IX
ASHES OF ROSES
"There she is, over an hour late; a little more an' she'd 'a' beencaught in a thunder shower, but she'd never look ahead," said Mirandato Jane; "and added to all her other iniquities, if she ain't riggedout in that new dress, steppin' along with her father's dancin'-schoolsteps, and swingin' her parasol for all the world as if she wasplay-actin'. Now I'm the oldest, Jane, an' I intend to have my say out;if you don't like it you can go into the kitchen till it's over. Stepright in here, Rebecca; I want to talk to you. What did you put on thatgood new dress for, on a school day, without permission?"
"I had intended to ask you at noontime, but you weren't at home, so Icouldn't," began Rebecca.
"You did no such a thing; you put it on because you was left alone,though you knew well enough I wouldn't have let you."
"If I'd been CERTAIN you wouldn't have let me I'd never have done it,"said Rebecca, trying to be truthful; "but I wasn't CERTAIN, and it wasworth risking. I thought perhaps you might, if you knew it was almost areal exhibition at school."
"Exhibition!" exclaimed Miranda scornfully; "you are exhibition enoughby yourself, I should say. Was you exhibitin' your parasol?"
"The parasol WAS silly," confessed Rebecca, hanging her head; "but it'sthe only time in my whole life when I had anything to match it, and itlooked so beautiful with the pink dress! Emma Jane and I spoke adialogue about a city girl and a country girl, and it came to me justthe minute before I started how nice it would come in for the citygirl; and it did. I haven't hurt my dress a mite, aunt Mirandy."
"It's the craftiness and underhandedness of your actions that's theworst," said Miranda coldly. "And look at the other things you've done!It seems as if Satan possessed you! You went up the front stairs toyour room, but you didn't hide your tracks, for you dropped yourhandkerchief on the way up. You left the screen out of your bedroomwindow for the flies to come in all over the house. You never clearedaway your lunch nor set away a dish, AND YOU LEFT THE SIDE DOORUNLOCKED from half past twelve to three o'clock, so 't anybody could'a' come in and stolen what they liked!"
Rebecca sat down heavily in her chair as she heard the list of hertransgressions. How could she have been so careless? The tears began toflow now as she attempted to explain sins that never could be explainedor justified.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she faltered. "I was trimming the schoolroom, andgot belated, and ran all the way home. It was hard getting into mydress alone, and I hadn't time to eat but a mouthful, and just at thelast minute, when I honestly--HONESTLY--would have thought aboutclearing away and locking up, I looked at the clock and knew I couldhardly get back to school in time to form in the line; and I thoughthow dreadful it would be to go in late and get my first black mark on aFriday afternoon, with the minister's wife and the doctor's wife andthe school committee all there!"
"Don't wail and carry on now; it's no good cryin' over spilt milk,"answered Miranda. "An ounce of good behavior is worth a pound ofrepentance. Instead of tryin' to see how little trouble you can make ina house that ain't your own home, it seems as if you tried to see howmuch you could put us out. Take that rose out o' your dress and let mesee the spot it's made on your yoke, an' the rusty holes where the wetpin went in. No, it ain't; but it's more by luck than forethought. Iain't got any patience with your flowers and frizzled-out hair andfurbelows an' airs an' graces, for all the world like your Miss-Nancyfather."
Rebecca lifted her head in a flash. "Look here, aunt Mirandy, I'll beas good as I know how to be. I'll mind quick when I'm spoken to andnever leave the door unlocked again, but I won't have my father callednames. He was a p-perfectly l-lovely father, that's what he was, andit's MEAN to call him Miss Nancy!"
"Don't you dare answer me back that imperdent way, Rebecca, tellin' meI'm mean; your father was a vain, foolish, shiftless man, an' you mightas well hear it from me as anybody else; he spent your mother's moneyand left her with seven children to provide for."
"It's s-something to leave s-seven nice children," sobbed Rebecca.
"Not when other folks have to help feed, clothe, and educate 'em,"responded Miranda. "Now you step upstairs, put on your nightgown, go tobed, and stay there till to-morrow mornin'. You'll find a bowl o'crackers an' milk on your bureau, an' I don't want to hear a sound fromyou till breakfast time. Jane, run an' take the dish towels off theline and shut the shed doors; we're goin' to have a turrible shower."
"We've had it, I should think," said Jane quietly, as she went to doher sister's bidding. "I don't often speak my mind, Mirandy; but youought not to have said what you did about Lorenzo. He was what he was,and can't be made any different; but he was Rebecca's father, andAurelia always says he was a good husband."
Miranda had never heard the proverbial phrase about the only "goodIndian," but her mind worked in the conventional manner when she saidgrimly, "Yes, I've noticed that dead husbands are usually good ones;but the truth needs an airin' now and then, and that child will neveramount to a hill o' beans till she gets some of her father trounced outof her. I'm glad I said just what I did."
"I daresay you are," remarked Jane, with what might be described as oneof her annual bursts of courage; "but all the same, Mirandy, it wasn'tgood manners, and it wasn't good religion!"
The clap of thunder that shook the house just at that moment made nosuch peal in Miranda Sawyer's ears as Jane's remark made when it fellwith a deafening roar on her conscience.
Perhaps after all it is just as well to speak only once a year and thenspeak to the purpose.
