I
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 voice 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.