Cape Cod Folks Part 29

After hearing Silvy's story, I believed that Mr. Rollin had acted a heartless and unmanly part towards Rebecca, made love to her which he could not doubt the poor girl took in earnest, and even promises which he knew he should lightly break sometime, and then, for his own purposes, he begged her to keep silence. I thought I understood, and resolved to instruct Rebecca to forget the red-haired fisherman; to be "sensible,"

and "marry good, honest George Olver," who loved her so devotedly.

Lute Cradlebow had come home, and was one among the many figures at this brilliant fete. Indeed, the bonfire had been deferred until later than usual in the season, by reason of his absence, and now he was noticeably the lion of the evening, in a brave dark blue cravat that was borne outward by the wind, or fluttered becomingly under his chin, to the envy and despair of all the Wallencamp youth. He exchanged a pleasant greeting with every one, and brought the largest young tree of all up the hill on his broad shoulders.

When, at length, the Wallencampers had permitted the fire to burn low, they joined hands in a ring around the embers, and sang the saddest and sweetest songs in the Hymnal. I sat on a rock near by, engaged as I had been much of the time since my arrival in Wallencamp, in trying to realize the situation--the awful gloom of the night, the river now invisible, below, the sound of the surf farther off, that made my heart sick, and with it the strange mingling of those religious songs, the lonely hill, the smouldering fire, the fantastic group gathered around.

When I got back to the Ark, I found Rebecca waiting for me. She followed me up to my room, and I closed the door.

"You see I waited long enough for you to come of your own accord," I said, laughing. Then I drew a chair in front of her. She sat at the foot of the bed, and I addressed her gravely:--

"Now, Becky, something is the matter. You are not the merry, light-hearted girl you were when I first knew you. And I can help you, perhaps. I will help you. Tell me what the trouble is!"

I thought I should see the tears gathering in Rebecca's eyes, but she looked, instead, so stonily disconsolate, that I was rather dismayed.

"I'm going to tell you," said she; "but you can't help me. They'll all know before long, I guess. I don't care. You talk good, but you don't say much about G.o.d. I guess you don't believe there is none. I don't, I can't understand. I'm like I'd got lost, somehow, and when they found me, they'd stone me--I don't care. I've felt enough. I don't feel no more.

I've cried so much, I guess I can't cry no more. If I could it 'ud be now, tellin' you.

"When Miss Waite came here to teach, I hadn't ever had no friend except the girls here, and they wasn't bad, but we was always runnin' wild around in the lots, and down to sh.o.r.e, and always laughin' and plaguin'

the teacher in school. And when Miss Waite came, she wasn't like you, nor she didn't have such clothes, nor such ways as yours. I didn't love her very much, but she used to talk to me, and wanted me to be a Christian.

And she didn't tell me all it was to be a Christian like you have, or I wouldn't 'a' been such a fool to think I could be; but she talked like it wasn't anything to understand, only to want Christ in your heart, and try to be good, and, first, I didn't pretend to mind much what she said, and used to tell the girls, and they'd tell me, too, and we'd laugh. Only one time, she was talkin' to me, and it seemed as though I couldn't hold out no longer, and I cried and cried, and when I got up I felt happy. Just as though He was there. Seemed as though He was all around everywhere, and goin' down the lane, there was a whip-poor-will singin', and it sounded like it never had before--so strange and happy--and I always loved 'em after that--but I never shall again.

"And I tried to be good, and quieter, and have the other girls and the children at home; and when father was drunk and noisy, and some of the folks laughed, I wouldn't give up--quite. Oh, I didn't feel like I was bad then! I didn't! You might remember that. I hadn't much manners, but I never thought anything bad. Some time you might remember that.

"Then Mr. Rollin came, and he might 'a' killed me, and it 'ud been a kindness; but he hadn't no such kind heart as that. He used to make excuses for meetin' me. He wouldn't look at any of the other girls. He said he couldn't see no beauty in anybody else. He said I was the only one on earth he loved. He said he wouldn't care what became of him if I wasn't good to him.

"I thought George never talked to me so much as that, and I trusted him every word. It was all so different. I thought I loved him, too. He talked about how he should take me to Providence, and I said I hadn't much manners or education, and they'd laugh at me. He said there wasn't another such a face there, and if he was suited, they might laugh. And he used to talk about how I'd look all dressed up in his house, down there--and I don't see! I don't see! I trusted every word.

