the “sawyer girls'” barn still had its haymow in rebecca's time, although the hay was a dozen years old or more, and, in the opinion of the occasional visiting horse, sadly juiceless and wanting in flavor. it still sheltered, too, old deacon israel sawyer's carryall and mowing-machine, with his pung, his sleigh, and a dozen other survivals of an earlier era, when the broad acres of the brick house went to make one of the finest farms in riverboro.
there were no horses or cows in the stalls nowadays; no pig grunting comfortably of future spare ribs in the sty; no hens to peck the plants in the cherished garden patch. the sawyer girls were getting on in years, and, mindful that care once killed a cat, they ordered their lives with the view of escaping that particular doom, at least, and succeeded fairly well until rebecca's advent made existence a trifle more sensational.
once a month for years upon years, miss miranda and miss jane had put towels over their heads and made a solemn visit to the barn, taking off the enameled cloth coverings (occasionally called “emmanuel covers” in riverboro), dusting the ancient implements, and sometimes sweeping the heaviest of the cobwebs from the corners, or giving a brush to the floor.
deacon israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place, propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal glory scarcely looked fairer to jacob of old than this to rebecca. by means of its dusty rounds she mounted, mounted, mounted far away from time and care and maiden aunts, far away from childish tasks and childish troubles, to the barn chamber, a place so full of golden dreams, happy reveries, and vague longings, that, as her little brown hands clung to the sides of the ladder and her feet trod the rounds cautiously in her ascent, her heart almost stopped beating in the sheer joy of anticipation.
once having gained the heights, the next thing was to unlatch the heavy doors and give them a gentle swing outward. then, oh, ever new paradise! then, oh, ever lovely green and growing world! for rebecca had that something in her soul that
“gives to seas and sunset skies the unspent beauty of surprise.”
at the top of guide board hill she could see alice robinson's barn with its shining weather vane, a huge burnished fish that swam with the wind and foretold the day to all riverboro. the meadow, with its sunny slopes stretching up to the pine woods, was sometimes a flowing sheet of shimmering grass, sometimes—when daisies and buttercups were blooming—a vision of white and gold. sometimes the shorn stubble would be dotted with “the happy hills of hay,” and a little later the rock maple on the edge of the pines would stand out like a golden ball against the green; its neighbor, the sugar maple, glowing beside it, brave in scarlet.
it was on one of these autumn days with a wintry nip in the air that adam ladd (rebecca's favorite “mr. aladdin”), after searching for her in field and garden, suddenly noticed the open doors of the barn chamber, and called to her. at the sound of his vice she dropped her precious diary, and flew to the edge of the haymow. he never forgot the vision of the startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in the other, dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an occasional glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.
“a sappho in mittens!” he cried laughingly, and at her eager question told her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when she was admitted to the female seminary at wareham.
now, all being ready, rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and withdrew a thick blank-book with mottled covers. out of her gingham apron pocket came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown paper; then she seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an inverted soapbox nearer to her for a table.
the book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the extracts already carefully copied therein. most of them were apparently to the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now and then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but once in a while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of discouragement, showing that the artist in the child was not wholly satisfied.
then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were no throes. other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was never obedient in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror from early childhood to the end of time.
not so with rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no more striking simile could possibly be used. her handwriting was not spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared, for copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the despair of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she must and did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six, till now, writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged in as solace and balm when the terrors of examples in least common multiple threatened to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar loomed huge and unconquerable in the near horizon.
as to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by training, and though she slipped at times from the beaten path, her extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant mistakes. it was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before copying her thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration of posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and particularly when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house, impulse as usual carried the day.
there sits rebecca, then, in the open door of the sawyers barn chamber—the sunset door. how many a time had her grandfather, the good deacon, sat just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when mrs. israel's temper was uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting contrast to his own fireside!
the open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the pipe, not allowed in the “settin'-room”—how beautifully these simple agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! “if i hadn't had my barn and my store both, i couldn't never have lived in holy matrimony with maryliza!” once said mr. watson feelingly.
but the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn and his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw such visions as rebecca. the child, transplanted from her home farm at sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and the companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky brothers and sisters—she had indeed fallen on shady days in riverboro. the blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and the same might have been said of miss miranda's mind and heart, though miss jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and rebecca already had her unconscious hand on several others. brickhouse rules were rigid and many for a little creature so full of life, but rebecca's gay spirit could not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped somehow and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she were not allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she could still sing in the cage, like the canary.
