Tenth Chronicle. REBECCA'S REMINISCENCES
Rebecca was sitting by the window in her room at the Wareham FemaleSeminary. She was alone, as her roommate, Emma Jane Perkins, wasreciting Latin down below in some academic vault of the old brickbuilding.
A new and most ardent passion for the classics had been born in EmmaJane's hitherto unfertile brain, for Abijah Flagg, who was carrying offall the prizes at Limerick Academy, had written her a letter in Latin, aletter which she had been unable to translate for herself, even with theaid of a dictionary, and which she had been apparently unwilling thatRebecca, her bosom friend, confidant, and roommate, should render intoEnglish.
An old-fashioned Female Seminary, with its allotment of one medium-sizedroom to two medium sized young females, gave small opportunities forprivacy by night or day, for neither the double washstand, nor the thusfar unimagined bathroom, nor even indeed the humble and serviceablescreen, had been realized, in these dark ages of which I write.Accordingly, like the irrational ostrich, which defends itself by thesimple process of not looking at its pursuers, Emma Jane had kept herLatin letter in her closed hand, in her pocket, or in her open book,flattering herself that no one had noticed her pleased bewilderment atits only half-imagined contents.
All the fairies were not present at Rebecca's cradle. A goodly number ofthem telegraphed that they were previously engaged or unavoidably absentfrom town. The village of Temperance, Maine, where Rebecca first saw thelight, was hardly a place on its own merits to attract large throngs offairies. But one dear old personage who keeps her pocket full of MerryLeaves from the Laughing Tree, took a fancy to come to the littlebirthday party; and seeing so few of her sister-fairies present, shedowered the sleeping baby more richly than was her wont, because of itsapparent lack of wealth in other directions. So the child grew, and theMerry Leaves from the Laughing Tree rustled where they hung from thehood of her cradle, and, being fairy leaves, when the cradle wasgiven up they festooned themselves on the cribside, and later on blewthemselves up to the ceilings at Sunnybook Farm and dangled there,making fun for everybody. They never withered, even at the brick housein Riverboro, where the air was particularly inimical to fairies,for Miss Miranda Sawyer would have scared any ordinary elf out of herseventeen senses. They followed Rebecca to Wareham, and during AbijahFlagg's Latin correspondence with Emma Jane they fluttered about thatyoung person's head in such a manner that Rebecca was almost afraid thatshe would discover them herself, although this is something, as a matterof fact, that never does happen.
A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken fromthe post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnightoil-burning, by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by suchscrutiny of the moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyedher brain tissue, she had mastered its romantic message. If it wasconventional in style, Emma Jane never suspected it. If some of thesimiles seemed to have been culled from the Latin poets, and some of thephrases built up from Latin exercises, Emma Jane was neither scholarnor critic; the similes, the phrases, the sentiments, when finallytranslated and written down in black-and-white English, made, in heropinion, the most convincing and heart-melting document ever sentthrough the mails:
Mea cara Emma:
Cur audeo scribere ad te epistulam? Es mihi dea! Semper es in mea anima.Iterum et iterum es cum me in somnis. Saepe video tuas capillos auri,tuos pulchros oculos similes caelo, tuas genas, quasi rubentes rosasin nive. Tua vox est dulcior quam cantus avium aut murmur rivuli inmontibus.
Cur sum ego tam miser et pauper et indignus, et tu tam dulcis et bona etnobilis?
Si cogitabis de me ero beatus. Tu es sola puella quam amo, et sempereris. Alias puellas non amavi. Forte olim amabis me, sed sum indignus.Sine te sum miser, cum tu es prope mea vita omni est goddamn.
Vale, carissima, carissima puella!
De tuo fideli servo A.F.
My dear Emma:
Why dare I write to you a letter? You are to me a goddess! Always youare in my heart. Again and again you are with me in dreams. Often I seeyour locks of gold, your beautiful eyes like the sky, your cheeks, asred roses in snow. Your voice is sweeter than the singing of birds orthe murmur of the stream in the mountains.
Why am I so wretched and poor and unworthy, and you so sweet and goodand noble?
If you will think of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that Ilove and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometimeyou will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, whenyou are near my life is all joy.
Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!
From your faithful slave A.F.
Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it inLatin, only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filledwith life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effectupon her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, orwhile eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking offto sleep at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, "Vale,carissima, carissima puella!" As to the effect on her modest,countrified little heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she wasa goddess and he her faithful slave, that quite baffles description; forit lifted her bodily out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new,rosy, ethereal atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.
Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waitedfor the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she alwaysdid, and always would until the end of time. At the present momentshe was busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabbycomposition book with mottled board covers lay open on the table beforeher, and sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption,and sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with thepencil poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, itshuddle of roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by thefast-falling snowflakes.
It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly droppinga great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, makingall ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.
The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendidavenue of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwarttrunks, whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under theirdazzling burden.
The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only bythe feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they rememberedso long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, andwhich they eagerly forgot as soon as they met one another in the living,laughing world, going up and down the hill.
"It's very becoming to the universe, snow is!" thought Rebecca, lookingout of the window dreamily. "Really there's little to choose between theworld and heaven when a snowstorm is going on. I feel as if I ought tolook at it every minute. I wish I could get over being greedy, but itstill seems to me at sixteen as if there weren't waking hours enoughin the day, and as if somehow I were pressed for time and continuallylosing something. How well I remember mother's story about me when Iwas four. It was at early breakfast on the farm, but I called all mealsdinner' then, and when I had finished I folded up my bib and sighed: O,dear! Only two more dinners, play a while and go to bed!' This was atsix in the morning--lamplight in the kitchen, snowlight outside!
Powdery, powdery, powdery snow, Making things lovely wherever you go! Merciful, merciful, merciful snow, Masking the ugliness hidden below.
Herbert made me promise to do a poem for the January 'Pilot,' but Imustn't take the snow as a subject; there has been too great competitionamong the older poets!" And with that she turned in her chair and beganwriting again in the shabby book, which was already three quartersfilled with childish scribblings, sometimes in pencil, and sometimes inviolet ink with carefully shaded capital letters."
* * * * *
Squire Bean has had a sharp attack of rheumatism and Abijah Flagg
cameback from Limerick for a few days to nurse him. One morning the Burnhamsisters from North Riverboro came over to spend the day with AuntMiranda, and Abijah went down to put up their horse. ("'Commodatin''Bijah" was his pet name when we were all young.)
He scaled the ladder to the barn chamber--the dear old ladder thatused to be my safety valve!--and pitched down the last forkful ofgrandfather's hay that will ever be eaten by any visiting horse. TheyWILL be delighted to hear that it is all gone; they have grumbled at itfor years and years.
What should Abijah find at the bottom of the heap but my Thought Book,hidden there two or three years ago and forgotten!
When I think of what it was to me, the place it filled in my life, theaffection I lavished on it, I wonder that I could forget it, even inall the excitement of coming to Wareham to school. And that gives me"an uncommon thought" as I used to say! It is this: that when we finishbuilding an air castle we seldom live in it after all; we sometimes evenforget that we ever longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as tobegin another castle on a higher hilltop, and this is sobeautiful,--especially while we are building, and before we live init!--that the first one has quite vanished from sight and mind, like theoutgrown shell of the nautilus that he casts off on the shore and neverlooks at again. (At least I suppose he doesn't; but perhaps he takes onebackward glance, half-smiling, half-serious, just as I am doing at myold Thought Book, and says, "WAS THAT MY SHELL! GOODNESS GRACIOUS! HOWDID I EVER SQUEEZE MYSELF INTO IT!")
That bit about the nautilus sounds like an extract from a school theme,or a "Pilot" editorial, or a fragment of one of dear Miss Maxwell'slectures, but I think girls of sixteen are principally imitations of thepeople and things they love and admire; and between editing the "Pilot,"writing out Virgil translations, searching for composition subjects, andstudying rhetorical models, there is very little of the originalRebecca Rowena about me at the present moment; I am just a member ofthe graduating class in good and regular standing. We do our hair alike,dress alike as much as possible, eat and drink alike, talk alike,--I amnot even sure that we do not think alike; and what will become of thepoor world when we are all let loose upon it on the same day of June?Will life, real life, bring our true selves back to us? Will love andduty and sorrow and trouble and work finally wear off the "school stamp"that has been pressed upon all of us until we look like rows of shiningcopper cents fresh from the mint?
