Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF
Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro districtschool, and had been for a week a full-fledged pupil at the WarehamSeminary, towards which goal she had been speeding ever since thememorable day when she rode into Riverboro on the top of Uncle JerryCobb's stagecoach, and told him that education was intended to be "themaking of her."
She went to and fro, with Emma Jane and the other Riverboro boys andgirls, on the morning and evening trains that ran between the academytown and Milliken's Mills.
The six days had passed like a dream!--a dream in which she sat incorners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed;stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heartfailure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delightedthe committee when reading at sight from "King Lear," but somewhatdiscouraged them when she could not tell the capital of the UnitedStates. She admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might havementioned it, but if so she had not remembered it.
In these first weeks among strangers she passed for nothing but aninteresting-looking, timid, innocent, country child, never revealing,even to the far-seeing Emily Maxwell, a hint of her originality,facility, or power in any direction. Rebecca was fourteen, but soslight, and under the paralyzing new conditions so shy, that shewould have been mistaken for twelve had it not been for her generaladvancement in the school curriculum.
Growing up in the solitude of a remote farm house, transplanted to atiny village where she lived with two elderly spinsters, she was stillthe veriest child in all but the practical duties and responsibilitiesof life; in those she had long been a woman.
It was Saturday afternoon; her lessons for Monday were all learned andshe burst into the brick house sitting-room with the flushed face andembarrassed mien that always foreshadowed a request. Requests were morecommonly answered in the negative than in the affirmative at the brickhouse, a fact that accounted for the slight confusion in her demeanor.
"Aunt Miranda," she began, "the fishman says that Clara Belle Simpsonwants to see me very much, but Mrs. Fogg can't spare her long at a time,you know, on account of the baby being no better; but Clara Belle couldwalk a mile up, and I a mile down the road, and we could meet at thepink house half way. Then we could rest and talk an hour or so, and bothbe back in time for our suppers. I've fed the cat; she had no appetite,as it's only two o'clock and she had her dinner at noon, but she'll goback to her saucer, and it's off my mind. I could go down cellar nowand bring up the cookies and the pie and doughnuts for supper before Istart. Aunt Jane saw no objection; but we thought I'd better ask you soas to run no risks."
Miranda Sawyer, who had been patiently waiting for the end of thisspeech, laid down her knitting and raised her eyes with a half-resignedexpression that meant: Is there anything unusual in heaven or earth orthe waters under the earth that this child does not want to do? Will sheever settle down to plain, comprehensible Sawyer ways, or will she tothe end make these sudden and radical propositions, suggesting at everyturn the irresponsible Randall ancestry?
"You know well enough, Rebecca, that I don't like you to be intimatewith Abner Simpson's young ones," she said decisively. "They ain't fitcompany for anybody that's got Sawyer blood in their veins, if it's everso little. I don't know, I'm sure, how you're goin' to turn out! Thefish peddler seems to be your best friend, without it's Abijah Flaggthat you're everlastingly talkin' to lately. I should think you'drather read some improvin' book than to be chatterin' with Squire Bean'schore-boy!"
"He isn't always going to be a chore-boy," explained Rebecca, "andthat's what we're considering. It's his career we talk about, and hehasn't got any father or mother to advise him. Besides, Clara Belle kindof belongs to the village now that she lives with Mrs. Fogg; and shewas always the best behaved of all the girls, either in school orSunday-school. Children can't help having fathers!"
"Everybody says Abner is turning over a new leaf, and if so, thefamily'd ought to be encouraged every possible way," said Miss Jane,entering the room with her mending basket in hand.
"If Abner Simpson is turnin' over a leaf, or anythin' else in creation,it's only to see what's on the under side!" remarked Miss Mirandapromptly. "Don't talk to me about new leaves! You can't change that kindof a man; he is what he is, and you can't make him no different!"
"The grace of God can do consid'rable," observed Jane piously.
"I ain't sayin' but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early andstay late on a man like Simpson."
"Now, Mirandy, Abner ain't more'n forty! I don't know what the averageage for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awfulsight of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kindof young. Not that I've heard Abner has experienced religion, buteverybody's surprised at the good way he's conductin' this fall."
