Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
REBECCA MARY
By Annie Hamilton Donnell
Contents
The Hundred and Oneth
The Thousand Quilt
The Bible Dream
The Cookbook Diary
The Bereavement
The Feel Doll
The Plummer Kind
Article Seven
Un-Plummered
The Hundred and Oneth
Rebecca Mary took another stitch. Then another. “Ninety-sevvun, ninety-
eight,” she counted aloud, her little pointed face gravely intent. She
waited the briefest possible space before she took ninety-nine. It was
getting very close to the Time now. “At the hundred an' oneth,” Rebecca
Mary whispered. “It's almost it.” Her breath came quicker under her
tight little dress. Between her thin, light eyebrows a crease deepened
anxiously.
“Ninety—n-i-n-e,” she counted, “one hun-der-ed”—it was so very close
now! The next stitch would be the hundred and oneth. Rebecca Mary's face
suddenly grew quite white.
“I'll wait a m-minute,” she decided; “I'm just a little scared. When
you've been lookin' head to the hundred and oneth so LONG and you get
the very next door to it, it scares you a little. I'll wait until—oh,
until Thomas Jefferson crows, before I sew the hundred and oneth.”
Thomas Jefferson was prospecting under the currant bushes. Rebecca Mary
could see him distinctly, even with her nearsighted little eyes, for
Thomas Jefferson was snow-white. Once in a while he stalked dignifiedly
out of the bushes and crowed. He might do it again any minute now.
The great sheet billowed and floated round Rebecca Mary, scarcely whiter
than her face. She held her needle poised, waiting the signal of Thomas
Jefferson. At any minute.... He was coming out now! A fleck of snow-
white was pricking the green of the currant leaves.
“He's out. Any minute he'll begin to cr—” He was already beginning! The
warning signals were out—chest expanding, neck elongating, and great
white wing aflap.
“I'm just a little scared,” breathed the child in the foam of the sheet.
Then Thomas Jefferson crowed.
“Hundred and one!” Rebecca Mary cried out, clearly, courage born within
her at the crucial instant. The Time—the Time—had come. She had taken
her last stitch.
“It's over,” she panted. “It always was a-coming, and it's come. I knew
it would. When it's come, you don't feel quite so scared. I'm glad it's
over.”
She folded up the great sheet carefully, making all the edges meet with
painful precision. It took time. She had left the needle sticking in the
unfinished seam—in the hundred-and-oneth stitch—and close beside it was
a tiny dot of red to “keep the place.”
“Rebecca! Rebecca Mary!” Aunt Olivia always called like that. If there
had been still another name—Rebecca Mary Something Else—she would have
called: “Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary Something Else!”
“Yes'm; I'm here.”
“Where's 'here'?” sharply.
“HERE—the grape-arbor, I mean.”
“Have you got your sheet?”
“I—yes'm.”
“Is your stent 'most done?”
Rebecca Mary rose slowly to her reluctant little feet, and with the
heavy sheet across her arm went to meet the sharp voice. At last the
Time had come.
“Well?” Aunt Olivia was waiting for her answer. Rebecca Mary groaned.
Aunt Olivia would not think it was “well.”
“Well, Rebecca Mary Plummer, you came to fetch my answer, did you? You
got your stent 'most done?” Aunt Olivia's hands were extended for the
folded sheet.
“I've got it DONE, Aunt 'Livia,” answered little Rebecca Mary, steadily.
Her slender figure, in its quaint, scant dress, looked braced as if to
meet a shock. But Rebecca Mary was terribly afraid.
“Every mite o' that seam? Then I guess you can't have done it very well;
that's what I guess! If it ain't done well, you'll have to take it—”
“Wait—please, won't you wait, Aunt 'Livia? I've got to say something. I
mean, I've got all the over-'n'-overing I'm ever going to do done.
THAT'S what's done. The hundred-and-oneth stitch was my stent, and it's
done. I'm not ever going to take the hundred and twoth. I've decided.”
Understanding filtered drop by drop into Aunt Olivia's bewildered brain.
She gasped at the final drop.
“Not ever going to take another stitch?” she repeated, with a calmness
that was awfuler than storm.
“No'm.”
“You've decided?”
“Yes'm.”
“May I ask when this—this state of mind began?”
Rebecca Mary girded herself afresh. She had such need of recruiting
strength.
“It's been coming on,” she said. “I've felt it. I knew all the time it
was a-coming—and then it came.”
It seemed to be all there. Why must she say any more? But still Aunt
Olivia waited, and Rebecca Mary read grim displeasure in capitals across
the gray field of her face. The little figure stiffened more and more.
“I've over-'n'-overed 'leven sheets,” the steady little voice went on,
because Aunt Olivia was waiting, and it must, “and you said I did 'em
pretty well. I tried to. I was going to do the other one well, till you
said there was going to be another dozen. I couldn't BEAR another dozen,
Aunt Olivia, so I decided to stop. When Thomas Jefferson crowed I sewed
the hundred-and-oneth stitch. That's all there's ever a-going to be.”
Rebecca Mary stepped back a step or two, as if finishing a speech and
retiring from her audience. There was even the effect of a bow in the
sudden collapse of the stiff little body. It was Aunt Olivia's turn now
to respond—and Aunt Olivia responded:
“You've had your say; now I'll have mine. Listen to me, Rebecca Mary
Plummer! Here's this sheet, and here's this needle in it. When you get
good and ready you can go on sewing. You won't have anything to eat till
you do. I've got through.”
The grim figure swept right-about face and tramped into the house as
though to the battle-roll of drums. Rebecca Mary stayed behind, face to
face with her fate.
