something I must do before it gets too dark. It's six o'clock now.”
“Wait!” commanded Duty. “Are you crazy? You don't mean—”
“Go back there and look at that child—and hear what she's singing! Stay
long enough to take it all in—don't hurry.”
But Duty barred her way, grim and stern.
Palely she put up both her hands and thrust it aside. She did not once
look back at it.
Already it was dusky under the guest chamber window. She had to stoop
and peer and feel in the long tangle of grass. She kept on patiently
with the Plummer kind of patience that never gave up. She was eager and
smiling, as though something pleasant were at the end of the peering and
stooping and feeling.
Aunt Olivia was hunting for a key.
The Plummer Kind
The doll's name was Olivicia.
Rebecca Mary had evolved the name from her inner consciousness and her
intense gratitude to Aunt Olivia and the minister's wife. She had put
Aunt Olivia first with instinctive loyalty, though in the secret little
closet of her soul she had longed to call the beautiful being Felicia,
intact and sweet. She did not know the meaning of Felicia, but she knew
that the doll, as it lay in the loving cradle of her arms, gazing upward
with changeless placidity and graciousness, looked as one should look
whose name was Felicia. Greater compliment than this Rebecca Mary could
not have paid the minister's wife.
“Olivicia,” she had placed the being on the sill of the attic window,
stood confronting, addressing it: “Olivicia, it's coming—it is very near
to! Sit there and listen and smile—oh yes, smile, SMILE. I don't wonder!
I would too, only I'm too glad. When you're TOO glad you can't smile.
I've been waiting for it to come. Olivicia, seems as if I'd been waiting
a thousan' years. You're so young, you've only lived such little while,
of course I don't expect you understand the deep-downness inside o' me
when I think—”
The address fluttered and came to a standstill here. Rebecca Mary was
suddenly minded that Olivicia was in the dark; must be enlightened
before she could smile understandingly.
“Why, you poor dear!—why, you don't know what it is that's coming and
that's near to! It's the—city, Olivicia,” enlightened Rebecca Mary,
gently, to insure against shock. “Aunt Olivia's going—to—the—city.”
In Rebecca Mary's dreamings it had always been THE city. It did not need
local habitation and a name; enough that it had streets upon streets,
houses upon houses upon houses, a dazzling swirl of men, women, and
little children—noise, glitter, glory. In her dreamings the city was
something so wondrous and grand that Heaven might have been its name.
The streets upon streets were not paved with gold, of course—of course
she knew they were not paved with gold! But in spite of herself she knew
that she would be disappointed if they did not shine.
Aunt Olivia had said it that morning. At breakfast—quite matter-of-
factly. Think of saying it matter-of-factly!
“I'm going to the city soon, Rebecca Mary,” she had said, between sips
of her tea. “Perhaps by Friday week, but I haven't set the day, really.
There's a good deal to do.”
Rebecca Mary had been helping do it all day. Now it was nearly time for
the pageant of red and gold in the west that Rebecca Mary loved, and she
had come up here with the beautiful being to watch it through the tiny
panes of the attic window, but more to ease the aching rapture in her
soul by speech. She must say it out loud. The city—the city—to the city
of streets and houses and men and wonders upon wonders!
Olivicia had come in the capacity of calm listener; for nothing excited
Olivicia.
“I,” Aunt Olivia had said, but Aunt Olivia usually said “I.” There was
no discouragement in that to Rebecca Mary. It did not for a moment occur
to her that “I” did not mean “we.”
The valise they had got down from its cobwebby niche was roomy; it would
hold enough for two. Rebecca Mary knew that, because she had packed it
so many times in her dreamings. She wished Aunt Olivia would let her
pack it now. She knew just where she would put everything—her best dress
and Aunt Olivia's (for of course they would wear their second-bests),
their best hats and shoes and gloves. Their nightgowns she would roll
tightly and put in one end, for it doesn't hurt nightgowns to be rolled
tightly. Of course she would not put anything heavy, like hair brushes
and shoes and things, on top of anything—unless it was the nightgowns,
for it doesn't hurt—
“Oh, Olivicia—oh, Olivicia, how I hope she'll say, 'Rebecca Mary, you
may pack the valise'! I could do it with my eyes shut, I've done it so
many, many times!”
But Aunt Olivia did not say it. One day and then another went by without
her saying it, and then one morning Rebecca Mary knew by the plump,
well-fed aspect of the valise that it was packed. Aunt Olivia had packed
it in the night.