"It wouldn't have been no different, anyway. I loved you when you came.

When he went with you, I tried to hate you. I hated him, but I never hated you! In my heart, teacher, I never hated you. You might think of that, some time----"

"Well, my dear little girl," I interrupted her; "it seems we have both been deceived in the fisherman, but, doubtless, we shall recover in time.

You don't like him, neither do I. We'll dismiss the subject from our minds, forever. There's a good, honest boy here in Wallencamp that a girl I know ought to busy her head about. Why trouble ourselves with disagreeable things?"

"You might think, some time," Rebecca went on, with the same hopeless expression, and in the same tense voice; "I never knew that about not trustin' anybody till you told me. I hadn't never be'n away from here. I wasn't brought up like you, and I wasn't so strong as you--you might think, some time--but not now. I don't ask to have you now--you don't see. I knew you wouldn't--you can forget--you're so happy--think of that, sometime, how happy you was, sittin' there--but I never can forget any more. I say it 'ud be'n better if I'd a died. It's the sin and the shame.

I've nothin' but to bear 'em, now, as long as I live. Oh, you might think what it was not to have no hope anywheres!"

"What do you mean?" I cried, as it rushed over me in that instant what I had been too heedless and slow to comprehend, the possible wretched meaning of her words. "What do you mean?" rising and standing over her, with a terrible sense of power to convict.

"Oh, Becky, you didn't mean that--worst?"

"Yes," said she, with no visible change on her poor, set face--"yes--I do."

"I wish you would go out of my room, and leave me!" I exclaimed, then; "I am not used to such people as you! Do you suppose I would have been with you all these weeks if I had known? Don't you see how you have wronged me? I never want to see you again, never! Go! go! and leave me alone!"

I shall never forget the look with which Rebecca rose wearily, and went to the door--not an angry look, not a look of terror nor even of pleading reproach; but it was as if her soul, sinful, crushed and bleeding though it was, in that one moment, rose above my soul and condemned it with sorrowful, clear eyes.

I listened to her step going down the stairs. I did not call her back. I heard her latch the outer door of the Ark. No thought of pity for her wrong, or commiseration for her desolation moved me. I thought only in my proud selfish pa.s.sion, how miserably, how bitterly I had been deceived.

I sought out the fisherman's letter before retiring, and the one I had begun in answer, and tore them both into shreds, believing that I should as easily rid my mind of the whole miserable affair with which I had been unwittingly complicated.

CHAPTER XIII.

A MILD WINTER ON THE CAPE.

"It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape;" the Wallencampers congratulated one another, blinking, with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort, in the rays of a strong March sun.

The Wallencampers were not, perhaps, generally incited by that love of stern, unceasing, and vigorous exertion which is, geographically considered, one of the chief characteristics of our hardy northern races.

True poets and idealists, they were lazy, and they had but few clothes, both excellent reasons for inclining kindly to the warm weather.

And yet, notwithstanding this, they had grown used to a wild ruggedness of nature and condition, a terrible, sublime uncertainty about life and things in general when the wind blew, missing which, in this earthly state, they would have pined most sadly. And I do not believe that they would have exchanged their rugged, storm-swept, wind-beleaguered little section of Cape Cod for a realm in sunny Italy itself; no, not even if the waves of that bright clime had rippled over sands of literal gold, and their winter had been nine months in the year instead of the customary six and a half.

"A mild winter on the Cape." Grandpa Keeler often repeated the words; and sitting by the fire at night, his eyes grew big and wild, and his tones took on a terrible impressiveness as he told of _rough_ winters on the Cape, when the snow lay drifted high across the fences in the lane, and "every time she came in yender"--pointing in the direction of the Bay--"she licked offa slice or two o' bank, and the old Ark whirled and shuk--O Lordy, teacher!--as ef she'd slipped her moorin's and gone off on a high sea, and ef you'd a heered the wind a screechin' inter them winders, you'd a thought the"----

"Bijonah Keeler!" Grandma Keeler spoke. She said no more. It was enough.

"You'd a thought something had got loose, sure," concluded Grandpa, with a keen glance aside to me that revealed, as with tenfold significance, the obstructed force of his narrative.

