Eleventh Chronicle. ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
I
"A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright Conversed as they sat on the green. They gazed at each other in tender delight. Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight, And the maid was the fair Imogene.
"Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go To fight in a far distant land, Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow, Some other will court you, and you will bestow On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said, "So hurtful to love and to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be eighteen,but now that she was within a month of that awe-inspiring andlong-desired age she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be aturning point in her quiet existence. Her eleventh year, for instance,had been a real turning-point, since it was then that she had leftSunnybrook Farm and come to her maiden aunts in Riverboro. AureliaRandall may have been doubtful as to the effect upon her spinstersisters of the irrepressible child, but she was hopeful from the firstthat the larger opportunities of Riverboro would be the "making" ofRebecca herself.
The next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left thedistrict school for the Wareham Female Seminary, then in the hey-dayof its local fame. Graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the mostthrilling episode in the life of a little country girl) happened atseventeen, and not long afterward her Aunt Miranda's death, sudden andunexpected, changed not only all the outward activities and conditionsof her life, but played its own part in her development.
The brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a June morningnowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthfulfootsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on thered-painted front door might have remembered Rebecca's prayer of a yearbefore, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered:"God bless Aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God blessthe brick house that's going to be!"
All the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had neverbeen in Miss Miranda Sawyer's time. The hollyhock bed that had been herchief pride was never neglected, and Rebecca liked to hear the neighborssay that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such varietyof beautiful colors in Riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped inat the kitchen windows where old Miss Miranda used to sit.
Now that the place was her very own Rebecca felt a passion of pride inits smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its bloominggarden spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenevershe looked at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern oldaunt who had looked upon her as the future head of the family, as wellas a passion of desire to be worthy of that trust.
It had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: thedeath of her aunt, the nursing of Miss Jane, prematurely enfeebled bythe shock, the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of thelittle family from Sunnybrook Farm. But all had gone smoothly; and whenonce the Randall fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed ableto stop their intrepid ascent.
Aurelia Randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sisterJane and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; themortgage was no longer a daily terror, for Sunnybrook had been sold tothe new railroad; Hannah, now Mrs. Will Melville, was happily situated;John, at last, was studying medicine; Mark, the boisterous and unluckybrother, had broken no bones for several months; while Jenny and Fannywere doing well at the district school under Miss Libby Moses, MissDearborn's successor.
"I don't feel very safe," thought Rebecca, remembering all theseunaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tattingshuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. "It'sjust like one of those too beautiful July days that winds up with athundershower before night! Still, when you remember that the Randallsnever had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, intheir family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is onlynatural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. If itreally turns out to BE settled, now that Aunt Jane and mother are strongagain I must be looking up one of what Mr. Aladdin calls my cast-offcareers."--"There comes Emma Jane Perkins through her front gate; shewill be here in a minute, and I'll tease her!" and Rebecca ran in thedoor and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the openwindows in the parlor.
Peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until Emma Janewas on the very threshold and then began singing her version of an oldballad, made that morning while she was dressing. The ballad was a greatfavorite of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it inthe present instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the originalhero and heroine, Alonzo and Imogene, and substituting Abijah the Braveand the Fair Emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first threeverses unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
Her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through thewindows into the still summer air:
"'A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright Conversed as they sat on the green. They gazed at each other in tender delight. Abijah the Brave was the name of the knight, And the maid was the Fair Emmajane.'"
"Rebecca Randall, stop! Somebody'll hear you!"
"No, they won't--they're making jelly in the kitchen, miles away."
"'Alas!' said the youth, since tomorrow I go To fight in a far distant land, Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow, Some other will court you, and you will bestow On a wealthier suitor your hand.'"
"Rebecca, you can't THINK how your voice carries! I believe mother canhear it over to my house!"
"Then, if she can, I must sing the third verse, just to clear yourreputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second," laughed hertormentor, going on with the song:
"'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Emmajane said, 'So hurtful to loveand to me! For if you be living, or if you be dead, I swear, my Abijah,that none in your stead, Shall the husband of Emmajane be!'"
After ending the third verse Rebecca wheeled around on the pianostool and confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlorwindows:--
"Emma Jane Perkins, it is an ordinary Thursday afternoon at four o'clockand you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even achurch sociable in prospect this evening. What does this mean? Is Abijahthe Brave coming at last?"
