VII
RIVERBORO SECRETS
Mr. Simpson spent little time with his family, owing to certain awkwardmethods of horse-trading, or the "swapping" of farm implements andvehicles of various kinds,--operations in which his customers werenever long suited. After every successful trade he generally passed alonger or shorter term in jail; for when a poor man without goods orchattels has the inveterate habit of swapping, it follows naturallythat he must have something to swap; and having nothing of his own, itfollows still more naturally that he must swap something belonging tohis neighbors.
Mr. Simpson was absent from the home circle for the moment because hehad exchanged the Widow Rideout's sleigh for Joseph Goodwin's plough.Goodwin had lately moved to North Edgewood and had never before met theurbane and persuasive Mr. Simpson. The Goodwin plough Mr. Simpsonspeedily bartered with a man "over Wareham way," and got in exchangefor it an old horse which his owner did not need, as he was leavingtown to visit his daughter for a year, Simpson fattened the agedanimal, keeping him for several weeks (at early morning or afternightfall) in one neighbor's pasture after another, and then exchangedhim with a Milltown man for a top buggy. It was at this juncture thatthe Widow Rideout missed her sleigh from the old carriage house. Shehad not used it for fifteen years and might not sit in it for anotherfifteen, but it was property, and she did not intend to part with itwithout a struggle. Such is the suspicious nature of the village mindthat the moment she discovered her loss her thought at once reverted toAbner Simpson. So complicated, however, was the nature of thisparticular business transaction, and so tortuous the paths of itsprogress (partly owing to the complete disappearance of the owner ofthe horse, who had gone to the West and left no address), that it tookthe sheriff many weeks to prove Mr. Simpson's guilt to the town's andto the Widow Rideout's satisfaction. Abner himself avowed his completeinnocence, and told the neighbors how a red-haired man with a hare lipand a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes had called him up one morningabout daylight and offered to swap him a good sleigh for an old ciderpress he had layin' out in the dooryard. The bargain was struck, andhe, Abner, had paid the hare-lipped stranger four dollars andseventy-five cents to boot; whereupon the mysterious one set down thesleigh, took the press on his cart, and vanished up the road, never tobe seen or heard from afterwards.
"If I could once ketch that consarned old thief," exclaimed Abnerrighteously, "I'd make him dance,--workin' off a stolen sleigh on mean' takin' away my good money an' cider press, to say nothin' o' mycharacter!"
"You'll never ketch him, Ab," responded the sheriff. "He's cut off thesame piece o' goods as that there cider press and that there characterand that there four-seventy-five o' yourn; nobody ever see any of 'embut you, and you'll never see 'em again!"
Mrs. Simpson, who was decidedly Abner's better half, took in washingand went out to do days' cleaning, and the town helped in the feedingand clothing of the children. George, a lanky boy of fourteen, didchores on neighboring farms, and the others, Samuel, Clara Belle,Susan, Elijah, and Elisha, went to school, when sufficiently clothedand not otherwise more pleasantly engaged.
There were no secrets in the villages that lay along the banks ofPleasant River. There were many hard-working people among theinhabitants, but life wore away so quietly and slowly that there was agood deal of spare time for conversation,--under the trees at noon inthe hayfield; hanging over the bridge at nightfall; seated about thestove in the village store of an evening. These meeting-placesfurnished ample ground for the discussion of current events as viewedby the masculine eye, while choir rehearsals, sewing societies, readingcircles, church picnics, and the like, gave opportunity for theexpression of feminine opinion. All this was taken very much forgranted, as a rule, but now and then some supersensitive person madeviolent objections to it, as a theory of life.
Delia Weeks, for example, was a maiden lady who did dressmaking in asmall way; she fell ill, and although attended by all the physicians inthe neighborhood, was sinking slowly into a decline when her cousinCyrus asked her to come and keep house for him in Lewiston. She went,and in a year grew into a robust, hearty, cheerful woman. Returning toRiverboro on a brief visit, she was asked if she meant to end her daysaway from home.
"I do most certainly, if I can get any other place to stay," sheresponded candidly. "I was bein' worn to a shadder here, tryin' to keepmy little secrets to myself, an' never succeedin'. First they had it Iwanted to marry the minister, and when he took a wife in Standish I wasknown to be disappointed. Then for five or six years they suspicioned Iwas tryin' for a place to teach school, and when I gave up hope, an'took to dressmakin', they pitied me and sympathized with me for that.When father died I was bound I'd never let anybody know how I was left,for that spites 'em worse than anything else; but there's ways o'findin' out, an' they found out, hard as I fought 'em! Then there wasmy brother James that went to Arizona when he was sixteen. I gave goodnews of him for thirty years runnin', but aunt Achsy Tarbox had aferretin' cousin that went out to Tombstone for her health, and shewrote to a postmaster, or to some kind of a town authority, and foundJim and wrote back aunt Achsy all about him and just how unfortunatehe'd been. They knew when I had my teeth out and a new set made; theyknew when I put on a false front-piece; they knew when the fruitpeddler asked me to be his third wife--I never told 'em, an' you can besure HE never did, but they don't NEED to be told in this village; theyhave nothin' to do but guess, an' they'll guess right every time. I wasall tuckered out tryin' to mislead 'em and deceive 'em and sidetrack'em; but the minute I got where I wa'n't put under a microscope by dayan' a telescope by night and had myself TO myself without sayin' 'Byyour leave,' I begun to pick up. Cousin Cyrus is an old man an'consid'able trouble, but he thinks my teeth are handsome an' says I'vegot a splendid suit of hair. There ain't a person in Lewiston thatknows about the minister, or father's will, or Jim's doin's, or thefruit peddler; an' if they should find out, they wouldn't care, an'they couldn't remember; for Lewiston 's a busy place, thanks be!"