“She's a Plummer, so it'll be SO,” Rebecca Mary thought, with the dull
little thud of a weight falling into her heart. Rebecca Mary was a
Plummer too, but she did not think of that, unless the un-swerving
determination in her stout little heart was the unconscious recognition
of it.
“I wonder”—her gaze wandered out towards the currant-bushes and came to
rest absently on Thomas Jefferson's big, white bulk—“I wonder if it
hurts very much.” She meant, to starve. A long vista of food-less days
opened before her, and in their contemplation the weight in her heart
grew very heavy indeed.
“We were GOING to have layer-cake for supper. I'm VERY fond of layer-
cake,” Rebecca Mary sighed, “I suppose, though, after a few weeks”—she
shuddered—“I shall be glad to have ANYTHING—just common things, like
crackers and skim-milk. Perhaps I shall want to eat a—horse. I've heard
of folks—You get very unparticular when you're starving.”
It was five o'clock. They WERE going to have supper at half past. She
could hear the tea things clinking in the house. She stole up to a
window. There was Aunt Olivia setting the layer-cake on the table. It
looked plump and rich, and it was sugared on top.
“There's strawberry jam in between it,” mused Rebecca Mary, regretfully.
“I wish it was apple jelly. I could bear it better if it was apple
jelly.” But it was jam. And there was honey, too, to eat with Aunt
Olivia's little fluffy biscuits. How very fond Rebecca Mary was of
honey!
Aunt Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway and rang the supper bell in
long, steady clangs just as usual. But no one responded just as usual,
and by the token she knew Rebecca Mary had not taken the other stitch
that lay between her and supper.
“She's a Plummer,” sighed Aunt Olivia, inwardly, unrealizing her own
Plummership, as little Rebecca Mary had unrealized hers. Each recognized
only the other's. The pity that both must be Plummers!
Rebecca Mary stayed out of doors until bedtime. She made but one
confidant.
“I've done it, Thomas Jefferson,” she said, sadly. “You ought to be
sorry for me, because if you hadn't crowed I shouldn't have sewed the
hundred and oneth. But you're not really to BLAME,” she added, hastily,
mindful of Thomas Jefferson's feelings. “I should have done it sometime
if you hadn't crowed. I knew it was coming. I suppose now I shall have
to starve. You'd think it was pretty hard to starve, I guess, Thomas
Jefferson.”
Thomas Jefferson made certain gloomy responses in his throat to the
effect that he was always starving; that any contributions on the spot
in the way of corn kernels, wheat grains, angleworms—any little
delicacies of the kind—would be welcome. And Rebecca Mary,
understanding, led the way to the corn bin. In the dark hours that
followed, the intimacy between the great white rooster and the little
white girl took on tenderer tones.
At breakfast next morning—at dinner time—at supper—Rebecca Mary absented
herself from the house. Aunt Olivia set on the meals regularly and
waited with tightening heartstrings. It did not seem to occur to her to
eat her own portions. She tasted no morsel of all the dainties she got
together wistfully. At nightfall the second day she began to feel real
alarm. She put on her bonnet and went to the minister's. He was rather a
new minister, and the Plummers had always required a good deal of time
to make acquaintance. But in the present stress of her need Aunt Olivia
did not stop to think of that.
“You must come over and—and do something,” she said, at the conclusion
of her strange little story. “It seems to me it's time for the minister
to step in.”
“What can I do, Miss Plummer?” the embarrassed young man ejaculated,
with a feeling of helplessness.
“Talk to her,” groaned Aunt Olivia, in her agony. “Tell her what her
duty is. Rebecca Mary might listen to the minister. All she's got to do
is to take just one stitch to show her submission. It won't take but an
instant. I've got supper all out on the kitchen table—I don't care if
it's ten o'clock at night!”
“It isn't a case for the minister. It's a case for the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children!” fumed the minister's kind little
wife inwardly. And she stole away in the twilight to deal with little
Rebecca Mary herself. She came back to the minister by and by, red-eyed
and fierce.
“You needn't go over; I've been. It won't do any good, Robert. That
poor, stiff-willed, set little thing is starving by inches!”
“I think her aunt is, too!”
“Well, perhaps—I can't help it, Robert, perhaps the—aunt—ought—to.”
“My dear!—Felicia!”
“I told you I couldn't help it. She is so hungry, Robert! If you had
seen her—What do you think she was doing when I got there?”
“Crying?”
“Crying! She was laughing. I cried. She sat there under some grapevines
watching a great white rooster eat his supper. His name, I think, is
Thomas Jefferson.”
“Yes, Thomas Jefferson,” agreed the minister, with the assurance of
acquaintance. For Thomas Jefferson was one of his parishioners.
“Well, she was laughing at him in the shakiest, hungriest little voice
you ever heard. 'Is it good?' she says. 'It LOOKS good.' He was eating
raw corn. 'If I could, I'd eat supper with you when you're VERY hungry,
you don't mind eating things raw.' Then she saw me.”
“Well?”
“Well, I coaxed her, Robert. It didn't do any good. Tomorrow somebody
must go there and interfere.”
“She must be a remarkably strange child,” the minister mused. He was
thinking of the holding-out powers of the three children he had a half-
ownership in.
“I don't think Rebecca Mary IS a child, Robert. She must be fifty years
old, at the least. She and her aunt are about the same age. Perhaps if
her mother had lived, or she hadn't made so many sheets, or learned to
knit and darn and cook—” The minister's kind little wife finished out
her sentence with a sigh. She took up a little garment in dire straits
to be mended. It suggested things to the minister.
“Can Rhoda darn?”
“RHODA!”
“Or make sheets and bread and things?”
“Robert, don't you feel well? Where is the pain?” But the laugh in the
pleasant blue eyes died out suddenly. Little Rebecca Mary lay too heavy
on the minister's wife's heart for mirth.
