New Chronicles of Rebecca Part 12

"How would it do to let some of the girls help?" modestly asked Miss Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. "We might choose the best sewers and let them put in at least a few st.i.tches, so that they can feel they have a share in it."

"Just the thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. "We can cut the stripes and sew them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this presidential year."

II

In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the preparations went forward in the two villages.

The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the soles of their shoes.

d.i.c.k Carter was made captain, for his grandfather had a gold medal given him by Queen Victoria for rescuing three hundred and twenty-six pa.s.sengers from a sinking British vessel. Riverboro thought it high time to pay some graceful tribute to Great Britain in return for her handsome conduct to Captain Nahum Carter, and human imagination could contrive nothing more impressive than a vicarious share in the flag raising.

Living Perkins tried to be happy in the ranks, for he was offered no official position, princ.i.p.ally, Mrs. Smellie observed, because "his father's war record wa'nt clean." "Oh, yes! Jim Perkins went to the war," she continued. "He hid out behind the hencoop when they was draftin', but they found him and took him along. He got into one battle, too, somehow or nother, but he run away from it. He was allers cautious, Jim was; if he ever see trouble of any kind comin' towards him, he was out o' sight fore it got a chance to light. He said eight dollars a month, without bounty, wouldn't pay HIM to stop bullets for. He wouldn't fight a skeeter, Jim wouldn't, but land! we ain't to war all the time, and he's a good neighbor and a good blacksmith."

Miss Dearborn was to be Columbia and the older girls of the two schools were to be the States. Such trade in muslins and red, white, and blue ribbons had never been known since "Watson kep' store," and the number of brief white petticoats hanging out to bleach would have caused the pa.s.sing stranger to imagine Riverboro a continual dancing school.

Juvenile virtue, both male and female, reached an almost impossible height, for parents had only to lift a finger and say, "you shan't go to the flag raising!" and the refractory spirit at once armed itself for new struggles toward the perfect life.

Mr. Jeremiah Cobb had consented to impersonate Uncle Sam, and was to drive Columbia and the States to the "raising" on the top of his own stage. Meantime the boys were drilling, the ladies were cutting and basting and st.i.tching, and the girls were sewing on stars; for the starry part of the spangled banner was to remain with each of them in turn until she had performed her share of the work.

It was felt by one and all a fine and splendid service indeed to help in the making of the flag, and if Rebecca was proud to be of the chosen ones, so was her Aunt Jane Sawyer, who had taught her all her delicate st.i.tches.

On a long-looked-for afternoon in August the minister's wife drove up to the brick house door, and handed out the great piece of bunting to Rebecca, who received it in her arms with as much solemnity as if it had been a child awaiting baptismal rites.

"I'm so glad!" she sighed happily. "I thought it would never come my turn!"

"You should have had it a week ago, but Huldah Meserve upset the ink bottle over her star, and we had to baste on another one. You are the last, though, and then we shall sew the stars and stripes together, and Seth Strout will get the top ready for hanging. Just think, it won't be many days before you children will be pulling the rope with all your strength, the band will be playing, the men will be cheering, and the new flag will go higher and higher, till the red, white, and blue shows against the sky!"

Rebecca's eyes fairly blazed. "Shall I fell on' my star, or b.u.t.tonhole it?" she asked.

"Look at all the others and make the most beautiful st.i.tches you can, that's all. It is your star, you know, and you can even imagine it is your state, and try and have it the best of all. If everybody else is trying to do the same thing with her state, that will make a great country, won't it?"

Rebecca's eyes spoke glad confirmation of the idea. "My star, my state!"

she repeated joyously. "Oh, Mrs. Baxter, I'll make such fine st.i.tches you'll think the white grew out of the blue!"

The new minister's wife looked pleased to see her spark kindle a flame in the young heart. "You can sew so much of yourself into your star,"

she went on in the glad voice that made her so winsome, "that when you are an old lady you can put on your specs and find it among all the others. Good-by! Come up to the parsonage Sat.u.r.day afternoon; Mr. Baxter wants to see you."

"Judson, help that dear little genius of a Rebecca all you can!" she said that night, when they were cosily talking in their parlor and living "all over" the parish carpet. "I don't know what she may, or may not, come to, some day; I only wish she were ours! If you could have seen her clasp the flag tight in her arms and put her cheek against it, and watched the tears of feeling start in her eyes when I told her that her star was her state! I kept whispering to myself, Covet not thy neighbor's child!'"

Daily at four o'clock Rebecca scrubbed her hands almost to the bone, brushed her hair, and otherwise prepared herself in body, mind, and spirit for the consecrated labor of sewing on her star. All the time that her needle cautiously, conscientiously formed the tiny st.i.tches she was making rhymes "in her head," her favorite achievement being this:

"Your star, my star, all our stars together, They make the dear old banner proud To float in the bright fall weather."

There was much discussion as to which of the girls should impersonate the State of Maine, for that was felt to be the highest honor in the gift of the committee.

Alice Robinson was the prettiest child in the village, but she was very shy and by no means a general favorite.

Minnie Smellie possessed the handsomest dress and a pair of white slippers and open-work stockings that nearly carried the day. Still, as Miss Delia Weeks well said, she was so stupid that if she should suck her thumb in the very middle of the exercises n.o.body'd be a dite surprised!

Huldah Meserve was next voted upon, and the fact that if she were not chosen her father might withdraw his subscription to the bra.s.s band fund was a matter for grave consideration.

"I kind o' hate to have such a giggler for the State of Maine; let her be the G.o.ddess of Liberty," proposed Mrs. Burbank, whose patriotism was more local than national.

"How would Rebecca Randall do for Maine, and let her speak some of her verses?" suggested the new minister's wife, who, could she have had her way, would have given all the prominent parts to Rebecca, from Uncle Sam down.