Yet there must be a little difference between us somewhere, or why doesAbijah Flagg write Latin letters to Emma Jane, instead of to me? Thereis one example on the other side of the argument,--Abijah Flagg. Hestands out from all the rest of the boys like the Rock of Gibraltar inthe geography pictures. Is it because he never went to school until hewas sixteen? He almost died of longing to go, and the longing seemed toteach him more than going. He knew his letters, and could read simplethings, but it was I who taught him what books really meant when I waseleven and he thirteen. We studied while he was husking corn or cuttingpotatoes for seed, or shelling beans in the Squire's barn. His belovedEmma Jane didn't teach him; her father wold not have let her be friendswith a chore-boy! It was I who found him after milking-time, summernights, suffering, yes dying, of Least Common Multiple and GreatestCommon Divisor; I who struck the shackles from the slave and told him toskip it all and go on to something easier, like Fractions, Percentage,and Compound Interest, as I did myself. Oh! How he used to smell of thecows when I was correcting his sums on warm evenings, but I don't regretit, for he is now the joy of Limerick and the pride of Riverboro, and Isuppose has forgotten the proper side on which to approach a cow if youwish to milk her. This now unserviceable knowledge is neatly inclosed inthe outgrown shell he threw off two or three years ago. His gratitudeto me knows no bounds, but--he writes Latin letters to Emma Jane! But asMr. Perkins said about drowning the kittens (I now quote from myself atthirteen), "It is the way of the world and how things have to be!"
Well, I have read the Thought Book all through, and when I want tomake Mr. Aladdin laugh, I shall show him my composition on the relativevalues of punishment and reward as builders of character.
I am not at all the same Rebecca today at sixteen that I was then,at twelve and thirteen. I hope, in getting rid of my failings, that Ihaven't scrubbed and rubbed so hard that I have taken the gloss off thepoor little virtues that lay just alongside of the faults; for as I readthe foolish doggerel and the funny, funny "Remerniscences," I see on thewhole a nice, well-meaning, trusting, loving heedless little creature,that after all I'd rather build on than outgrow altogether, because sheis Me; the Me that was made and born just a little different from allthe rest of the babies in my birthday year.
One thing is alike in the child and the girl. They both love to setthoughts down in black and white; to see how they look, how they sound,and how they make one feel when one reads them over.
They both love the sound of beautiful sentences and the tinkle ofrhyming words, and in fact, of the three great R's of life, they adoreReading and Riting, as much as they abhor 'Rithmetic.
The little girl in the old book is always thinking of what she is "goingto be."
Uncle Jerry Cobb spoiled me a good deal in this direction. I rememberhe said to everybody when I wrote my verses for the flag-raising: "Naryrung on the ladder o' fame but that child'll climb if you give hertime!"--poor Uncle Jerry! He will be so disappointed in me as time goeson. And still he would think I have already climbed two rungs on theladder, although it is only a little Wareham ladder, for I am one ofthe "Pilot" editors, the first "girl editor"--and I have taken a fiftydollar prize in composition and paid off the interest on a twelvehundred dollar mortgage with it.
"High is the rank we now possess, But higher we shall rise; Though what we shall hereafter be Is hid from mortal eyes."
This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and Mr.Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and smiled at me.Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the next morning with justone verse in the middle of it.
"She made the cleverest people quite ashamed; And ev'n the good withinward envy groan, Finding themselves so very much exceeded, In theirown way by all the things that she did."
Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the lastrhyme before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to being.Mr. Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my "cast-offcareers."
"What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?" he asked,looking at Miss Maxwell and laughing. "Women never hit what they aim at,anyway; but if they shut their eyes and shoot in the air they generallyfind themselves in the bull's eye."
I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should be, whenI grew up, was, that even before father died mother worried about themortgage on the farm, and what would become of us if it were foreclosed.
It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way, butoh! it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of us thento think of, and still has three at home to feed and clothe out of thefarm.
Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that I willnever really "grow up," Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know the world anybetter than the pearl inside of the oyster. They none of them know theold, old thoughts I have, some of them going back years and years; forthey are never ones that I can speak about.
I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so handsome andgraceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or too busy to play withus. He never did any work at home because he had to keep his hands nicefor playing the church melodeon, or the violin or piano for dances.
Mother used to say: "Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the strawberries,your father cannot help." "John, you must milk next year for I haven'tthe time and it would spoil your father's hands."
All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel shirts,except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white ones withs
tarched bosoms. He was very particular about them and mother used tostitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and press the bosoms andcollar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.
Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new dressesfor herself, and no time to wear them, because she was always takingcare of the babies; and father was happy and well and handsome. Butwe children never thought much about it until once, after father hadmortgaged the farm, there was going to be a sociable in Temperancevillage. Mother could not go as Jenny had whooping-cough and Mark hadjust broken his arm, and when she was tying father's necktie, the lastthing before he started, he said: "I wish, Aurelia, that you cared alittle about YOUR appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with aman like me."
Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I looked ather eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a minute I was everso old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It has always stayed there,although I admired my handsome father and was proud of him because hewas so talented; but now that I am older and have thought about things,my love for mother is different from what it used to be. Father wasalways the favorite when we were little, he was so interesting, andI wonder sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer andbetter than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it seemsvery cruel.
As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me mypink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition to dosomething special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy to a child.I had not been to school then, or read George Macdonald, so I did notknow that "Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil."
Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and everybody saidhow wonderful they were, and bought them straight away; and she tookcare of a blind father and two brothers, and traveled wherever shewished. It comes back to me now, that summer when I was ten and MissRoss painted me sitting by the mill-wheel while she talked to me offoreign countries!
The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems to thegirls of her literature class. It was about David the shepherd boywho used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle "wheeling slow as insleep." He used to wonder about the wide world that the eagle beheld,the eagle that was stretching his wings so far up in the blue, while he,the poor shepherd boy, could see only the "strip twixt the hill and thesky;" for he lay in a hollow.
I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday beforeI joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long to see as muchas the eagle saw?
There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. "Rebecca dear," he said,"it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the shepherd boydid; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see 'twixt the hilland the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only youhave the right sort of vision."
I was a long, long time about "experiencing religion." I remember Sundayafternoons at the brick house the first winter after I went there; whenI used to sit in the middle of the dining-room as I was bid, silent andstill, with the big family Bible on my knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's"Saints' Rest," but her seat was by the window, and she at least couldgive a glance into the street now and then without being positivelywicked.
Aunt Jane used to read the "Pilgrim's Progress." The fire burned low;the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that the picturesswam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see God;but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and John thatI could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the sad, long onebeginning:
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll, Damnation and the dead."
It was brother John for whom I was chiefly homesick on Sundayafternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother wasalways busy, and Hannah never liked to talk.
Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro; andat the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and thought I wasgrown up and a church member, and so he asked me to lead in prayer.
I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like thinkingout loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal easier than to AuntMiranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There were things I could say toHim that I could never say to anybody else, and saying them always mademe happy and contented.
When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I told himI was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough to be a realmember.
"So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?" he asked, smiling."Well, there is something else much more important, which is, thatHe understands you! He understands your feeble love, your longings,desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that, after all, is whatcounts! Of course you don't understand Him! You are overshadowed by Hislove, His power, His benignity, His wisdom; that is as it should be!Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could stand erect and unabashed in God'spresence, as one who perfectly comprehended His nature or His purposes,it would be sacrilege! Don't be puzzled out of your blessed inheritanceof faith, my child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He acceptsyou!"
"God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that," I said; "but thedoctrines do worry me dreadfully."
"Let them alone for the present," Mr Baxter said. "Anyway, Rebecca, youcan never prove God; you can only find Him!"
"Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr. Baxter?" Iasked. "Am I the beginnings of a Christian?"
"You are a dear child of the understanding God!" Mr. Baxter said; "and Isay it over to myself night and morning so that I can never forget it."
* * * * *
The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in therush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The bell forphilosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have been writingfor nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going up the Academyhill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand hill for learning! Isuppose after fifty years or so the very ground has become soaked withknowledge, and every particle of air in the vicinity is crammed withuseful information.
I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow hereabouts)and take it out again,--when shall I take it out again?
After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to writein a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen worth puttingdown; something strange; something unusual; something different from thethings that happen every day in Riverboro and Edgewood!
Graduation will surely take me a little out of "the hollow,"--make mea little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at the whole wide worldbeneath him while he wheels "slow as in sleep." But whether or not,I'll try not to be a discontented shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxtersaid, that the little strip that I see "twixt the hill and the sky" isable to hold all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes tosee it.
Rebecca Rowena Randall.
Wareham Female Seminary, December 187--.
New Chronicles of Rebecca Page 10