New Chronicles of Rebecca

“My hat! Oh! Aunt Miranda, my hateful hat!” cried Rebecca, never remembering at the instant how often she had prayed that the “fretful porcupine” might some time vanish in this violent manner, since it refused to die a natural death.

She had already stopped the horse, so, giving her aunt’s shawl one last desperate twitch, she slipped out between the wagon wheels, and darted in the direction of the hated object, the loss of which had dignified it with a temporary value and importance.

The stiff brown turban rose in the air, then dropped and flew along the bridge; Rebecca pursued; it danced along and stuck between two of the railings; Rebecca flew after it, her long braids floating in the wind.

“Come back! Come back! Don’t leave me alone with the team. I won’t have it! Come back, and leave your hat!”

Miranda had at length extricated herself from the submerging shawl, but she was so blinded by the wind, and so confused that she did not measure the financial loss involved in her commands.

Rebecca heard, but her spirit being in arms, she made one more mad scramble for the vagrant hat, which now seemed possessed with an evil spirit, for it flew back and forth, and bounded here and there, like a living thing, finally distinguishing itself by blowing between the horse’s front and hind legs, Rebecca trying to circumvent it by going around the wagon, and meeting it on the other side.

It was no use; as she darted from behind the wheels the wind gave the hat an extra whirl, and scurrying in the opposite direction it soared above the bridge rail and disappeared into the rapid water below.

“Get in again!” cried Miranda, holding on her bonnet. “You done your best and it can’t be helped, I only wish’t I’d let you wear your black hat as you wanted to; and I wish’t we’d never come such a day! The shawl has broke the stems of the velvet geraniums in my bonnet, and the wind has blowed away my shawl pin and my back comb. I’d like to give up and turn right back this minute, but I don’t like to borrer Perkins’s hoss again this month. When we get up in the woods you can smooth your hair down and tie the rigolette over your head and settle what’s left of my bonnet; it’ll be an expensive errant, this will!”

II

It was not till next morning that Rebecca’s heart really began its song of thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs. Perkins was going to Milliken’s Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a serviceable hat.

“You mustn’t pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn’t get the pink bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it won’t fade nor moult. Don’t buy a light-colored felt because you’ll get sick of it in two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always liked the shape of the brown one, and you’ll never get another trimmin’ that’ll wear like them quills.”

“I hope not!” thought Rebecca.

“If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and not worn it behind because you think it’s more grown-up an’ fash’onable, the wind never’d a’ took the hat off your head, and you wouldn’t a’ lost it; but the mischief’s done and you can go right over to Mis’ Perkins now, so you won’t miss her nor keep her waitin’. The two dollars and a half is in an envelope side o’ the clock.”

Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate, wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in Paradise.

The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any fault or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast, should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be practically indestructible.

“Whene’er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I’ll see; But if they’re trimmed with hedgehog quills They’ll not belong to me!”

So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the side entry.

“There’s ‘Bijah Flagg drivin’ in,” said Miss Miranda, going to the window. “Step out and see what he’s got, Jane; some passel from the Squire, I guess. It’s a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he wouldn’t wrop up a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin’ room door, Jane; it’s turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire’s hoss never stan’s still a minute cept when he’s goin’!”

Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.

“Guess what I’ve got for ye, Rebecky?”

No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.

“Nodhead apples?” she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and satin-skinned as an apple herself.

“No; guess again.”

“A flowering geranium?”

“Guess again!”

“Nuts? Oh! I can’t, Bijah; I’m just going to Milliken’s Mills on an errand, and I’m afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?”

“Reely for you, I guess!” and he opened the large brown paper bag and drew from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!

They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance. They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose that, when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in some near and happy future.

Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at this dramatic moment.

“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “Where, and how under the canopy, did you ever?”

“I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday,” chuckled Abijah, with a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, “an’ I seen this little bunnit skippin’ over the water jest as Becky does over the road. It’s shaped kind o’ like a boat, an’ gorry, ef it wa’nt sailin’ jest like a boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin’ plume?’ thinks I.”

(“Where indeed!” thought Rebecca stormily.)

“Then it come to me that I’d drove that plume to school and drove it to meetin’ and drove it to the Fair an’drove it most everywheres on Becky. So I reached out a pole an’ ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs an’ come to any damage, an’ here it is! The hat’s passed in its checks, I guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the plume’s bout’s good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o’ the plume.”

“It was real good of you, ‘Bijah, an’ we’re all of us obliged to you,” said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly with the other.

“Well, I do say,” she exclaimed, “and I guess I’ve said it before, that of all the wearing’ plumes that ever I see, that one’s the wearin’est! Seems though it just wouldn’t give up. Look at the way it’s held Mis’ Cobb’s dye; it’s about as brown’s when it went int’ the water.”

“Dyed, but not a mite dead,” grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated for his puns.

“And I declare,” Miranda continued, “when you think o’ the fuss they make about ostriches, killin’ em off by hundreds for the sake o’ their feathers that’ll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,—an’ all the time lettin’ useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why I can’t hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest how good they do last, an’ so they won’t use em for trimmin’. ‘Bijah’s right; the hat ain’t no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another this mornin’—any color or shape you fancy—an’ have Miss Morton sew these brown quills on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest to hide the roots. Then you’ll be fixed for another season, thanks to ‘Bijah.”

Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long with the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca’s affairs, for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage driver’s that same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable trimming, she laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen table and left the room, dimpling a little more than usual.

Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned in the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with great effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the Thought Book for the benefit of posterity:

“It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He said, ‘I’ll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho’ I may not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will last till crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue or green Or orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They never will be dead.’ And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his native heath, Said, I think I’ll pluck me some immmortelles And make me up a wreath.’

“R.R.R.”

Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS

I

Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long and full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important occurrences.

There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged; the year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire Bean’s chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick Academy in search of an education; and finally the year of her graduation, which, to the mind of seventeen, seems rather the culmination than the beginning of existence.

Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.

There was the day she first met her friend of friends, “Mr. Aladdin,” and the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral necklace. There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro under a cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads, telling her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of the Syrian missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic memory, as strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds’ wings and breasts that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered the moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new minister, for though many were tried only one was chosen; and finally there was the flag-raising, a festivity that thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society from centre to circumference, a festivity that took place just before she entered the Female Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss Dearborn and the village school.

There must have been other flag-raisings in history,—even the persons most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed that much,—but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or brilliancy of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of some pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal almanac.

The new minister’s wife was the being, under Providence, who had conceived the germinal idea of the flag.

At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction), as old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of the difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.