"They'll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss theirfirewood and apples and potatoes again," affirmed Miranda.
"Clara Belle don't seem to have inherited from her father," Janeventured again timidly. "No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by thegirl. If it hadn't been for her, the baby would have been dead by now."
"Perhaps tryin' to save it was interferin' with the Lord's will," wasMiranda's retort.
"Folks can't stop to figure out just what's the Lord's will when a childhas upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself," and as she spokeJane darned more excitedly. "Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn'tought to have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, evenif she did see Clara Belle comin' across lots. She'd ought to havewaited before drivin' off; but of course she was afraid of missing thetrain, and she's too good a woman to be held accountable."
"The minister's wife says Clara Belle is a real--I can't think of theword!" chimed in Rebecca. "What's the female of hero? Whatever it is,that's what Mrs. Baxter called her!"
"Clara Belle's the female of Simpson; that's what she is," Miss Mirandaasserted; "but she's been brought up to use her wits, and I ain't sayin'but she used em."
"I should say she did!" exclaimed Miss Jane; "to put that screaming,suffering child in the baby-carriage and run all the way to the doctor'swhen there wasn't a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more suchactions would make the Simpson name sound consid'rable sweeter in thisneighborhood."
"Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!" vouchsafed the eldersister, "but we've talked enough about em an' to spare. You can goalong, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company shekeeps."
"All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!" cried Rebecca, leaping from thechair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. "Andhow does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Bellea company-tart?"
"Don't Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she's taken her right into thefamily?"
"Oh, yes," Rebecca answered, "she has lovely things to eat, and Mrs.Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that takinga present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and areextra glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, thosetarts will have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; youremember the one I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That wasqueer--but nice," she added hastily.
"Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give awaywithout taking my tarts!" responded Miranda tersely; the joints of herarmor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, whohad insinuated that company-tarts lasted a long time in the brick house.This was a fact; indeed, the company-tart was so named, not from anyidea that it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too goodfor every-day use.
Rebecca's face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into animpolite and, what was worse, an apparently ungrateful speech.
"I didn't mean to say anything not nice, Aunt Miranda," she stammered."Truly the tart was splendid, but not exactly like new, that's all. Andoh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of thebox Mr.
Ladd gave me on my birthday."
"You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you," commandedMiranda, "and when you fill it don't uncover a new tumbler of jelly;there's some dried-apple preserves open that'll do. Wear your rubbersand your thick jacket. After runnin' all the way down there--for yourlegs never seem to be rigged for walkin' like other girls'--you'll setdown on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o' cold, an' yourAunt Jane n' I'll be kep' up nights nursin' you and luggin' your mealsupstairs to you on a waiter."
Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rockingchair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when theimmovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certainamount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.
Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance atAunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion andwas accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew thatcertain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she hadbecome sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca's unspokenquery meant: "COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEINGSATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?"
These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment whenMiranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was somethingabout them that stirred her spinster heart--they were so gay, soappealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived inthe brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What madeher so different from everybody else. Could it be that her gracelesspopinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her somestrange combination of gifts instead of fortune? Her eyes, her brows,the color of her lips, the shape of her face, as well as her ways andwords, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what anenchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delightinto the gray monotony of the dragging years!
There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walkeddecorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away overSunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and CandaceMilliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, lifewas seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she startedafresh every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodeanfeat of spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, alwaysin her power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the trystwith freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Mirandasaid looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidentswere sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.
As the great bare horse-chestnut near the pink-house gate loomed intoview, the red linsey-woolsey speck going down the road spied theblue linsey-woolsey speck coming up, and both specks flew over theintervening 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 afraidthe fishman wouldn't tell you to start exactly at two, or that one of uswould walk faster than the other; but we met at the very spot! It was avery 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 toyou, doesn't she? You're not homesick any more, are you?"
"No-o; not really; only when I remember there's only little Susan tomanage the twins; though they're getting on real well without me. But Ikind of think, Rebecca, that I'm going to be given away to the Foggs forgood."
