New Chronicles of Rebecca

As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed into view, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied the blue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over the intervening distance and, meeting, embraced each other ardently, somewhat to the injury of the company-tart.

“Didn’t it come out splendidly?” exclaimed Rebecca. “I was so afraid the fishman wouldn’t tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of us would walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was a very uncommon idea, wasn’t it? Almost romantic!”

“And what do you think?” asked Clara Belle proudly. “Look at this! Mrs. Fogg lent me her watch to come home by!”

“Oh, Clara Belle, how wonderful! Mrs. Fogg gets kinder and kinder to you, doesn’t she? You’re not homesick any more, are you?”

“No-o; not really; only when I remember there’s only little Susan to manage the twins; though they’re getting on real well without me. But I kind of think, Rebecca, that I’m going to be given away to the Foggs for good.”

“Do you mean adopted?”

“Yes; I think father’s going to sign papers. You see we can’t tell how many years it’ll be before the poor baby outgrows its burns, and Mrs. Fogg’ll never be the same again, and she must have somebody to help her.”

“You’ll be their real daughter, then, won’t you, Clara Belle? And Mr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, and everything splendid.”

“Yes; I’ll have board, and clothes, and school, and be named Fogg, and” (here her voice sank to an awed whisper) “the upper farm if I should ever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she was persuading me not to mind being given away.”

“Clara Belle Simpson!” exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. “Who’d have thought you’d be a female hero and an heiress besides? It’s just like a book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I’ll make Uncle Jerry Cobb allow there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don’t.”

“Of course I know it’s all right,” Clara Belle replied soberly. “I’ll have a good home and father can’t keep us all; but it’s kind of dreadful to be given away, like a piano or a horse and carriage!”

Rebecca’s hand went out sympathetically to Clara Belle’s freckled paw. Suddenly her own face clouded and she whispered:

“I’m not sure, Clara Belle, but I’m given away too—do you s’pose I am? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away from Sunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; but mother doesn’t say anything about my coming back, and our family’s one of those too-big ones, you know, just like yours.”

“Did your mother sign papers to your aunts?’

“If she did I never heard anything about it; but there’s something pinned on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of the bookcase.”

“You’d know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you’re just lent,” Clara Belle said cheeringly. “I don’t believe anybody’d ever give YOU away! And, oh! Rebecca, father’s getting on so well! He works on Daly’s farm where they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all the young colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drives all over the country. Daly told Mr. Fogg he was splendid with stock, and father says it’s just like play. He’s sent home money three Saturday nights.”

“I’m so glad!” exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. “Now your mother’ll have a good time and a black silk dress, won’t she?”

“I don’t know,” sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. “Ever since I can remember she’s just washed and cried and cried and washed. Miss Dearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know, and she came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg’s. I heard them talking last night when I was getting the baby to sleep—I couldn’t help it, they were so close—and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn’t like Acreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don’t give her any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff and particular up that way and they liked women to have wedding rings.”

“Hasn’t your mother got a wedding ring?” asked Rebecca, astonished. “Why, I thought everybody HAD to have them, just as they do sofas and a kitchen stove!”

“I never noticed she didn’t have one, but when they spoke I remembered mother’s hands washing and wringing, and she doesn’t wear one, I know. She hasn’t got any jewelry, not even a breast-pin.”

Rebecca’s tone was somewhat censorious, “your father’s been so poor perhaps he couldn’t afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he’d have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that’s the time to do it, right at the very first.”

“They didn’t have any real church dress-up wedding,” explained Clara Belle extenuatingly. “You see the first mother, mine, had the big boys and me, and then she died when we were little. Then after a while this mother came to housekeep, and she stayed, and by and by she was Mrs. Simpson, and Susan and the twins and the baby are hers, and she and father didn’t have time for a regular wedding in church. They don’t have veils and bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn’s sister did.”

“Do they cost a great deal—wedding rings?” asked Rebecca thoughtfully. “They’re solid gold, so I s’pose they do. If they were cheap we might buy one. I’ve got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have you?”

“Fifty-three,” Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; “and anyway there are no stores nearer than Milltown. We’d have to buy it secretly, for I wouldn’t make father angry, or shame his pride, now he’s got steady work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings.”

Rebecca looked nonplussed. “I declare,” she said, “I think the Acreville people must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only because she hasn’t got any jewelry. You wouldn’t dare tell your father what Miss Dearborn heard, so he’d save up and buy the ring?”

“No; I certainly would not!” and Clara Belle’s lips closed tightly and decisively.