Aunt Olivia went into Rebecca Mary's room in the middle of the night.
She had been in three times before.
“She looks thinner than she did last time,” Aunt Olivia murmured,
distressedly. “Tomorrow night—how long do children live without eating?
It's four meals now—four meals is a great many for a little thin thing
to go without!” Aunt Olivia had been without four meals too; she would
have been able to judge how it felt—if she had remembered that part. She
stood in her scant, long nightgown, gazing down at the little sleeper.
The veil was down and her heart was in her eyes.
Rebecca Mary threw out her arm and sighed. “It LOOKS good, Thomas
Jefferson,” she murmured. “When you're VERY hungry you can eat things
raw.” Suddenly the child sat up in bed, wide-eyed and wild. She did not
seem to see Aunt Olivia at all.
“Once I ate a pie!” she cried. “It wasn't a whole one, but I should eat
a whole one now—I think I should eat the PLATE now.” She swayed back and
forth weakly, awake and not awake.
“Once I ate a layer-cake. There was jam in it. I wouldn't care if it was
apple jelly in it now—I'd LIKE apple jelly in it now. Once I ate a
pudding and a doughnut a-n-d—a—a—I think it was a horse. I'd eat a horse
now. Hush! Don't tell Aunt Olivia, but I'm going to eat—to—e-at—Thom-
as—Jeffer—” She swayed back on the pillows again. Aunt Olivia shook her
in an agony of fear—she was so white—she lay so still.
“Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary PLUMMER!” Aunt Olivia shrilled in
her ear. “You get right out o' bed this minute and come downstairs and
eat your supper! It's high time you had something in your stomach—I
don't care if it's twelve o'clock. You get right out o' bed REBECCA
MARY!”
Aunt Olivia had the limp little figure in her arms, shaking it gently
again and again. Rebecca's startled eyes flew open. In that instant was
born inspiration in the brain of Aunt Olivia. She thought of an appeal
to make.
“Do you want ME to starve, too? Right here before your face and eyes? I
haven't eat a mouthful since you did, and I shan't till you DO.”
Rebecca Mary slid to the floor with a soft thud of little brown, bare
feet. Slow comprehension dawned in her eyes. “Are your—— did you say YOU
was starving, too?”
“Yes”—grimly.
“Does it hurt you—too?”
“Yes”—unsteadily.
“VERY much?”
“YES.”
“Why don't you eat something?”
“Because you don't. I'm waiting for you to.”
“Shan't you ever?”
“Not if you don't.”
Rebecca Mary caught her breath in a sob. “Shall I be—to blame?” She was
moving towards the door now. With an irresistible impulse Aunt Olivia
gathered her in her arms, and covered her lean little face with kisses.
“You poor little thing! You poor little thing! You poor little thing!”
over and over.
Rebecca Mary gazed up into the softened face and read something there.
It took her breath away. She could not believe it without further proof.
“You don't—I don't suppose you LOVE me?” panted Rebecca Mary. But Aunt
Olivia was gone out of the room in a swirl of white nightgown.
“Everything's on the table,” she called back from the stairs. “I'm going
to light a fire. You come right down. I think it's high time—” her voice
trailing out thinly.
“She does,” murmured Rebecca Mary, radiant of face.
At half past twelve o'clock they both ate supper, both in their scant,
white nightgowns, both very hungry indeed. But before she sat down in
her old place at the table, Rebecca Mary went round to Aunt Olivia's
place and whispered something rather shyly in her ear. She had been by
herself in a corner of the room for a moment.
“I've sewed the hundred and twoth,” Rebecca Mary whispered.
The Thousand Quilt
“Good afternoon,” Rebecca Mary said, politely.
The minister's wife was cutting little trousers out of big ones—the
minister's big ones. It was the old puzzle of how to steer clear of the
thin places.
“Boys grow so!” sighed, tenderly, the minister's wife, over her work.
She had not heard the voice from the doorway.
“Good afternoon”—again.
It was a quaint little figure in tight red calico standing there. It
might easily have stepped down from some old picture on the wall.
Rebecca Mary had a bundle in her arms. It was so large that it obscured
breast and face, and only a pair of grave blue eyes, presided over by
thin, light brows, seemed visible to the minister's wife. The trousers
puzzle merged into this one. Now who could—
“Oh! Oh, it's Miss Plummer's little girl Rebecca,” she said, cordially.
“Rebecca Mary her NIECE,” came, a little muffled, from behind the great
bundle.
“Rebecca Mary's niece—— Oh, you mean Miss Plummer's niece, and your
whole name is that! But I suppose she calls you Rebecca or Becky, for
short? Walk in, Rebecca.”
But Rebecca Mary was struggling with the paralyzing vision of Aunt
Olivia calling her Becky. She had passed by the lesser wonder of being
called Rebecca without the Mary.
“Oh no'm, indeed; Aunt 'Livia never shortens me,” gently gasped the
child. And the minister's wife, measuring from the bundle down, smiled
to herself. There did not seem much room for shortening.
“But walk in, dear—you're going to walk in? I hope you have come to make
me a little call?”
Rebecca Mary struggled out of her paralysis. Here was occasion for new
embarrassment. For Rebecca Mary was honest.
“N-o'm I mean, not a LITTLE call. I've come to spend the afternoon,” she
said, slowly, “and I've brought my work.”
The bundle—the great bundle—was her work! She advanced into the room and
began carefully to unroll it. It was the turn of the minister's wife to
be paralyzed. She pushed forward a chair, and the child sat down in it.
“It's my Thousand Quilt that I'm making for Aunt 'Livia,” explained
Rebecca Mary. “It's 'most done. There's a thousand pieces in it, and I'm
on the nine hundred and ninety-oneth. I thought proberly you'd have some
work, so I brought mine.”
