New Chronicles of Rebecca

“I ain’t sayin’ but it can if it sets out, but it has to begin early and stay late on a man like Simpson.”

“Now, Mirandy, Abner ain’t more’n forty! I don’t know what the average age for repentance is in men-folks, but when you think of what an awful sight of em leaves it to their deathbeds, forty seems real kind of young. Not that I’ve heard Abner has experienced religion, but everybody’s surprised at the good way he’s conductin’ this fall.”

“They’ll be surprised the other way round when they come to miss their firewood and apples and potatoes again,” affirmed Miranda.

“Clara Belle don’t seem to have inherited from her father,” Jane ventured again timidly. “No wonder Mrs. Fogg sets such store by the girl. 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,” was Miranda’s retort.

“Folks can’t stop to figure out just what’s the Lord’s will when a child has upset a kettle of scalding water on to himself,” and as she spoke Jane darned more excitedly. “Mrs. Fogg knows well enough she hadn’t ought to have left that baby alone in the kitchen with the stove, even if she did see Clara Belle comin’ across lots. She’d ought to have waited before drivin’ off; but of course she was afraid of missing the train, 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 the word!” 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 Miranda asserted; “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’s when there wasn’t a soul on hand to advise her! Two or three more such actions would make the Simpson name sound consid’rable sweeter in this neighborhood.”

“Simpson will always sound like Simpson to me!” vouchsafed the elder sister, “but we’ve talked enough about em an’ to spare. You can go along, Rebecca; but remember that a child is known by the company she keeps.”

“All right, Aunt Miranda; thank you!” cried Rebecca, leaping from the chair on which she had been twisting nervously for five minutes. “And how does this strike you? Would you be in favor of my taking Clara Belle a company-tart?”

“Don’t Mrs. Fogg feed the young one, now she’s taken her right into the family?”

“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 taking a present lets the person know you’ve been thinking about them and are extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those tarts will have to be eaten by the family, and a new batch made; you remember the one I had when I was rewarding myself last week? That was queer—but nice,” she added hastily.

“Mebbe you could think of something of your own you could give away without taking my tarts!” responded Miranda tersely; the joints of her armor having been pierced by the fatally keen tongue of her niece, who had 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 any idea that it would ever be eaten by guests, but because it was too good for every-day use.

Rebecca’s face crimsoned with shame that she had drifted into an impolite 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. And oh! I know what I can take Clara Belle! A few chocolate drops out of the box Mr. Ladd gave me on my birthday.”

“You go down cellar and get that tart, same as I told you,” commanded Miranda, “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 rubbers and your thick jacket. After runnin’ all the way down there—for your legs never seem to be rigged for walkin’ like other girls’—you’ll set down on some damp stone or other and ketch your death o’ cold, an’ your Aunt Jane n’ I’ll be kep’ up nights nursin’ you and luggin’ your meals upstairs to you on a waiter.”

Here Miranda leaned her head against the back of her rocking chair, dropped her knitting and closed her eyes wearily, for when the immovable body is opposed by the irresistible force there is a certain amount of jar and disturbance involved in the operation.

Rebecca moved toward the side door, shooting a questioning glance at Aunt Jane as she passed. The look was full of mysterious suggestion and was accompanied by an almost imperceptible gesture. Miss Jane knew that certain articles were kept in the entry closet, and by this time she had become sufficiently expert in telegraphy to know that Rebecca’s unspoken query meant: “COULD YOU PERMIT THE HAT WITH THE RED WINGS, IT BEING SATURDAY, FINE SETTLED WEATHER, AND A PLEASURE EXCURSION?”

These confidential requests, though fraught with embarrassment when Miranda was in the room, gave Jane much secret joy; there was something about them that stirred her spinster heart—they were so gay, so appealing, so un-Sawyer-, un-Riverboro-like. The longer Rebecca lived in the brick house the more her Aunt Jane marveled at the child. What made her so different from everybody else. Could it be that her graceless popinjay of a father, Lorenzo de Medici Randall, had bequeathed her some strange 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 and words, proclaimed her a changeling in the Sawyer tribe; but what an enchanting changeling; bringing wit and nonsense and color and delight into the gray monotony of the dragging years!

There was frost in the air, but a bright cheery sun, as Rebecca walked decorously out of the brick house yard. Emma Jane Perkins was away over Sunday on a visit to a cousin in Moderation; Alice Robinson and Candace Milliken were having measles, and Riverboro was very quiet. Still, life was seldom anything but a gay adventure to Rebecca, and she started afresh every morning to its conquest. She was not exacting; the Asmodean feat of spinning a sand heap into twine was, poetically speaking, always in her power, so the mile walk to the pink-house gate, and the tryst with freckled, red-haired Clara Belle Simpson, whose face Miss Miranda said looked like a raw pie in a brick oven, these commonplace incidents were sufficiently exhilarating to brighten her eye and quicken her step.

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!”