Chapter Chapter 16 · SEASONS OF GROWTH

. SEASONS OF GROWTH

SEASONS OF GROWTH

The days flew by; as summer had melted into autumn so autumn had given

place to winter. Life in the brick house had gone on more placidly of

late, for Rebecca was honestly trying to be more careful in the

performance of her tasks and duties as well as more quiet in her plays,

and she was slowly learning the power of the soft answer in turning

away wrath.

Miranda had not had, perhaps, quite as many opportunities in which to

lose her temper, but it is only just to say that she had not fully

availed herself of all that had offered themselves.

There had been one outburst of righteous wrath occasioned by Rebecca's

over-hospitable habits, which were later shown in a still more dramatic

and unexpected fashion.

On a certain Friday afternoon she asked her aunt Miranda if she might

take half her bread and milk upstairs to a friend.

"What friend have you got up there, for pity's sake?" demanded aunt

Miranda.

"The Simpson baby, come to stay over Sunday; that is, if you're

willing, Mrs. Simpson says she is. Shall I bring her down and show her?

She's dressed in an old dress of Emma Jane's and she looks sweet."

"You can bring her down, but you can't show her to me! You can smuggle

her out the way you smuggled her in and take her back to her mother.

Where on earth do you get your notions, borrowing a baby for Sunday!"

"You're so used to a house without a baby you don't know how dull it

is," sighed Rebecca resignedly, as she moved towards the door; "but at

the farm there was always a nice fresh one to play with and cuddle.

There were too many, but that's not half as bad as none at all. Well,

I'll take her back. She'll be dreadfully disappointed and so will Mrs.

Simpson. She was planning to go to Milltown."

"She can un-plan then," observed Miss Miranda.

"Perhaps I can go up there and take care of the baby?" suggested

Rebecca. "I brought her home so 't I could do my Saturday work just the

same."

"You've got enough to do right here, without any borrowed babies to

make more steps. Now, no answering back, just give the child some

supper and carry it home where it belongs."

"You don't want me to go down the front way, hadn't I better just come

through this room and let you look at her? She has yellow hair and big

blue eyes! Mrs. Simpson says she takes after her father."

Miss Miranda smiled acidly as she said she couldn't take after her

father, for he'd take any thing there was before she got there!

Aunt Jane was in the linen closet upstairs, sorting out the clean

sheets and pillow cases for Saturday, and Rebecca sought comfort from

her.

"I brought the Simpson baby home, aunt Jane, thinking it would help us

over a dull Sunday, but aunt Miranda won't let her stay. Emma Jane has

the promise of her next Sunday and Alice Robinson the next. Mrs.

Simpson wanted I should have her first because I've had so much

experience in babies. Come in and look at her sitting up in my bed,

aunt Jane! Isn't she lovely? She's the fat, gurgly kind, not thin and

fussy like some babies, and I thought I was going to have her to

undress and dress twice each day. Oh dear! I wish I could have a

printed book with everything set down in it that I COULD do, and then I

wouldn't get disappointed so often."

"No book could be printed that would fit you, Rebecca," answered aunt

Jane, "for nobody could imagine beforehand the things you'd want to do.

Are you going to carry that heavy child home in your arms?"

"No, I'm going to drag her in the little soap-wagon. Come, baby! Take

your thumb out of your mouth and come to ride with Becky in your

go-cart." She stretched out her strong young arms to the crowing baby,

sat down in a chair with the child, turned her upside down

unceremoniously, took from her waistband and scornfully flung away a

crooked pin, walked with her (still in a highly reversed position) to

the bureau, selected a large safety pin, and proceeded to attach her

brief red flannel petticoat to a sort of shirt that she wore. Whether

flat on her stomach, or head down, heels in the air, the Simpson baby

knew she was in the hands of an expert, and continued gurgling placidly

while aunt Jane regarded the pantomime with a kind of dazed awe.

"Bless my soul, Rebecca," she ejaculated, "it beats all how handy you

are with babies!"

"I ought to be; I've brought up three and a half of 'em," Rebecca

responded cheerfully, pulling up the infant Simpson's stockings.

"I should think you'd be fonder of dolls than you are," said Jane.

"I do like them, but there's never any change in a doll; it's always

the same everlasting old doll, and you have to make believe it's cross

or sick, or it loves you, or can't bear you. Babies are more trouble,

but nicer."

Miss Jane stretched out a thin hand with a slender, worn band of gold

on the finger, and the baby curled her dimpled fingers round it and

held it fast.

"You wear a ring on your engagement finger, don't you, aunt Jane? Did

you ever think about getting married?"

"Yes, dear, long ago."

"What happened, aunt Jane?"

"He died--just before."

"Oh!" And Rebecca's eyes grew misty.