“Yes, I see—” The minister's wife stood looking down at the tight little
red figure among the gorgeous waves of the Thousand Quilt. They eddied
and surged around it in dizzy reds and purples and greens. She was
conscious of being a little seasick, and for relief she turned back to
the puzzle of the little trousers. It had been in her mind at first to
express sorrow at Rhoda's being unfortunately away—and the boys. Now she
was glad she hadn't, for it was quite plain enough that the visitor had
not come to spend the afternoon with the minister's children, but with
the minister's wife.
“It isn't she that's young—it's I,” thought the minister's wife, with
kind, laughing eyes. “She's old enough to be my mother.” “How old are
you, dear?” she added, aloud.
“Me? I guess you mean Aunt 'Livia, don't you? It's Aunt 'Livia's
birthday I'm making it for, it's going to be a present. Once she gave me
a present on my birthday.”
Once!—the minister's wife remembered Rhoda's birthdays and the boys'.
Taken altogether, such a host of little birthdays! But this little old,
old visitor seemed to have had but one.
“My birthday is two days quicker than Aunt 'Livia's is,” volunteered the
visitor, sociably. “We're 'most twins, you see. Aunt 'Livia was fifty-
six that time she gave me the present. She's agoing to be fifty-nine
when I give her this quilt—it's taken me ever since to make it.”
The minister's wife looked up from her cutting. So Rebecca Mary was only
fifty-nine!
“It's quite a long quilt,” sighed Rebecca Mary. But pride woke in her
eyes as she gazed out on the splendors of the green and purple sea. “A
Thousand Quilt has so many stitches in it, but when you sew'em all
yourself—when you sew every single stitch—” The pride in Rebecca Mary's
grave blue eyes grew and grew.
“Robert,” the minister's wife said that night to the minister, “it's an
awful quilt, but you ought to have seen her eyes! It's taken her three
years to make it—maybe you wouldn't be proud yourself!”
“Maybe YOU wouldn't, if Rhoda had made it.”
“RHODA! Robert, she sewed one square of patchwork once and it made her
sick. I had to put her to bed. Speaking of 'once' reminds me—once
Rebecca Mary had a birthday present, Robert.” She waited a little
anxiously for him to understand. The minister always understood, but
sometimes he made her wait.
“Felicia, are you trying to make me cry?” he said, and she was
satisfied. She went across to him, as she always did when she wanted to
cry herself. The floor was strewn with the tiniest boy's engine and
cars, and she remembered, as she zigzagged among them, that they had
been one of his very last birthday presents.
“It was—Robert, what do you think the present was? I'll give you three
guesses, but I advise you to guess a rooster.”
“Thomas Jefferson,” murmured the minister, as one who was acquainted.
“Yes, that is his name. How did you remember? She is very fond of him—he
is her intimatest friend, she says. So she is under great obligations to
her aunt. It's a large quilt, but it's none too large to 'cover' Thomas
Jefferson. I'm going to help her buy a lining and cotton batting.”
“Cracked corn will make a good lining, but cotton bat—”
“Robert, this is not a comedy! If you'd seen Rebecca Mary, and the
quilt, you'd call it a tragedy. You couldn't surprise me any if you told
me she'd quilted it herself!”
Down the road from Aunt Olivia's farm, across its southern boundary
fence, romped and shouted all day long the Tony Trumbullses. No one,
except possibly their mother, was quite certain how many of them there
were; it was a dizzy process to take their census. They were never
still, in little brown bare limbs nor shrill voices. From sunup to
sundown the Tony Trumbullses raced and laughed. Certainly they were
happy.
The minister's wife had not dared to tell her Caller of the afternoon
that the minister's children were down there shouting and racing with
the little Tony Trumbullses. Dear, no!—not after Rebecca Mary in the
course of conversation had said that Aunt Olivia did not countenance the
Tony Trumbullses. Rebecca Mary did not say “countenance,” but it meant
that.
“Her aunt won't let her play with them, Robert. And she'd like to—you
needn't tell me Rebecca Mary wouldn't like to! I saw it in her poor
little solemn eyes. Besides, she said she asked her aunt once to let
her. Robert, aunts are cruel; I never knew it before. They've no
business bringing up little Rebecca Marys!”
“My dear! Felicia!” But in the minister's eyes was agreement.
Aunt Olivia took afternoon naps with punctilious regularity—Aunt Olivia
herself was punctilious regularity. At half past one, day upon day, she
hung out the dish towel, hung up her kitchen apron, and walked with
unswerving course into her bedroom. There, disposed upon the dainty bed
in rigid lines of unrest, she rested. The naps were often long ones.
A little after the afternoon that Rebecca Mary spent at the minister's
the birthday quilt was finished. The thousandth tiny piece was neatly
over-'n'-overed to its gorgeous expanse. But Rebecca Mary was not
content. She longed to make it complete. She wanted to surprise Aunt
'Livia with it, as Aunt 'Livia on that momentous birthday of her own had
surprised her with the little fluff-ball of yellow down that had grown
into Thomas Jefferson. That had been such a beautiful surprise, but
this—Aunt 'Livia had seen the quilt so many, many times! She had taught
Rebecca Mary's stiff little fingers to set the first stitches in it; she
had made her rip out this purple square and that pink-checked one, and
this one and that one and that. Oh, Aunt 'Livia was ACQUAINTED with the
quilt! It would not be much of a surprise.