So, beauty, fashion, and wealth having been tried and found wanting, the committee discussed the claims of talent, and it transpired that to the awe-stricken Rebecca fell the chief plum in the pudding. It was a tribute to her gifts that there was no jealousy or envy among the other girls; they readily conceded her special fitness for the role.

Her life had not been pressed down full to the brim of pleasures, and she had a sort of distrust of joy in the bud. Not until she saw it in full radiance of bloom did she dare embrace it. She had never read any verse but Byron, Felicia Hemans, bits of "Paradise Lost," and the selections in the school readers, but she would have agreed heartily with the poet who said:

"Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy; they heed not our expectancy; But round some corner in the streets of life They on a sudden clasp us with a smile."

For many nights before the raising, when she went to her bed she said to herself, after she had finished her prayers: "It can't be true that I'm chosen for the State of Maine! It just CAN'T be true! n.o.body could be good ENOUGH, but oh, I'll try to be as good as I can! To be going to Wareham Seminary next week and to be the State of Maine too! Oh! I must pray HARD to G.o.d to keep me meek and humble!"

III

The flag was to be raised on a Tuesday, and on the previous Sunday it became known to the children that Clara Belle Simpson was coming back from Acreville, coming to live with Mrs. Fogg and take care of the baby, called by the neighborhood boys "the Fogg horn," on account of his excellent voice production.

Clara Belle was one of Miss Dearborn's original flock, and if she were left wholly out of the festivities she would be the only girl of suitable age to be thus slighted; it seemed clear to the juvenile mind, therefore, that neither she nor her descendants would ever recover from such a blow. But, under all the circ.u.mstances, would she be allowed to join in the procession? Even Rebecca, the optimistic, feared not, and the committee confirmed her fears by saying that Abner Simpson's daughter certainly could not take any prominent part in the ceremony, but they hoped that Mrs. Fogg would allow her to witness it.

When Abner Simpson, urged by the town authorities, took his wife and seven children away from Riverboro to Acreville, just over the border in the next county, Riverboro went to bed leaving its barn and shed doors unfastened, and drew long breaths of grat.i.tude to Providence.

Of most winning disposition and genial manners, Mr. Simpson had not that instinctive comprehension of property rights which renders a man a valuable citizen.

Squire Bean was his nearest neighbor, and he conceived the novel idea of paying Simpson five dollars a year not to steal from him, a method occasionally used in the Highlands in the early days.

The bargain was struck, and adhered to religiously for a twelve-month, but on the second of January Mr. Simpson announced the verbal contract as formally broken.

"I didn't know what I was doin' when I made it, Squire," he urged.

"In the first place, it's a slur on my reputation and an injury to my self-respect. Secondly, it's a nervous strain on me; and thirdly, five dollars don't pay me!"

Squire Bean was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of these arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he confessed to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental att.i.tude could be changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science than the state prison.

Abner was a most unusual thief, and conducted his operations with a tact and neighborly consideration none too common in the profession. He would never steal a man's scythe in haying-time, nor his fur lap-robe in the coldest of the winter. The picking of a lock offered no attractions to him; "he wa'n't no burglar," he would have scornfully a.s.serted. A strange horse and wagon hitched by the roadside was the most flagrant of his thefts; but it was the small things--the hatchet or axe on the chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment bleaching on the gra.s.s, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes, that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure, the theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner himself had been a man of sufficient property to carry on his business operations independently, it is doubtful if he would have helped himself so freely to his neighbor's goods.

Riverboro regretted the loss of Mrs. Simpson, who was useful in scrubbing, cleaning, and washing, and was thought to exercise some influence over her predatory spouse. There was a story of their early married life, when they had a farm; a story to the effect that Mrs.

Simpson always rode on every load of hay that her husband took to Milltown, with the view of keeping him sober through the day. After he turned out of the country road and approached the metropolis, it was said that he used to bury the docile lady in the load. He would then drive on to the scales, have the weight of the hay entered in the buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for feed and water, and when a favorable opportunity offered he would a.s.sist the hot and panting Mrs.

Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush the straw from her person. For this reason it was always a.s.serted that Abner Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown, but the story was never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the only suspected blot on meek Mrs. Simpson's personal reputation.

As for the Simpson children, they were missed chiefly as familiar figures by the roadside; but Rebecca honestly loved Clara Belle, notwithstanding her Aunt Miranda's opposition to the intimacy. Rebecca's "taste for low company" was a source of continual anxiety to her aunt.

"Anything that's human flesh is good enough for her!" Miranda groaned to Jane. "She'll ride with the rag-sack-and-bottle peddler just as quick as she would with the minister; she always sets beside the St. Vitus' dance young one at Sabbath school; and she's forever riggin' and onriggin'

that dirty Simpson baby! She reminds me of a puppy that'll always go to everybody that'll have him!"

It was thought very creditable to Mrs. Fogg that she sent for Clara Belle to live with her and go to school part of the year.

"She'll be useful" said Mrs. Fogg, "and she'll be out of her father's way, and so keep honest; though she's no awful hombly I've no fears for her. A girl with her red hair, freckles, and cross-eyes can't fall into no kind of sin, I don't believe."

Mrs. Fogg requested that Clara Belle should be started on her journey from Acreville by train and come the rest of the way by stage, and she was disturbed to receive word on Sunday that Mr. Simpson had borrowed a "good roader" from a new acquaintance, and would himself drive the girl from Acreville to Riverboro, a distance of thirty-five miles. That he would arrive in their vicinity on the very night before the flag-raising was thought by Riverboro to be a public misfortune, and several residents hastily determined to deny themselves a sight of the festivities and remain watchfully on their own premises.