บทที่ บทที่ 2 · REBECCA'S RELATIONS

. REBECCA'S RELATIONS

REBECCA'S RELATIONS

They had been called the Sawyer girls when Miranda at eighteen, Jane at

twelve, and Aurelia at eight participated in the various activities of

village life; and when Riverboro fell into a habit of thought or

speech, it saw no reason for falling out of it, at any rate in the same

century. So although Miranda and Jane were between fifty and sixty at

the time this story opens, Riverboro still called them the Sawyer

girls. They were spinsters; but Aurelia, the youngest, had made what

she called a romantic marriage and what her sisters termed a mighty

poor speculation. "There's worse things than bein' old maids," they

said; whether they thought so is quite another matter.

The element of romance in Aurelia's marriage existed chiefly in the

fact that Mr. L. D. M. Randall had a soul above farming or trading and

was a votary of the Muses. He taught the weekly singing-school (then a

feature of village life) in half a dozen neighboring towns, he played

the violin and "called off" at dances, or evoked rich harmonies from

church melodeons on Sundays. He taught certain uncouth lads, when they

were of an age to enter society, the intricacies of contra dances, or

the steps of the schottische and mazurka, and he was a marked figure in

all social assemblies, though conspicuously absent from town-meetings

and the purely masculine gatherings at the store or tavern or bridge.

His hair was a little longer, his hands a little whiter, his shoes a

little thinner, his manner a trifle more polished, than that of his

soberer mates; indeed the only department of life in which he failed to

shine was the making of sufficient money to live upon. Luckily he had

no responsibilities; his father and his twin brother had died when he

was yet a boy, and his mother, whose only noteworthy achievement had

been the naming of her twin sons Marquis de Lafayette and Lorenzo de

Medici Randall, had supported herself and educated her child by making

coats up to the very day of her death. She was wont to say plaintively,

"I'm afraid the faculties was too much divided up between my twins. L.

D. M. is awful talented, but I guess M. D. L. would 'a' ben the

practical one if he'd 'a' lived."

"L. D. M. was practical enough to get the richest girl in the village,"

replied Mrs. Robinson.

"Yes," sighed his mother, "there it is again; if the twins could 'a'

married Aurelia Sawyer, 't would 'a' been all right. L. D. M. was

talented 'nough to GET Reely's money, but M. D. L. would 'a' ben

practical 'nough to have KEP' it."

Aurelia's share of the modest Sawyer property had been put into one

thing after another by the handsome and luckless Lorenzo de Medici. He

had a graceful and poetic way of making an investment for each new son

and daughter that blessed their union. "A birthday present for our

child, Aurelia," he would say,--"a little nest-egg for the future;" but

Aurelia once remarked in a moment of bitterness that the hen never

lived that could sit on those eggs and hatch anything out of them.

Miranda and Jane had virtually washed their hands of Aurelia when she

married Lorenzo de Medici Randall. Having exhausted the resources of

Riverboro and its immediate vicinity, the unfortunate couple had moved

on and on in a steadily decreasing scale of prosperity until they had

reached Temperance, where they had settled down and invited fate to do

its worst, an invitation which was promptly accepted. The maiden

sisters at home wrote to Aurelia two or three times a year, and sent

modest but serviceable presents to the children at Christmas, but

refused to assist L. D. M. with the regular expenses of his rapidly

growing family. His last investment, made shortly before the birth of

Miranda (named in a lively hope of favors which never came), was a

small farm two miles from Temperance. Aurelia managed this herself, and

so it proved a home at least, and a place for the unsuccessful Lorenzo

to die and to be buried from, a duty somewhat too long deferred, many

thought, which he performed on the day of Mira's birth.

It was in this happy-go-lucky household that Rebecca had grown up. It

was just an ordinary family; two or three of the children were handsome

and the rest plain, three of them rather clever, two industrious, and

two commonplace and dull. Rebecca had her father's facility and had

been his aptest pupil. She "carried" the alto by ear, danced without

being taught, played the melodeon without knowing the notes. Her love

of books she inherited chiefly from her mother, who found it hard to

sweep or cook or sew when there was a novel in the house. Fortunately

books were scarce, or the children might sometimes have gone ragged and

hungry.

But other forces had been at work in Rebecca, and the traits of unknown

forbears had been wrought into her fibre. Lorenzo de Medici was flabby

and boneless; Rebecca was a thing of fire and spirit: he lacked energy

and courage; Rebecca was plucky at two and dauntless at five. Mrs.