"Do you mean adopted?"
"Yes; I think father's going to sign papers. You see we can't tell howmany 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 helpher."
"You'll be their real daughter, then, won't you, Clara Belle? AndMr. Fogg is a deacon, and a selectman, and a road commissioner, andeverything 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 shouldever get married; Miss Dearborn told me that herself, when she waspersuading me not to mind being given away."
"Clara Belle Simpson!" exclaimed Rebecca in a transport. "Who'd havethought you'd be a female hero and an heiress besides? It's just likea book story, and it happened in Riverboro. I'll make Uncle Jerry Cobballow there CAN be Riverboro stories, you see if I don't."
"Of course I know it's all right," Clara Belle replied soberly. "I'llhave a good home and father can't keep us all; but it's kind of dreadfulto 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 Iam? Poor father left us in debt, you see. I thought I came away fromSunnybrook to get an education and then help pay off the mortgage; butmother doesn't say anything about my coming back, and our family's oneof 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 somethingpinned on to the mortgage that mother keeps in the drawer of thebookcase."
"You'd know it if twas adoption papers; I guess you're just lent," ClaraBelle 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 farmwhere they raise lots of horses and cattle, too, and he breaks all theyoung colts and trains them, and swaps off the poor ones, and drivesall 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 Saturdaynights."
"I'm so glad!" exclaimed Rebecca sympathetically. "Now your mother'llhave a good time and a black silk dress, won't she?"
"I don't know," sighed Clara Belle, and her voice was grave. "Ever sinceI can remember she's just washed and cried and cried and washed. MissDearborn has been spending her vacation up to Acreville, you know,and she came yesterday to board next door to Mrs. Fogg's. I heard themtalking last night when I was getting the baby to sleep--I couldn'thelp it, they were so close--and Miss Dearborn said mother doesn't likeAcreville; she says nobody takes any notice of her, and they don't giveher any more work. Mrs. Fogg said, well, they were dreadful stiff andparticular 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 akitchen stove!"
"I never noticed she didn't have one, but when they spoke I rememberedmother'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 poorperhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'dhave given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's thetime to do it, right at the very first."
"They didn't have any real church dress-up wedding," explained ClaraBelle extenuatingly. "You see the first mother, mine, had the big boysand me, and then she died when we were little. Then after a while thismother 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 andfather didn't have time for a regular wedding in church. They don't haveveils and bridesmaids and refreshments round here like Miss Dearborn'ssister 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 mightbuy one. I've got seventy-four cents saved up; how much have you?"
"Fifty-three," Clara Belle responded, in a depressing tone; "and anywaythere 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 gotsteady work; and mother would know I had spent all my savings."
Rebecca looked nonplussed. "I declare," she said, "I think the Acrevillepeople must be perfectly horrid not to call on your mother only becauseshe hasn't got any jewelry. You wouldn't dare tell your father what MissDearborn heard, so he'd save up and buy the ring?"
"No; I certainly would not!" and Clara Belle's lips closed tightly anddecisively.
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 tellhim who it's for! He's coming to stay over tomorrow with his aunt, andI'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 hopedawning in her eyes; "and we can think afterwards how to get it over tomother. Perhaps you could send it to father instead, but I wouldn't dareto do it myself. You won't tell anybody, Rebecca?"
"Cross my heart!" Rebecca exclaimed dramatically; and then with areproachful look, "you know I couldn't repeat a sacred secret likethat! Shall we meet next Saturday afternoon, and I tell you what'shappened?--Why, Clara Belle, isn't that Mr. Ladd watering his horse atthe foot of the hill this very minute? It is; and he's driven up fromMilltown stead of coming on the train from Boston to Edgewood. He's allalone, and I can ride home with him and ask him about the ring rightaway!"
Clara Belle kissed Rebecca fervently, and started on her homewardwalk, while Rebecca waited at the top of the long hill, fluttering herhandkerchief as a signal.
"Mr. Aladdin! Mr. Aladdin!" she cried, as the horse and wagon camenearer.
