Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith
New Chronicles of Rebecca
II
It was not till next morning that Rebecca’s heart really began its song of thanksgiving. Her Aunt Miranda announced at breakfast, that as Mrs. Perkins was going to Milliken’s Mills, Rebecca might go too, and buy a serviceable hat.
“You mustn’t pay over two dollars and a half, and you mustn’t get the pink bird without Mrs. Perkins says, and the milliner says, that it won’t fade nor moult. Don’t buy a light-colored felt because you’ll get sick of it in two or three years same as you did the brown one. I always liked the shape of the brown one, and you’ll never get another trimmin’ that’ll wear like them quills.”
“I hope not!” thought Rebecca.
“If you had put your elastic under your chin, same as you used to, and not worn it behind because you think it’s more grown-up an’ fash’onable, the wind never’d a’ took the hat off your head, and you wouldn’t a’ lost it; but the mischief’s done and you can go right over to Mis’ Perkins now, so you won’t miss her nor keep her waitin’. The two dollars and a half is in an envelope side o’ the clock.”
Rebecca swallowed the last spoonful of picked-up codfish on her plate, wiped her lips, and rose from her chair happier than the seraphs in Paradise.
The porcupine quills had disappeared from her life, and without any fault or violence on her part. She was wholly innocent and virtuous, but nevertheless she was going to have a new hat with the solferino breast, should the adored object prove, under rigorous examination, to be practically indestructible.
“Whene’er I take my walks abroad, How many hats I’ll see; But if they’re trimmed with hedgehog quills They’ll not belong to me!”
So she improvised, secretly and ecstatically, as she went towards the side entry.
“There’s ‘Bijah Flagg drivin’ in,” said Miss Miranda, going to the window. “Step out and see what he’s got, Jane; some passel from the Squire, I guess. It’s a paper bag and it may be a punkin, though he wouldn’t wrop up a punkin, come to think of it! Shet the dinin’ room door, Jane; it’s turrible drafty. Make haste, for the Squire’s hoss never stan’s still a minute cept when he’s goin’!”
Abijah Flagg alighted and approached the side door with a grin.
“Guess what I’ve got for ye, Rebecky?”
No throb of prophetic soul warned Rebecca of her approaching doom.
“Nodhead apples?” she sparkled, looking as bright and rosy and satin-skinned as an apple herself.
“No; guess again.”
“A flowering geranium?”
“Guess again!”
“Nuts? Oh! I can’t, Bijah; I’m just going to Milliken’s Mills on an errand, and I’m afraid of missing Mrs. Perkins. Show me quick! Is it really for me, or for Aunt Miranda?”
“Reely for you, I guess!” and he opened the large brown paper bag and drew from it the remains of a water-soaked hat!
They WERE remains, but there was no doubt of their nature and substance. They had clearly been a hat in the past, and one could even suppose that, when resuscitated, they might again assume their original form in some near and happy future.
Miss Miranda, full of curiosity, joined the group in the side entry at this dramatic moment.
“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “Where, and how under the canopy, did you ever?”
“I was working on the dam at Union Falls yesterday,” chuckled Abijah, with a pleased glance at each of the trio in turn, “an’ I seen this little bunnit skippin’ over the water jest as Becky does over the road. It’s shaped kind o’ like a boat, an’ gorry, ef it wa’nt sailin’ jest like a boat! Where hev I seen that kind of a bristlin’ plume?’ thinks I.”
(“Where indeed!” thought Rebecca stormily.)
“Then it come to me that I’d drove that plume to school and drove it to meetin’ and drove it to the Fair an’drove it most everywheres on Becky. So I reached out a pole an’ ketched it fore it got in amongst the logs an’ come to any damage, an’ here it is! The hat’s passed in its checks, I guess; looks kind as if a wet elephant had stepped on it; but the plume’s bout’s good as new! I reely fetched the hat beck for the sake o’ the plume.”
“It was real good of you, ‘Bijah, an’ we’re all of us obliged to you,” said Miranda, as she poised the hat on one hand and turned it slowly with the other.
“Well, I do say,” she exclaimed, “and I guess I’ve said it before, that of all the wearing’ plumes that ever I see, that one’s the wearin’est! Seems though it just wouldn’t give up. Look at the way it’s held Mis’ Cobb’s dye; it’s about as brown’s when it went int’ the water.”
“Dyed, but not a mite dead,” grinned Abijah, who was somewhat celebrated for his puns.
