Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

  II

  REBECCA'S RELATIONS

  They had been called the Sawyer girls when Miranda at eighteen, Jane attwelve, and Aurelia at eight participated in the various activities ofvillage life; and when Riverboro fell into a habit of thought orspeech, it saw no reason for falling out of it, at any rate in the samecentury. So although Miranda and Jane were between fifty and sixty atthe time this story opens, Riverboro still called them the Sawyergirls. They were spinsters; but Aurelia, the youngest, had made whatshe called a romantic marriage and what her sisters termed a mightypoor speculation. "There's worse things than bein' old maids," theysaid; whether they thought so is quite another matter.

  The element of romance in Aurelia's marriage existed chiefly in thefact that Mr. L. D. M. Randall had a soul above farming or trading andwas a votary of the Muses. He taught the weekly singing-school (then afeature of village life) in half a dozen neighboring towns, he playedthe violin and "called off" at dances, or evoked rich harmonies fromchurch melodeons on Sundays. He taught certain uncouth lads, when theywere of an age to enter society, the intricacies of contra dances, orthe steps of the schottische and mazurka, and he was a marked figure inall social assemblies, though conspicuously absent from town-meetingsand the purely masculine gatherings at the store or tavern or bridge.

  His hair was a little longer, his hands a little whiter, his shoes alittle thinner, his manner a trifle more polished, than that of hissoberer mates; indeed the only department of life in which he failed toshine was the making of sufficient money to live upon. Luckily he hadno responsibilities; his father and his twin brother had died when hewas yet a boy, and his mother, whose only noteworthy achievement hadbeen the naming of her twin sons Marquis de Lafayette and Lorenzo deMedici Randall, had supported herself and educated her child by makingcoats up to the very day of her death. She was wont to say plaintively,"I'm afraid the faculties was too much divided up between my twins. L.D. M. is awful talented, but I guess M. D. L. would 'a' ben thepractical one if he'd 'a' lived."

  "L. D. M. was practical enough to get the richest girl in the village,"replied Mrs. Robinson.

  "Yes," sighed his mother, "there it is again; if the twins could 'a'married Aurelia Sawyer, 't would 'a' been all right. L. D. M. wastalented 'nough to GET Reely's money, but M. D. L. would 'a' benpractical 'nough to have KEP' it."

  Aurelia's share of the modest Sawyer property had been put into onething after another by the handsome and luckless Lorenzo de Medici. Hehad a graceful and poetic way of making an investment for each new sonand daughter that blessed their union. "A birthday present for ourchild, Aurelia," he would say,--"a little nest-egg for the future;" butAurelia once remarked in a moment of bitterness that the hen neverlived that could sit on those eggs and hatch anything out of them.

  Miranda and Jane had virtually washed their hands of Aurelia when shemarried Lorenzo de Medici Randall. Having exhausted the resources ofRiverboro and its immediate vicinity, the unfortunate couple had movedon and on in a steadily decreasing scale of prosperity until they hadreached Temperance, where they had settled down and invited fate to doits worst, an invitation which was promptly accepted. The maidensisters at home wrote to Aurelia two or three times a year, and sentmodest but serviceable presents to the children at Christmas, butrefused to assist L. D. M. with the regular expenses of his rapidlygrowing family. His last investment, made shortly before the birth ofMiranda (named in a lively hope of favors which never came), was asmall farm two miles from Temperance. Aurelia managed this herself, andso it proved a home at least, and a place for the unsuccessful Lorenzoto die and to be buried from, a duty somewhat too long deferred, manythought, which he performed on the day of Mira's birth.

  It was in this happy-go-lucky household that Rebecca had grown up. Itwas just an ordinary family; two or three of the children were handsomeand the rest plain, three of them rather clever, two industrious, andtwo commonplace and dull. Rebecca had her father's facility and hadbeen his aptest pupil. She "carried" the alto by ear, danced withoutbeing taught, played the melodeon without knowing the notes. Her loveof books she inherited chiefly from her mother, who found it hard tosweep or cook or sew when there was a novel in the house. Fortunatelybooks were scarce, or the children might sometimes have gone ragged andhungry.

  But other forces had been at work in Rebecca, and the traits of unknownforbears had been wrought into her fibre. Lorenzo de Medici was flabbyand boneless; Rebecca was a thing of fire and spirit: he lacked energyand courage; Rebecca was plucky at two and dauntless at five. Mrs.Randall and Hannah had no sense of humor; Rebecca possessed and showedit as soon as she could walk and talk.

