XXIX
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
Two months had gone by,--two months of steady, fagging work; ofcooking, washing, ironing; of mending and caring for the threechildren, although Jenny was fast becoming a notable little housewife,quick, ready, and capable. They were months in which there had beenmany a weary night of watching by Aurelia's bedside; of soothing andbandaging and rubbing; of reading and nursing, even of feeding andbathing. The ceaseless care was growing less now, and the familybreathed more freely, for the mother's sigh of pain no longer came fromthe stifling bedroom, where, during a hot and humid August, Aurelia hadlain, suffering with every breath she drew. There would be no questionof walking for many a month to come, but blessings seemed to multiplywhen the blinds could be opened and the bed drawn near the window; whenmother, with pillows behind her, could at least sit and watch the workgoing on, could smile at the past agony and forget the weary hours thathad led to her present comparative ease and comfort.
No girl of seventeen can pass through such an ordeal and come outunchanged; no girl of Rebecca's temperament could go through it withoutsome inward repining and rebellion. She was doing tasks in which shecould not be fully happy,--heavy and trying tasks, which perhaps shecould never do with complete success or satisfaction; and like promiseof nectar to thirsty lips was the vision of joys she had had to putaside for the performance of dull daily duty. How brief, how fleeting,had been those splendid visions when the universe seemed open for heryoung strength to battle and triumph in! How soon they had faded intothe light of common day! At first, sympathy and grief were so keen shethought of nothing but her mother's pain. No consciousness of selfinterposed between her and her filial service; then, as the weekspassed, little blighted hopes began to stir and ache in her breast;defeated ambitions raised their heads as if to sting her; unattainabledelights teased her by their very nearness; by the narrow line ofseparation that lay between her and their realization. It is easy, forthe moment, to tread the narrow way, looking neither to the right norleft, upborne by the sense of right doing; but that first joy ofself-denial, the joy that is like fire in the blood, dies away; thepath seems drearier and the footsteps falter. Such a time came toRebecca, and her bright spirit flagged when the letter was receivedsaying that her position in Augusta had been filled. There was amutinous leap of the heart then, a beating of wings against the door ofthe cage, a longing for the freedom of the big world outside. It wasthe stirring of the powers within her, though she called it by no suchgrand name. She felt as if the wind of destiny were blowing her flamehither and thither, burning, consuming her, but kindling nothing. Allthis meant one stormy night in her little room at Sunnybrook, but theclouds blew over, the sun shone again, a rainbow stretched across thesky, while "hope clad in April green" smiled into her upturned face andbeckoned her on, saying:--
"Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be."
Threads of joy ran in and out of the gray tangled web of daily living.There was the attempt at odd moments to make the bare little house lessbare by bringing in out-of-doors, taking a leaf from Nature's book andnoting how she conceals ugliness wherever she finds it. Then there wasthe satisfaction of being mistress of the poor domain; of planning,governing, deciding; of bringing order out of chaos; of implantinggayety in the place of inert resignation to the inevitable. Anotherelement of comfort was the children's love, for they turned to her asflowers to the sun, drawing confidently on her fund of stories, serenein the conviction that there was no limit to Rebecca's power ofmake-believe. In this, and in yet greater things, little as sherealized it, the law of compensation was working in her behalf, for inthose anxious days mother and daughter found and knew each other asnever before. A new sense was born in Rebecca as she hung over hermother's bed of pain and unrest,--a sense that comes only ofministering, a sense that grows only when the strong bend toward theweak. As for Aurelia, words could never have expressed her dumbhappiness when the real revelation of motherhood was vouchsafed her. Inall the earlier years when her babies were young, carking cares andanxieties darkened the fireside with their brooding wings. Then Rebeccahad gone away, and in the long months of absence her mind and soul hadgrown out of her mother's knowledge, so that now, when Aurelia had timeand strength to study her child, she was like some enchantingchangeling. Aurelia and Hannah had gone on in the dull round and thecommon task, growing duller and duller; but now, on a certain stage oflife's journey, who should appear but this bewildering being, who gavewings to thoughts that had only crept before; who brought color andgrace and harmony into the dun brown texture of existence.
You might harness Rebecca to the heaviest plough, and while she hadyouth on her side, she would always remember the green earth under herfeet and the blue sky over her head. Her physical eye saw the cake shewas stirring and the loaf she was kneading; her physical ear heard thekitchen fire crackling and the teakettle singing, but ever and anon herfancy mounted on pinions, rested itself, renewed its strength in theupper air. The bare little farmhouse was a fixed fact, but she had manya palace into which she now and then withdrew; palaces peopled withstirring and gallant figures belonging to the world of romance; palacesnot without their heavenly apparitions too, breathing celestialcounsel. Every time she retired to her citadel of dreams she came forthradiant and refreshed, as one who has seen the evening star, or heardsweet music, or smelled the rose of joy.
