New Chronicles of Rebecca Part 13

On Monday afternoon the children were rehearsing their songs at the meeting-house. As Rebecca came out on the broad wooden steps she watched Mrs. Peter Meserve's buggy out of sight, for in front, wrapped in a cotton sheet, lay the previous flag. After a few chattering good-bys and weather prophecies with the other girls, she started on her homeward walk, dropping in at the parsonage to read her verses to the minister.

He welcomed her gladly as she removed her white cotton gloves (hastily slipped on outside the door, for ceremony) and pushed back the funny hat with the yellow and black porcupine quills--the hat with which she made her first appearance in Riverboro society.

"You've heard the beginning, Mr. Baxter; now will you please tell me if you like the last verse?" she asked, taking out her paper. "I've only read it to Alice Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet, though she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote a birthday poem to herself, and she made natal' rhyme with Milton,.'

which, of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:

'This is my day so natal And I will follow Milton.'

Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it, she said. This was it:

'Let me to the hills away, Give me pen and paper; I'll write until the earth will sway The story of my Maker.'"

The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations.

When she was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a marvelous companion.

"The name of the poem is going to be My Star,'" she continued, "and Mrs.

Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of magicness when they get into poetry, don't you think so?" (Rebecca always talked to grown people as if she were their age, or, a more subtle and truer distinction, as if they were hers.)

"It has often been so remarked, in different words," agreed the minister.

"Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we ought to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace together; and I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn says she's the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end like this: I didn't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on my star:

For it's your star, my star, all the stars together, That make our country's flag so proud To float in the bright fall weather.

Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West, Side by side they lie at peace On the dear flag's mother-breast."

"'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by nature,'" thought the minister, quoting Wordsworth to himself. "And I wonder what becomes of them! That's a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether you or my wife ought to have the more praise. What made you think of the stars lying on the flag's mother-breast'? Where did you get that word?"

"Why" (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), "that's the way it is; the flag is the whole country--the mother--and the stars are the states.

The stars had to lie somewhere: 'LAP' nor 'ARMS' wouldn't sound well with West,' so, of course, I said 'BREAST,'" Rebecca answered, with some surprise at the question; and the minister put his hand under her chin and kissed her softly on the forehead when he said good-by at the door.

IV

Rebecca walked rapidly along in the gathering twilight, thinking of the eventful morrow.

As she approached the turning on the left called the old Milltown road, she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish, flapping, Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over the long hills leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him; there never was another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy reddish hair, the gay c.o.c.k of his hat, and the long piratical, upturned mustaches, which the boys used to say were used as hat-racks by the Simpson children at night.. The old Milltown road ran past Mrs. Fogg's house, so he must have left Clara Belle there, and Rebecca's heart glowed to think that her poor little friend need not miss the raising.

She began to run now, fearful of being late for supper, and covered the ground to the falls in a brief time. As she crossed the bridge she again saw Abner Simpson's team, drawn up at the watering trough.

Coming a little nearer, with the view of inquiring for the family, her quick eye caught sight of something unexpected. A gust of wind blew up a corner of a linen lap-robe in the back of the wagon, and underneath it she distinctly saw the white-sheeted bundle that held the flag; the bundle with a tiny, tiny spot of red bunting peeping out at one corner.

It is true she had eaten, slept, dreamed red, white, and blue for weeks, but there was no mistaking the evidence of her senses; the idolized flag, longed for, worked for, sewed for, that flag was in the back of Abner Simpson's wagon, and if so, what would become of the raising?

Acting on blind impulse, she ran toward the watering-trough, calling out in her clear treble: "Mr. Simpson! Oh, Mr. Simpson, will you let me ride a piece with you and hear all about Clara Belle? I'm going part way over to the Centre on an errand." (So she was; a most important errand,--to recover the flag of her country at present in the hands of the foe!)

Mr. Simpson turned round in his seat and cried heartily, "Certain sure I will!" for he liked the fair s.e.x, young and old, and Rebecca had always been a prime favorite with him. "Climb right in! How's everybody? Glad to see ye! The folks talk bout ye from sun-up to sun-down, and Clara Belle can't hardly wait for a sight of ye!"

Rebecca scrambled up, trembling and pale with excitement. She did not in the least know what was going to happen, but she was sure that the flag, when in the enemy's country, must be at least a little safer with the State of Maine sitting on top of it!

Mr. Simpson began a long monologue about Acreville, the house he lived in, the pond in front of it, Mrs. Simpson's health, and various items of news about the children, varied by reports of his personal misfortunes.

He put no questions, and asked no replies, so this gave the inexperienced soldier a few seconds to plan a campaign. There were three houses to pa.s.s; the Browns' at the corner, the Millikens', and the Robinsons' on the brow of the hill. If Mr. Robinson were in the front yard she might tell Mr. Simpson she wanted to call there and ask Mr.

Robinson to hold the horse's head while she got out of the wagon.

Then she might fly to the back before Mr. Simpson could realize the situation, and dragging out the precious bundle, sit on it hard, while Mr. Robinson settled the matter of ownership with Mr. Simpson.

This was feasible, but it meant a quarrel between the two men, who held an ancient grudge against each other, and Mr. Simpson was a valiant fighter as the various sheriffs who had attempted to arrest him could cordially testify. It also meant that everybody in the village would hear of the incident and poor Clara Belle be branded again as the child of a thief.

