I
The foregoing episode, if narrated in a romance, would undoubtedly have
been called “The Saving of the Colors,” but at the nightly conversazione
in Watson's store it was alluded to as the way little Becky Randall got
the flag away from Slippery Simpson.
Dramatic as it was, it passed into the limbo of half-forgotten things
in Rebecca's mind, its brief importance submerged in the glories of the
next day.
There was a painful prelude to these glories. Alice Robinson came to
spend the night with Rebecca, and when the bedroom door closed upon the
two girls, Alice announced her intention of “doing up” Rebecca's front
hair in leads and rags, and braiding the back in six tight, wetted
braids.
Rebecca demurred. Alice persisted.
“Your hair is so long and thick and dark and straight,” she said, “that
you'll look like an Injun!”
“I am the State of Maine; it all belonged to the Indians once,” Rebecca
remarked gloomily, for she was curiously shy about discussing her
personal appearance.
“And your wreath of little pine-cones won't set decent without crimps,”
continued Alice.
Rebecca glanced in the cracked looking-glass and met what she considered
an accusing lack of beauty, a sight that always either saddened or
enraged her according to circumstances; then she sat down resignedly
and began to help Alice in the philanthropic work of making the State of
Maine fit to be seen at the raising.
Neither of the girls was an expert hairdresser, and at the end of an
hour, when the sixth braid was tied, and Rebecca had given one last
shuddering look in the mirror, both were ready to weep with fatigue.
The candle was blown out and Alice soon went to sleep, but Rebecca
tossed on her pillow, its goose-feathered softness all dented by the
cruel lead knobs and the knots of twisted rags. She slipped out of bed
and walked to and fro, holding her aching head with both hands. Finally
she leaned on the window-sill, watching the still weather-vane on
Alice's barn and breathing in the fragrance of the ripening apples,
until her restlessness subsided under the clear starry beauty of the
night.
At six in the morning the girls were out of bed, for Alice could hardly
wait until Rebecca's hair was taken down, she was so eager to see the
result of her labors.
The leads and rags were painfully removed, together with much hair, the
operation being punctuated by a series of squeaks, squeals, and shrieks
on the part of Rebecca and a series of warnings from Alice, who wished
the preliminaries to be kept secret from the aunts, that they might the
more fully appreciate the radiant result.
Then came the unbraiding, and then--dramatic moment--the “combing out;”
a difficult, not to say impossible process, in which the hairs that had
resisted the earlier stages almost gave up the ghost.
The long front strands had been wound up from various angles and by
various methods, so that, when released, they assumed the strangest,
most obstinate, most unexpected attitudes. When the comb was dragged
through the last braid, the wild, tortured, electric hairs following,
and then rebounding from it in a bristling, snarling tangle.
Massachusetts gave one encompassing glance at the State o' Maine's head,
and announced her intention of going home to breakfast! She was deeply
grieved at the result of her attempted beautifying, but she felt that
meeting Miss Miranda Sawyer at the morning meal would not mend matters
in the least, so slipping out of the side door, she ran up Guide Board
hill as fast as her legs could carry her.
The State o' Maine, deserted and somewhat unnerved, sat down before the
glass and attacked her hair doggedly and with set lips, working over it
until Miss Jane called her to breakfast; then, with a boldness born
of despair, she entered the dining room, where her aunts were already
seated at table. To “draw fire” she whistled, a forbidden joy, which
only attracted more attention, instead of diverting it. There was a
moment of silence after the grotesque figure was fully taken in; then
came a moan from Jane and a groan from Miranda.
“What have you done to yourself?” asked Miranda sternly.
“Made an effort to be beautiful and failed!” jauntily replied Rebecca,
but she was too miserable to keep up the fiction. “Oh, Aunt Miranda,
don't scold. I'm so unhappy! Alice and I rolled up my hair to curl it
for the raising. She said it was so straight I looked like an Indian!”
“Mebbe you did,” vigorously agreed Miranda, “but 't any rate you looked
like a Christian Injun, 'n' now you look like a heathen Injun; that's
all the difference I can see. What can we do with her, Jane, between
this and nine o'clock?”
“We'll all go out to the pump just as soon as we're through breakfast,”
answered Jane soothingly. “We can accomplish consid'rable with water and
force.”
Rebecca nibbled her corn-cake, her tearful eyes cast on her plate and
her chin quivering.
“Don't you cry and red your eyes up,” chided Miranda quite kindly; “the
minute you've eat enough run up and get your brush and comb and meet us
at the back door.”
“I wouldn't care myself how bad I looked,” said Rebecca, “but I can't
bear to be so homely that I shame the State of Maine!”
Oh, what an hour followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary
or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of
horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be
dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under
the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough roller
towels; to be dried with hot flannels! And is it not well-nigh
incredible that at the close of such an hour the ends of the long hair
should still stand out straight, the braids having been turned up two
inches by Alice, and tied hard in that position with linen thread?