Aurelia could have understood the feeling of a narrow-minded andconventional hen who has brought a strange, intrepid duckling into theworld; but her situation was still more wonderful, for she could onlycompare her sensations to those of some quiet brown Dorking who hasbrooded an ordinary egg and hatched a bird of paradise. Such an ideahad crossed her mind more than once during the past fortnight, and itflashed to and fro this mellow October morning when Rebecca came intothe room with her arms full of goldenrod and flaming autumn leaves.
"Just a hint of the fall styles, mother," she said, slipping the stemof a gorgeous red and yellow sapling between the mattress and the footof the bed. "This was leaning over the pool, and I was afraid it wouldbe vain if I left it there too long looking at its beautifulreflection, so I took it away from danger; isn't it wonderful? How Iwish I could carry one to poor aunt Miranda to-day! There's never aflower in the brick house when I'm away."
It was a marvelous morning. The sun had climbed into a world that heldin remembrance only a succession of golden days and starlit nights. Theair was fragrant with ripening fruit, and there was a mad little birdon a tree outside the door nearly bursting his throat with joy ofliving. He had forgotten that summer was over, that winter must evercome; and who could think of cold winds, bare boughs, or frozen streamson such a day? A painted moth came in at the open window and settled onthe tuft of brilliant leaves. Aurelia heard the bird and looked fromthe beauty of the glowing bush to her tall, splendid daughter, standinglike young Spring with golden Autumn in her arms.
Then suddenly she covered her eyes and cried, "I can't bear it! Here Ilie chained to this bed, interfering with everything you want to do.It's all wasted! All my saving and doing without; all your hard study;all Mirandy's outlay; everything that we thought was going to be themaking of you!"
"Mother, mother, don't talk so, don't think so!" exclaimed Rebecca,sitting down impetuously on the floor by the bed and dropping thegoldenrod by her side. "Why, mother, I'm only a little past seventeen!This person in a purple calico apron with flour on her nose is only thebeginnings of me! Do you remember the young tree that Johntransplanted? We had a dry summer and a cold winter and it didn't growa bit, nor show anything of all we did for it; then there was a goodyear and it made up for lost time. This is just my little 'rootingseason,' mother, but don't go and believe my day is over, because ithasn't begun! The old maple by the well that's in its hundredth yearhad new leaves this summer, so there must be hope for me at seventeen!"
"You can put a brave face on it," sobbed Aurelia, "but you can'tdeceive me. You've lost your place; you'll never see your friends here,and you're
nothing but a drudge!"
"I look like a drudge," said Rebecca mysteriously, with laughing eyes,"but I really am a princess; you mustn't tell, but this is only adisguise; I wear it for reasons of state. The king and queen who are atpresent occupying my throne are very old and tottering, and are goingto abdicate shortly in my favor. It's rather a small kingdom, Isuppose, as kingdoms go, so there isn't much struggle for it in royalcircles, and you mustn't expect to see a golden throne set with jewels.It will probably be only of ivory with a nice screen of peacockfeathers for a background; but you shall have a comfortable chair verynear it, with quantities of slaves to do what they call in novels your'lightest bidding.'"
Aurelia smiled in spite of herself, and though not perhaps whollydeceived, she was comforted.
"I only hope you won't have to wait too long for your thrones and yourkingdoms, Rebecca," she said, "and that I shall have a sight of thembefore I die; but life looks very hard and rough to me, what with youraunt Miranda a cripple at the brick house, me another here at the farm,you tied hand and foot, first with one and then with the other, to saynothing of Jenny and Fanny and Mark! You've got something of yourfather's happy disposition, or it would weigh on you as it does on me."
"Why, mother!" cried Rebecca, clasping her knees with her hands; "why,mother, it's enough joy just to be here in the world on a day likethis; to have the chance of seeing, feeling, doing, becoming! When youwere seventeen, mother, wasn't it good just to be alive? You haven'tforgotten?"
"No," said Aurelia, "but I wasn't so much alive as you are, never inthe world."
"I often think," Rebecca continued, walking to the window and lookingout at the trees,--"I often think how dreadful it would be if I werenot here at all. If Hannah had come, and then, instead of me, John;John and Jenny and Fanny and the others, but no Rebecca; never anyRebecca! To be alive makes up for everything; there ought to be fearsin my heart, but there aren't; something stronger sweeps them out,something like a wind. Oh, see! There is Will driving up the lane,mother, and he ought to have a letter from the brick house."