"I don't know certainly, but it will be some time this week."
"And of course you'd rather be dressed up and not seen, than seen whennot dressed up. Right, my Fair Emmajane; so would I. Not that it makesany difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calicoand expecting nobody.
"Oh, well, YOU! There's something inside of you that does instead ofpretty dresses," cried Emma Jane, whose adoration of her friend hadnever altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. "Youknow you are as different from anybody else in Riverboro as a princessin a fairy story. Libby Moses says they would notice you in Lowell,Massachusetts!"
"Would they? I wonder," speculated Rebecca, rendered almost speechlessby this tribute to her charms. "Well, if Lowell, Massachusetts, couldsee me, or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with theviolet sash, it would die of envy, and so would you!"
"If I had been going to be envious of you, Rebecca, I should have diedyears ago. Come, let's go out on the steps where it's shady and cool."
"And where we can see the Perkins front gate and the road running bothways," teased Rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: "Howis it getting on, Emmy? Tell me what's happened since I've been inBrunswick."
"Nothing much," confessed Emma Jane. "He writes to me, but I don't writeto him, you know. I don't dare to, till he comes to the house."
"Are his letters still in Latin?"
asked Rebecca, with a twinkling eye.
"Oh, no! Not now, because--well, because there are things you can't seemto write in Latin. I saw him at the Masonic picnic in the grove, but hewon't say anything REAL to me till he gets more pay and dares to speakto mother and father. He IS brave in all other ways, but I ain't surehe'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and alwayshas been. Just remember what's in his mind all the time, Rebecca, thatmy folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on thepoor-farm. Not that I care; look how he's educated and worked himselfup! I think he's perfectly elegant, and I shouldn't mind if he had beenborn in the bulrushes, like Moses."
Emma Jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been beforeshe went to the expensive Wareham Female Seminary. She had acquireda certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but inmoments of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. She grewslowly in all directions, did Emma Jane, and, to use Rebecca's favoritenautilus figure, she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on theshores of "life's unresting sea."
"Moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear," corrected Rebeccalaughingly. "Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite asromantic a scene--Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from thepoorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid!Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder,Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day;and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you willwrite notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of MissRebecca Randall's company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg, M.C.,will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses andthe turquoise carryall!"
Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: "If I everwrite the invitation I shan't be addressing it to Miss Randall, I'm sureof that; it'll be to Mrs.-----"
"Don't!" cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her handover Emma Jane's lips. "If you won't I'll stop teasing. I couldn't beara name put to anything, I couldn't, Emmy dear! I wouldn't tease you,either, if it weren't something we've both known ever so long--somethingthat you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijahtoo."
"Don't get excited," replied Emma Jane, "I was only going to say youwere sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time."
"Oh," said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; "ifthat's all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought--I don'treally know just what I thought!"
"I think you thought something you didn't want me to think you thought,"said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
"No, it's not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me ofmy coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed ofthe brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when Icame out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of theold years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautifultoday! Doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fieldspainted pink and green and yellow this very minute?"
"It's a perfectly elegant day!" responded Emma Jane with a sigh. "Ifonly my mind was at rest! That's the difference between being young andgrown-up. We never used to think and worry."
"Indeed we didn't! Look, Emmy, there's the very spot where Uncle JerryCobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and mybouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroomwindow and wondering what I had in mother's little hair trunk strappedon behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, howcross she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever hadcomes back to me and cuts like a knife!"
"She was dreadful hard to get along with, and I used to hate her likepoison," confessed Emma Jane; "but I am sorry now. She was kinder towardthe last, anyway, and then, you see children know so little! We neversuspected she was sick or that she was worrying over that lost interestmoney."
"That's the trouble. People seem hard and unreasonable and unjust,and we can't help being hurt at the time, but if they die we forgeteverything but our own angry speeches; somehow we never remember theirs.And oh, Emma Jane, there's another such a sweet little picture out therein the road. The next day after I came to Riverboro, do you remember, Istole out of the brick house crying, and leaned against the front gate.You pushed your little fat pink-and-white face through the pickets andsaid: Don't cry! I'll kiss you if you will me!'"
Lumps rose suddenly in Emma Jane's throat, and she put her arm aroundRebecca's waist as they sat together side by side.
