Bab Bab 3 · A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS

. A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS

A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS

"I don' know as I cal'lated to be the makin' of any child," Miranda had

said as she folded Aurelia's letter and laid it in the light-stand

drawer. "I s'posed, of course, Aurelia would send us the one we asked

for, but it's just like her to palm off that wild young one on somebody

else."

"You remember we said that Rebecca or even Jenny might come, in case

Hannah couldn't," interposed Jane.

"I know we did, but we hadn't any notion it would turn out that way,"

grumbled Miranda.

"She was a mite of a thing when we saw her three years ago," ventured

Jane; "she's had time to improve."

"And time to grow worse!"

"Won't it be kind of a privilege to put her on the right track?" asked

Jane timidly.

"I don' know about the privilege part; it'll be considerable of a

chore, I guess. If her mother hain't got her on the right track by now,

she won't take to it herself all of a sudden."

This depressed and depressing frame of mind had lasted until the

eventful day dawned on which Rebecca was to arrive.

"If she makes as much work after she comes as she has before, we might

as well give up hope of ever gettin' any rest," sighed Miranda as she

hung the dish towels on the barberry bushes at the side door.

"But we should have had to clean house, Rebecca or no Rebecca," urged

Jane; "and I can't see why you've scrubbed and washed and baked as you

have for that one child, nor why you've about bought out Watson's stock

of dry goods."

"I know Aurelia if you don't," responded Miranda. "I've seen her house,

and I've seen that batch o' children, wearin' one another's clothes and

never carin' whether they had 'em on right sid' out or not; I know what

they've had to live and dress on, and so do you. That child will like

as not come here with a passel o' things borrowed from the rest o' the

family. She'll have Hannah's shoes and John's undershirts and Mark's

socks most likely. I suppose she never had a thimble on her finger in

her life, but she'll know the feelin' o' one before she's ben here many

days. I've bought a piece of unbleached muslin and a piece o' brown

gingham for her to make up; that'll keep her busy. Of course she won't

pick up anything after herself; she probably never see a duster, and

she'll be as hard to train into our ways as if she was a heathen."

"She'll make a dif'rence," acknowledged Jane, "but she may turn out

more biddable 'n we think."

"She'll mind when she's spoken to, biddable or not," remarked Miranda

with a shake of the last towel.

Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for

any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood. She was

just, conscientious, economical, industrious; a regular attendant at

church and Sunday-school, and a member of the State Missionary and

Bible societies, but in the presence of all these chilly virtues you

longed for one warm little fault, or lacking that, one likable failing,

something to make you sure she was thoroughly alive. She had never had

any education other than that of the neighborhood district school, for

her desires and ambitions had all pointed to the management of the

house, the farm, and the dairy. Jane, on the other hand, had gone to an

academy, and also to a boarding-school for young ladies; so had

Aurelia; and after all the years that had elapsed there was still a

slight difference in language and in manner between the elder and the

two younger sisters.

Jane, too, had had the inestimable advantage of a sorrow; not the

natural grief at the loss of her aged father and mother, for she had

been content to let them go; but something far deeper. She was engaged

to marry young Tom Carter, who had nothing to marry on, it is true, but

who was sure to have, some time or other. Then the war broke out. Tom

enlisted at the first call. Up to that time Jane had loved him with a

quiet, friendly sort of affection, and had given her country a mild

emotion of the same sort. But the strife, the danger, the anxiety of

the time, set new currents of feeling in motion. Life became something

other than the three meals a day, the round of cooking, washing,

sewing, and church going. Personal gossip vanished from the village

conversation. Big things took the place of trifling ones,--sacred

sorrows of wives and mothers, pangs of fathers and husbands,

self-denials, sympathies, new desire to bear one another's burdens. Men

and women grew fast in those days of the nation's trouble and danger,

and Jane awoke from the vague dull dream she had hitherto called life

to new hopes, new fears, new purposes. Then after a year's anxiety, a

year when one never looked in the newspaper without dread and sickness

of suspense, came the telegram saying that Tom was wounded; and without

so much as asking Miranda's leave, she packed her trunk and started for

the South. She was in time to hold Tom's hand through hours of pain; to

show him for once the heart of a prim New England girl when it is

ablaze with love and grief; to put her arms about him so that he could

have a home to die in, and that was all;--all, but it served.

