August. You should learn to swim.’

‘ Ja,‘ sighs my uncle.

She wrings the voluminous skirt of her bathing suit dry, rubs her face and legs, throws her towel over her shoulders, and in silence she and August walk back to their little cottage. Aunt Augusta disappears into the house to dress and Uncle August goes to his hammock, puts his newspaper over his head, and sleeps till dinnertime.

That’s just the way it is now.

I was West a month ago, and, though I had no real business in southern California, I made a special point of going to Long Beach to visit them. And that’s the procedure. It’s exactly the same as it was at Echo Lake years ago; only Aunt Augusta swims alone. Her eight girls are married now and none of them live in California.

Aunt Augusta has changed very little in the five years since she packed her swimming suits, her book of recipes, and Uncle August and waved good-bye to us in Milton. She is sixty-five, but she is as tall and straight and precise in her movements as she was twenty years past. Her eyes are not as sharp a blue as they once were, and she is prone not to listen when you talk but to sit gazing at her son. It was a great shock to me to see a photograph of William on the living-room mantel and on her dressing table. In Milton, from the day she heard of his death until her last evening among us, she never mentioned his name or allowed a picture of him in the house.

Augusta has always been an enigma to her husband’s family. My aunts say she’s pigheaded and selfish, still they respect her. They have to. She measures up to the highest standards in housekeeping, wifehood, and motherhood — and in feminine beauty, too. Though they resent her perfection, they grudgingly accede that she made good her wildest boast. She said when her oldest daughter was fourteen and the youngest a baby: ‘I have wanted five boys and I have eight daughters and only one son, but I don’t cry about it. Every girl will be married before she is twenty-four.’

Her sisters-in-law have never forgotten that statement. To this day in family gatherings we often argue over what was the most important factor in Aunt Augusta’s success: Compulsory swimming? Household duties? Raspberry-down-the-cellar?

II

Aunt Caroline, who patronizes every fortune teller, palmist, and astrologer in town to learn the fate of her three spinster daughters (we still call girls over twenty-five that in Milton), accuses Augusta of using a love potion in Raspberry-down-the-cellar. She always laughs when she says it, but she’s only half in jest. That dessert has played an important part in the life of every Keller girl. Their mother always served it, either before an engagement when the man in question was asked to dinner, or, if the proposal came before the intended dinner, as the climax of the wedding feast.

Raspberry-down-the-cellar is n’t its real name. It has some impossible German one, but William named it that long ago. It deserves a much more ambrosial designation. When once you taste that dessert you can never forget it. You feel Olympian. Its fragrance lingers with you as does that of a rare wine, and you learn to treasure its memory, for you cannot repeat the experience at will. Augusta’s recipe is a secret. She always made it a day ahead and kept it under lock and key in the fruit cellar. No one was ever allowed to fetch it or take it from the castle-onthe-Rhine mould but herself.

We’ll never know just how much faith Aunt Augusta had in Raspberry-down-the-cellar as an aid to matrimony. I’m inclined to think that when she came to America at the age of eighteen with a satchel of clothes and a book of family recipes, she simply thought of it as a good party dish, and that it was not until it became famous that she decided to keep it shrouded in mystery.

Augusta believes that women have only two functions in life: to be a wife and to be a mother. She groomed her daughters from birth for the marriage market. To each one she gave a romantic name: Claire, Gwendolyn, Lucrece, Rosalyn, Janice, Carmen, Juliet, Eloise.

Uncle August, who liked good prose names, objected each time. He resented the name of Carmen especially. ‘That’s no name at all; that’s an opera. Think what you do.’

‘I think — that’s why I do it, August. I have made a study of America.’

‘ Ach! ’ But my uncle gave in. In his home he was ever an ejaculating rather than a wordy man. On High Street, August Keller was respected as a shrewd and level-headed business man, but before Augusta he was always bewildered and uncertain. She never nagged him or belittled him with her tongue. He was the nominal head of the household, but one knew that she kept him on the throne because she wanted him there. She served him well — cared for his clothes, his meals, and his little comforts — suffered his clumsy adoration. She never betrayed any affection for him or a desire for his companionship. When she talked to him it was always a consultation.

During the winter, the Kellers lived in town in the big brown house on Longfellow Avenue. Aunt Augusta believed that women should have a consummate knowledge of housekeeping. She never kept a servant, but relegated all the work to her daughters. Each one was responsible for a certain room. The big daily jobs, such as marketing and cooking, and the weekly ones, like washing, ironing, and mending, rotated among the older girls. With duties, schoolwork, and music lessons, they were pretty well tied down during the week. Our good times in Milton were adjusted to the Keller routine. We often grumbled about it, but we never rebelled. My cousins were too great a power in the younger set for anyone to risk offending them. Invitations to Echo Lake were too coveted.