"Oh, I do remember," she said in a choking voice. "And I can see the twoof us driving over to North Riverboro and selling soap to Mr. AdamLadd; and lighting up the premium banquet lamp at the Simpson party; andlaying the daisies round Jacky Winslow's mother when she was dead inthe cabin; and trundling Jacky up and down the street in our old babycarriage!"
"And I remember you," continued Rebecca, "being chased down the hillby Jacob Moody, when we were being Daughters of Zion and you had beenchosen to convert him!"
"And I remember you, getting the flag back from Mr. Simpson; and how youlooked when you spoke your verses at the flag-raising."
"And have you forgotten the week I refused to speak to Abijah Flaggbecause he fished my turban with the porcupine quills out of the riverwhen I hoped at last that I had lost it! Oh, Emma Jane, we had dear goodtimes together in the little harbor.'"
"I always thought that was an elegant composition of yours--thatfarewell to the class," said Emma Jane.
"The strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbor of childhood intothe unknown seas," recalled Rebecca. "It is bearing you almost out ofmy sight, Emmy, these last days, when you put on a new dress in theafternoon and look out of the window instead of coming across thestreet. Abijah Flagg never used to be in the little harbor with the restof us; when did he first sail in, Emmy?"
Emma Jane grew a deeper pink and her button-hole of a mouth quiveredwith delicious excitement.
"It was last year at the seminary, when he wrote me his first Latinletter from Limerick Academy," she said in a half whisper.
"I remember," laughed Rebecca. "You suddenly began the study of the deadlanguages, and the Latin dictionary took the place of the crochet needlein your affections. It was cruel of you never to show me that letter,Emmy!"
"I know every word of it by heart," said the blushing Emma Jane, "andI think I really ought to say it to you, because it's the only way youwill ever know how perfectly elegant Abijah is. Look the other way,Rebecca. Shall I have to translate it for you, do you think, because itseems to me I could not bear to do that!"
"It depends upon Abijah's Latin and your pronunciation," teased Rebecca."Go on; I will turn my eyes toward the orchard."
The Fair Emmajane, looking none too old still for the "little harbor,"but almost too young for the "unknown seas," gathered up her courage andrecited like a tremulous parrot the boyish love letter that had so firedher youthful imagination.
"Vale, carissima, carissima puella!" repeated Rebecca in her musicalvoice. "Oh, how beautiful it sounds! I don't wonder it altered yourfeeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane," she cried with a suddenchange of tone, "if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Bravehad that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write itto me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk andask Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg."
Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. "I speak as a church member,Rebecca," she said, "when I tell you I've always thanked the Lord thatyou never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If eitherof you ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I'vealways known it!"
II
The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, sofar as Abijah Flagg's part of it was concerned, for many years, hisaffection dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he sawEm
ma Jane Perkins at the age of nine.
Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until thelast three years, when the evolution of the chore-boy into thebudding scholar and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dullimagination.
Squire Bean's wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinkingthat she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, themother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that shewas not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities,particularly the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever sincehe could remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world atall; this world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made anyprovision for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was foreverleveled at the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grewsad and shy, clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitablecraving for love in his heart and had never received a caress in hislife.
He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean's house. The firstyear he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, goto the post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, butevery day he grew more and more useful.
His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper's son, and theywere inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the whitecottage between Squire Bean's house and the Sawyers'. Mr. Perkins hadsold his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith'sshop in the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was ofno special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was ofimportance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in thefront yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair,pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on,but Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson cameover like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met himat the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent himhome, and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom hehad already scraped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busysettling the new house.
After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations,and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appearedunexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing thebroad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, buthis afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious,and positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playinghouse, the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable tohave two and not three participants.
At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever.Without a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch ofground between himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stonesand larger ones, as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson,and flung and flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling.Then he made a "stickin'" door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Janeinside and strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indianbrave. At such an early age does woman become a distracting anddisturbing influence in man's career!
Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and theson of wealth, but Abijah's chances of friendship with Emma Jane grewfewer and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, sothere was no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knotof boys and girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah andElisha, the Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in SquireBean's front yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata asshe passed the premises.
