The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road,
and after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could
endure, Rebecca remarked sedately:
“It's a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn't it, Mr. Perkins?”
“Plenty o' trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin's an' all,” that
good man replied. “If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head,
an' food to eat, you've got to work for 'em. If I hadn't 'a' labored
early an' late, learned my trade, an' denied myself when I was young, I
might 'a' be'n a pauper layin' sick in a loggin' cabin, 'stead o' bein'
an overseer o' the poor an' selectman drivin' along to take the pauper
to the poor farm.”
“People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they,
Mr. Perkins?” asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her
home farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like
a shadow over her childhood.
“Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to _be_ mortgaged. You
have to own something before you can mortgage it.”
Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
certain stage in worldly prosperity.
“Well,” she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
growing hopeful as she did so; “maybe the sick woman will be better such
a beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and
say he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation
that was once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it
came out in a story I'm reading.”
“I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much,” responded
the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.
A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly
to its door.
As they drew near the figure of a woman approached--Mrs. Lizy Ann
Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.
“Good morning, Mr. Perkins,” said the woman, who looked tired and
irritable. “I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after
I sent you word, and she's dead.”
Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all
decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world
reveling in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving
in the fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks
or tossing it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling
after the summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the
birds singing for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping,
adding its note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.
“I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'
day,” said Lizy Ann Dennett.
“Her soul passed upward to its God
Just at the break of day.”
These words came suddenly into Rebecca's mind from a tiny chamber where
such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the
surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral
or read them in the hymn book or made them up “out of her own head,” but
she was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking
that she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett's conversation.
“I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an' she's be'n here an' laid her out,”
continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. “She ain't got any folks, an'
John Winslow ain't never had any as far back as I can remember. She
belongs to your town and you'll have to bury her and take care of
Jacky--that's the boy. He's seventeen months old, a bright little
feller, the image o' John, but I can't keep him another day. I'm all
wore out; my own baby's sick, mother's rheumatiz is extry bad, and my
husband's comin' home tonight from his week's work. If he finds a child
o' John Winslow's under his roof I can't say what would happen; you'll
have to take him back with you to the poor farm.”
“I can't take him up there this afternoon,” objected Mr. Perkins.
“Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he's good as a kitten. John
Winslow'll hear o' Sal's death sooner or later, unless he's gone out of
the state altogether, an' when he knows the boy's at the poor farm, I
kind o' think he'll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the
village to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to
stay here alone for a spell?” she asked, turning to the girls.
“Afraid?” they both echoed uncomprehendingly.
Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence
had not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but
drove off together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin
and promising to be back in an hour.
There was not a house within sight, either looking up or down the shady
road, and the two girls stood hand in hand, watching the wagon out of
sight; then they sat down quietly under a tree, feeling all at once a
nameless depression hanging over their gay summer-morning spirits.
It was very still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now
and then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a far-distant mowing
machine.
“We're _watching!_” whispered Emma Jane. “They watched with Gran'pa
Perkins, and there was a great funeral and two ministers. He left two
thousand dollars in the bank and a store full of goods, and a paper
thing you could cut tickets off of twice a year, and they were just like
money.”
“They watched with my little sister Mira, too,” said Rebecca. “You
remember when she died, and I went home to Sunnybrook Farm? It was
winter time, but she was covered with evergreen and white pinks, and
there was singing.”
“There won't be any funeral or ministers or singing here, will there?
Isn't that awful?”
“I s'pose not; and oh, Emma Jane, no flowers either. We might get those
for her if there's nobody else to do it.”
“Would you dare put them on to her?” asked Emma Jane, in a hushed voice.
“I don't know; I can't tell; it makes me shiver, but, of course, we
_could_ do it if we were the only friends she had. Let's look into
the cabin first and be perfectly sure that there aren't any. Are you
afraid?”
“N-no; I guess not. I looked at Gran'pa Perkins, and he was just the
same as ever.”
At the door of the hut Emma Jane's courage suddenly departed. She
held back shuddering and refused either to enter or look in. Rebecca
shuddered too, but kept on, drawn by an insatiable curiosity about life
and death, an overmastering desire to know and feel and understand the
mysteries of existence, a hunger for knowledge and experience at all
hazards and at any cost.