“And I declare,” Miranda continued, “when you think o’ the fuss they make about ostriches, killin’ em off by hundreds for the sake o’ their feathers that’ll string out and spoil in one hard rainstorm,—an’ all the time lettin’ useful porcupines run round with their quills on, why I can’t hardly understand it, without milliners have found out jest how good they do last, an’ so they won’t use em for trimmin’. ‘Bijah’s right; the hat ain’t no more use, Rebecca, but you can buy you another this mornin’—any color or shape you fancy—an’ have Miss Morton sew these brown quills on to it with some kind of a buckle or a bow, jest to hide the roots. Then you’ll be fixed for another season, thanks to ‘Bijah.”
Uncle Jerry and Aunt Sarah Cobb were made acquainted before very long with the part that destiny, or Abijah Flagg, had played in Rebecca’s affairs, for, accompanied by the teacher, she walked to the old stage driver’s that same afternoon. Taking off her new hat with the venerable trimming, she laid it somewhat ostentatiously upside down on the kitchen table and left the room, dimpling a little more than usual.
Uncle Jerry rose from his seat, and, crossing the room, looked curiously into the hat and found that a circular paper lining was neatly pinned in the crown, and that it bore these lines, which were read aloud with great effect by Miss Dearborn, and with her approval were copied in the Thought Book for the benefit of posterity:
“It was the bristling porcupine, As he stood on his native heath, He said, ‘I’ll pluck me some immortelles And make me up a wreath. For tho’ I may not live myself To more than a hundred and ten, My quills will last till crack of doom, And maybe after then. They can be colored blue or green Or orange, brown, or red, But often as they may be dyed They never will be dead.’ And so the bristling porcupine As he stood on his native heath, Said, I think I’ll pluck me some immmortelles And make me up a wreath.’
“R.R.R.”
Fifth Chronicle. THE SAVING OF THE COLORS
I
Even when Rebecca had left school, having attained the great age of seventeen and therefore able to look back over a past incredibly long and full, she still reckoned time not by years, but by certain important occurrences.
There was the year her father died; the year she left Sunnybrook Farm to come to her aunts in Riverboro; the year Sister Hannah became engaged; the year little Mira died; the year Abijah Flagg ceased to be Squire Bean’s chore-boy, and astounded Riverboro by departing for Limerick Academy in search of an education; and finally the year of her graduation, which, to the mind of seventeen, seems rather the culmination than the beginning of existence.
Between these epoch-making events certain other happenings stood out in bold relief against the gray of dull daily life.
There was the day she first met her friend of friends, “Mr. Aladdin,” and the later, even more radiant one when he gave her the coral necklace. There was the day the Simpson family moved away from Riverboro under a cloud, and she kissed Clara Belle fervently at the cross-roads, telling her that she would always be faithful. There was the visit of the Syrian missionaries to the brick house. That was a bright, romantic memory, as strange and brilliant as the wonderful little birds’ wings and breasts that the strangers brought from the Far East. She remembered the moment they asked her to choose some for herself, and the rapture with which she stroked the beautiful things as they lay on the black haircloth sofa. Then there was the coming of the new minister, for though many were tried only one was chosen; and finally there was the flag-raising, a festivity that thrilled Riverboro and Edgewood society from centre to circumference, a festivity that took place just before she entered the Female Seminary at Wareham and said good-by to kind Miss Dearborn and the village school.
There must have been other flag-raisings in history,—even the persons most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed that much,—but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such flag-raising as theirs, either in magnitude of conception or brilliancy of actual performance, could twice glorify the same century. Of some pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small wonder if Rebecca chose it as one of the important dates in her personal almanac.
The new minister’s wife was the being, under Providence, who had conceived the germinal idea of the flag.
At this time the parish had almost settled down to the trembling belief that they were united on a pastor. In the earlier time a minister was chosen for life, and if he had faults, which was a probably enough contingency, and if his congregation had any, which is within the bounds of possibility, each bore with the other (not quite without friction), as old-fashioned husbands and wives once did, before the easy way out of the difficulty was discovered, or at least before it was popularized.
The faithful old parson had died after thirty years’ preaching, and perhaps the newer methods had begun to creep in, for it seemed impossible to suit the two communities most interested in the choice.
The Rev. Mr. Davis, for example, was a spirited preacher, but persisted in keeping two horses in the parsonage stable, and in exchanging them whenever he could get faster ones. As a parochial visitor he was incomparable, dashing from house to house with such speed that he could cover the parish in a single afternoon. This sporting tendency, which would never have been remarked in a British parson, was frowned upon in a New England village, and Deacon Milliken told Mr. Davis, when giving him what he alluded to as his “walking papers,” that they didn’t want the Edgewood church run by hoss power!
The next candidate pleased Edgewood, where morning preaching was held, but the other parish, which had afternoon service, declined to accept him because he wore a wig—an ill-matched, crookedly applied wig.