Another idea danced into her excited brain; such a clever one she could hardly believe it hers. She might call Mr. Robinson to the wagon, and when he came close to the wheels she might say, "all of a sudden": "Please take the flag out of the back of the wagon, Mr. Robinson. We have brought it here for you to keep overnight." Mr. Simpson might be so surprised that he would give up his prize rather than be suspected of stealing.

But as they neared the Robinsons' house there was not a sign of life to be seen; so the last plan, ingenious though it was, was perforce abandoned.

The road now lay between thick pine woods with no dwelling in sight.

It was growing dusk and Rebecca was driving along the lonely way with a person who was generally called Slippery Simpson.

Not a thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in her diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War in his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined the British forces and impersonated General Burgoyne had greatly endeared him to her. The only difficulty was to find proper words for her delicate mission, for, of course, if Mr. Simpson's anger were aroused, he would politely push her out of the wagon and drive away with the flag. Perhaps if she led the conversation in the right direction an opportunity would present itself. She well remembered how Emma Jane Perkins had failed to convert Jacob Moody, simply because she failed to "lead up" to the delicate question of his manner of life. Clearing her throat nervously, she began: "Is it likely to be fair tomorrow?"

"Guess so; clear as a bell. What's on foot; a picnic?"

"No; we're to have a grand flag-raising!" ("That is," she thought, "if we have any flag to raise!")

"That so? Where?"

"The three villages are to club together and have a rally, and raise the flag at the Centre. There'll be a bra.s.s band, and speakers, and the Mayor of Portland, and the man that will be governor if he's elected, and a dinner in the Grange Hall, and we girls are chosen to raise the flag."

"I want to know! That'll be grand, won't it?" (Still not a sign of consciousness on the part of Abner.)

"I hope Mrs. Fogg will take Clara Belle, for it will be splendid to look at! Mr. Cobb is going to be Uncle Sam and drive us on the stage. Miss Dearborn--Clara Belle's old teacher, you know--is going to be Columbia; the girls will be the States of the Union, and oh, Mr. Simpson, I am the one to be the State of Maine!" (This was not altogether to the point, but a piece of information impossible to conceal.)

Mr. Simpson flourished the whipstock and gave a loud, hearty laugh. Then he turned in his seat and regarded Rebecca curiously. "You're kind of small, hain't ye, for so big a state as this one?" he asked.

"Any of us would be too small," replied Rebecca with dignity, "but the committee asked me, and I am going to try hard to do well."

The tragic thought that there might be no occasion for anybody to do anything, well or ill, suddenly overcame her here, and putting her hand on Mr. Simpson's sleeve, she attacked the subject practically and courageously.

"Oh, Mr. Simpson, dear Mr. Simpson, it's such a mortifying subject I can't bear to say anything about it, but please give us back our flag!

Don't, DON'T take it over to Acreville, Mr. Simpson! We've worked so long to make it, and it was so hard getting the money for the bunting!

Wait a minute, please; don't be angry, and don't say no just yet, till I explain more. It'll be so dreadful for everybody to get there tomorrow morning and find no flag to raise, and the band and the mayor all disappointed, and the children crying, with their muslin dresses all bought for nothing! O dear Mr. Simpson, please don't take our flag away from us!"

The apparently astonished Abner pulled his mustaches and exclaimed: "But I don't know what you're drivin' at! Who's got yer flag? I hain't!"

Could duplicity, deceit, and infamy go any further, Rebecca wondered, and her soul filling with righteous wrath, she cast discretion to the winds and spoke a little more plainly, bending her great swimming eyes on the now embarra.s.sed Abner, who looked like an angle-worm, wriggling on a pin.

"Mr. Simpson, how can you say that, when I saw the flag in the back of your wagon myself, when you stopped to water the horse? It's wicked of you to take it, and I cannot bear it!" (Her voice broke now, for a doubt of Mr. Simpson's yielding suddenly darkened her mind.) "If you keep it, you'll have to keep me, for I won't be parted from it! I can't fight like the boys, but I can pinch and scratch, and I WILL scratch, just like a panther--I'll lie right down on my star and not move, if I starve to death!"

"Look here, hold your hosses n' don't cry till you git something to cry for!" grumbled the outraged Abner, to whom a clue had just come; and leaning over the wagon-back he caught hold of a corner of white sheet and dragged up the bundle, scooping off Rebecca's hat in the process, and almost burying her in bunting.

She caught the treasure pa.s.sionately to her heart and stifled her sobs in it, while Abner exclaimed: "I swan to man, if that hain't a flag!

Well, in that case you're good n' welcome to it! Land! I seen that bundle lyin' in the middle o' the road and I says to myself, that's somebody's washin' and I'd better pick it up and leave it at the post-office to be claimed; n' all the time it was a flag!"

This was a Simpsonian version of the matter, the fact being that a white-covered bundle lying on the Meserves' front steps had attracted his practiced eye, and slipping in at the open gate he had swiftly and deftly removed it to his wagon on general principles; thinking if it were clean clothes it would be extremely useful, and in any event there was no good in pa.s.sing by something flung into your very arms, so to speak. He had had no leisure to examine the bundle, and indeed took little interest in it. Probably he stole it simply from force of habit, and because there was nothing else in sight to steal, everybody's premises being preternaturally tidy and empty, almost as if his visit had been expected!