There was no one else in the room when Rebecca Mary made her
disappointing little discovery. She went over to the plump valise and
prodded it gently with her finger. But it is so difficult to tell in
that way whether your own best dress, your own best hat, best shoes,
best gloves, are in there. Rebecca Mary hurried upstairs and looked in
her closet and in her “best” bureau drawer.
They were not there! In her relief she caught up the beautiful being and
strained her hard, lifeless little body to her own warm breast. If she
had not been Rebecca Mary, she would have danced about the room.
“Oh, I'm so relieved, Olivicia!” she laughed, softly. “If they're not up
here, THEY'RE DOWN THERE. They've got to be somewhere. They're in that
valise—valise—vali-i-ise!”
Rebecca Mary had never been to a city, and within her remembrance Aunt
Olivia had never been. Curiosity was not a Plummer trait, hence Rebecca
Mary had never asked many questions about the remote period before her
own advent into Aunt Olivia's life. The same Plummer restraint kept her
now from asking questions. There was nothing to do but wait, but the
waiting was illumined by her joyous anticipations.
Oddly enough, Aunt Olivia seemed to have no anticipations—at least
joyous ones. Her, thin, grave face may even have looked a little thinner
and graver, IF Rebecca Mary had thought to notice.
The night the lean old valise took on plumpness, Aunt Olivia went often
into Mary's little room. Many of the times she came out very shortly
with the child's “best” things trailing from her arms, but once or twice
she stayed rather long—long enough to stand beside a little white bed
and look down on a flushed little face. A pair of wide-open eyes watched
her smilingly from the pillows, but they were not Rebecca Mary's eyes,
and Olivicia was altogether trustworthy.
An odd thing happened—but Olivicia never told. Why should she publish
abroad that she had lain there and seen Aunt Olivia bend once—bend
twice—over Rebecca Mary and kiss her?
Softly, patiently, very wearily, Aunt Olivia went in and out. The things
she brought out in her arms she folded carefully and packed, but not in
the lank old valise. She put them all with tender painstaking into a
quaint little carpetbag. When the work was done she set the bag away out
of sight, and went about packing her own things in the old valise.
The day before, she had been to see the minister and the minister's
wife. She called for them both, and sat down gravely and made her
proposition. It was startling only because of the few words it took to
make it. Otherwise it was very pleasant, and the minister and the
minister's wife received it with nods and smiles.
“Of course, Miss Olivia—why, certainly!” smiled and nodded the minister.
“Why, it will be delightful—and Rhoda will be so pleased!” nodded and
smiled the minister's wife. But after their caller had gone she faced
the minister with indignant eyes.
“Why did you let her?” she demanded. “Why did you spoil it all by that?”
“Because she was Miss Olivia,” he answered, gently.
“Yes—yes, I suppose so,” reluctantly; “but, anyway, you needn't have let
her do it in advance. Actually it made me blush, Robert!”
The minister rubbed his cheeks tentatively. “Made me, too,” he admitted,
“but I respect Miss Olivia so much—”
The minister's wife tacked abruptly to her other source of indignation.
“Why doesn't she TAKE Rebecca Mary? Robert, wait! You know it isn't
because—You know better!”
“It isn't because, dear—I know better,” he hurried, assuringly. The
minister was used to her little indignations and loved them for being
hers. They were harmless, too, and wont to have a good excuse for being.
This one, now—the minister in his heart wondered that Miss Olivia did
not take Rebecca Mary.
“It would be such a treat. Robert, you think what a treat it would be to
Rebecca Mary!”
“Still, dear—”
“I don't want to be still! I want Rebecca Mary to have that treat!” But
she kissed him in token of being willing to drop it there—it was her
usual token—and ran away to get a little room ready. There was not a
device known to the minister's wife that she did not use to make that
room pleasant.
“Shall I take your pincushion, Rhoda?” Rhoda had come up to help.
“Yes,” eagerly, “and I'll write Welcome with the pins.”
“And the little fan to put on the wall—the pink one?”
“Yes, yes; let me spread it out, mamma!”
“That's grand. Now if we only had a pink quilt—”
“I 'only have' one!” laughed Rhoda, hurrying after it.
The whole little room when they left, like the pins in the pincushion,
spelled “WELCOME.”
Aunt Olivia got up earlier than usual one day and went about the house
for a survey. The valise and the little carpetbag she carried downstairs
and out on to the front steps. Her face was whitened as if by a long
night's vigil. When she called Rebecca Mary it was with a voice strained
hoarse. The beautiful being Olivicia watched her with intent, unwinking
gaze. Could it be Olivicia understood?