Randall and Hannah had no sense of humor; Rebecca possessed and showed

it as soon as she could walk and talk.

She had not been able, however, to borrow her parents' virtues and

those of other generous ancestors and escape all the weaknesses in the

calendar. She had not her sister Hannah's patience or her brother

John's sturdy staying power. Her will was sometimes willfulness, and

the ease with which she did most things led her to be impatient of hard

tasks or long ones. But whatever else there was or was not, there was

freedom at Randall's farm. The children grew, worked, fought, ate what

and slept where they could; loved one another and their parents pretty

well, but with no tropical passion; and educated themselves for nine

months of the year, each one in his own way.

As a result of this method Hannah, who could only have been developed

by forces applied from without, was painstaking, humdrum, and limited;

while Rebecca, who apparently needed nothing but space to develop in,

and a knowledge of terms in which to express herself, grew and grew and

grew, always from within outward. Her forces of one sort and another

had seemingly been set in motion when she was born; they needed no

daily spur, but moved of their own accord--towards what no one knew,

least of all Rebecca herself. The field for the exhibition of her

creative instinct was painfully small, and the only use she had made of

it as yet was to leave eggs out of the corn bread one day and milk

another, to see how it would turn out; to part Fanny's hair sometimes

in the middle, sometimes on the right, and sometimes on the left side;

and to play all sorts of fantastic pranks with the children,

occasionally bringing them to the table as fictitious or historical

characters found in her favorite books. Rebecca amused her mother and

her family generally, but she never was counted of serious importance,

and though considered "smart" and old for her age, she was never

thought superior in any way. Aurelia's experience of genius, as

exemplified in the deceased Lorenzo de Medici led her into a greater

admiration of plain, every-day common sense, a quality in which

Rebecca, it must be confessed, seemed sometimes painfully deficient.

Hannah was her mother's favorite, so far as Aurelia could indulge

herself in such recreations as partiality. The parent who is obliged to

feed and clothe seven children on an income of fifteen dollars a month

seldom has time to discriminate carefully between the various members

of her brood, but Hannah at fourteen was at once companion and partner

in all her mother's problems. She it was who kept the house while

Aurelia busied herself in barn and field. Rebecca was capable of

certain set tasks, such as keeping the small children from killing

themselves and one another, feeding the poultry, picking up chips,

hulling strawberries, wiping dishes; but she was thought irresponsible,

and Aurelia, needing somebody to lean on (having never enjoyed that

luxury with the gifted Lorenzo), leaned on Hannah. Hannah showed the

result of this attitude somewhat, being a trifle careworn in face and

sharp in manner; but she was a self-contained, well-behaved, dependable

child, and that is the reason her aunts had invited her to Riverboro to

be a member of their family and participate in all the advantages of

their loftier position in the world. It was several years since Miranda

and Jane had seen the children, but they remembered with pleasure that

Hannah had not spoken a word during the interview, and it was for this

reason that they had asked for the pleasure of her company. Rebecca, on

the other hand, had dressed up the dog in John's clothes, and being

requested to get the three younger children ready for dinner, she had

held them under the pump and then proceeded to "smack" their hair flat

to their heads by vigorous brushing, bringing them to the table in such

a moist and hideous state of shininess that their mother was ashamed of

their appearance. Rebecca's own black locks were commonly pushed

smoothly off her forehead, but on this occasion she formed what I must

perforce call by its only name, a spit-curl, directly in the centre of

her brow, an ornament which she was allowed to wear a very short time,

only in fact till Hannah was able to call her mother's attention to it,

when she was sent into the next room to remove it and to come back

looking like a Christian. This command she interpreted somewhat too

literally perhaps, because she contrived in a space of two minutes an

extremely pious style of hairdressing, fully as effective if not as

startling as the first. These antics were solely the result of nervous

irritation, a mood born of Miss Miranda Sawyer's stiff, grim, and

martial attitude. The remembrance of Rebecca was so vivid that their

sister Aurelia's letter was something of a shock to the quiet, elderly

spinsters of the brick house; for it said that Hannah could not

possibly be spared for a few years yet, but that Rebecca would come as

soon as she could be made ready; that the offer was most thankfully

appreciated, and that the regular schooling and church privileges, as

well as the influence of the Sawyer home, would doubtless be "the

making of Rebecca."