Emma Jane hurried softly away from the felt terrors of the cabin, and
after two or three minutes of utter silence Rebecca issued from the
open door, her sensitive face pale and woe-begone, the ever-ready tears
raining down her cheeks. She ran toward the edge of the wood, sinking
down by Emma Jane's side, and covering her eyes, sobbed with excitement:
“Oh, Emma Jane, she hasn't got a flower, and she's so tired and
sad-looking, as if she'd been hurt and hurt and never had any good
times, and there's a weeny, weeny baby side of her. Oh, I wish I hadn't
gone in!”
Emma Jane blenched for an instant. “Mrs. Dennett never said _there was
two dead ones! Isn't that dreadful?_ But,” she continued, her practical
common sense coming to the rescue, “you've been in once and it's all
over; it won't be so bad when you take in the flowers because you'll
be used to it. The goldenrod hasn't begun to bud, so there's nothing
to pick but daisies. Shall I make a long rope of them, as I did for the
schoolroom?”
“Yes,” said Rebecca, wiping her eyes and still sobbing. “Yes, that's the
prettiest, and if we put it all round her like a frame, the undertaker
couldn't be so cruel as to throw it away, even if she is a pauper,
because it will look so beautiful. From what the Sunday school lessons
say, she's only asleep now, and when she wakes up she'll be in heaven.”
“_There's another place_,” said Emma Jane, in an orthodox and sepulchral
whisper, as she took her ever-present ball of crochet cotton from her
pocket and began to twine the whiteweed blossoms into a rope.
“Oh, well!” Rebecca replied with the easy theology that belonged to her
temperament. “They simply couldn't send her _down there_ with that
little weeny baby. Who'd take care of it? You know page six of the
catechism says the only companions of the wicked after death are their
father the devil and all the other evil angels; it wouldn't be any place
to bring up a baby.”
“Whenever and wherever she wakes up, I hope she won't know that the big
baby is going to the poor farm. I wonder where he is?”
“Perhaps over to Mrs. Dennett's house. She didn't seem sorry a bit, did
she?”
“No, but I suppose she's tired sitting up and nursing a stranger. Mother
wasn't sorry when Gran'pa Perkins died; she couldn't be, for he was
cross all the time and had to be fed like a child. Why _are_ you crying
again, Rebecca?”
“Oh, I don't know, I can't tell, Emma Jane! Only I don't want to die and
have no funeral or singing and nobody sorry for me! I just couldn't bear
it!”
“Neither could I,” Emma Jane responded sympathetically; “but p'r'aps
if we're real good and die young before we have to be fed, they will
be sorry. I do wish you could write some poetry for her as you did for
Alice Robinson's canary bird, only still better, of course, like that
you read me out of your thought book.”
“I could, easy enough,” exclaimed Rebecca, somewhat consoled by the
idea that her rhyming faculty could be of any use in such an emergency.
“Though I don't know but it would be kind of bold to do it. I'm all
puzzled about how people get to heaven after they're buried. I can't
understand it a bit; but if the poetry is on her, what if that should
go, too? And how could I write anything good enough to be read out loud
in heaven?”
“A little piece of paper couldn't get to heaven; it just couldn't,”
asserted Emma Jane decisively. “It would be all blown to pieces and
dried up. And nobody knows that the angels can read writing, anyway.”
“They must be as educated as we are, and more so, too,” agreed Rebecca.
“They must be more than just dead people, or else why should they have
wings? But I'll go off and write something while you finish the rope;
it's lucky you brought your crochet cotton and I my lead pencil.”
In fifteen or twenty minutes she returned with some lines written on a
scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said,
preparing to read them aloud: “They're not good; I was afraid your
father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly
like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally
Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so
I thought if I said 'friend' it would show she had somebody to be sorry.
“This friend of ours has died and gone
From us to heaven to live.
If she has sinned against Thee, Lord,
We pray Thee, Lord, forgive.
“Her husband runneth far away
And knoweth not she's dead.
Oh, bring him back--ere tis too late--
To mourn beside her bed.
“And if perchance it can't be so,
Be to the children kind;
The weeny one that goes with her,
The other left behind.”
“I think that's perfectly elegant!” exclaimed Emma Jane, kissing Rebecca
fervently. “You are the smartest girl in the whole State of Maine, and
it sounds like a minister's prayer. I wish we could save up and buy a
printing machine. Then I could learn to print what you write and we'd
be partners like father and Bill Moses. Shall you sign it with your name
like we do our school compositions?”
“No,” said Rebecca soberly. “I certainly shan't sign it, not knowing
where it's going or who'll read it. I shall just hide it in the flowers,
and whoever finds it will guess that there wasn't any minister or
singing, or gravestone, or anything, so somebody just did the best they
could.”