“Hurry and dress, Rebecca Mary; there's a good deal to do,” Aunt Olivia
said at the door. She did not go in. “Yes, in your second-best—don't you
see I've put it out. You can wear that every day now, till—for a while.”
Something in the voice startled Rebecca Mary out of her subdued ecstasy
and sent her down to breakfast with a nameless fear tugging at her
heart.
“You're going to stay at the minister's—I've paid your board in
advance,” Aunt Olivia said, monotonously, as if it were her lesson. She
did not look at Rebecca Mary. “I've put in your long-sleeve aprons so
you can help do up the dishes. There's plenty of handkerchiefs to last.
You mustn't forget your rubbers when it's wet, or to make up your bed
yourself. I don't want you to make the minister's wife any more trouble
than you can help.”
The lesson went monotonously on, but Rebecca Mary scarcely heard. She
had heard the first sentence—her sentence, poor child! “You're going to
stay at the minister's—stay at the minister's—stay at the minister's.”
It said itself over and over again in her ears. In her need for somebody
to lean on, her startled gaze sought the beautiful being across the room
in agonized appeal.
But Olivicia was staring smilingly at Aunt Olivia. ET TU, OLIVICIA!
If Rebecca Mary had noticed, there was an appealing, wistful look in
Aunt Olivia's eyes too, in odd contrast to the firm lips that moved
steadily on with their lesson:
“You can walk to school with Rhoda, you'll enjoy that. You've never had
folks to walk with. And you can stay with her, only you mustn't forget
your stents. I've put in some towels to hem. Maybe the minister's wife
has got something; if so, hem hers first. You'll be like one o' the
family, and they're nice folks, but I want you to keep right on being a
Plummer.”
Years afterwards Rebecca Mary remembered the dizzy dance of the bottles
in the caster—they seemed to join hands and sway and swing about their
silver circlet and how Aunt Olivia's buttons marched and countermarched
up and down Aunt Olivia's alpaca dress. She did not look above the
buttons—she did not dare to. If she was to keep right on being a
Plummer, she must not cry.
“That's all,” she heard through the daze and dizziness, “except that I
can't tell when I'll be back. It—ain't decided. Likely I shan't be
able—there won't be much chance to write, and you needn't expect me to.
No need to write me either. That's all, I guess.”
The stage that came for Aunt Olivia dropped the little carpetbag and
Rebecca Mary at the minister's. In the brief interval between the start
and the dropping, Rebecca Mary sat, stiff and numb, on the edge of the
high seat and gazed out unfamiliarly at the familiar landmarks they
lurched past. At any other time the knowledge that she was going to the
minister's to stay—to live—would have filled her with staid joy. At any
other time—but THIS time only a dull ache filled her little dreary
world. Everything seemed to ache—the munching cows in the Trumbull
pasture, the cats on the doorsteps, the dog loping along beside the
stage, the stage driver's stooping old back. Aunt Olivia was going to
the city—Rebecca Mary wasn't going to the city. There was no room in the
world for anything but that and the ache.
Rebecca Mary's indignation was not born till night. Then, lying in the
dainty bed under Rhoda's pink quilt, her mood changed. Until then she
had only been disappointed. But then she sat up suddenly and said bitter
things about Aunt Olivia.
“She's gone to have a good time all to herself—and she might have taken
me. She didn't, she didn't, and she might've. She wanted all the good
time herself! She didn't want me to have any!”
“Rebecca Mary!—did you speak, dear?” It was the gentle voice of the
minister's wife outside the door. Rebecca Mary's red little hands
unwrung and dropped on the pink quilt.
“No'm, I did—I mean yes'm, I didn't—I mean—”
“You don't feel sick? There isn't anything the matter, dear?”
“No'm—oh, yes'm, yes'm!” for there was something the matter. It was Aunt
Olivia. But she must not say it—must not cry—must keep right on being a
Plummer.
“Robert, I didn't go in—I couldn't,” the minister's wife said, back in
the cheery sitting room. “I suppose you think I'd have gone in and
comforted her, taken her right in my arms and comforted her the Rhoda
way, but I didn't.”
“No?” The minister's voice was a little vague on account of the sermon
on his knees.
“I seemed to know—something told me right through that door—that she'd
rather I wouldn't. Robert, if the child is homesick, it's a different
kind of homesickness.”
“The Plummer kind,” he suggested. The minister was coming to.
“Yes, the Plummer kind, I suppose, Plummers are such—such PLUMMERY
persons, Robert!”