Their town house was a magnet for week-end gatherings in the winter, but it was at their cottage that we had the most fun. Carmen is my closest friend in the family, and every summer for ten years I used to spend a month there as her guest. The house was a simple one, with four huge screened verandahs, flanked by a continuous line of cots. There was ample room for friends, and friends were eager to come. There was a canoe, a tennis court, and a lawn rolling down to the lake. We always ate outside at a long table guarded by a tall elm and a white pine — and oh, the food was good!

Routine was forgotten. Company and daughters spent the long summer days as they pleased. Of course we always made our beds, set the table, and did the dishes, but Aunt Augusta did n’t demand it. There was only one rule, and that was an adamant one. At eight o’clock in the morning and at four sharp, Aunt Augusta struck her Chinese gong. Swimming lime. Books were closed, tennis rackets dropped, skirts and blouses were ripped off and swimming suits donned. Everyone followed my aunt down the path to the lake.

If it were a week-end and Uncle August was there, he would leave his hammock and come down to the shore to watch. Even on the hottest days he would not so much as put his foot in the water. ‘Na, na,‘ he would say and plead with his wife, ‘Augusta, be careful. They all follow.’ He’d stand there gnawing his lip, lost in the dust of his children’s laughter as one daughter after another waded from him.

Augusta never looked back to shore. She knew her bevy of girls would follow her across the lake and back and that their guests would pursue if they could. When they returned from their mile-and-a-half swim, she would rise wordlessly from the water, methodically dry herself, and go into the house. August puffed his way back to his hammock, and the girls, now that their duty was done, dawdled on the shore as long as they wished.

My aunt liked to be ragged about her swimming school. She always had a ready answer: ‘Raising daughters is a business. Some women leave too much to God. Beauty, yes, but health and a good figure — that’s another story.’

III

Right here let me say that the Keller girls were always in demand for any histrionic activities in our county. We are addicted to pageants in Milton. We have one in the fall to celebrate the crops, in the spring for the cherry blossoms, and we’re liable to have one for no reason at all. No one ever tried to compete with Augusta’s daughters for parts. They were the spirits supreme, of Liberty, Justice, Equality, and Upper Michigan. Once all eight of them were goddesses. It was practically a Keller harvest of plenty, and a splendid boost for Milton. They made such handsome statues that their picture was printed in the rotogravure section of all the state papers and even of the New York Times. We’ve never been able to achieve such publicity again, but then our fetes have never had quite the same éclat that they had in the days of the Augusta pageants. My aunt always designed the important costumes then, and nobody can drape a piece of cheesecloth with quite the same classic elegance.

Augusta thought that every woman should be ‘artistic.’ When any one of her girls showed a special flair for drawing, dancing, or music, she was encouraged to study with the best teacher in town, but if she started to take her work seriously and began talking about a career, the lessons were abruptly stopped. Augusta was dead-set against higher education for women, too. I remember her brief tussle with Lucrece, who had a scholarly bent and wanted to go to the state university.

After much bolstering up from the rest of us, she confronted her mother, who sat in her fan chair under the tall elm, hemming a tablecloth. ‘Mother, if I’m going to Michigan this fall, I ought to send in my application.’

‘You have decided to go? Your father and I do not approve of college; you are too many.’

‘But if I work my way through?’

Aunt Augusta was too wise ever to give a flat negative answer. ‘And what will you have then that Claire and Gwendolyn have missed?’

‘A little knowledge. I’ll get a job. I ’ll be free.’

‘So,’ said my aunt, her needle never losing its rhythm. ‘Free. For what? A woman’s place is in the home. It always was and always will be. Will you find a husband at college?’

‘Why — I don’t know,’ stammered Lucrece.

‘Nor do I,’ said her mother.

Aunt Augusta’s method of quashing filial rebellion was simple: first logic, then arbitrary discipline. She was not always successful, but this much must be said for her — when she surrendered, she acknowledged her defeat with a haughty, uncomplaining grace. I’ve always admired the manner in which she yielded to Rosalyn. The victory was Rosalyn’s, but Aunt Augusta’s manœuvres were brilliant. I was at Echo Lake at the end of their silent, battle, when Aunt Augusta admitted she was vanquished and served Raspberry-down-the-cellar for dinner.

That was ten years ago. Claire, Gwendolyn, and Janice were married then. Rosalyn, who is older than Janice, was still single. Rosalyn had been visiting cousins in St. Louis the months of June and July. All Milton whispered when she went away. The Keller children, even the marrieds and their babies, were expected to be at Echo Lake in the summer. Aunt Augusta said that Rosalyn needed a doctor’s care in the city, but everybody knew it was an alibi. She was shipped South because of Joe Brookhart.