Rebecca sat quietly for a few moments, then she exclaimed jubilantly: “I know where we could get it! From Mr. Aladdin, and then I needn’t tell him who it’s for! He’s coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, and I’ll ask him to buy a ring for us in Boston. I won’t explain anything, you know; I’ll just say I need a wedding ring.”

“That would be perfectly lovely,” replied Clara Belle, a look of hope dawning in her eyes; “and we can think afterwards how to get it over to mother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn’t dare to do it myself. You won’t tell anybody, Rebecca?”

“Cross my heart!” Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with a reproachful look, “you know I couldn’t repeat a sacred secret like that! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what’s happened?—Why, Clara Belle, isn’t that Mr. Ladd watering his horse at the foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and he’s driven up from Milltown stead of coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He’s all alone, and I can ride home with him and ask him about the ring right away!”

Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homeward walk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering her handkerchief as a signal.

“Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!” she cried, as the horse and wagon came nearer.

Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.

“Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?”

Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delight at his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.

“Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I’m so glad you came this way, for there’s something very important to ask you about,” she began, rather breathlessly.

“No doubt,” laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of his acquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; “I hope the premium banquet lamp doesn’t smoke as it grows older?”

“Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped off the banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it’s not the lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you’d make up your mind what you were going to give me for Christmas.”

“Well,” and “I do remember that much quite nicely.”

“Well, is it bought?”

“No, I never buy Christmas presents before Thanksgiving.”

“Then, DEAR Mr. Aladdin, would you buy me something different, something that I want to give away, and buy it a little sooner than Christmas?”

“That depends. I don’t relish having my Christmas presents given away. I like to have them kept forever in little girls’ bureau drawers, all wrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I’ll change my mind. What is it you want?”

“I need a wedding ring dreadfully,” said Rebecca, “but it’s a sacred secret.”

Adam Ladd’s eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself with pleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, a person of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as this child? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that made him so delightful to young people.

“I thought it was perfectly understood between us,” he said, “that if you could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that I was to ride up to the brick house on my snow white”—

“Coal black,” corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warning finger.

“Coal black charger; put a golden circlet on your lily white finger, draw you up behind me on my pillion”—

“And Emma Jane, too,” Rebecca interrupted.

“I think I didn’t mention Emma Jane,” argued Mr. Aladdin. “Three on a pillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of a prancing chestnut, and we all go off to my castle in the forest.”

“Emma Jane never leaps, and she’d be afraid of a prancing chestnut,” objected Rebecca.

“Then she shall have a gentle cream-colored pony; but now, without any explanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which shows plainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white—I mean coal black—charger with somebody else.”

Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaic world no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the fool according to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddle but Mr. Aladdin.

“The ring isn’t for ME!” she explained carefully. “You know very well that Emma Jane nor I can’t be married till we’re through Quackenbos’s Grammar, Greenleaf’s Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails and run a sewing machine. The ring is for a friend.”

“Why doesn’t the groom give it to his bride himself?”

“Because he’s poor and kind of thoughtless, and anyway she isn’t a bride any more; she has three step and three other kind of children.”

Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stooped to tuck in the rug over Rebecca’s feet and his own. When he raised his head again he asked: “Why not tell me a little more, Rebecca? I’m safe!”

Rebecca looked at him, feeling his wisdom and strength, and above all his sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: “You remember I told you all about the Simpsons that day on your aunt’s porch when you bought the soap because I told you how the family were always in trouble and how much they needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle’s father, has always been very poor, and not always very good,—a little bit THIEVISH, you know—but oh, so pleasant and nice to talk to! And now he’s turning over a new leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when she came here a stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was so patient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But where she lives now, though they used to know her when she was a girl, they’re not polite to her and don’t give her scrubbing and washing; and Clara belle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people were stiff, and despised her because she didn’t wear a wedding ring, like all the rest. And Clara Belle and I thought if they were so mean as that, we’d love to give her one, and then she’d be happier and have more work; and perhaps Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her a breast-pin and earrings, and she’ll be fitted out like the others. I know Mrs. Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood on account of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace.”

Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed under the delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than once felt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathed in some purifying spring.

“How shall you send the ring to Mrs. Simpson?” he asked, with interest.

“We haven’t settled yet; Clara Belle’s afraid to do it, and thinks I could manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if it does, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask Aunt Miranda, and others that belong to Aunt Jane.”

“It costs the merest trifle. I’ll buy one and bring it to you, and we’ll consult about it; but I think as you’re great friends with Mr. Simpson you’d better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strong point! It’s a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it’s worth trying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I’ll stay in the background where nobody will see me.”