"He was a soldier and he died of a gunshot wound, in a hospital, down

South."

"Oh! aunt Jane!" softly. "Away from you?"

"No, I was with him."

"Was he young?"

"Yes; young and brave and handsome, Rebecca; he was Mr. Carter's

brother Tom."

"Oh! I'm so glad you were with him! Wasn't he glad, aunt Jane?"

Jane looked back across the half-forgotten years, and the vision of

Tom's gladness flashed upon her: his haggard smile, the tears in his

tired eyes, his outstretched arms, his weak voice saying, "Oh, Jenny!

Dear Jenny! I've wanted you so, Jenny!" It was too much! She had never

breathed a word of it before to a human creature, for there was no one

who would have understood. Now, in a shamefaced way, to hide her

brimming eyes, she put her head down on the young shoulder beside her,

saying, "It was hard, Rebecca!"

The Simpson baby had cuddled down sleepily in Rebecca's lap, leaning

her head back and sucking her thumb contentedly. Rebecca put her cheek

down until it touched her aunt's gray hair and softly patted her, as

she said, "I'm sorry, aunt Jane!"

The girl's eyes were soft and tender and the heart within her stretched

a little and grew; grew in sweetness and intuition and depth of

feeling. It had looked into another heart, felt it beat, and heard it

sigh; and that is how all hearts grow.

Episodes like these enlivened the quiet course of every-day existence,

made more quiet by the departure of Dick Carter, Living Perkins, and

Huldah Meserve for Wareham, and the small attendance at the winter

school, from which the younger children of the place stayed away during

the cold weather.

Life, however, could never be thoroughly dull or lacking in adventure

to a child of Rebecca's temperament. Her nature was full of

adaptability, fluidity, receptivity. She made friends everywhere she

went, and snatched up acquaintances in every corner.

It was she who ran to the shed door to take the dish to the "meat man"

or "fish man;" she who knew the family histories of the itinerant fruit

venders and tin peddlers; she who was asked to take supper or pass the

night with children in neighboring villages--children of whose parents

her aunts had never so much as heard. As to the nature of these

friendships, which seemed so many to the eye of the superficial

observer, they were of various kinds, and while the girl pursued them

with enthusiasm and ardor, they left her unsatisfied and heart-hungry;

they were never intimacies such as are so readily made by shallow

natures. She loved Emma Jane, but it was a friendship born of

propinquity and circumstance, not of true affinity. It was her

neighbor's amiability, constancy, and devotion that she loved, and

although she rated these qualities at their true value, she was always

searching beyond them for intellectual treasures; searching and never

finding, for although Emma Jane had the advantage in years she was

still immature. Huldah Meserve had an instinctive love of fun which

appealed to Rebecca; she also had a fascinating knowledge of the world,

from having visited her married sisters in Milltown and Portland; but

on the other hand there was a certain sharpness and lack of sympathy in

Huldah which repelled rather than attracted. With Dick Carter she could

at least talk intelligently about lessons. He was a very ambitious boy,

full of plans for his future, which he discussed quite freely with

Rebecca, but when she broached the subject of her future his interest

sensibly lessened. Into the world of the ideal, Emma Jane, Huldah, and

Dick alike never seemed to have peeped, and the consciousness of this

was always a fixed gulf between them and Rebecca.

"Uncle Jerry" and "aunt Sarah" Cobb were dear friends of quite another

sort, a very satisfying and perhaps a somewhat dangerous one. A visit

from Rebecca always sent them into a twitter of delight. Her merry

conversation and quaint comments on life in general fairly dazzled the

old couple, who hung on her lightest word as if it had been a prophet's

utterance; and Rebecca, though she had had no previous experience,

owned to herself a perilous pleasure in being dazzling, even to a

couple of dear humdrum old people like Mr. and Mrs. Cobb. Aunt Sarah

flew to the pantry or cellar whenever Rebecca's slim little shape first

appeared on the crest of the hill, and a jelly tart or a frosted cake

was sure to be forthcoming. The sight of old uncle Jerry's spare figure

in its clean white shirt sleeves, whatever the weather, always made

Rebecca's heart warm when she saw him peer longingly from the kitchen

window. Before the snow came, many was the time he had come out to sit

on a pile of boards at the gate, to see if by any chance she was

mounting the hill that led to their house. In the autumn Rebecca was

often the old man's companion while he was digging potatoes or shelling

beans, and now in the winter, when a younger man was driving the stage,

she sometimes stayed with him while he did his evening milking. It is

safe to say that he was the only creature in Riverboro who possessed

Rebecca's entire confidence; the only being to whom she poured out her

whole heart, with its wealth of hopes, and dreams, and vague ambitions.