It carried her through weary months of nursing--nursing of other

soldiers for Tom's dear sake; it sent her home a better woman; and

though she had never left Riverboro in all the years that lay between,

and had grown into the counterfeit presentment of her sister and of all

other thin, spare, New England spinsters, it was something of a

counterfeit, and underneath was still the faint echo of that wild

heart-beat of her girlhood. Having learned the trick of beating and

loving and suffering, the poor faithful heart persisted, although it

lived on memories and carried on its sentimental operations mostly in

secret.

"You're soft, Jane," said Miranda once; "you allers was soft, and you

allers will be. If 't wa'n't for me keeping you stiffened up, I b'lieve

you'd leak out o' the house into the dooryard."

It was already past the appointed hour for Mr. Cobb and his coach to be

lumbering down the street.

"The stage ought to be here," said Miranda, glancing nervously at the

tall clock for the twentieth time. "I guess everything 's done. I've

tacked up two thick towels back of her washstand and put a mat under

her slop-jar; but children are awful hard on furniture. I expect we

sha'n't know this house a year from now."

Jane's frame of mind was naturally depressed and timorous, having been

affected by Miranda's gloomy presages of evil to come. The only

difference between the sisters in this matter was that while Miranda

only wondered how they could endure Rebecca, Jane had flashes of

inspiration in which she wondered how Rebecca would endure them. It was

in one of these flashes that she ran up the back stairs to put a vase

of apple blossoms and a red tomato-pincushion on Rebecca's bureau.

The stage rumbled to the side door of the brick house, and Mr. Cobb

handed Rebecca out like a real lady passenger. She alighted with great

circumspection, put the bunch of faded flowers in her aunt Miranda's

hand, and received her salute; it could hardly be called a kiss without

injuring the fair name of that commodity.

"You needn't 'a' bothered to bring flowers," remarked that gracious and

tactful lady; "the garden 's always full of 'em here when it comes

time."

Jane then kissed Rebecca, giving a somewhat better imitation of the

real thing than her sister. "Put the trunk in the entry, Jeremiah, and

we'll get it carried upstairs this afternoon," she said.

"I'll take it up for ye now, if ye say the word, girls."

"No, no; don't leave the horses; somebody'll be comin' past, and we can

call 'em in."

"Well, good-by, Rebecca; good-day, Mirandy 'n' Jane. You've got a

lively little girl there. I guess she'll be a first-rate company

keeper."

Miss Sawyer shuddered openly at the adjective "lively" as applied to a

child; her belief being that though children might be seen, if

absolutely necessary, they certainly should never be heard if she could

help it. "We're not much used to noise, Jane and me," she remarked

acidly.

Mr. Cobb saw that he had taken the wrong tack, but he was too unused to

argument to explain himself readily, so he drove away, trying to think

by what safer word than "lively" he might have described his

interesting little passenger.

"I'll take you up and show you your room, Rebecca," Miss Miranda said.

"Shut the mosquito nettin' door tight behind you, so 's to keep the

flies out; it ain't flytime yet, but I want you to start right; take

your passel along with ye and then you won't have to come down for it;

always make your head save your heels. Rub your feet on that braided

rug; hang your hat and cape in the entry there as you go past."

"It's my best hat," said Rebecca

"Take it upstairs then and put it in the clothes-press; but I shouldn't

'a' thought you'd 'a' worn your best hat on the stage."

"It's my only hat," explained Rebecca. "My every-day hat wasn't good

enough to bring. Fanny's going to finish it."

"Lay your parasol in the entry closet."

"Do you mind if I keep it in my room, please? It always seems safer."

"There ain't any thieves hereabouts, and if there was, I guess they

wouldn't make for your sunshade, but come along. Remember to always go

up the back way; we don't use the front stairs on account o' the

carpet; take care o' the turn and don't ketch your foot; look to your

right and go in. When you've washed your face and hands and brushed

your hair you can come down, and by and by we'll unpack your trunk and

get you settled before supper. Ain't you got your dress on hind sid'

foremost?"

Rebecca drew her chin down and looked at the row of smoked pearl

buttons running up and down the middle of her flat little chest.

"Hind side foremost? Oh, I see! No, that's all right. If you have seven

children you can't keep buttonin' and unbuttonin' 'em all the

time--they have to do themselves. We're always buttoned up in front at

our house. Mira's only three, but she's buttoned up in front, too."

Miranda said nothing as she closed the door, but her looks were at once

equivalent to and more eloquent than words.