As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generallychose feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as hecould and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he wouldwalk on his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a doublesomersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms ofthe Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girlsexclaimed, "Isn't he splendid!" although he often heard his rival murmurscornfully, "SMARTY ALECK!"--a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, ashe was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worthwhile bothering about his education), finally became impressed with hisability, lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were allhe needed, books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot tountie, Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him tountie it.
When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be somethingbetter than a chore boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wagesfor three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented himwith a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked heropinion.
This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she couldnot and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideason every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised theminister if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn'tendure his mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle JerryCobb didn't part with his river field until he had talked it over withRebecca; and as for Aunt Jane, she couldn't decide whether to wear herblack merino or her gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy,which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme,Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: "There IS a kind of magicness aboutgoing far away and then coming back all changed."
This was precisely Abijah's unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing ofAbbie Flagg's worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigmaof his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have goneto Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved EmmaJane; but no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the processof "becoming," but after he had "become" something. He did not proposeto take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he!He proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was,at present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in thefamily nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return toRiverboro nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer.Yes, sir. He was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning forone thing,--useless kinds and all,--going to have good clothes, and agood income. Everything that was in his power should be right, becausethere would always be lurking in the background the things he nevercould help--the mother and the poorhouse.
So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came backthe first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he waslittle seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place wherehe could make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the sametime.
The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. Hewas invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of hisshirt-collar, and he was sure that his "pants" were not the properthing, for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almostunrealizable height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpetsas if they were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow beforehim. They played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties,but he had not had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough,but Jimmy had and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of JamesWatson's unworthy and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheekalmost destroyed his faith in an overruling Providence.
After the parties were over he went back to his old room in SquireBean's shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered aboutEmma Jane as sw
allows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness ofhopeless handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed inthe night, lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, rememberingthat he had seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He roseagain half an hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oilon his hair, and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he wentback to bed, and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimerand learn to play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties,and outshine his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, hefinally sank into a troubled slumber.
Those days, so full of hope and doubt and torture, seemed mercifullyunreal now, they lay so far back in the past--six or eight years, infact, which is a lifetime to the lad of twenty--and meantime he hadconquered many of the adverse circumstances that had threatened to cloudhis career.
Abijah Flagg was a true child of his native State. Something of the sametimber that Maine puts into her forests, something of the same strengthand resisting power that she works into her rocks, goes into her sonsand daughters; and at twenty Abijah was going to take his fate in hishand and ask Mr. Perkins, the rich blacksmith, if, after a suitableperiod of probation (during which he would further prepare himself forhis exalted destiny), he might marry the fair Emma Jane, sole heiress ofthe Perkins house and fortunes.
III
This was boy and girl love, calf love, perhaps, though even that maydevelop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far awaywere other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in itsown way. There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher,drifting into a foolish alliance because she did not agree with herstepmother at home; there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class,dazzled by Huldah Meserve, who like a glowworm "shone afar off bright,but looked at near, had neither heat nor light."
There was sweet Emily Maxwell, less than thirty still, with most of herheart bestowed in the wrong quarter. She was toiling on at the Warehamschool, living as unselfish a life as a nun in a convent; lavishing themind and soul of her, the heart and body of her, on her chosen work.How many women give themselves thus, consciously and unconsciously;and, though they themselves miss the joys and compensations of motheringtheir own little twos and threes, God must be grateful to them fortheir mothering of the hundreds which make them so precious in Hisregenerating purposes.
Then there was Adam Ladd, waiting at thirty-five for a girl to grow alittle older, simply because he could not find one already grown whosuited his somewhat fastidious and exacting tastes.
"I'll not call Rebecca perfection," he quoted once, in a letter to EmilyMaxwell,--"I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid tomove. But she's a dancing sprig of the tree next it."
When first she appeared on his aunt's piazza in North Riverboro andinsisted on selling him a large quantity of very inferior soap in orderthat her friends, the Simpsons, might possess a premium in the shape ofa greatly needed banquet lamp, she had riveted his attention. He thoughtall the time that he enjoyed talking with her more than with any womanalive, and he had never changed his opinion. She always caught whathe said as if it were a ball tossed to her, and sometimes her mind, asthrough it his thoughts came back to him, seemed like a prism which haddyed them with deeper colors.
