[Illustration: Book Cover]
REBECCA'S PROMISE
By Frances R. Sterrett
Rebecca's Promise
Jimmie the Sixth
William and Williamina
Mary Rose of Mifflin
Up the Road with Sallie
The Jam Girl
* * * * *
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Publishers New York
[Illustration: SHE THRUST THE VIOLETS INTO REBECCA'S HAND [page 4]]
REBECCA'S
PROMISE
BY
FRANCES R. STERRETT
AUTHOR OF "JIMMIE THE SIXTH," "MARY ROSE OF MIFFLIN,"
"THE JAM GIRL," ETC.
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED BY
E. C. CASWELL
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
TO
LILIAN JOSEPHA STERRETT
who believes in memory insurance
for you and for me.
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
She thrust the violets into Rebecca's hand _Frontispiece_
"Do you mean to tell us that we can't go?" 152
"Hello, Kitty!" 302
"I love you, Rebecca Mary" 324
CHAPTER I
"I never should have brought you here," murmured Cousin Susan Wentworth,
as she looked across the table at young Cousin Rebecca Mary Wyman, who
sat on the other side of the white cloth like a small gray mouse with
bright expectant eyes, a pretty pink flush on her cheeks and her head
with its crown of soft yellow brown hair held high. "I should have saved
my money for new kitchen curtains. The curtains in my kitchen are a
disgrace to any housekeeper. But life wouldn't be worth much if we
didn't occasionally do something we shouldn't, would it?" And she smiled
at pink-cheeked Rebecca Mary. "The memory of this pretty room with the
gay crowds of people, the music, the good things to eat will last longer
than any curtains. And I can cut down the old bedroom curtains for the
kitchen. Rebecca Mary, did you ever think that is what life really is,
cutting down our desires to fit our necessities?"
Rebecca Mary sniffed. She had known that for twenty-two years. She did
not have to be thirty-nine like Cousin Susan to learn that necessities
always crowd out desires. And anyway she did not wish to talk of
necessities, they were stupid and uninteresting, when for once in her
life she was a part of what no one in the wide world could ever consider
a necessity.
She let Cousin Susan study the card the attentive waiter handed to her,
and while Cousin Susan tried to keep her mind from prices and on names,
Rebecca Mary's bright eyes roved over the big brilliant room. She had
never expected to enter it. She had scarcely believed her two pink ears
when they told her that Cousin Susan had said, quite casually, "Rebecca
Mary, suppose we go to the Waloo for tea?" Rebecca Mary had given a
startled gasp, but here she was at the Waloo trying to forget that her
old blue serge suit was wide where it should be narrow and narrow where
it should be wide, and that her hat had only been given a good brushing
to make it ready for another season.
Afternoon tea was served at the Waloo in the Viking room, a beautiful
place with its scenes from the old Norse sagas on the walls above a
wainscoting of dark wood and with lights like old ship lanterns hanging
from the beamed ceiling. The chairs and tables were suggestive of long
ago days, also, but the linen, the silver, the dainty china, the music
and the guests were very much of to-day.
Rebecca Mary watched the young people almost enviously as Cousin Susan
hesitated over _foie gras_ sandwiches, which were expensive and
therefore suitable for an occasion which was to cost her kitchen its new
curtains, and lettuce sandwiches which were cheap and which she made
herself every time the Mifflin Fortnightly Club met with her. Rebecca
Mary could easily imagine what joy it would be to come to the Viking
room in smart new clothes and with a young man like--like that tall
young fellow who was with the girl in the wistaria taffeta. It made the
pink in Rebecca Mary's cheeks turn to rose just to think of what joy
that would be.
There were any number of girls in the Viking room with whom Rebecca Mary
would have changed places in the twinkling of an eye. It hurt almost as
much as an ulcerated tooth to watch those radiant young people. And when
you have an ulcerated tooth you don't, unless you are strong-minded or
philosophical or stoical, laugh and chatter gayly; you know you don't.
Rebecca Mary wasn't strong-minded nor philosophical nor stoical, she was
just a girl who had never had anything and, oh, how she did want
something, and she wanted it right away. That was why her eyebrows
frowned yellow-brownly, and the corners of her mouth drooped a bit.
"Oh, Cousin Susan!" she groaned, "why did we ever come here? Why didn't
you take me to Childs'?"
"Eh?" murmured Cousin Susan, still hovering between expense and
curiosity.
But before she could say another word a little girl ran up to them, an
elflike little thing, who held a huge bunch of violets in her hand. She
had been following a man from the room when she had seen Rebecca Mary
and dashed around the tables, just missing a disastrous collision with a
fat waiter, to arrive breathless beside her.