Number three was eloquent but given to gesticulation, and Mrs. Jere Burbank, the president of the Dorcas Society, who sat in a front pew, said she couldn’t bear to see a preacher scramble round the pulpit hot Sundays.
Number four, a genial, handsome man, gifted in prayer, was found to be a Democrat. The congregation was overwhelmingly Republican in its politics, and perceived something ludicrous, if not positively blasphemous, in a Democrat preaching the gospel. (“Ananias and Beelzebub’ll be candidatin’ here, first thing we know!” exclaimed the outraged Republican nominee for district attorney.)
Number five had a feeble-minded child, which the hiring committee prophesied, would always be standing in the parsonage front yard, making talk for the other denominations.
Number six was the Rev. Judson Baxter, the present incumbent; and he was voted to be as near perfection as a minister can be in this finite world. His young wife had a small income of her own, a distinct and unusual advantage, and the subscription committee hoped that they might not be eternally driving over the country to get somebody’s fifty cents that had been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous duties a little more easily.
“It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!” complained Mrs. Robinson. “If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and I only hope they won’t get wasteful and run into debt. They say she keeps the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the room is lit up so often evenin’s that the neighbors think her and Mr. Baxter must set in there. It don’t seem hardly as if it could be so, but Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she says we might as well say good-by to the parlor carpet, which is church property, for the Baxters are living all over it!”
This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest service.
Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.
“It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,” she said, “but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to remember that their mothers made it with their own hands.”
“How would it do to let some of the girls help?” modestly asked Miss Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. “We might choose the best sewers and let them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have a share in it.”
“Just the thing!” exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. “We can cut the stripes and sew them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign rally, and we couldn’t christen it at a better time than in this presidential year.”
II
In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the preparations went forward in the two villages.
The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the soles of their shoes.
Dick Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six passengers from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time to pay some graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome conduct to Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive nothing more impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.
Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no official position, principally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because “his father’s war record wa’nt clean.” “Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the war,” she continued. “He hid out behind the hencoop when they was draftin’, but they found him and took him along. He got into one battle, too, somehow or nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious, Jim was; if he ever see trouble of any kind comin’ towards him, he was out o’ sight fore it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a month, without bounty, wouldn’t pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn’t fight a skeeter, Jim wouldn’t, but land! we ain’t to war all the time, and he’s a good neighbor and a good blacksmith.”
Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue ribbons had never been known since “Watson kep’ store,” and the number of brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the passing stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.
Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, “you shan’t go to the flag raising!” and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for new struggles toward the perfect life.
Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to drive Columbia and the States to the “raising” on the top of his own stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and basting and stitching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the starry part of the spangled banner was to remain with each of them in turn until she had performed her share of the work.
It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help in the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen ones, so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate stitches.
On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister’s wife drove up to the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had been a child awaiting baptismal rites.
“I’m so glad!” she sighed happily. “I thought it would never come my turn!”
“You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won’t be many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the new flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows against the sky!”
Rebecca’s eyes fairly blazed. “Shall I fell on’ my star, or buttonhole it?” she asked.
“Look at all the others and make the most beautiful stitches you can, that’s all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is your state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else is trying to do the same thing with her state, that will make a great country, won’t it?”
Rebecca’s eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. “My star, my state!” she repeated joyously. “Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I’ll make such fine stitches you’ll think the white grew out of the blue!”
The new minister’s wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame in the young heart. “You can sew so much of yourself into your star,” she went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, “that when you are an old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the others. Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Saturday afternoon; Mr. Baxter wants to see you.”
“Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!” she said that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and living “all over” the parish carpet. “I don’t know what she may, or may not, come to, some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have seen her clasp the flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it, and watched the tears of feeling start in her eyes when I told her that her star was her state! I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy neighbor’s child!’”
Daily at four o’clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone, brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and spirit for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time that her needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny stitches she was making rhymes “in her head,” her favorite achievement being this:
“Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old banner proud To float in the bright fall weather.”
There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate the State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the gift of the committee.
Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very shy and by no means a general favorite.
Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white slippers and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as Miss Delia Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should suck her thumb in the very middle of the exercises nobody’d be a dite surprised!
Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the brass band fund was a matter for grave consideration.
“I kind o’ hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her be the Goddess of Liberty,” proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was more local than national.
“How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her verses?” suggested the new minister’s wife, who, could she have had her way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam down.
So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to the awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a tribute to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other girls; they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.
Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of “Paradise Lost,” and the selections in the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily with the poet who said:
“Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a sudden clasp us with a smile.”
For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to herself, after she had finished her prayers: “It can’t be true that I’m chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN’T be true! Nobody could be good ENOUGH, but oh, I’ll try to be as good as I can! To be going to Wareham Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must pray HARD to God to keep me meek and humble!”