In the daytime, Grandpa was now much out of doors. He had most frequent and loving recourse to an interesting looking pile of rubbish at the south end of the barn. There he sat, and napped and nodded, and employed the brief interims of wakefulness in whittling bean poles, preparatory for another year's supply of that dreaded and inexorable crop. Earth's disturbing voices, Grandma Keeler herself, seldom reached him there.

Early, too, I saw him in the garden, leaning pensively on his hoe--a becalmed and striking figure in a ragged snuff-colored coat, and a hat marked by numerous small orifices, through which, here and there, strands from his silvery fringe of hair strayed and waved in the breezes.

It was Grandma and Grandpa Keeler's custom at the first approach of spring to detach themselves from Madeline's household, and to form a separate and complete establishment of their own in the sunny kitchen, away out at the end of the Ark. I was still, nominally, Madeline's boarder, and sat at the table with her and the little Keelers; but the impulses of my heart were ever guiding my feet to that other dear resort, where doors and hearts seemed always open to receive me, and an inexpressible warmth and light and comfort pervaded the atmosphere.

It was early in March, when, returning from school one day at the noontide intermission, I found Grandma standing without the Ark, singularly occupied. The sun was shining on her uncovered head, and the tranquil glow on her face was clearly the exponent of no fict.i.tious happiness. In her ap.r.o.n she had a quant.i.ty of empty egg-sh.e.l.ls, so carefully drained of their contents as to present an almost perfect external appearance, and these she was arranging on the twigs of a large bush that grew just outside the window.

I was glad, afterwards, that I intruded then no skeptical questions as to her purpose, for, as I stood and looked at her, her action gradually lost for me the tinge of eccentricity, with which it had at first seemed imbued. I realized that there was something grander than reason, more exalted than philosophy.

"I suppose you've heerd about egg-plants, teacher;" said she, at length, turning to me, while the sun in her face broke up into scintillant beams that penetrated my being, and quickened my very soul. "This 'ere old bush ain't bore nothin' for years, and it looked so bare and sorrerful, somehow, standin' out here all alone, and everything else a kinder wakin'

up in the spring, I thought I'd try to sorter liven it up a little;" and she resumed her placid occupation.

"Blessed Grandma," I could only murmur, as I turned to enter the Ark; "inspired, delightful soul!"

It was in March that the Wallencamp sun-bonnets came forth, all in a single day, a curious and startling pageant. The Modoc, who had gone bareheaded through the winter, a.s.sumed hers as a turban of impressive alt.i.tude, while the diminutive Carietta and the infant Sophronia appeared but as vagrant telescopes on insufficient pegs.

In March the "pipers" lifted up their homesick notes at nightfall, in the meadows. On the last day of that month, I found arbutus in bloom under the leaves in the cedar woods.

Scarcely had the first faint signs of herbage appeared on the earth ere the Wallencamp cows and horses were given over exclusively to the guardianship of nature, and to wander whithersoever they would, for the Wallencamp fences had ceased to present themselves as obstacles in the way. Indeed, some portions of them had been utterly obliterated, and this was easily traced to a habit prevalent among the Wallencampers of resorting to them for fuel when, on some winter night, other resources were found to be low.

Other portions of them were decayed, or blown over in the wind, so that there was just enough left to sit on for private soliloquy, or social debate, and to give a picturesque charm to the landscape; yet, it was a fact which I found worthy of notice, that, in going from one place to another, no true Wallencamper ever walked over a broken-down part of the fence, or went through a gap in the fence; he always selected an upright part of the fence to climb over, even going a little out of the way, if necessary, to effect this purpose.

The Wallencampers were staunch on the matter of individual rights; they turned each his own horse and cow into his own door-yard. Animated, doubtless, by something of the same principle, those attenuated animals, having made an impartial _detour_ of the premises, congregated, as of one accord, along the highway, especially in that part of the lane between the Ark and the school-house.

I made my way through these new perils from day to day, in safety, until the deepening green of the hills and fields called the herd away to wider pastures.

Dr. Aberdeen, however, remained behind. Dr. Aberdeen, as he was termed by the Wallencampers, was a horse of peculiar and distinguished parts. Among his other eccentric gifts, he had a harmless habit of chasing beings of a superior race. In what manner this propensity had first manifested itself, I do not know, but it had been eagerly seized upon as ground for further development by the juvenile element of Wallencamp, and especially by the Modoc, under whose lively tuition the animal had reached an almost strategic ability in the art.