"Oh, Miss Wyman!" she whispered, her small face aglow with importance.
"I'm so glad I saw you. This is my birthday, and my daddy brought me
here for tea just as if I were all grown up. He bought me these violets,
too, and I've had them all afternoon so I'd like to give them to you now
because," her face grew crimson, and her voice rang out above the hum of
voices, "I love you!" She thrust the violets into Rebecca Mary's hand
and ran away without giving Rebecca Mary a chance to say one word.
Rebecca Mary just saw a portion of her father's back as he disappeared
through the door, and she looked down at the violets with an odd flash
in her gray eyes. No one ever had given her violets before. She had
always picked them herself on the sunny slope of the bluff at Mifflin.
"What a dear child," smiled Cousin Susan. "Who is she?"
"One of my pupils, Joan Befort. Yes, she is a dear." Rebecca Mary buried
her hot cheeks in the cool fragrance of the violets for a moment.
When she lifted her head she met the amused glance of an elderly woman
at the next table. She must be a grandmother woman, Rebecca Mary thought
swiftly, although she did not look like any grandmother Rebecca Mary
knew with her smart and expensive hat and blue gown, on the front of
which was pinned a bunch of violets and an orchid encircled with
foliage. The smile which lurked around the lips of this most
ungrandmotherly looking grandmother made Rebecca Mary remember little
Joan Befort's fervent declaration of affection, and she smiled, too. How
funny it must have sounded in the crowded tea room. "I love you!"
Rebecca Mary giggled, she couldn't help it, even if she was most
dreadfully embarrassed.
At the table beside the ungrandmotherly looking grandmother was a young
man the very sight of whom sent Rebecca Mary into a quiver of delight.
She had seen his picture in the Gazette too many times not to recognize
him. He was young Peter Simmons, who had left college in his sophomore
year to drive an ambulance in France during the second year of the great
war. He had been awarded a _croix de guerre_ for "unusual bravery under
fire," and later had gone into the French flying service until he could
fight under his own flag. He had been with the American Army of
Occupation in Germany and had only recently returned to Waloo. No wonder
Rebecca Mary thrilled all down her back bone as she realized that she
was looking at a hero. She stared and stared for she might never see one
again, and the hero raised his eyes and saw awed admiration written in
huge letters all over her flushed face.
Evidently young Peter Simmons did not care for awed admiration, perhaps
he had had too much of it, perhaps it made him unpleasantly
self-conscious, for he scowled blackly and murmured an impatient
something to the grandmother which made her look at Rebecca Mary again.
Rebecca Mary turned a deep crimson and was horribly uncomfortable. She
knew very well what they were saying, that such a shabby girl had no
business among the fine birds in the Viking room, and she scowled, too.
She could give scowl for scowl as well as any one. Peter's black frown
made you laugh, but there was something rather pathetic about Rebecca
Mary's bent yellow-brown brows, perhaps it was because her lower lip
quivered as she hastily averted her shamed eyes.
On the other side of young Peter was a girl no older than Rebecca Mary,
and she was so prettily and smartly clothed that she made Rebecca Mary
feel like Cousin Susan's kitchen curtains, old and ragged. But every one
in the room made her feel like that, she thought miserably, and she
tossed her head higher to show how little she cared as her glance roamed
on to the man on the other side of the grandmother. Of course the
grandmother must be old Mrs. Peter Simmons, and old Mrs. Peter Simmons
was one of the most important women in Waloo, so important that a poor
little school teacher like Rebecca Mary could never hope to know her.
Rebecca Mary rather liked the face of the man on the other side of Mrs.
Peter Simmons. He was older than young Peter, and the most doting friend
could not have called him handsome, but he had something much better
than perfect features. He was the type of man who would do things, she
decided, and then she saw Mrs. Simmons turn to speak to him and with a
little shrinking feeling of horror Rebecca Mary knew that they were
talking of her, for the man who could do things raised his head and
looked directly at her. For a moment their eyes met. Rebecca Mary was
furious to feel her cheeks burn and her heart thump. She scowled before
she turned her head quickly. She wouldn't look at that table again. I
should say not!
There were other tables and other family parties, and, oh, dear! other
couples. Old Samuel Johnson knew exactly what he was talking about when
he said that "envy is almost the only vice which is practicable at all
times and in every place." Rebecca Mary did find it so very very easy to
be envious. About the only person she did not envy that afternoon was a
short, stout, middle-aged man with a red face, who sat at a table by
himself and consumed vast quantities of hot buttered toast.