Adam Ladd always called Rebecca in his heart his little Spring. Hisboyhood had been lonely and unhappy. That was the part of life he hadmissed, and although it was the full summer of success and prosperitywith him now, he found his lost youth only in her.
She was to him--how shall I describe it?
Do you remember an early day in May with budding leaf, warm earth,tremulous air, and changing, willful sky--how new it seemed? How freshand joyous beyond all explaining?
Have you lain with half-closed eyes where the flickering of sunlightthrough young leaves, the song of birds and brook and the fragrance ofwild flowers combined to charm your senses, and you felt the sweetnessand grace of nature as never before?
Rebecca was springtide to Adam's thirsty heart. She was blithe youthincarnate; she was music--an Aeolian harp that every passing breezewoke to some whispering little tune; she was a changing, iridescentjoy-bubble; she was the shadow of a leaf dancing across a dusty floor.No bough of his thought could be so bare but she somehow built a nest init and evoked life where none was before.
And Rebecca herself?
She had been quite unconscious of all this until very lately, and evennow she was but half awakened; searching among her childish instinctsand her girlish dreams for some Ariadne thread that should guide hersafely through the labyrinth of her new sensations.
For the moment she was absorbed, or thought she was, in the little lovestory of Abijah and Emma Jane, but in reality, had she realized it, thatlove story served chiefly as a basis of comparison for a possible one ofher own, later on.
She liked and respected Abijah Flagg, and loving Emma Jane was a habitcontracted early in life; but everything that they did or said, orthought or wrote, or hoped or feared, seemed so inadequate, so painfullyshort of what might be done or said, or thought or written, or hoped orfeared, under easily conceivable circumstances, that she almost felt adisposition to smile gently at the fancy of the ignorant young couplethat they had caught a glimpse of the great vision.
She was sitting under the sweet apple tree at twilight. Supper was over;Mark's restless feet were quiet, Fanny and Jenny were tucked safely inbed; her aunt and her mother were stemming currants on the side porch.
A blue spot at one of the Perkins windows showed that in one vestalbosom hope was not dead yet, although it was seven o'clock.
Suddenly there was the sound of a horse's feet coming up the quiet road;plainly a steed hired from some metropolis like Milltown or Wareham,as Riverboro horses when through with their day's work never disportedthemselves so gayly.
A little open vehicle came in sight, and in it sat Abijah Flagg. Thewagon was so freshly painted and so shiny that Rebecca thought that hemust have alighted at the bridge and given it a last polish. The creasesin his trousers, too, had an air of having been pressed in only a fewminutes before. The whip was new and had a yellow ribbon on it; thegray suit of clothes was new, and the coat flourished a flower in itsbutton-hole. The hat was the latest thing in hats, and the intrepidswain wore a seal-ring on the little finger of his right hand. AsRebecca remembered that she had guided it in making capital G's in hiscopy-book, she felt positively maternal, although she was two yearsyounger than Abijah the Brave.
He drove up to the Perkins gate and was so long about hitching the horsethat Rebecca's heart beat tumultuously at the thought of Emma Jane'sheart waiting under the blue barege. Then he brushed an imaginary speckoff his sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he wentup the path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
"Not all the heroes go to the wars," thought Rebecca. "Abijah has laidthe ghost of his father and redeemed the memory of his mother, for noone will dare say again that Abbie Flagg's son could never amount toanything!"
The minutes went by, and more minutes, and more. The tranquil dusksettled down over the little village street and the young moon came outjust behind the top of the Perkins pine tree.
The Perkins front door opened and Abijah the Brave came out hand in handwith his Fair Emma Jane.
They walked through the orchard, the eyes of the old couple followingthem from the window, and just as they disappeared down the green slopethat led to the riverside the gray coat sleeve encircled the blue baregewaist.
Rebecca, quivering with instant sympathy and comprehension, hid her facein her hands.
"Emmy has sailed away and I am all alone in the little harbor," shethought.
It was as if childhood, like a thing real and visible, were slippingdown the grassy river banks, after Abijah and Emma Jane, anddisappearing like them into the moon-lit shadows of the summer night.
"I am all alone in the little harbor," she repeated; "and oh, I wonder,I wonder, shall I be afraid to leave
it, if anybody ever comes to carryme out to sea!"
New Chronicles of Rebecca Page 11