But Rebecca Mary set her little pointed chin between her little brown
palms and pondered, and out of the pondering grew a plan so ambitious
and so daring that Rebecca Mary gasped in the throes of it. But she held
her ground and entertained it intrepidly. She even grew on friendly
terms with it in the end. Here was a way to surprise Aunt 'Livia;
Rebecca Mary would do it! That it would entail an almost endless amount
of work did not daunt her: Rebecca Mary was a Plummer, and Plummers were
not to be daunted. The long vista of patient hours of trying labor that
the plan opened up before her set her blood tingling like a warrior's on
the eve of battle. What were long, patient hours to a Plummer? Rebecca
Mary girded up her loins and went to meet them.
Thereafter at Aunt Olivia's nap times Rebecca Mary disappeared. Day upon
day, week upon week, she stole quietly away when the door of Aunt
Olivia's bedroom shut. The first time she went oddly loaded down with
what would have appeared—if there had been any one for it to “appear” to
be a bundle of long sticks. She made two trips into the unknown that
first day. The second time the bundle looked much like that one over
which her grave blue eyes had peered at the minister's wife when she
went to spend the afternoon with her.
It was spring when the mysterious disappearances began. It was summer
before Aunt Olivia woke up—not from her nap, but from her inattention.
Quite suddenly she came upon the realization that Rebecca Mary was not
about the house; nor about the grounds, for she instituted prompt
search. She went to all the child's odd little haunts—the grapery, the
orchard, the corn-house, even to her own beloved back yard, full of
sweet-scented hiding-nooks dear to a child, but sacred ground to Aunt
Olivia. Rebecca Mary sometimes did her “stents” there as a special
privilege; she might be there now, unprivileged. Aunt Olivia's back yard
was almost as full of flowery delights to Rebecca Mary as it was to Aunt
Olivia.
The child was not there—not anywhere. Aunt Olivia sought for Thomas
Jefferson to inquire of him, but Thomas Jefferson was missing too. She
went the rounds again. Where could the child be?
It was a hot, stinging day in late June when Aunt Olivia's suspicions
awoke. They had been long in rousing, but, once alert, they developed
rapidly into certainties. Her pale eyes glistened, her thin nostrils
dilated—Aunt Olivia's whole lean, sharp, unemotional person put on
suspicion. The child had gone to see the Tony Trumbullses.
“My land!” ejaculated Aunt Olivia, “after all my forbidding! And she a
Plummer!” She sat down suddenly as though a little faint. She had never
known a Plummer to disobey before; it was a new experience. It took time
to get used to it, and she sat still a long time, rigid and grim, on the
edge of the chair. Then as suddenly as she had sat down she got up. It
could not be—she refused to entertain the suspicion longer. Rebecca Mary
had NOT gone there to that forbidden place; she was in the garden
somewhere. Aunt Olivia, a little stiff as if from a chill, went once
more in search of the child.
“Rebecca! Rebecca Mary!” she called, at regular intervals. Then sharply,
“Rebecca Mary Plummer!” Her voice had thin cadences of suspicion lurking
in it against its will.
But there seemed really no doubt. One by one incriminating circumstances
occurred to Aunt Olivia. Rebecca Mary had longed to go so much; the Tony
Trumbullses, one at a time or in a tumultuous body, had urged her so
often; she herself had more than once caught the child gazing wistfully,
in passing by, at the bewildering, deafening, frolics of the little Tony
Trumbullses. Once Rebecca Mary had asked to go barefoot, as they went.
Once she had let out the tight little braids in her neck and rumpled her
thin little hair. Once Aunt Olivia had come upon her PLAYING. The
remembrance of it now tightened the lines around Aunt Olivia's lips. The
child had been running wildly about the yard, shouting in a strange,
excited, ridiculous way. When Aunt Olivia in stern displeasure had
demanded explanations, she had run on recklessly, calling back over her
shoulder: “Don't stop me! I'm a Tony Trumbull!”
“My land!” breathed Aunt Olivia, taking back the suspicion to her
breast. “After all my forbidding she's gone down there. She's BEEN going
down there dear knows how long. She's waited till I took my naps an'
then went. A PLUMMER!”
There was really nowhere else she could have gone. She had never wanted
to go anywhere else, except to the minister's, and Rebecca Mary was
punctilious and would not think of going THERE again till the minister's
wife had returned her visit.
But Aunt Olivia waited. As usual, she went to her room next day at nap
time and closed the door behind her. But when a little figure slipped
down the road towards the forbidden place a moment later, she was
watching behind her blinds. She was groaning as if in pain.
The little figure began to run staidly. Aunt Olivia groaned again. The
child was in a hurry to get there—she couldn't wait to walk! There was
guilt in every motion of the little figure.
“And she runs like a Plummer,” groaned Aunt Olivia.
The next day, and the next, Aunt Olivia watched behind her blinds. The
fourth day she put on her afternoon dress and followed the hurrying
little figure. Not at once—Aunt Olivia did not hurry. There was a sad
reluctance in every movement. It seemed a terrible thing to be following
Rebecca Mary—Rebecca Mary Plummer to a forbidden place.
Afar off Aunt Olivia heard faintly the shoutings that always heralded an
approach to the Tony Trumbullses, and shuddered. The tumult kept growing
clearer; she thought she detected a wild, excited little shout that
might be Rebecca Mary's. Her thin lips set into a stern, straight line.
A splash of red caught Aunt Olivia's eye as she drew nearer the joyous
whirl of little children. Rebecca Mary wore a little tight red dress.
The coil seemed closing in about the child.
Close to the southern boundary fence of Aunt Olivia's land stood an old
empty barn. It had been a place for storing surplus hay, once, when
there had been surplus hay. For many years now it had been empty. As
Aunt Olivia approached it she noticed that its great sliding door was
open. Strange, when for so long it had been shut!