Rebecca mounted the back stairs wearily, closed the door of herbedroom, and took off the beloved pink gingham with trembling fingers.Her cotton handkerchief was rolled into a hard ball, and in theintervals of reaching the more difficult buttons that lay between hershoulder blades and her belt, she dabbed her wet eyes carefully, sothat they should not rain salt water on the finery that had been wornat such a price. She smoothed it out carefully, pinched up the whiteruffle at the neck, and laid it away in a drawer with an extra littlesob at the roughness of life. The withered pink rose fell on the floor.Rebecca looked at it and thought to herself, "Just like my happy day!"Nothing could show more clearly the kind of child she was than the factthat she instantly perceived the symbolism of the rose, and laid it inthe drawer with the dress as if she were burying the whole episode withall its sad memories. It was a child's poetic instinct with a dawninghint of woman's sentiment in it.
She braided her hair in the two accustomed pig-tails, took off her bestshoes (which had happily escaped notice), with all the while a fixedresolve growing in her mind, that of leaving the brick house and goingback to the farm. She would not be received there with openarms,--there was no hope of that,--but she would help her mother aboutthe house and send Hannah to Riverboro in her place. "I hope she'lllike it!" she thought in a momentary burst of vindictiveness. She satby the window trying to make some sort of plan, watching the lightningplay over the hilltop and the streams of rain chasing each other downthe lightning rod. And this was the day that had dawned so joyfully! Ithad been a red sunrise, and she had leaned on the window sill studyingher lesson and thinking what a lovely world it was. And what a goldenmorning! The changing of the bare, ugly little schoolroom into a bowerof beauty; Miss Dearborn's pleasure at her success with the Simpsontwins' recitation; the privilege of decorating the blackboard; thehappy thought of drawing Columbia from the cigar box; the intoxicatingmoment when the school clapped her! And what an afternoon! How it wenton from glory to glory, beginning with Emma Jane's telling her, RebeccaRandall, that she was as "handsome as a picture."
She lived through the exercises again in memory, especially herdialogue with Emma Jane and her inspiration of using the bough-coveredstove as a mossy bank where the country girl could sit and watch herflocks. This gave Emma Jane a feeling of such ease that she neverrecited better; and how generous it was of her to lend the garnet ringto the city girl, fancying truly how it would flash as she furled herparasol and approached the awe-stricken shep
herdess! She had thoughtaunt Miranda might be pleased that the niece invited down from the farmhad succeeded so well at school; but no, there was no hope of pleasingher in that or in any other way. She would go to Maplewood on the stagenext day with Mr. Cobb and get home somehow from cousin Ann's. Onsecond thoughts her aunts might not allow it. Very well, she would slipaway now and see if she could stay all night with the Cobbs and be offnext morning before breakfast.
Rebecca never stopped long to think, more 's the pity, so she put onher oldest dress and hat and jacket, then wrapped her nightdress, comb,and toothbrush in a bundle and dropped it softly out of the window. Herroom was in the L and her window at no very dangerous distance from theground, though had it been, nothing could have stopped her at thatmoment. Somebody who had gone on the roof to clean out the gutters hadleft a cleat nailed to the side of the house about halfway between thewindow and the top of the back porch. Rebecca heard the sound of thesewing machine in the dining-room and the chopping of meat in thekitchen; so knowing the whereabouts of both her aunts, she scrambledout of the window, caught hold of the lightning rod, slid down to thehelpful cleat, jumped to the porch, used the woodbine trellis for aladder, and was flying up the road in the storm before she had time toarrange any details of her future movements.
Jeremiah Cobb sat at his lonely supper at the table by the kitchenwindow. "Mother," as he with his old-fashioned habits was in the habitof calling his wife, was nursing a sick neighbor. Mrs. Cobb was motheronly to a little headstone in the churchyard, where reposed "Sarah Ann,beloved daughter of Jeremiah and Sarah Cobb, aged seventeen months;"but the name of mother was better than nothing, and served at any rateas a reminder of her woman's crown of blessedness.
The rain still fell, and the heavens were dark, though it was scarcelyfive o'clock. Looking up from his "dish of tea," the old man saw at theopen door a very figure of woe. Rebecca's face was so swollen withtears and so sharp with misery that for a moment he scarcely recognizedher. Then when he heard her voice asking, "Please may I come in, Mr.Cobb?" he cried, "Well I vow! It's my little lady passenger! Come tocall on old uncle Jerry and pass the time o' day, hev ye? Why, you'rewet as sops. Draw up to the stove. I made a fire, hot as it was,thinkin' I wanted somethin' warm for my supper, bein' kind o' lonesomewithout mother. She's settin' up with Seth Strout to-night. There,we'll hang your soppy hat on the nail, put your jacket over the chairrail, an' then you turn your back to the stove an' dry yourself good."
Uncle Jerry had never before said so many words at a time, but he hadcaught sight of the child's red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, and hisbig heart went out to her in her trouble, quite regardless of anycircumstances that might have caused it.
Rebecca stood still for a moment until uncle Jerry took his seat againat the table, and then, unable to contain herself longer, cried, "Oh,Mr. Cobb, I've run away from the brick house, and I want to go back tothe farm. Will you keep me to-night and take me up to Maplewood in thestage? I haven't got any money for my fare, but I'll earn it somehowafterwards."
"Well, I guess we won't quarrel 'bout money, you and me," said the oldman; "and we've never had our ride together, anyway, though we allersmeant to go down river, not up."
"I shall never see Milltown now!" sobbed Rebecca.
"Come over here side o' me an' tell me all about it," coaxed uncleJerry. "Jest set down on that there wooden cricket an' out with thewhole story."
Rebecca leaned her aching head against Mr. Cobb's homespun knee andrecounted the history of her trouble. Tragic as that history seemed toher passionate and undisciplined mind, she told it truthfully andwithout exaggeration.