“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 and long-desired age she wondered if, after all, it was destined to be a turning point in her quiet existence. her eleventh year, for instance, had been a real turning-point, since it was then that she had left sunnybrook farm and come to her maiden aunts in riverboro. aurelia randall may have been doubtful as to the effect upon her spinster sisters of the irrepressible child, but she was hopeful from the first that the larger opportunities of riverboro would be the “making” of rebecca herself.
the next turning-point was her fourteenth year, when she left the district school for the wareham female seminary, then in the hey-day of its local fame. graduation (next to marriage, perhaps, the most thrilling episode in the life of a little country girl) happened at seventeen, and not long afterward her aunt miranda's death, sudden and unexpected, changed not only all the outward activities and conditions of her life, but played its own part in her development.
the brick house looked very homelike and pleasant on a june morning nowadays with children's faces smiling at the windows and youthful footsteps sounding through the halls; and the brass knocker on the red-painted front door might have remembered rebecca's prayer of a year before, when she leaned against its sun-warmed brightness and whispered: “god bless aunt miranda; god bless the brick house that was; god bless the brick house that's going to be!”
all the doors and blinds were open to the sun and air as they had never been in miss miranda sawyer's time. the hollyhock bed that had been her chief pride was never neglected, and rebecca liked to hear the neighbors say that there was no such row of beautiful plants and no such variety of beautiful colors in riverboro as those that climbed up and peeped in at the kitchen windows where old miss miranda used to sit.
now that the place was her very own rebecca felt a passion of pride in its smoothly mown fields, its carefully thinned-out woods, its blooming garden spots, and its well-weeded vegetable patch; felt, too whenever she looked at any part of it, a passion of gratitude to the stern old aunt who had looked upon her as the future head of the family, as well as a passion of desire to be worthy of that trust.
it had been a very difficult year for a girl fresh from school: the death of her aunt, the nursing of miss jane, prematurely enfeebled by the shock, the removal of her own invalid mother and the rest of the little family from sunnybrook farm. but all had gone smoothly; and when once the randall fortunes had taken an upward turn nothing seemed able to stop their intrepid ascent.
aurelia randall renewed her youth in the companionship of her sister jane and the comforts by which her children were surrounded; the mortgage was no longer a daily terror, for sunnybrook had been sold to the new railroad; hannah, now mrs. will melville, was happily situated; john, at last, was studying medicine; mark, the boisterous and unlucky brother, had broken no bones for several months; while jenny and fanny were doing well at the district school under miss libby moses, miss dearborn's successor.
“i don't feel very safe,” thought rebecca, remembering all these unaccustomed mercies as she sat on the front doorsteps, with her tatting shuttle flying in and out of the fine cotton like a hummingbird. “it's just like one of those too beautiful july days that winds up with a thundershower before night! still, when you remember that the randalls never had anything but thunder and lightning, rain, snow, and hail, in their family history for twelve or fifteen years, perhaps it is only natural that they should enjoy a little spell of settled weather. if it really turns out to be settled, now that aunt jane and mother are strong again i must be looking up one of what mr. aladdin calls my cast-off careers.”—“there comes emma jane perkins through her front gate; she will be here in a minute, and i'll tease her!” and rebecca ran in the door and seated herself at the old piano that stood between the open windows in the parlor.
peeping from behind the muslin curtains, she waited until emma jane was on the very threshold and then began singing her version of an old ballad, made that morning while she was dressing. the ballad was a great favorite of hers, and she counted on doing telling execution with it in the present instance by the simple subterfuge of removing the original hero and heroine, alonzo and imogene, and substituting abijah the brave and the fair emmajane, leaving the circumstances in the first three verses unaltered, because in truth they seemed to require no alteration.
her high, clear voice, quivering with merriment, floated through the windows 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 can hear it over to my house!”
“then, if she can, i must sing the third verse, just to clear your reputation from the cloud cast upon it in the second,” laughed her tormentor, going on with the song:
“'oh, hush these suspicions!' fair emmajane said, 'so hurtful to love and 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 piano stool and confronted her friend, who was carefully closing the parlor windows:—
“emma jane perkins, it is an ordinary thursday afternoon at four o'clock and you have on your new blue barege, although there is not even a church sociable in prospect this evening. what does this mean? is abijah the 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 when not dressed up. right, my fair emmajane; so would i. not that it makes any difference to poor me, wearing my fourth best black and white calico and expecting nobody.
“oh, well, you! there's something inside of you that does instead of pretty dresses,” cried emma jane, whose adoration of her friend had never altered nor lessened since they met at the age of eleven. “you know you are as different from anybody else in riverboro as a princess in a fairy story. libby moses says they would notice you in lowell, massachusetts!”
“would they? i wonder,” speculated rebecca, rendered almost speechless by this tribute to her charms. “well, if lowell, massachusetts, could see me, or if you could see me, in my new lavender muslin with the violet sash, it would die of envy, and so would you!”
“if i had been going to be envious of you, rebecca, i should have died years 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 both ways,” teased rebecca, and then, softening her tone, she said: “how is it getting on, emmy? tell me what's happened since i've been in brunswick.”