Rebecca Mary had never imagined there were so many gay, light-hearted
people in the world as there were in the Viking room that May afternoon
and more would have entered if it had not been for the silken barrier
which was held in front of the door by two very haughty waiters. Rebecca
Mary felt blue and depressed to the very toes of her common-sense
little shoes. She felt so hopelessly out of the gay and brilliant
picture. She almost wished that Cousin Susan had not asked her to the
Waloo for tea.
"Which shall we have, Rebecca Mary?" Cousin Susan found herself quite
incapable of making such a momentous decision without assistance.
"Lettuce or _foie gras_."
Rebecca Mary did not hesitate a second. She knew. "_Foie gras_," she
said promptly. "I've never tasted them, and I've made hundreds of
lettuce sandwiches, just thousands of them. What is the use of going to
new places if you don't try new things?" There was just a trace of
impatience in her low voice as if she thought that Cousin Susan should
have known that without being told.
"H-m," murmured Cousin Susan. "The _foie gras_, then. They certainly
sound mysterious and adventurous." And having given her order, Cousin
Susan looked about her. "Isn't this an attractive place? I've read in
the Gazette about the afternoon teas in the Viking room and how popular
they were. I suppose all these people are very rich and important. None
of them will pay for tea with kitchen curtains." And Cousin Susan's eyes
twinkled.
Rebecca Mary's eyes twinkled, too, although really there was nothing
very amusing to her in paying for tea with ten yards of any kind of
material. It was rather sordid to her and poor and generally horrid,
like her very existence.
Cousin Susan looked at her frowning little face and fingered the silver
in front of her with hands which although well cared for showed that
they were more for use than ornament. Cousin Susan's hands exactly
illustrated Cousin Susan's heart, which was so big and generous and
helpful that the hands were often overworked. As she looked at Rebecca
Mary Cousin Susan took a sudden determination and followed an impulse,
which was nothing new for her, and which sometimes brought her great
satisfaction and sometimes nothing but dissatisfaction.
"Don't frown like that, Rebecca Mary," she commanded like a general
speaking to a very small private. "It is a lot easier to put a wrinkle
in your forehead than it is to get one out as you'll learn some day. And
while we are on the subject of your looks I'm going to take an old
cousin's privilege and tell you what I think of you. It's a shame to do
it here," she acknowledged ruefully, "but if I take the six-twenty train
I shan't have another chance. You know," she went on in a firm low
voice, "I don't like the way you live, and your mother wouldn't like it
if she knew. Why, you don't get a thing out of your life, Rebecca Mary,
not a thing!"
"I don't see what I can do," murmured Rebecca Mary with a twist of her
shoulders and a rebellious flash in her gray eyes. "You needn't think I
like my life, Cousin Susan. It isn't one I should ever choose. I should
say not! But I try to make the best of it."
"But you don't make the best of it. That is just the point. You make
such a horrid worst of it. Yes, you do!" as Rebecca Mary indignantly
declared that she didn't. "Listen. I've watched you and I never imagined
a girl could detach herself from life, real life, as you have done. You
haven't any friends, you don't go anywhere but to school, you don't do
anything but teach the third grade in the Lincoln school."
At that Rebecca Mary did interrupt and there was a bright red spot on
each of her cheeks, like a poppy in a bed of lilies. "It costs money to
have a share in real life," she said in a suppressed voice which made
you think how very thin the crust of earth around a volcano must be.
"And I haven't any money. You know how awfully little we have and how
much it costs to live now. I have to send something home every month and
there are always taxes and insurance. And I have to provide for my old
age! You have no idea what a nightmare that is," tragically. "I wake up
in the night thinking what will happen when I'm too old to teach.
It's--it's ghastly!" It was so ghastly that she shivered, and the
poppies left her face so that it was just a field of white lilies.
"You are thinking entirely too much of your old age. You are robbing
your youth for it. It is perfectly ridiculous for you to make such a
nightmare of the future. I know it isn't entirely your fault. Your
mother is rabid on the subject. She has brought you and Grace up to
think of old age as a blood-thirsty old beast who has to be fed with
youth. Yes, I know all about your Aunt Agnes and your second Cousin
Lucy. But, my dear, they could have saved and saved and their money
might have been lost just when they needed it. You can't be sure of
keeping money no matter how you save it. That's why I spend mine." She
looked at the dainty expensive sandwiches the waiter placed before her
and laughed. "It's gospel truth, my dear," she went on soberly, "that
the only thing you can be sure of taking into the future is what you can
remember, the memory of the good times you have had, the people you have
met, the places you have seen, the books you have read, the music you
have heard. Don't you know that youth should enjoy things for old age
to remember? And take it from me, Rebecca Mary, that the old find their
greatest pleasure in recalling their youth. Will you have cream or lemon
in your tea? Lemon always seems more like a party to me."