Rosalyn’s trip improved neither her spirits nor her health. When she returned to the cottage in August, she was pale, listless, and indifferent to all activities, even to the summons of the Chinese gong.

Carmen and I were her confidantes, but she was very sparing in her confessions to us. She told us, though, that she had had three proposals of marriage. When we pressed her for details she said, ‘Oh, what’s the use? They were hateful men, every one of them. Cousin Annie did everything she could to push Arthur Hilmtz on to me. I know Mother was in back of it too. His father owns a department store. But I ’ll never marry that sap — never, never! I don’t care how much money he has!’

‘Have you told Mother yet?’

‘I wrote her just before I came home. We have n’t talked about it since I’ve been here. She met me at the train, too. I did n’t even have an hour alone in Milton.’

Carmen and I were sympathetic. Rosalyn had been in love since her highschool days with Joe Brookhart, and, although he was handsome and a leader at school, he came from the wrong kind of people. His father was a drunkard — worse than that, he was serving a prison term for robbery — and Joe had a mother and a sister to support. Rosalyn had had many admirers, but she had never cared for anyone but Joe. In the spring she had told her parents that she was going to marry him with or without their consent. Augusta had suggested that she go away and think it over. When Rosalyn returned to Echo Lake, she avoided her mother and spent most of her time taking long walks by herself, coming back red-nosed and red-eyed. Then one day Aunt Augusta asked her why she did n’t invite Joe out for a weekend.

We were all pretty much excited when we heard that. There was an immediate change in Rosalyn. By the end of the week, the color was back in her cheeks and she was the first one to follow her mother into the lake.

When Joe came we all were very nice to him. It was n’t difficult. Joe is nice himself. He and Rosalyn, both so straight and blond and tall, were so happy to be together, it made the rest of us feel we were intruding if we ventured near them. They did n’t give us much opportunity either.

On Saturday night they took the canoe and paddled out to the centre of the lake. Aunt Augusta, sitting in her fan chair, and Uncle August, lying in the hammock, could see their heads purple against the sunset as they sat in the canoe. When Carmen and I passed her parents on our way to the willow tree, I said to my aunt, ‘We’re going to watch the lovers, too.’ It was bold of me, but I wanted to know what she’d say.

‘Take some punk with you; the mosquitoes are very bad,’ was her reply.

‘What do you suppose she’s thinking?’ I asked Carmen when we were out of earshot. ‘I’ve watched her all day, but I can’t tell.’

Carmen laughed. ‘No one ever knows what she thinks, but Rosalyn’s going to marry Joe all right. Mother gave me a dozen napkins to hem this afternoon and she spent all morning in the cellar.’

Sunday for dinner we had Raspberry-down-the-cellar. If Aunt Augusta had n’t looked so forbidding, we should have circled around Rosalyn and Joe and congratulated them. As it was, nobody but Joe said anything. It was the first time he had tasted the dessert. He ate it slowly, dreamily, and when he had licked his spoon clean of the last morsel he said, ‘This — this is perfect, Mrs. Keller.’

‘We find it good,’ said Aunt Augusta, her eyes controlling the table.

‘ Ach, it is quite all right,’ said Uncle August, nodding to Rosalyn.

Rosalyn flushed a deep red, her eyes blurred, and she left the table.

‘Excuse me.’ Joe dashed after her. They hid behind the willow tree. It’s such a spreading tree, we could only see a bit of Rosalyn’s dress.

Uncle August spent the afternoon in his hammock; Aunt Augusta in her lawn chair, hemming a tablecloth. The rest of us clustered on the porch, whispering.

‘Mother’s given her consent.‘

‘Not really!’

‘It amounts to the same thing. She never makes Raspberry-down-the-cellar except for Papa’s birthday — for William’s, too, when he was alive — and on very special occasions.’

‘I’m so glad!’

‘Oh, she knows everything! She even knows when to give in!’

They always spoke of their mother in a curious impersonal way, as if she were their teacher and they were her students being trained for life. They obeyed her and admired her, but they never loved her as they loved each other and their fumbling, inconsequential father.

Rosalyn and Joe were married at the end of the summer, and Rosalyn had as fine a trousseau and as expensive a wedding as the daughters before her.

Of course her sisters-in-law had a great deal to say to Augusta about the match. Aunt Caroline, whose girls were all in their shady twenties, was especially exultant. ‘A Brookhart! What next! I ’d die before seeing one of my daughters marry into that family. Augusta, how can you countenance such a thing?’

’There is such a thing as fate,’ answered Augusta, her head high. It was the nearest she ever came to any explanation or apology for her consent.

IV

Though Aunt Augusta had often said that when all her daughters were married she and August were going to move to California, we never took her seriously. My uncle had been born in Milton and was one of its most prominent citizens. It used to take him an hour to walk down High Street because of the many friends he met on the way. And Augusta was only human. With all her children settled in the Middle West, surely she would n’t want to be so far away from them.