At the brick house she practiced scales and exercises, but at the

Cobbs' cabinet organ she sang like a bird, improvising simple

accompaniments that seemed to her ignorant auditors nothing short of

marvelous. Here she was happy, here she was loved, here she was drawn

out of herself and admired and made much of. But, she thought, if there

were somebody who not only loved but understood; who spoke her

language, comprehended her desires, and responded to her mysterious

longings! Perhaps in the big world of Wareham there would be people who

thought and dreamed and wondered as she did.

In reality Jane did not understand her niece very much better than

Miranda; the difference between the sisters was, that while Jane was

puzzled, she was also attracted, and when she was quite in the dark for

an explanation of some quaint or unusual action she was sympathetic as

to its possible motive and believed the best. A greater change had come

over Jane than over any other person in the brick house, but it had

been wrought so secretly, and concealed so religiously, that it

scarcely appeared to the ordinary observer. Life had now a motive

utterly lacking before. Breakfast was not eaten in the kitchen, because

it seemed worth while, now that there were three persons, to lay the

cloth in the dining-room; it was also a more bountiful meal than of

yore, when there was no child to consider. The morning was made

cheerful by Rebecca's start for school, the packing of the luncheon

basket, the final word about umbrella, waterproof, or rubbers; the

parting admonition and the unconscious waiting at the window for the

last wave of the hand. She found herself taking pride in Rebecca's

improved appearance, her rounder throat and cheeks, and her better

color; she was wont to mention the length of Rebecca's hair and add a

word as to its remarkable evenness and lustre, at times when Mrs.

Perkins grew too diffuse about Emma Jane's complexion. She threw

herself wholeheartedly on her niece's side when it became a question

between a crimson or a brown linsey-woolsey dress, and went through a

memorable struggle with her sister concerning the purchase of a red

bird for Rebecca's black felt hat. No one guessed the quiet pleasure

that lay hidden in her heart when she watched the girl's dark head bent

over her lessons at night, nor dreamed of her joy in, certain quiet

evenings when Miranda went to prayer meeting; evenings when Rebecca

would read aloud Hiawatha or Barbara Frietchie, The Bugle Song, or The

Brook. Her narrow, humdrum existence bloomed under the dews that fell

from this fresh spirit; her dullness brightened under the kindling

touch of the younger mind, took fire from the "vital spark of heavenly

flame" that seemed always to radiate from Rebecca's presence.

Rebecca's idea of being a painter like her friend Miss Ross was

gradually receding, owing to the apparently insuperable difficulties in

securing any instruction. Her aunt Miranda saw no wisdom in cultivating

such a talent, and could not conceive that any money could ever be

earned by its exercise, "Hand painted pictures" were held in little

esteem in Riverboro, where the cheerful chromo or the dignified steel

engraving were respected and valued. There was a slight, a very slight

hope, that Rebecca might be allowed a few music lessons from Miss

Morton, who played the church cabinet organ, but this depended entirely

upon whether Mrs. Morton would decide to accept a hayrack in return for

a year's instruction from her daughter. She had the matter under

advisement, but a doubt as to whether or not she would sell or rent her

hayfields kept her from coming to a conclusion. Music, in common with

all other accomplishments, was viewed by Miss Miranda as a trivial,

useless, and foolish amusement, but she allowed Rebecca an hour a day

for practice on the old piano, and a little extra time for lessons, if

Jane could secure them without payment of actual cash.

The news from Sunnybrook Farm was hopeful rather than otherwise. Cousin

Ann's husband had died, and John, Rebecca's favorite brother, had gone

to be the man of the house to the widowed cousin. He was to have good

schooling in return for his care of the horse and cow and barn, and

what was still more dazzling, the use of the old doctor's medical

library of two or three dozen volumes. John's whole heart was set on

becoming a country doctor, with Rebecca to keep house for him, and the

vision seemed now so true, so near, that he could almost imagine his

horse ploughing through snowdrifts on errands of mercy, or, less

dramatic but none the less attractive, could see a physician's neat

turncut trundling along the shady country roads, a medicine case

between his, Dr. Randall's, feet, and Miss Rebecca Randall sitting in a

black silk dress by his side.

Hannah now wore her hair in a coil and her dresses a trifle below her

ankles, these concessions being due to her extreme height. Mark had

broken his collar bone, but it was healing well. Little Mira was

growing very pretty. There was even a rumor that the projected railroad

from Temperance to Plumville might go near the Randall farm, in which

case land would rise in value from nothing-at-all an acre to something

at least resembling a price. Mrs. Randall refused to consider any

improvement in their financial condition as a possibility. Content to

work from sunrise to sunset to gain a mere subsistence for her

children, she lived in their future, not in her own present, as a

mother is wont to do when her own lot seems hard and cheerless.