Adam Ladd drew up quickly at the sound of the eager young voice.
"Well, well; here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like ared-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive with me?"
Rebecca clambered into the carriage, laughing and blushing with delightat his nonsense and with joy at seeing him again.
"Clara Belle and I were just talking about you this minute, and I'm soglad you came this way, for there's something very important to ask youabout," she began, rather breathlessly.
"No doubt," laughed Adam Ladd, who had become, in the course of hisacquaintance with Rebecca, a sort of high court of appeals; "I hope thepremium banquet lamp doesn't smoke as it grows older?"
"Now, Mr. Aladdin, you WILL not remember nicely. Mr. Simpson swapped offthe banquet lamp when he was moving the family to Acreville; it's notthe lamp at all, but once, when you were here last time, you said you'dmake 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, somethingthat 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, allwrapped in pink tissue paper; but explain the matter and perhaps I'llchange my mind. What is it you want?"
"I need a wedding ring dreadfully," said Rebecca, "but it's a sacredsecret."
Adam Ladd's eyes flashed with surprise and he smiled to himself withpleasure. Had he on his list of acquaintances, he asked himself, aperson of any age or sex so altogether irresistible and unique as thischild? Then he turned to face her with the merry teasing look that madehim so delightful to young people.
"I thought it was perfectly understood between us," he said, "that ifyou could ever contrive to grow up and I were willing to wait, that Iwas to ride up to the brick house on my snow white"--
"Coal black," corrected Rebecca, with a sparkling eye and a warningfinger.
"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 apillion is very uncomfortable. I think Emma Jane leaps on the back of aprancing 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 anyexplanation, you ask me to buy you a wedding ring, which showsplainly that you are planning to ride off on a snow white--I mean coalblack--charger with somebody else."
Rebecca dimpled and laughed with joy at the nonsense. In her prosaicworld no one but Adam Ladd played the game and answered the foolaccording to his folly. Nobody else talked delicious fairy-story twaddlebut Mr. Aladdin.
"The ring isn't for ME!" she explained carefully. "You know very wellthat Emma Jane nor I can't be married till we're through Quackenbos'sGrammar, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and big enough to wear long trails andrun 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 brideany more; she has three step and three other kind of children."
Adam Ladd put the whip back in the socket thoughtfully, and then stoopedto tuck in the rug over Rebecca's feet and his own. When he raised hishead 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 allhis sympathy. Then she said hesitatingly: "You remember I told you allabout the Simpsons that day on your aunt's porch when you bought thesoap because I told you how the family were always in trouble and howmuch they needed a banquet lamp? Mr. Simpson, Clara Belle's father, hasalways 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 turningover a new leaf. And everybody in Riverboro liked Mrs. Simpson when shecame here a stranger, because they were sorry for her and she was sopatient, and such a hard worker, and so kind to the children. But whereshe lives now, though they used to know her when she was a girl, they'renot polite to her and don't give her scrubbing and washing; and Clarabelle heard our teacher say to Mrs. Fogg that the Acreville people werestiff, and despised her because she didn't wear a wedding ring, like allthe 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 morework; and perhaps Mr. Simpson if he gets along better will buy her abreast-pin and earrings, and she'll be fitted out like the others. Iknow Mrs. Peter Meserve is looked up to by everybody in Edgewood onaccount of her gold bracelets and moss agate necklace."
Adam turned again to meet the luminous, innocent eyes that glowed underthe delicate brows and long lashes, feeling as he had more than oncefelt before, as if his worldly-wise, grown-up thoughts had been bathedin 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 Icould manage better. Will the ring cost much? Because, of course, if itdoes, I must ask Aunt Jane first. There are things I have to ask AuntMiranda, and others that belong to Aunt Jane."
"It costs the merest trifle. I'll buy one and bring it to you, and we'llconsult about it; but I think as you're great friends with Mr. Simpsonyou'd better send it to him in a letter, letters being your strongpoint! It's a present a man ought to give his own wife, but it's worthtrying, Rebecca. You and Clara Belle can manage it between you, and I'llstay in the background where nobody will see me."