Miss Delia Weeks may have exaggerated matters somewhat, but it is easyto imagine that Rebecca as well as all the other Riverboro children hadheard the particulars of the Widow Rideout's missing sleigh and AbnerSimpson's supposed connection with it.
There is not an excess of delicacy or chivalry in the ordinary countryschool, and several choice conundrums and bits of verse dealing withthe Simpson affair were bandied about among the scholars, utteredalways, be it said to their credit, in undertones, and when the Simpsonchildren were not in the group.
Rebecca Randall was of precisely the same stock, and had had much thesame associations as her schoolmates, so one can hardly say why she sohated mean gossip and so instinctively held herself aloof from it.
Among the Riverboro girls of her own age was a certain excellentlynamed Minnie Smellie, who was anything but a general favorite. She wasa ferret-eyed, blond-haired, spindle-legged little creature whose mindwas a cross between that of a parrot and a sheep. She was suspected ofcopying answers from other girls' slates, although she had never beencaught in the act. Rebecca and Emma Jane always knew when she hadbrought a tart or a triangle of layer cake with her school luncheon,because on those days she forsook the cheerful society of her mates andsought a safe solitude in the woods, returning after a time with ajocund smile on her smug face.
After one of these private luncheons Rebecca had been tempted beyondher strength, and when Minnie took her seat among them asked, "Is yourheadache better, Minnie? Let me wipe off that strawberry jam over yourmouth."
There was no jam there as a matter of fact, but the guilty Minnie'shandkerchief went to her crimson face in a flash.
Rebecca confessed to Emma Jane that same afternoon that she feltashamed of her prank. "I do hate her ways," she exclaimed, "but I'msorry I let her know we 'spected her; and so to make up, I gave herthat little piece of broken coral I keep in my bead purse; you know theone?"
"It don't hardly seem as if she deserved that, and her so greedy,"remarked Emma Jane.
"I know it, but it makes me feel better," said Rebecca largely; "andthen I've had it two years, and it's broken so it wouldn't ever be anyreal good, beautiful as it is to look at."
The coral had partly served its purpose as a reconciling bond, when oneafternoon Rebecca, who had stayed after school for her grammar lessonas usual, was returning home by way of the short cut. Far ahead, beyondthe bars, she espied the Simpson children just entering the woodsy bit.Seesaw was not with them, so she hastened her steps in order to securecompany on her homeward walk. They were speedily lost to view, but whenshe had almost overtaken them she heard, in the trees beyond, MinnieSmellie's voice lifted high in song, and the sound of a child'ssobbing. Clara Belle, Susan, and the twins were running along the path,and Minnie was dancing up and down, shrieking:--
"'What made the sleigh love Simpson so?' The eager children cried; 'Why Simpson loved the sleigh, you know,' The teacher quick replied."
The last glimpse of the routed Simpson tribe, and the last futter oftheir tattered garments, disappeared in the dim distance. The fall ofone small stone cast by the valiant Elijah, known as "the fightingtwin," did break the stillness of the woods for a moment, but it didnot come within a hundred yards of Minnie, who shouted "Jail Birds" atthe top of her lungs and then turned, with an agreeable feeling ofexcitement, to meet Rebecca, standing perfectly still in the path, witha day of reckoning plainly set forth in her blazing eyes.
Minnie's face was not pleasant to see, for a coward detected at themoment of wrongdoing is not an object of delight.
"Minnie Smellie, if ever--I--catch--you--singing--that--to the Simpsonsagain--do you know what I'll do?" asked Rebecca in a tone ofconcentrated rage.
"I don't know and I don't care," said Minnie jauntily, though her looksbelied her.
"I'll take that piece of coral away from you, and I THINK I shall slapyou besides!"
"You wouldn't darst," retorted Minnie. "If you do, I'll tell my motherand the teacher, so there!"
"I don't care if you tell your mother, my mother, and all yourrelations, and the president," said Rebecca, gaining courage as thenoble words fell from her lips. "I don't care if you tell the town, thewhole of York county, the state of Maine and--and the nation!" shefinished grandiloquently. "Now you run home and remember what I say. Ifyou do it again, and especially if you say 'Jail Birds,' if I thinkit's right and my duty, I shall punish you somehow."
The next morning at recess Rebecca observed Minnie telling the talewith variations to Huldah Meserve. "She THREATENED me," whisperedMinnie, "but I never believe a word she says."
The latter remark was spoken with the direct intention of beingoverheard, for Minnie had spasms of bravery, when well surrounded bythe machinery of law and order.
As Rebecca went back to her seat she asked Miss Dearborn if she mightpass a note to Minnie Smellie and received permission. This was thenote:--
Of all the girls that are so mean There's none like Minnie Smellie. I'll take away the gift I gave And pound her into jelly.
_P. S. Now do you believe me?_
R. Randall.
The effect of this piece of doggerel was entirely convincing, and fordays afterwards whenever Minnie met the Simpsons even a mile from thebrick house she shuddered and held her peace.
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Page 7