Ninth Chronicle. THE GREEN ISLE

Many a green isle needs must beIn the deep sea of misery,Or the mariner, worn and wan,Never thus could voyage onDay and night and night and day,Drifting on his weary way.—Shelley

Meantime in these frosty autumn days life was crowded with events in the lonely Simpson house at Acreville.

The tumble-down dwelling stood on the edge of Pliney’s Pond; so called because old Colonel Richardson left his lands to be divided in five equal parts, each share to be chosen in turn by one of his five sons, Pliny, the eldest, having priority of choice.

Pliny Richardson, having little taste for farming, and being ardently fond of fishing, rowing, and swimming, acted up to his reputation of being “a little mite odd,” and took his whole twenty acres in water—hence Pliny’s Pond.

The eldest Simpson boy had been working on a farm in Cumberland County for two years. Samuel, generally dubbed “see-saw,” had lately found a humble place in a shingle mill and was partially self-supporting. Clara Belle had been adopted by the Foggs; thus there were only three mouths to fill, the capacious ones of Elijah and Elisha, the twin boys, and of lisping, nine-year-old Susan, the capable houseworker and mother’s assistant, for the baby had died during the summer; died of discouragement at having been born into a family unprovided with food or money or love or care, or even with desire for, or appreciation of, babies.

There was no doubt that the erratic father of the house had turned over a new leaf. Exactly when he began, or how, or why, or how long he would continue the praiseworthy process,—in a word whether there would be more leaves turned as the months went on,—Mrs. Simpson did not know, and it is doubtful if any authority lower than that of Mr. Simpson’s Maker could have decided the matter. He had stolen articles for swapping purposes for a long time, but had often avoided detection, and always escaped punishment until the last few years. Three fines imposed for small offenses were followed by several arrests and two imprisonments for brief periods, and he found himself wholly out of sympathy with the wages of sin. Sin itself he did not especially mind, but the wages thereof were decidedly unpleasant and irksome to him. He also minded very much the isolated position in the community which had lately become his; for he was a social being and would ALMOST rather not steal from a neighbor than have him find it out and cease intercourse! This feeling was working in him and rendering him unaccountably irritable and depressed when he took his daughter over to Riverboro at the time of the great flag-raising.

There are seasons of refreshment, as well as seasons of drought, in the spiritual, as in the natural world, and in some way or other dews and rains of grace fell upon Abner Simpson’s heart during that brief journey. Perhaps the giving away of a child that he could not support had made the soil of his heart a little softer and readier for planting than usual; but when he stole the new flag off Mrs. Peter Meserve’s doorsteps, under the impression that the cotton-covered bundle contained freshly washed clothes, he unconsciously set certain forces in operation.

It will be remembered that Rebecca saw an inch of red bunting peeping from the back of his wagon, and asked the pleasure of a drive with him. She was no daughter of the regiment, but she proposed to follow the flag. When she diplomatically requested the return of the sacred object which was to be the glory of the “raising” next day, and he thus discovered his mistake, he was furious with himself for having slipped into a disagreeable predicament; and later, when he unexpectedly faced a detachment of Riverboro society at the cross-roads, and met not only their wrath and scorn, but the reproachful, disappointed glance of Rebecca’s eyes, he felt degraded as never before.

The night at the Centre tavern did not help matters, nor the jolly patriotic meeting of the three villages at the flag-raising next morning. He would have enjoyed being at the head and front of the festive preparations, but as he had cut himself off from all such friendly gatherings, he intended at any rate to sit in his wagon on the very outskirts of the assembled crowd and see some of the gayety; for, heaven knows, he had little enough, he who loved talk, and song, and story, and laughter, and excitement.

The flag was raised, the crowd cheered, the little girl to whom he had lied, the girl who was impersonating the State of Maine, was on the platform “speaking her piece,” and he could just distinguish some of the words she was saying:

“For it’s your star, my star, all the stars together, That makes our country’s flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather.”

Then suddenly there was a clarion voice cleaving the air, and he saw a tall man standing in the centre of the stage and heard him crying: “THREE CHEERS FOR THE GIRL THAT SAVED THE FLAG FROM THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY!”

He was sore and bitter enough already; lonely, isolated enough; with no lot nor share in the honest community life; no hand to shake, no neighbor’s meal to share; and this unexpected public arraignment smote him between the eyes. With resentment newly kindled, pride wounded, vanity bleeding, he flung a curse at the joyous throng and drove toward home, the home where he would find his ragged children and meet the timid eyes of a woman who had been the loyal partner of his poverty and disgraces.