Rebecca Mary took the lemon while a puzzled frown appeared between her
two eyebrows. "It isn't that I don't like my work, Cousin Susan," she
said slowly, "for I do. I love children, and I love to teach. If I had a
million I should want to teach somewhere, in a settlement or a mission,
you know. But I'll admit that the future does scare me blue. Suppose I
should be ill, suppose----"
"Suppose fiddlesticks!" Cousin Susan broke in impatiently.
"It's all very well for you to talk. You have some one to take care of
you, a husband, and----"
"My dear, you can't guarantee a husband any more than you can a savings
account. Women are left penniless widows every day. Don't misunderstand
me, Rebecca Mary. I believe in a certain amount of saving, but I don't
believe in sacrificing everything in the present to a future you may
never have. How do you know you will live to grow old? How do you know
that a grateful pupil won't leave you an income?--that has happened if
you can believe the newspapers. How do you know that you won't make
your own fortune in some marvelous way? That's the loveliest part of
life, Rebecca Mary. You don't know what is waiting for you around the
corner so you might as well expect riches as poverty; better in my
opinion. I'd always rather look forward to a fried chicken than a soup
bone hashed."
Rebecca Mary had to giggle when Cousin Susan suggested that a grateful
pupil might leave her an income. That was even more improbable than that
she would make a fortune for herself.
"Cousin Susan," she giggled scornfully, "You are a perfect silly!"
"That may be," admitted Cousin Susan, "but I'm telling you good solid
sense. A proper amount of pleasure is as necessary to the real
development of human beings as bread or boots. Every one admits that
now. And you're not getting a proper amount, my dear. You aren't getting
any! Why, you aren't living, you only breathe, and life is more than
breathing. You are naturally impulsive. Can't you let yourself enjoy
life instead of fear it? Yes, you are afraid of it. I've watched you.
And from what you say I imagine that your room-mate was just another
like you. I'm glad she has gone home. And your clothes are a scandal.
How many years have you worn that suit?"
Rebecca Mary's face turned a bright crimson to match the red-hot
indignation inside of her. How dared Cousin Susan talk to her like that?
She was doing the best she could. She shouldn't tell Cousin Susan how
old her blue serge was. It was none of Cousin Susan's business.
"You wouldn't feel so shut out of the world if you looked like other
people and went where other people go. I don't suppose you speak an
unprofessional word all day," went on Cousin Susan with growing
indignation at what she considered the waste of a perfectly good girl.
"It's a crime, Rebecca Mary Wyman! A crime! And you needn't boast about
your old age provision when you haven't the brains to make a sensible
one. I'm as poor as a church mouse myself. Your Cousin Howard will never
make more than a decent living, and we have two children to feed and
clothe and educate. I hadn't any more business to come here for tea than
I would have to go to the Zoo and buy a baboon for a parlor ornament.
But if I don't do something occasionally to make a day stand out,
something that it is a pleasure to remember, I never should be able to
keep on patching Elsie's petticoats, and darning Kittie's stockings. I
know,--I know!--Rebecca Mary, that when you are young you live in the
future, and when you are old you live in the past. Some one has said
that memories are the only real fountain of youth. And that's true. A
girl is young such a short time that she has to cram the days full if
she wants to be sure of a happy old age. I can't imagine anything more
awful than to have no good times to remember. And all pleasures aren't
like the tea here. Such a lot of them can be had for nothing. You can
get such fun just out of companionship, and the world is full of people
with whom we were meant to be friends. Why, life now means helping other
people to have a good time instead of moping off by yourself. You should
know that, Rebecca Mary. I know I sound like a sermon, but it is all so
true. You must not turn your back to people and hide in a corner. You
must face the world and take what you can and give what you can. I wish
you would promise me something?" she asked eagerly.
Rebecca Mary didn't look as if she would promise any one anything, but
she asked politely: "What would you like me to promise, Cousin Susan?"
"Just to say 'Yes, thank you' instead of 'No, I can't possibly,' when
you are asked to do something or go somewhere," begged Cousin Susan,
refusing to be discouraged by the scornful toss of Rebecca Mary's head.