Upstairs under the pink quilt the rigid little figure relaxed just
enough to admit of getting out of bed and fumbling in the little
carpetbag. With her diary in her hand—for Aunt Olivia had remembered her
diary—Rebecca Mary went to the window and sat down. She had to hold the
cookbook up at a painful angle and peer at it sharply, for the moonlight
that filtered into the little room through the vines was dim and soft.
“Aunt Olivia has gone to the city and I haven't,” painfully traced
Rebecca Mary. “She wanted the good time all to herself. I shall never
forgive Aunt Olivia the Lord have mercy on her.” Then Rebecca Mary went
back to bed. She dreamed that the cars ran off the track and they
brought Aunt Olivia's pieces home to her. In the dreadful dream she
forgave Aunt Olivia.
It was very pleasant at the minister's and the minister's wife's.
Rebecca Mary felt the warmth and pleasantness of it in every fibre of
her body and soul. But she was not happy nor warm. She thought it was
indignation against Aunt Olivia—she did not know she was homesick. She
did not know why she went to the old home every day after school and
wandered through Aunt Olivia's flower garden, and sat with little brown
chin palm-deep on the doorsteps. Gradually the indignation melted out of
existence and only the homesickness was left. It sat on her small, lean
face like a little spectre. It troubled the minister's wife.
“What can we do, Robert?” she asked.
“What?” he echoed; for the minister, too, was troubled.
“She wanders about like a little lost soul. When she plays with the
children it's only the outside of her that plays.”
“Only the outside,” he nodded.
“Last night I went in, Robert, and—and tried the Rhoda way. I think she
liked it, but it didn't comfort her. I am sure now that it is
homesickness, Robert.” They were both sure, but the grim little spectre
sat on, undaunted by all their kindnesses.
“When thy father and thy mother forsake the,” wrote Rebecca Mary in the
cookbook diary, “and thy Aunt Olivia for I know it means and thy Aunt
Olivia then the Lord will take the up, but I dont feal as if anyboddy
had taken me up. The ministers wife did once but of course she had to
put me down again rite away. She is a beutiful person and I love her but
she is differunt from thy father and thy mother and thy Aunt Olivia. Ide
rather have Aunt Olivia take me up than to have the Lord.”
It was when she shut the battered little book this time that Rebecca
Mary remembered one or two things that had happened the morning Aunt
Olivia went away. It was queer how she HADN'T remembered them before.
She remembered that Aunt Olivia had taken her sharp little face between
her own hands and looked down wistfully at it—wistfully, Rebecca Mary
remembered now, though she did not call it by that name. She remembered
Aunt Olivia had said, “You needn't hem anything unless it's for the
minister's wife—never mind the towels I put in.” That was almost the
last thing she had said. She had put her head out of the stage door to
say it. Rebecca Mary had hemmed a towel each day. There were but two
left, and she resolved to hem both of those tomorrow. A sudden little
longing was born within her for more towels to hem for Aunt Olivia.
It was nearly three weeks after Rebecca Mary's entrance into the
minister's family when the letter came. It was directed to Rebecca Mary,
and lay on her plate when she came home from school.
“Oh, look, you've got a letter, Rebecca Mary!” heralded Rhoda, joyfully.
Then her face fell, for maybe the letter would say Aunt Olivia was
coming home.
“Is it from your aunt Olivia?” she asked, anxiously.
“No,” Rebecca Mary said, in slow surprise. “The writing isn't, anyway,
and the name is another one—”
“Oh! Oh! Maybe she's got mar—”
“Rhoda!” cautioned the minister.
This is the letter Rebecca Mary read:
“Dear Rebecca Mary,—You see I know your name from your aunt. She talked
about you all the time, but I am writing you of my own accord. She does
not know it. I think you will like to know that at last we are feeling
very hopeful about your aunt. We have been very anxious since the
operation, she had so little strength to rally with. But now if she
keeps on as well as this you will have her home again in a little while.
The doctors say three weeks. She is the patientest patient in the ward.
Yours very truly, Sara Ellen Nesbitt, Nurse” Ward A, Emmons Hospital
That was the letter. Rebecca Mary's face grew a little whiter at every
line of it. At every line understanding grew clearer, till at the end
she knew it all. She gave a little cry, and ran out of the room. Love
and remorse and sympathy fought for first place in her laboring little
breast. In the next few minutes she lived so long a time and thought so
many thoughts! But above everything else towered joy that Aunt Olivia
was coming home.
Rebecca Mary's eyes blazed with pride at being a Plummer. This kind of
courage was the Plummer kind. The child's lank little figure seemed to
grow taller and straighter. She held up her head splendidly and exulted.