It is probable that even then his (extremely light) hand was already on the “new leaf.” The angels, doubtless, were not especially proud of the matter and manner of his reformation, but I dare say they were glad to count him theirs on any terms, so difficult is the reformation of this blind and foolish world! They must have been; for they immediately flung into his very lap a profitable, and what is more to the point, an interesting and agreeable situation where money could be earned by doing the very things his nature craved. There were feats of daring to be performed in sight of admiring and applauding stable boys; the horses he loved were his companions; he was OBLIGED to “swap,” for Daly, his employer, counted on him to get rid of all undesirable stock; power and responsibility of a sort were given him freely, for Daly was no Puritan, and felt himself amply capable of managing any number of Simpsons; so here were numberless advantages within the man’s grasp, and wages besides!

Abner positively felt no temptation to steal; his soul expanded with pride, and the admiration and astonishment with which he regarded his virtuous present was only equaled by the disgust with which he contemplated his past; not so much a vicious past, in his own generous estimation of it, as a “thunderin’ foolish” one.

Mrs. Simpson took the same view of Abner’s new leaf as the angels. She was thankful for even a brief season of honesty coupled with the Saturday night remittance; and if she still washed and cried and cried and washed, as Clara Belle had always seen her, it was either because of some hidden sorrow, or because her poor strength seemed all at once to have deserted her.

Just when employment and good fortune had come to the step-children, and her own were better fed and clothed than ever before, the pain that had always lurked, constant but dull, near her tired heart, grew fierce and triumphantly strong; clutching her in its talons, biting, gnawing, worrying, leaving her each week with slighter powers of resistance. Still hope was in the air and a greater content than had ever been hers was in her eyes; a content that came near to happiness when the doctor ordered her to keep her bed and sent for Clara Belle. She could not wash any longer, but there was the ever new miracle of the Saturday night remittance for household expenses.

“Is your pain bad today, mother,” asked Clara Belle, who, only lately given away, was merely borrowed from Mrs. Fogg for what was thought to be a brief emergency.

“Well, there, I can’t hardly tell, Clara Belle,” Mrs. Simpson replied, with a faint smile. “I can’t seem to remember the pain these days without it’s extra bad. The neighbors are so kind; Mrs. Little has sent me canned mustard greens, and Mrs. Benson chocolate ice cream and mince pie; there’s the doctor’s drops to make me sleep, and these blankets and that great box of eatables from Mr. Ladd; and you here to keep me comp’ny! I declare I’m kind o’ dazed with comforts. I never expected to see sherry wine in this house. I ain’t never drawed the cork; it does me good enough jest to look at Mr. Ladd’s bottle settin’ on the mantel-piece with the fire shinin’ on the brown glass.”

Mr. Simpson had come to see his wife and had met the doctor just as he was leaving the house.

“She looks awful bad to me. Is she goin’ to pull through all right, same as the last time?” he asked the doctor nervously.

“She’s going to pull right through into the other world,” the doctor answered bluntly; “and as there don’t seem to be anybody else to take the bull by the horns, I’d advise you, having made the woman’s life about as hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to die easy!”

Abner, surprised and crushed by the weight of this verbal chastisement, sat down on the doorstep, his head in his hands, and thought a while solemnly. Thought was not an operation he was wont to indulge in, and when he opened the gate a few minutes later and walked slowly toward the barn for his horse, he looked pale and unnerved. It is uncommonly startling, first to see yourself in another man’s scornful eyes, and then, clearly, in your own.

Two days later he came again, and this time it was decreed that he should find Parson Carll tying his piebald mare at the post.

Clara Belle’s quick eye had observed the minister as he alighted from his buggy, and, warning her mother, she hastily smoothed the bedclothes, arranged the medicine bottles, and swept the hearth.

“Oh! Don’t let him in!” wailed Mrs. Simpson, all of a flutter at the prospect of such a visitor. “Oh, dear! They must think over to the village that I’m dreadful sick, or the minister wouldn’t never think of callin’! Don’t let him in, Clara Belle! I’m afraid he will say hard words to me, or pray to me; and I ain’t never been prayed to since I was a child! Is his wife with him?”

“No; he’s alone; but father’s just drove up and is hitching at the shed door.”

“That’s worse than all!” and Mrs. Simpson raised herself feebly on her pillows and clasped her hands in despair. “You mustn’t let them two meet, Clara Belle, and you must send Mr. Carll away; your father wouldn’t have a minister in the house, nor speak to one, for a thousand dollars!”

“Be quiet, mother! Lie down! It’ll be all right! You’ll only fret yourself into a spell! The minister’s just a good man; he won’t say anything to frighten you. Father’s talking with him real pleasant, and pointing the way to the front door.”

The parson knocked and was admitted by the excited Clara Belle, who ushered him tremblingly into the sickroom, and then betook herself to the kitchen with the children, as he gently requested her.