"Please, Rebecca Mary! You talk so much about insurance and that sort of
thing that I'm going to ask you to take out some,"--she hesitated and
then laughed,--"memory insurance. We can't all hope to be money rich
when we are old, but we can all plan to be memory rich. Please promise?"
Rebecca Mary put her violets on the table and stared at her. "Your tea
is getting cold, Cousin Susan," she said stiffly. She shouldn't promise
anything so foolish. Cousin Susan was the most irresponsible old silly,
but Rebecca Mary couldn't be irresponsible. There was too much dependent
upon her. She drank her own tea and ate her sandwiches and even had a
bit of French pastry when Cousin Susan said she was going to try some
even if it did mean going without the new magazine she had planned to
buy to read on the way home.
"I can make the evening paper last longer," she said as she hesitated
between a strawberry tart and a cream-filled cornet. "I've read about
French pastry for years, but we don't have it in Mifflin, and I never
had a chance to taste it before. Isn't it good?"
Rebecca Mary said it was good, but inwardly she sniffed again and tried
to think that it was ridiculous for a woman of Cousin Susan's age to
become hysterical over a piece of pie. She could not understand Cousin
Susan's enjoyment of little things. She never would have dared to spend
her kitchen curtains and new magazine for tea and French pastry. It
would have been too foolishly extravagant. But she had enjoyed her tea.
And it was exhilarating to be a part, even a shabby part, of a world she
had never penetrated before and never would again, she thought
mournfully. That was the trouble with pleasant experiences, they came
all too seldom and were over far too soon. But Cousin Susan had said
when you had had a pleasant experience once you had it for ever. Perhaps
there was something in that thought. Rebecca Mary evidently thought
there was for her eyes were like stars as, with the violets pinned to
her shabby coat, she followed Cousin Susan from the room.
She found herself in a crush at the door. Beside her was young Peter
Simmons. Rebecca Mary thrilled as he brushed against her arm.
"Beg your pardon," he murmured absently, but he never looked at her.
It made Rebecca Mary so furious to be so coolly ignored that she did not
see that Joan Befort and her father pushed by her and that close on
their heels were Mrs. Simmons and the man who looked as if he would do
things. The chattering laughing throng pressed closer. A hand even
touched Rebecca Mary's fingers. She drew them away with a shrug of her
shoulders. She did hate to be jostled.
"My dear, I must fly!" exclaimed Cousin Susan when they had emerged a
trifle breathless from the crowd. "But first give me that promise?
Please, Rebecca Mary! What is that in your hand?" she broke off to ask
suddenly, for something green hung from Rebecca Mary's worn brown glove.
"Why--why----" stammered Rebecca Mary as she opened her hand and found,
of all things, a four-leaf clover. She stared from it to Cousin Susan.
"Where did you get that?" Like Rebecca Mary, Cousin Susan scanned the
faces hurrying by. Not one of them looked as if it belonged to a person
who would thrust a four-leaf clover into the fingers of a girl in a
shabby blue serge. Four-leaf clovers had been no part of the table
decorations. They never are. They belong in meadows and are only found
by patient seekers. Even Rebecca Mary had to admit that it was odd and
that it gave her a strange shivery sort of a feeling.
"My, but I'm glad I didn't buy curtains!" Cousin Susan was enchanted
with the mystery. "You simply will have to give me that promise now,
Rebecca Mary. You are sure to have adventures if you do. There's the
sign." She pointed to the crumpled clover leaf. "There's magic in it!"
she whispered. Really, Cousin Susan was a silly.
"I wonder!" Rebecca Mary looked at the talisman. Where could it have
come from? Perhaps there was magic in it. There must have been, for
suddenly Rebecca Mary laughed softly. She straightened her shoulders and
looked into Cousin Susan's kind blue eyes. "Yes, Cousin Susan," she said
swiftly, as if the spell of the clover leaf might be broken if she
didn't speak in a hurry, "I promise to say 'Yes, thank you' instead of
'No, I can't possibly.'"
And then before Cousin Susan could say how glad she was, right there on
the crowded avenue, Rebecca Mary put her arm around Cousin Susan and
hugged her.
"I haven't been a bit nice this afternoon," she confessed frankly and
with considerable regret. "I've been horrid, but it was because I did
feel so out of place. But I do love you and--and I shall try and be more
decent to people. And if you really want me to take one of your old
memory insurance policies," she giggled as she thought of Cousin Susan
as an insurance agent, "why, of course I shall. Perhaps--" she looked
down at the mysterious clover leaf, and her eyes crinkled--"perhaps this
might make a first payment."