“If that old barn door ain't open!” breathed Aunt Olivia, stopping in
her astonishment. “I ain't seen it open before in these ten years. Now,
what I want to know is, who opened it? Likely as not those screeching
little wild Injuns.” She strode across the stubby grass-ground to the
barn and peered into its cool, dim depths. Then Aunt Olivia uttered a
little, bewildered cry. Gradually the dimness took on light and the
whole startling picture within unfolded itself to her astonished eyes.
Rebecca Mary was quilting. She was stooping earnestly over a gay expanse
of purples and reds and greens. Her little tight red back was towards
Aunt Olivia; it looked bent and strained. Rebecca Mary's eyes were very
close to the gay expanse.
Suddenly Rebecca Mary began to speak, and Aunt Olivia's widened eyes
discovered a great, white rooster pecking about under the quilt. His
big, snowy bulk stood out distinct in the shadow of it.
“I'm glad we're 'most through. Aren't you, Thomas Jefferson? It's been a
pretty LONG quilt. You get sort of tired when you quilt a LONG quilt. It
makes your back creak when you unbend it; and when you quilt in a barn,
of course you can't see without squinching, and it hurts your eyes to
squinch.”
Silence again, except for the industrious peck-peck of the great white
rooster. Aunt Olivia stood very still.
“You've been a great help, Thomas Jefferson,” began again the voice of
Rebecca Mary, after a little. “I'm very much obliged to you, as I've
said before. I don't know what I should have done without you. No, you
needn't answer. I couldn't hear a word you said. You can't hear with
cotton in both o' your ears,” Rebecca Mary sighed. There was no cotton
in Aunt Olivia's ears to shut out the soft little sound. “But of course
you have to wear it in, on account o' your conscience. It's conscience
cotton, Thomas Jefferson. I've explained before, but I don't know's you
understood. It seems a little unpolite to wear it in my ears, with you
here keeping me comp'ny. I s'pose you think it's un—unsociable. But Aunt
Olivia doesn't allow me to 'sociate with the Tony Trumbullses. Oh,
Thomas Jefferson, I wish she'd allow me to 'sociate!”
Aunt Olivia found herself wishing she had conscience cotton in both o'
her ears.
“They're such nice, cheerful little children! It makes you want to go
right over their fence and hollow too.” Rebecca Mary pronounced it
“hollow” with careful precision. Aunt Olivia would not approve of
“holler.” “And when you can't, you like to listen. But I s'posed
listening to them hollow would be 'sociating. So I put the cotton in.”
The joyous “hollowing” broke in waves of glee on Aunt Olivia's eardrums.
It seemed to be assaulting her heart. Oddly, now it did not sound
unmannerly and dreadful. It sounded nice and cheerful. A Plummer, even,
might be happy like that.
“Cotton is a very strange ex—exper'ence, Thomas Jefferson,” ran on the
little voice. “At first you 'most can't stand it, but you get over the
worst of it bymeby. Besides, we're getting 'most through now. Ain't that
splendid, Thomas Jefferson? And it's pretty lucky, too, because Aunt
'Livia's birthday is getting very near. It—it almost scares me. Doesn't
it you? For I don't know how Aunt 'Livia looks when she's pleased—you
think she'll look pleased, don't you, Thomas Jefferson? It's such a long
quilt, and when you've sewed every stitch yourself—”
If Rebecca Mary had turned round then she would have seen how Aunt
Olivia looked when she was pleased. But the little figure at the
quilting-frame bent steadily to its task, only another soft sigh
stealing into Aunt Olivia's uncottoned ears. Thomas Jefferson pecked his
way towards the open door, and the lean figure there started back
guiltily; Aunt Olivia did not want to be recognized.
“You there under the quilt, Thomas Jefferson?” The little voice put on
tenderness. “Because I'm a-going to tell you something. Once Aunt 'Livia
gave ME a birthday present and it was YOU. Such a little mite of a
yellow chicken! That's why I'm making the quilt for Aunt 'Livia. It was
three years ago; I've loved you ever since,” added Rebecca Mary, simply.
For an instant Aunt Olivia stopped being a Plummer. A sob crept into her
throat. “Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary Plummer!” she cried,
involuntarily. Then she stepped back hastily, glad for the cotton in
Rebecca Mary's ears. For the surprise—she must not spoil the child's
hard-earned surprise. And, besides, Aunt Olivia wanted to be surprised.
It was a relief to get away. She could not look any longer at the
picture in the great cobwebby barn—the gorgeous quilt spread out to its
full extent, the empty scaffolds above Rebecca Mary stooping to her
work, Thomas Jefferson pecking about the floor. Aunt Olivia was not old;
through all the years ahead of her she would remember that picture.
She went straight to the southern boundary fence and looked across at
the jubilant little Tony Trumbullses. The one in a red dress like
Rebecca Mary's she singled out with a pointing finger. “YOU come here,”
she called. “I won't hurt you; no need to look scairt. Do you know who I
am? I'm Rebecca Mary's aunt. You know who Rebecca Mary is, don't you?”
“Gracious!” shrilled the little red Tony Trumbull, which Aunt Olivia
took for yes.
“Well, then, you know where I live. You see here—I want you all, the
whole kit o' you, to come to my house tomorrow morning to see Rebecca
Mary. I'm going to say it over again. Tomorrow morning, to see Rebecca
Mary!” setting apart the syllables with the pointing finger. “You can
play in my back yard,” said Aunt Olivia, sublimely unconscious of slang.
The Bible Dream
Rebecca Mary sat on the kitchen steps, shelling peas and trying not to
listen. She had begun a hummy little tune to help out, but in the
interstices of rattling peas and the verses of the tune she could
distinctly hear some of the things Aunt Olivia and the Caller were
saying. This was one of the things:
“She's offered a reward, but I don't calculate there's much chance
she'll ever see it again.”
A sigh followed. The voice was the Caller's, the sigh Aunt Olivia's.