  She had not been able, however, to borrow her parents' virtues andthose of other generous ancestors and escape all the weaknesses in thecalendar. She had not her sister Hannah's patience or her brotherJohn's sturdy staying power. Her will was sometimes willfulness, andthe ease with which she did most things led her to be impatient of hardtasks or long ones. But whatever else there was or was not, there wasfreedom at Randall's farm. The children grew, worked, fought, ate whatand slept where they could; loved one another and their parents prettywell, but with no tropical passion; and educated themselves for ninemonths of the year, each one in his own way.

  As a result of this method Hannah, who could only have been developedby forces applied from without, was painstaking, humdrum, and limited;while Rebecca, who apparently needed nothing but space to develop in,and a knowledge of terms in which to express herself, grew and grew andgrew, always from within outward. Her forces of one sort and anotherhad seemingly been set in motion when she was born; they needed nodaily spur, but moved of their own accord--towards what no one knew,least of all Rebecca herself. The field for the exhibition of hercreative instinct was painfully small, and the only use she had made ofit as yet was to leave eggs out of the corn bread one day and milkanother, to see how it would turn out; to part Fanny's hair sometimesin the middle, sometimes on the right, and sometimes on the left side;and to play all sorts of fantastic pranks with the children,occasionally bringing them to the table as fictitious or historicalcharacters found in her favorite books. Rebecca amused her mother andher family generally, but she never was counted of serious importance,and though considered "smart" and old for her age, she was neverthought superior in any way. Aurelia's experience of genius, asexemplified in the deceased Lorenzo de Medici led her into a greateradmiration of plain, every-day common sense, a quality in whichRebecca, it must be confessed, seemed sometimes painfully deficient.

  Hannah was her mother's favorite, so far as Aurelia could indulgeherself in such recreations as partiality. The parent who is obliged tofeed and clothe seven children on an income of fifteen dollars a monthseldom has time to discriminate carefully between the various membersof her brood, but Hannah at fourteen was at once companion and partnerin all her mother's problems. She it was who kept the house whileAurelia busied herself in barn and field. Rebecca was capable ofcertain set tasks, such as keeping the small children from killingthemselves and one another, feeding the poultry, picking up chips,hulling strawberries, wiping dishes; but she was thought irresponsible,and Aurelia, needing somebody to lean on (having never enjoyed thatluxury with the gifted Lorenzo), leaned on Hannah. Hannah showed theresult of this attitude somewhat, being a trifle careworn in face andsharp in manner; but she was a self-contained, well-behaved, dependablechild, and that is the reason her aunts had invited her to Riverboro tobe a member of their family and participate in all the advantages oftheir loftier position in the world. It was several years since Mirandaand Jane had seen the children, but they remembered with pleasure thatHannah had not spoken a word during the interview, and it was for thisreason that they had asked for the pleasure of her company. Rebecca, onthe other hand, had dressed up the dog in John's clothes, and beingrequested to get the three younger children ready for dinner, she hadheld them under the pump and then proceeded to "smack" their hair flatto their heads by vigorous brushing, bringing them to the table in sucha mois
t and hideous state of shininess that their mother was ashamed oftheir appearance. Rebecca's own black locks were commonly pushedsmoothly off her forehead, but on this occasion she formed what I mustperforce call by its only name, a spit-curl, directly in the centre ofher brow, an ornament which she was allowed to wear a very short time,only in fact till Hannah was able to call her mother's attention to it,when she was sent into the next room to remove it and to come backlooking like a Christian. This command she interpreted somewhat tooliterally perhaps, because she contrived in a space of two minutes anextremely pious style of hairdressing, fully as effective if not asstartling as the first. These antics were solely the result of nervousirritation, a mood born of Miss Miranda Sawyer's stiff, grim, andmartial attitude. The remembrance of Rebecca was so vivid that theirsister Aurelia's letter was something of a shock to the quiet, elderlyspinsters of the brick house; for it said that Hannah could notpossibly be spared for a few years yet, but that Rebecca would come assoon as she could be made ready; that the offer was most thankfullyappreciated, and that the regular schooling and church privileges, aswell as the influence of the Sawyer home, would doubtless be "themaking of Rebecca."