“nothing much,” confessed emma jane. “he writes to me, but i don't write to 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 seem to write in latin. i saw him at the masonic picnic in the grove, but he won't say anything real to me till he gets more pay and dares to speak to mother and father. he is brave in all other ways, but i ain't sure he'll ever have the courage for that, he's so afraid of them and always has been. just remember what's in his mind all the time, rebecca, that my folks know all about what his mother was, and how he was born on the poor-farm. not that i care; look how he's educated and worked himself up! i think he's perfectly elegant, and i shouldn't mind if he had been born in the bulrushes, like moses.”
emma jane's every-day vocabulary was pretty much what it had been before she went to the expensive wareham female seminary. she had acquired a certain amount of information concerning the art of speech, but in moments of strong feeling she lapsed into the vernacular. she grew slowly in all directions, did emma jane, and, to use rebecca's favorite nautilus figure, she had left comparatively few outgrown shells on the shores of “life's unresting sea.”
“moses wasn't born in the bulrushes, emmy dear,” corrected rebecca laughingly. “pharaoh's daughter found him there. it wasn't quite as romantic a scene—squire bean's wife taking little abijah flagg from the poorhouse 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 will write notes stating that mrs. abijah flagg requests the pleasure of miss rebecca 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 and the turquoise carryall!”
emma jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: “if i ever write the invitation i shan't be addressing it to miss randall, i'm sure of that; it'll be to mrs.——-”
“don't!” cried rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand over emma jane's lips. “if you won't i'll stop teasing. i couldn't bear a 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—something that you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and abijah too.”
“don't get excited,” replied emma jane, “i was only going to say you were sure to be mrs. somebody in course of time.”
“oh,” said rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; “if that's all you meant, just nonsense; but i thought, i thought—i don't really 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 of my coming birthday and said that squire bean would give me the deed of the brick house. that made me feel very old and responsible; and when i came out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the old years were moving up and down the road. everything is so beautiful today! doesn't the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields painted pink and green and yellow this very minute?”
“it's a perfectly elegant day!” responded emma jane with a sigh. “if only my mind was at rest! that's the difference between being young and grown-up. we never used to think and worry.”
“indeed we didn't! look, emmy, there's the very spot where uncle jerry cobb stopped the stage and i stepped out with my pink parasol and my bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom window and wondering what i had in mother's little hair trunk strapped on behind. poor aunt miranda didn't love me at first sight, and oh, how cross she was the first two years! but now every hard thought i ever had comes back to me and cuts like a knife!”
“she was dreadful hard to get along with, and i used to hate her like poison,” confessed emma jane; “but i am sorry now. she was kinder toward the last, anyway, and then, you see children know so little! we never suspected she was sick or that she was worrying over that lost interest money.”
“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 forget everything but our own angry speeches; somehow we never remember theirs. and oh, emma jane, there's another such a sweet little picture out there in the road. the next day after i came to riverboro, do you remember, i stole out of the brick house crying, and leaned against the front gate. you pushed your little fat pink-and-white face through the pickets and said: don't cry! i'll kiss you if you will me!'”
lumps rose suddenly in emma jane's throat, and she put her arm around rebecca's waist as they sat together side by side.
“oh, i do remember,” she said in a choking voice. “and i can see the two of us driving over to north riverboro and selling soap to mr. adam ladd; and lighting up the premium banquet lamp at the simpson party; and laying the daisies round jacky winslow's mother when she was dead in the cabin; and trundling jacky up and down the street in our old baby carriage!”
“and i remember you,” continued rebecca, “being chased down the hill by jacob moody, when we were being daughters of zion and you had been chosen to convert him!”
“and i remember you, getting the flag back from mr. simpson; and how you looked when you spoke your verses at the flag-raising.”
“and have you forgotten the week i refused to speak to abijah flagg because he fished my turban with the porcupine quills out of the river when i hoped at last that i had lost it! oh, emma jane, we had dear good times together in the little harbor.'”
“i always thought that was an elegant composition of yours—that farewell to the class,” said emma jane.
“the strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbor of childhood into the unknown seas,” recalled rebecca. “it is bearing you almost out of my sight, emmy, these last days, when you put on a new dress in the afternoon and look out of the window instead of coming across the street. abijah flagg never used to be in the little harbor with the rest of us; when did he first sail in, emmy?”
emma jane grew a deeper pink and her button-hole of a mouth quivered with delicious excitement.
“it was last year at the seminary, when he wrote me his first latin letter from limerick academy,” she said in a half whisper.
“i remember,” laughed rebecca. “you suddenly began the study of the dead languages, and the latin dictionary took the place of the crochet needle in 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, “and i think i really ought to say it to you, because it's the only way you will ever know how perfectly elegant abijah is. look the other way, rebecca. shall i have to translate it for you, do you think, because it seems 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 and recited like a tremulous parrot the boyish love letter that had so fired her youthful imagination.
“vale, carissima, carissima puella!” repeated rebecca in her musical voice. “oh, how beautiful it sounds! i don't wonder it altered your feeling for abijah! upon my word, emma jane,” she cried with a sudden change of tone, “if i had suspected for an instant that abijah the brave had that latin letter in him i should have tried to get him to write it to me; and then it would be i who would sit down at my mahogany desk and ask 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 that you never looked at abijah flagg and he never looked at you. if either of you ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and i've always known it!”