“Get out the skirt-board, Jane,” cried Miranda, to whom opposition
served as a tonic, “and move that flat-iron on to the front o' the
stove. Rebecca, set down in that low chair beside the board, and Jane,
you spread out her hair on it and cover it up with brown paper. Don't
cringe, Rebecca; the worst's over, and you've borne up real good! I'll
be careful not to pull your hair nor scorch you, and oh, _how_ I'd like
to have Alice Robinson acrost my knee and a good strip o' shingle in my
right hand! There, you're all ironed out and your Aunt Jane can put on
your white dress and braid your hair up again good and tight. Perhaps
you won't be the hombliest of the states, after all; but when I see you
comin' in to breakfast I said to myself: I guess if Maine looked like
that, it wouldn't never 'a' been admitted into the Union!'”
When Uncle Sam and the stagecoach drew up to the brick house with a
grand swing and a flourish, the goddess of Liberty and most of the
States were already in their places on the “harricane deck.”
Words fail to describe the gallant bearing of the horses, their
headstalls gayly trimmed and their harnesses dotted with little flags.
The stage windows were hung in bunting, and from within beamed Columbia,
looking out from the bright frame as if proud of her freight of loyal
children. Patriotic streamers floated from whip, from dash-board and
from rumble, and the effect of the whole was something to stimulate the
most phlegmatic voter.
Rebecca came out on the steps and Aunt Jane brought a chair to assist in
the ascent. Miss Dearborn peeped from the window, and gave a despairing
look at her favorite.
What had happened to her? Who had dressed her? Had her head been put
through a wringing-machine? Why were her eyes red and swollen? Miss
Dearborn determined to take her behind the trees in the pine grove
and give her some finishing touches; touches that her skillful fingers
fairly itched to bestow.
The stage started, and as the roadside pageant grew gayer and gayer,
Rebecca began to brighten and look prettier, for most of her beautifying
came from within. The people, walking, driving, or standing on
their doorsteps, cheered Uncle Sam's coach with its freight of
gossamer-muslined, fluttering-ribboned girls, and just behind, the
gorgeously decorated haycart, driven by Abijah Flagg, bearing the jolly
but inharmonious fife-and-drum corps.
Was ever such a golden day! Such crystal air! Such mellow sunshine! Such
a merry Uncle Sam!
The stage drew up at an appointed spot near a pine grove, and while the
crowd was gathering, the children waited for the hour to arrive when
they should march to the platform; the hour toward which they seemed to
have been moving since the dawn of creation.
As soon as possible Miss Dearborn whispered to Rebecca: “Come behind the
trees with me; I want to make you prettier!”
Rebecca thought she had suffered enough from that process already during
the last twelve hours, but she put out an obedient hand and the two
withdrew.
Now Miss Dearborn was, I fear, a very indifferent teacher. Dr. Moses
always said so, and Libbie Moses, who wanted her school, said it was
a pity she hadn't enjoyed more social advantages in her youth. Libbie
herself had taken music lessons in Portland; and spent a night at the
Profile House in the White Mountains, and had visited her sister in
Lowell, Massachusetts. These experiences gave her, in her own mind, and
in the mind of her intimate friends, a horizon so boundless that her
view of smaller, humbler matters was a trifle distorted.
Miss Dearborn's stock in trade was small, her principal virtues being
devotion to children and ability to gain their love, and a power of
evolving a schoolroom order so natural, cheery, serene, and peaceful
that it gave the beholder a certain sense of being in a district heaven.
She was poor in arithmetic and weak in geometry, but if you gave her a
rose, a bit of ribbon, and a seven-by-nine looking-glass she could make
herself as pretty as a pink in two minutes.
Safely sheltered behind the pines, Miss Dearborn began to practice
mysterious feminine arts. She flew at Rebecca's tight braids, opened
the strands and rebraided them loosely; bit and tore the red, white,
and blue ribbon in two and tied the braids separately. Then with nimble
fingers she pulled out little tendrils of hair behind the ears and
around the nape of the neck. After a glance of acute disapproval
directed at the stiff balloon skirt she knelt on the ground and gave
a strenuous embrace to Rebecca's knees, murmuring, between her hugs,
“Starch must be cheap at the brick house!”
This particular line of beauty attained, there ensued great pinchings of
ruffles, her fingers that could never hold a ferrule nor snap children's
ears being incomparable fluting-irons.
Next the sash was scornfully untied and tightened to suggest something
resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy,
spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs,
till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart,
alert!
Pride of bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck,
and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned
in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton
gloves that called attention to the tanned wrist and arms were stripped
off and put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was
adjusted at a heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly
into a fluffy frame, and finally, as she met Rebecca's grateful eyes
she gave her two approving, triumphant kisses. In a second the sensitive
face lighted into happiness; pleased dimples appeared in the cheeks, the
kissed mouth was as red as a rose, and the little fright that had walked
behind the pine-tree stepped out on the other side Rebecca the lovely.
As to the relative value of Miss Dearborn's accomplishments, the
decision must be left to the gentle reader; but though it is certain
that children should be properly grounded in mathematics, no heart of
flesh could bear to hear Miss Dearborn's methods vilified who had seen
her patting, pulling, squeezing Rebecca from ugliness into beauty.
The young superintendent of district schools was a witness of the scene,
and when later he noted the children surrounding Columbia as bees
a honeysuckle, he observed to Dr. Moses: “She may not be much of a
teacher, but I think she'd be considerable of a wife!” and subsequent
events proved that he meant what he said!