“It's queer where it ever went to!” Aunt Olivia's voice.
“Yes, it's all o' QUEER,” the Caller's, with mysterious hints in it that
made Rebecca Mary, out on the doorsteps, shudder suddenly and forget
where she was in the tune. Oh, oh, dear, did they s'pose—they couldn't
s'pose it had been STOLEN?
Rebecca Mary's little hard brown hand stopped halfway to the pea-basket
and fell limply at her side on the doorstep. It made a little thud as it
fell. Rebecca Mary's horrified gaze wandered out into the glare of
sunshine where wandered Thomas Jefferson, stepping daintily, hunting
bugs. That was his day's work. Thomas Jefferson was a hard worker.
The voices went on, but Rebecca Mary did not heed them now; she was
looking at Thomas Jefferson, but she did not see him. Not until—it
happened. On a sudden Thomas Jefferson, forgetful of dignity, made a
swoop for something that glittered in the grass. Then Rebecca Mary saw
him—then started to her feet with an inarticulate little cry, while in
her honest brown eyes the horror grew. Oh, oh, dear, what was that
Thomas Jefferson had swooped for? For a brief instant it had glittered
in the grass—Rebecca Mary knew in her soul that it had glittered.
Thomas Jefferson stretched his sheeny neck, curved it ridiculously, and
crowed. It sounded like a crow of triumph; that was the way he crowed
when the bug had been a delicious one.
The Caller was coming out, Aunt Olivia with her. Rebecca Mary could hear
the crackle of their starched skirts; Aunt Olivia's crackled loudest.
Rebecca Mary had always had a queer feeling that Aunt Olivia herself was
starched. There had never been a time when she could not remember her
carrying her head very stiffly and straight and never bending her back.
Nobody else in the world, Rebecca Mary reflected proudly, could pick up
a pin without bending. SHE couldn't, herself, even after she had
privately practiced a good deal.
“Good afternoon, Rebecca Mary; you out here?” the Caller nodded
pleasantly. Folks had such queer ways of saying things. How could you
say good afternoon to anybody if she WASN'T here?
“Didn't you hear Mrs. Dixey, Rebecca Mary? I guess you've forgot your
manners,” came in Aunt Olivia's crisp tones.
“Oh yes'm, I have. I mean I DID. Yes'm, thank you, I'm out here,”
quavered Rebecca Mary. She was not afraid of the Caller and she had
never been afraid of Aunt Olivia, but the horror that was settling round
her heart made her clear little voice unsteady. Her eyes were still
following Thomas Jefferson on his mincing travels about the yard. The
sunshine was on his splendid white coat, but Rebecca Mary felt no pride
in him.
“Ain't that the han'somest rooster! You ought to show him at the fair, I
declare! See how his feathers glisten in the sun!”
“Thomas Jefferson belongs to Rebecca Mary,” Aunt Olivia said, briefly.
“She raised him.”
“My! Well, he's han'some enough. Ain't it amusing how a nice-feeling
rooster like that will go stepping round as if he felt about too toppy
to live! He'd ought to wear diamonds.”
“Oh, oh, dear, please don't!” breathed Rebecca Mary, softly, but neither
of the women heard her.
“Well, well, I must be going. I've made a regular visit. But I tell John
when I get away from home, it feels so good I STAY! 'I don't get away
any too often,' I says, 'and I guess I've earnt the right.' Well, I must
be going if I'm ever going to! Good-bye, Miss Plummer—good-bye, Rebecca
Mary. All is, I hope Mis' Avery's boarder'll find her diamond, don't
you? But I don't calculate she will. Well, good afternoon. She hadn't
ought to have wore the ring, when she knew it was loose in the setting
like that. Some folks are just that careless! Well—”
But Rebecca Mary did not hear the rest of the Caller's leave-taking. She
had slipped away to Thomas Jefferson out in the sun.
“Oh, come here—come here with me!” she cried, intensely. “Come out
behind the barn where we can talk. I've got to say something to you
that's awful! I've GOT to, you've got to listen, Thomas Jefferson.”
It was still and terribly hot in the treeless glare behind the barn, but
it was all in the day's work to Thomas Jefferson. Behind the barn was a
beautiful place for bugs.
“Listen! Oh, you poor dear, you've got to listen!” Rebecca Mary cried.
“You've got to stop hunting for bugs—and don't you dare to crow! If you
crow, Thomas Jefferson, it will break my heart. I don't s'pose you know
what you've done—I don't know as you've done it—but there's something
awful happened. Oh, Thomas Jefferson, it glittered—I saw it glitter!”
Suddenly Rebecca Mary stooped and gathered Thomas Jefferson into her
arms. She held him with a passionate clasp against her flat little
calico breast. He was HERS. He was all the intimate friend she had ever
had. He had been her little downy baby and slept in her hand. She had
fed him and watched him grow and been proud of him. He was her all.
“Oh, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, what was it that glittered in
the grass? Tell me and I'll believe you. Say it was a little piece o'
glass and I'll put you down and go get you some corn, and we'll never
speak of it again. But don't look at me like that—don't look at me like
that! You look—GUILTY!”
She rocked him in her arms. In her soul she knew what it was that had
glittered. But in Thomas Jefferson's soul—oh, they could not blame
Thomas Jefferson!
“You haven't got any soul, poor dear; poor dear, you haven't got any
soul, and you can't be guilty without a soul. They couldn't—hang—you.”
Her voice sank to the merest whisper. She tightened her clasp on the
great, soft body and smoothed the soft feathers with a tender, tremulous
little hand.