She felt like going up on the minister's housetop and proclaiming:
“She's my aunt Olivia! She's mine! She's mine—I'm a Plummer, too! All o'
you listen, she's my aunt Olivia, and she's coming home!”
Suddenly the child flung out her arms towards the south where Aunt
Olivia was. And though she stood quite still, something within her
seemed to spring away and go hurrying through the clear air.
“I shouldn't suppose Aunt Olivia would ever forgive me, but she's Aunt
Olivia and she will,” wrote Rebecca Mary that night, her small, dark
face full of a solemn peace—it seemed so long since she had been full of
peace before. She wrote on eagerly:
“When she gets home Ime going to hug her I can't help it if it wont be
keeping right on.”
Article Seven
Rebecca Mary measured them. Against the woodshed wall, with chalk—it was
not altogether an easy thing to do. The result startled her. With rather
unsteady little fingers she measured from chalk mark to floor again, to
make sure it was as bad as that. It was even a little worse.
“Oh,” sighed Rebecca Mary, “to think they belong to me—to think they're
hitched on!” She gazed down at them with scorn and was ashamed of them.
She tried to conceal their length with her brief skirts; but when she
straightened up, there they were again, as long as ever. She sat down
suddenly on the shed floor and drew them up underneath her. That was
temporarily a relief. “If I sit here world without end nobody'll see
'em,” grimly smiled Rebecca Mary.
It was her legs Rebecca Mary measured against the woodshed wall. It was
her legs she was ashamed of. No wonder the minister's wife had said to
the minister going home from meeting, with Rebecca Mary behind them
unawares,—no wonder she had said, “Robert, HAVE you noticed Rebecca
Mary's legs?”
Rebecca Mary had not heard the reply of the minister, for of course she
had gone away then. If she had stayed she would have heard him say, with
exaggerated prudery, “Felicia! My dear! Were you alluding to Rebecca
Mary's limbs?” for the minister wickedly remembered inadvertent
occasions when he himself had called legs legs.
“LEGS,” the minister's wife repeated, calmly—“Rebecca Mary's are too
long for limbs. Robert, that child will grow up one of these days!”
“They all do,” sighed the minister. “It's human nature, dear. You'll be
telling me next that there's something the matter with Rhoda's—legs.”
The minister's wife gazed thoughtfully ahead at a little trio fast
approaching the vanishing point. Her eyes grew a little wistful.
“There is now, perhaps, but I haven't noticed—I won't look!” she
murmured. “And, anyway, Robert, Rhoda will give us a little time to get
used to it in. But Rebecca Mary isn't the Rhoda kind—I don't believe
Rebecca Mary will give us even three days of grace!”
“I always supposed Rebecca Mary was born that way—grown up,” the
minister remarked, tucking a gloved hand comfortably close under his
arm. “I wouldn't let it worry me, dear.”
“Oh, I don't—not worry, really,” she said, smiling—“only her legs
startled me a little today. If she were mine, I should let her dresses
down.”
“If she were Rhod—”
“She isn't, she's Rebecca Mary. Probably if I were Miss Olivia I would
let Rhoda's down!” And she knew she would.
Rebecca Mary on the woodshed floor sat and thought “deep-down” thoughts.
Her eyes were fixed dreamily on a big knothole before her, and the
thoughts seemed to come out of it and stand before her, demanding
imperiously to be thought. One after another—a relentless procession.
“Think me,” the first one had commanded. “I'm the Thought of Growing Up.
I saw you measuring your legs, and I concluded it was time for me to
introduce myself. I had to come some time, didn't I?”
“Oh yes,” breathed Rebecca Mary, sadly. “I don't suppose I could expect
you to stay in there always; but—but I'm not very glad to see you. You
needn't have come so SUDDEN,” she added, with gentle resentment.
The Thought of Growing Up crept into her mind and nestled down there. As
thoughts go, it was not an unkind one.
“You'll get used to me sometime and like me,” it said, comfortingly. But
Rebecca Mary knew better. She drove it out.
Why must legs keep on growing and unwelcome Thoughts come out of
knotholes? Why could not little girls keep on sewing stents and learning
arithmetic and carrying beautiful doll-beings to bed? Why had the Lord
created little girls like this—this growing kind?
“If I had made the world,” began Rebecca Mary—but stopped in a hurry.
The irreverence of presuming to make a better world than the Lord shamed
her.
“I suppose He knew best, but if He'd ever been a little girl—” This was
worse than the other. Rebecca Mary hastily dismissed the world and its
Maker from her musings for fear of further irreverences.