Rebecca Mary Part 10

"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 gra.s.s. 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 grat.i.tude 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 antic.i.p.ations.

Oddly enough, Aunt Olivia seemed to have no antic.i.p.ations--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, a.s.suringly. 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--"