However, a month after Eloise was married, the cottage at Echo Lake and the house on Longfellow Avenue were posted for sale. August went around town sighing good-bye to his cronies. My mother, who was fond of him, had enough nerve to say to Augusta, ‘How can you uproot August like this! He’ll be an old man when he gives up his business and his children.’

‘The children will come to visit us,’ said Augusta. ‘They all have their own lives to live. August is past sixty. He should retire.’

‘He can do that and stay here.’

‘We have talked it over. There are two to consider.’

‘Why, what do you mean?’

‘I want to retire too,’ was her irritating reply.

The family gave a farewell party for them and presented August with a Gladstone bag, Augusta with a fitted overnight case. We gave them the gifts after a very fine buffet lunch. It was my job to see that Augusta’s wineglass was kept well filled. The scheme concocted by Aunt Caroline and my mother was that maybe after a good meal and plenty to drink and a handsome present Augusta might tell them the ingredients of Raspberry-down-thecellar.

Aunt Caroline approached the subject very cautiously. ‘You deserve a lot of credit, Augusta. You raised a fine family.’

‘ Ja, dat’s right.’ Her tongue always became a little thick after wine.

‘They’re all married now.’

‘Dat’s right. If you listened to me long ago, Caroline, when I told you it was better that your girls should swim than to go to college, maybe they would n’t be teaching school yet.’

Aunt Caroline’s lips tightened. She was very sensitive about her bespectacled daughters. She wanted to claw Aunt Augusta’s arrogant eyes, but instead she flattered her. ‘Everyone knows you are smart. We’ve always admired you. Now that you’re going away we should like something to remember you by.’

‘Well, and what do you want?’

‘Oh, it’s just a little thing,’ fenced Aunt Caroline.

‘So. I know it already. The recipe for Raspberry-down-the-cellar.’ Augusta smiled. ‘You have always been a stubborn woman, Caroline. I have given you everything — my piecrust, my mustard pickles, my five-fruit jam. This one I keep.’

That Augusta was generous with her culinary secrets is not strictly true. She would never write down the ingredients, but would say them quickly as if she were impatient to be through with a disagreeable task. One had to copy them or remember them as best she could. It was rather a wasted effort, too. No one’s pickles or piecrust tasted like hers. At least they did n’t until she left Milton and my aunts checked ingredients and measurements with Rosalyn.

Aunt Caroline was determined to get what she wanted. ‘I don’t intend to be inquisitive,’ she persisted, ‘but none of us can understand why — ’

‘You would n’t. I have never told you. Not even to my girls have I given that recipe. I was saving it for William’s wife. It was his favorite dessert.’

There was a dead silence in the room. Stella gasped and Carmen plucked at the seam of her dress. William was the only one of her children whom Aunt Augusta had gone ‘foolish over.’ She had worshiped him. When he died of the flu in a camp in California during the war she had shut herself in her room for three days and would take no nourishment or comfort from the family. August had wanted to go West to bring back his body. ‘You can’t bring back the dead,’ was all she said. At the end of three days, her husband drove her to Echo Lake. She lived there alone for six weeks until the close of school, when the girls came out and joined her. She insisted that the house be filled to capacity as usual. She worked hard that summer, cooking for sometimes as many as twenty-five people. She would seldom let any of us help her, but would shoo us out of the house as soon as we dressed in the morning. ‘No, you are young, have a good time.’ At night she used to take long swims alone. It was the only year she ever did that. But not once did she mention William’s name.

Now to hear her say it calmly, eighteen years after his death, stunned even Aunt Caroline. The wine had softened Aunt Augusta. Her blue eyes were clouded with memories. ‘ My boy used to write that he liked California, fine — especially the ocean. When the war was over, he said we two were going there together. He liked the camp training, too, but in his last letter he wrote that he was hungry for Raspberry-down-the-cellar. . . . Do you remember William, Caroline?’

‘Oh, surely — ’

‘He used to laugh a lot. He would laugh at us now — at me for keeping a dessert for him and you thinking that dessert is magic.’

Aunt Caroline slipped her pencil back into her purse.

‘You want it so bad, Caroline? I give it to you. . . . You take two quarts of raspberries, the finest you can get, and sugar them overnight.’

‘Granulated or powdered?’

‘Powdered . . .’

It has been argued back and forth many times. Aunt Minnie insists that Caroline was too eager, her pencil and paper too handy; Aunt Caroline says that Augusta took a swallow of black coffee just before she started to give the ingredients. It cleared her head and she reverted to her normal tricky way of giving recipes. . . . Well, I don’t know. All I know is that when Aunt Caroline tried it the next day it was nothing but an ordinary raspberry mousse.