Rebecca stood perfectly still in the centre of the floor and looked

about her. There was a square of oilcloth in front of each article of

furniture and a drawn-in rug beside the single four poster, which was

covered with a fringed white dimity counterpane.

Everything was as neat as wax, but the ceilings were much higher than

Rebecca was accustomed to. It was a north room, and the window, which

was long and narrow, looked out on the back buildings and the barn.

It was not the room, which was far more comfortable than Rebecca's own

at the farm, nor the lack of view, nor yet the long journey, for she

was not conscious of weariness; it was not the fear of a strange place,

for she loved new places and courted new sensations; it was because of

some curious blending of uncomprehended emotions that Rebecca stood her

sunshade in the corner, tore off her best hat, flung it on the bureau

with the porcupine quills on the under side, and stripping down the

dimity spread, precipitated herself into the middle of the bed and

pulled the counterpane over her head.

In a moment the door opened quietly. Knocking was a refinement quite

unknown in Riverboro, and if it had been heard of would never have been

wasted on a child.

Miss Miranda entered, and as her eye wandered about the vacant room, it

fell upon a white and tempestuous ocean of counterpane, an ocean

breaking into strange movements of wave and crest and billow.

"REBECCA!"

The tone in which the word was voiced gave it all the effect of having

been shouted from the housetops.

A dark ruffled head and two frightened eyes appeared above the dimity

spread.

"What are you layin' on your good bed in the daytime for, messin' up

the feathers, and dirtyin' the pillers with your dusty boots?"

Rebecca rose guiltily. There seemed no excuse to make. Her offense was

beyond explanation or apology.

"I'm sorry, aunt Mirandy--something came over me; I don't know what."

"Well, if it comes over you very soon again we'll have to find out what

't is. Spread your bed up smooth this minute, for 'Bijah Flagg 's

bringin' your trunk upstairs, and I wouldn't let him see such a

cluttered-up room for anything; he'd tell it all over town."

When Mr. Cobb had put up his horses that night he carried a kitchen

chair to the side of his wife, who was sitting on the back porch.

"I brought a little Randall girl down on the stage from Maplewood

to-day, mother. She's kin to the Sawyer girls an' is goin' to live with

'em," he said, as he sat down and began to whittle. "She's that

Aurelia's child, the one that ran away with Susan Randall's son just

before we come here to live."

"How old a child?"

"'Bout ten, or somewhere along there, an' small for her age; but land!

she might be a hundred to hear her talk! She kep' me jumpin' tryin' to

answer her! Of all the queer children I ever come across she's the

queerest. She ain't no beauty--her face is all eyes; but if she ever

grows up to them eyes an' fills out a little she'll make folks stare.

Land, mother! I wish 't you could 'a' heard her talk."

"I don't see what she had to talk about, a child like that, to a

stranger," replied Mrs. Cobb.

"Stranger or no stranger, 't wouldn't make no difference to her. She'd

talk to a pump or a grind-stun; she'd talk to herself ruther 'n keep

still."

"What did she talk about?"

"Blamed if I can repeat any of it. She kep' me so surprised I didn't

have my wits about me. She had a little pink sunshade--it kind o'

looked like a doll's amberill, 'n' she clung to it like a burr to a

woolen stockin'. I advised her to open it up--the sun was so hot; but

she said no, 't would fade, an' she tucked it under her dress. 'It's

the dearest thing in life to me,' says she, 'but it's a dreadful care.'

Them 's the very words, an' it's all the words I remember. 'It's the

dearest thing in life to me, but it's an awful care!' "--here Mr. Cobb

laughed aloud as he tipped his chair back against the side of the

house. "There was another thing, but I can't get it right exactly. She

was talkin' 'bout the circus parade an' the snake charmer in a gold

chariot, an' says she, 'She was so beautiful beyond compare, Mr. Cobb,

that it made you have lumps in your throat to look at her.' She'll be

comin' over to see you, mother, an' you can size her up for yourself. I

don' know how she'll git on with Mirandy Sawyer--poor little soul!"

This doubt was more or less openly expressed in Riverboro, which,

however, had two opinions on the subject; one that it was a most

generous thing in the Sawyer girls to take one of Aurelia's children to

educate, the other that the education would be bought at a price wholly

out of proportion to its intrinsic value.

Rebecca's first letters to her mother would seem to indicate that she

cordially coincided with the latter view of the situation.