“The Lord didn't put anything in you but a stomach and a—a gizzard. He
left your soul out and you're not to blame for that. I don't blame you,
Thomas Jefferson, and of course the Lord don't. But Mrs. Avery's
boarder—oh, oh, dear, I'm afraid Mrs. Avery's boarder will! You mustn't
tell—I mean I mustn't. Nobody must know what it was that glittered in
the grass. Do you want to be—searched?
“You know 'xactly where she sat over to this house yesterday morning,
when she went by—and how she said you were too sweet for anything—and
how she flew her hand round with—with IT on it. You know as well as I
do. And it was loose, the di'mond-stone was loose. We didn't either of
us know that. We're not to blame if things are loose, and you're not to
blame for not having any soul. But oh, oh, dear, how dreadfully it makes
us both feel! You'd better give up crowing, Thomas Jefferson; I feel
just as if you'd let it out if you crew.”
At tea Rebecca Mary played with her spoon, while her berries swam,
untasted, in their yellow sea of cream. Aunt Olivia remonstrated.
“Why don't you eat your supper, child?” she asked, sharply. Rebecca Mary
was always glad when she said child instead of Rebecca Mary, for then
the sharpness did not cut. She was feeling now for the glasses up in her
thin gray hair. Aunt Olivia could see everything through those glasses
and it made Rebecca Mary tremble to think—oh, oh, dear, suppose she
should see the secret hidden in Rebecca Mary's soul! It seemed as if
Aunt Olivia trained the glasses directly upon the corner where the
secret glittered in the gra—was hidden in Rebecca Mary's troubled little
soul. But this is what Aunt Olivia said:
“It's your stomach. What you need is a good dose of camomile tea to tone
you up. I didn't give you any this spring, for a wonder. Now you go
right up to bed and I'll set some to steeping. Does it hurt you any?”
“Oh yes'm,” murmured Rebecca Mary, sadly, but she meant her soul and
Aunt Olivia meant her stomach. She mounted the steep stairs to her
little eavesdropping room and slipped her small spare body out of her
clothes into her scant little nightgown. It was rather a relief to go to
bed. If she could have been sure that Thomas Jefferson—but, no, Thomas
Jefferson was not in bed. As Rebecca Mary lay and waited for her
camomile tea she was certain she could hear him stepping about under the
window. Once he came directly under and “crew,” and then Rebecca Mary
hid her head in the pillow for he was letting it out.
“Cock-a-doodle-do—ooo, did-you-see-me-swoo-oo-OOP-it-up?” crowed Thomas
Jefferson, under the window. Rebecca Mary with her eyes pillow-deep
could see him stretching his neck and letting it out. It seemed to her
everybody could hear him—Aunt Olivia downstairs, steeping camomile
'blows, and Mrs. Avery's boarder across the fields.
“Aunt Olivia,” whispered Rebecca Mary, while she sipped her bitter tea a
little later, “how much—I suppose precious things cost a great deal,
don't they?”
“My grief!” Aunt Olivia set down the bowl and felt of Rebecca Mary's
temples, then of her wrists. The child was out of her head.
“Di'mond-stones like—like that boarder's—I suppose those cost a great
deal? As much as—how much as, Aunt Olivia?”
“My grief, don't you worry about any di'mond-stones! YOU haven't lost
any. What you'll lose will be your health, if you don't swallow down the
rest o' this tea and go right to sleep like a good girl! No, no, I'm not
going to answer any questions. Drink this; swallow it down.”
Rebecca Mary swallowed it down, but she did not go right to sleep like a
good girl. She lay on the hard little bed and thought of many things, or
of one thing many times. Over and over, wearily, drearily, until the sin
of Thomas Jefferson became her sin. She adopted it.
When at last she dropped to sleep it was to dream a Bible dream. Usually
Rebecca Mary liked to dream Bible dreams, but not this one. This one was
different. This one was of Abraham and Isaac. She thought she was right
there and saw Abraham build the little altar and offer up—no, it wasn't
Isaac! It was Thomas Jefferson. And the Abraham in her dream was turning
into HER. The flowing white robes were dwindling to a little scant white
nightgown. She stood a little way off and saw herself offering up Thomas
Jefferson. It was a dreadful dream.
The night was a perfectly black one, the kind that Rebecca Mary was
afraid of. It was the only thing in the world she had ever been afraid
of—a black night. But after the dream she got up stealthily and slipped
through the blackness, out to Thomas Jefferson. It was only out to the
little lean-to shed, but it seemed a very long way to Rebecca Mary. The
blackness pressed up against her, she put out her little, trembling
hands and pushed through it.
“Thomas Jefferson! Thomas Jefferson!” she called softly. But he was a
sound sleeper, she remembered; she would have to find him and wake him.
In the darkness she felt about on Thomas Jefferson's perch for Thomas
Jefferson. When the little groping hand came upon something very soft
and warm, the other hand went up to join it, and together they lifted
Thomas Jefferson down. He gave a protesting croak, and then, because he
was acquainted with the clasp of the two small hands, and night or day
liked it, he went back to his interrupted dreams and said not another
word. Thomas Jefferson had never dreamed a Bible dream—never heard of
Abraham or Isaac, had no soul to be disquieted.
With her burden against her breast Rebecca Mary pushed back through the
darkness, up to the black little room under the eaves. She felt about
for her little carpet-covered shoe box and gently crowded the great
white bulk into it. Then she crept back into bed and lay on the outer
edge with her loving, light little hand on Thomas Jefferson's feathers.
The trouble in her burdened soul poured itself out.
“Oh, Thomas Jefferson,” she whispered down to the heap of soft feathers,
“I'm going to smooth you this way all night for tomorrow you die!” Her
voice even in a whisper had a solemn, inspired note. “There's no other
way; you'll have to make up your mind to be willing. It's going to break
my heart, and, oh, I'm afraid it will break yours! I'm afraid it will
kill us both!”