Rebecca's Promise Part 1

Rebecca's Promise.

by Frances R. Sterrett.

CHAPTER I

"I never should have brought you here," murmured Cousin Susan Wentworth, as she looked across the table at young Cousin Rebecca Mary Wyman, who sat on the other side of the white cloth like a small gray mouse with bright expectant eyes, a pretty pink flush on her cheeks and her head with its crown of soft yellow brown hair held high. "I should have saved my money for new kitchen curtains. The curtains in my kitchen are a disgrace to any housekeeper. But life wouldn't be worth much if we didn't occasionally do something we shouldn't, would it?" And she smiled at pink-cheeked Rebecca Mary. "The memory of this pretty room with the gay crowds of people, the music, the good things to eat will last longer than any curtains. And I can cut down the old bedroom curtains for the kitchen. Rebecca Mary, did you ever think that is what life really is, cutting down our desires to fit our necessities?"

Rebecca Mary sniffed. She had known that for twenty-two years. She did not have to be thirty-nine like Cousin Susan to learn that necessities always crowd out desires. And anyway she did not wish to talk of necessities, they were stupid and uninteresting, when for once in her life she was a part of what no one in the wide world could ever consider a necessity.

She let Cousin Susan study the card the attentive waiter handed to her, and while Cousin Susan tried to keep her mind from prices and on names, Rebecca Mary's bright eyes roved over the big brilliant room. She had never expected to enter it. She had scarcely believed her two pink ears when they told her that Cousin Susan had said, quite casually, "Rebecca Mary, suppose we go to the Waloo for tea?" Rebecca Mary had given a startled gasp, but here she was at the Waloo trying to forget that her old blue serge suit was wide where it should be narrow and narrow where it should be wide, and that her hat had only been given a good brushing to make it ready for another season.

Afternoon tea was served at the Waloo in the Viking room, a beautiful place with its scenes from the old Norse sagas on the walls above a wainscoting of dark wood and with lights like old ship lanterns hanging from the beamed ceiling. The chairs and tables were suggestive of long ago days, also, but the linen, the silver, the dainty china, the music and the guests were very much of to-day.

Rebecca Mary watched the young people almost enviously as Cousin Susan hesitated over _foie gras_ sandwiches, which were expensive and therefore suitable for an occasion which was to cost her kitchen its new curtains, and lettuce sandwiches which were cheap and which she made herself every time the Mifflin Fortnightly Club met with her. Rebecca Mary could easily imagine what joy it would be to come to the Viking room in smart new clothes and with a young man like--like that tall young fellow who was with the girl in the wistaria taffeta. It made the pink in Rebecca Mary's cheeks turn to rose just to think of what joy that would be.

There were any number of girls in the Viking room with whom Rebecca Mary would have changed places in the twinkling of an eye. It hurt almost as much as an ulcerated tooth to watch those radiant young people. And when you have an ulcerated tooth you don't, unless you are strong-minded or philosophical or stoical, laugh and chatter gayly; you know you don't.

Rebecca Mary wasn't strong-minded nor philosophical nor stoical, she was just a girl who had never had anything and, oh, how she did want something, and she wanted it right away. That was why her eyebrows frowned yellow-brownly, and the corners of her mouth drooped a bit.

"Oh, Cousin Susan!" she groaned, "why did we ever come here? Why didn't you take me to Childs'?"

"Eh?" murmured Cousin Susan, still hovering between expense and curiosity.

But before she could say another word a little girl ran up to them, an elflike little thing, who held a huge bunch of violets in her hand. She had been following a man from the room when she had seen Rebecca Mary and dashed around the tables, just missing a disastrous collision with a fat waiter, to arrive breathless beside her.

"Oh, Miss Wyman!" she whispered, her small face aglow with importance.

"I'm so glad I saw you. This is my birthday, and my daddy brought me here for tea just as if I were all grown up. He bought me these violets, too, and I've had them all afternoon so I'd like to give them to you now because," her face grew crimson, and her voice rang out above the hum of voices, "I love you!" She thrust the violets into Rebecca Mary's hand and ran away without giving Rebecca Mary a chance to say one word.

Rebecca Mary just saw a portion of her father's back as he disappeared through the door, and she looked down at the violets with an odd flash in her gray eyes. No one ever had given her violets before. She had always picked them herself on the sunny slope of the bluff at Mifflin.

"What a dear child," smiled Cousin Susan. "Who is she?"

"One of my pupils, Joan Befort. Yes, she is a dear." Rebecca Mary buried her hot cheeks in the cool fragrance of the violets for a moment.

When she lifted her head she met the amused glance of an elderly woman at the next table. She must be a grandmother woman, Rebecca Mary thought swiftly, although she did not look like any grandmother Rebecca Mary knew with her smart and expensive hat and blue gown, on the front of which was pinned a bunch of violets and an orchid encircled with foliage. The smile which lurked around the lips of this most ungrandmotherly looking grandmother made Rebecca Mary remember little Joan Befort's fervent declaration of affection, and she smiled, too. How funny it must have sounded in the crowded tea room. "I love you!"

Rebecca Mary giggled, she couldn't help it, even if she was most dreadfully embarra.s.sed.

At the table beside the ungrandmotherly looking grandmother was a young man the very sight of whom sent Rebecca Mary into a quiver of delight.

She had seen his picture in the Gazette too many times not to recognize him. He was young Peter Simmons, who had left college in his soph.o.m.ore year to drive an ambulance in France during the second year of the great war. He had been awarded a _croix de guerre_ for "unusual bravery under fire," and later had gone into the French flying service until he could fight under his own flag. He had been with the American Army of Occupation in Germany and had only recently returned to Waloo. No wonder Rebecca Mary thrilled all down her back bone as she realized that she was looking at a hero. She stared and stared for she might never see one again, and the hero raised his eyes and saw awed admiration written in huge letters all over her flushed face.

Evidently young Peter Simmons did not care for awed admiration, perhaps he had had too much of it, perhaps it made him unpleasantly self-conscious, for he scowled blackly and murmured an impatient something to the grandmother which made her look at Rebecca Mary again.

Rebecca Mary turned a deep crimson and was horribly uncomfortable. She knew very well what they were saying, that such a shabby girl had no business among the fine birds in the Viking room, and she scowled, too.

She could give scowl for scowl as well as any one. Peter's black frown made you laugh, but there was something rather pathetic about Rebecca Mary's bent yellow-brown brows, perhaps it was because her lower lip quivered as she hastily averted her shamed eyes.

On the other side of young Peter was a girl no older than Rebecca Mary, and she was so prettily and smartly clothed that she made Rebecca Mary feel like Cousin Susan's kitchen curtains, old and ragged. But every one in the room made her feel like that, she thought miserably, and she tossed her head higher to show how little she cared as her glance roamed on to the man on the other side of the grandmother. Of course the grandmother must be old Mrs. Peter Simmons, and old Mrs. Peter Simmons was one of the most important women in Waloo, so important that a poor little school teacher like Rebecca Mary could never hope to know her.

Rebecca Mary rather liked the face of the man on the other side of Mrs.

Peter Simmons. He was older than young Peter, and the most doting friend could not have called him handsome, but he had something much better than perfect features. He was the type of man who would do things, she decided, and then she saw Mrs. Simmons turn to speak to him and with a little shrinking feeling of horror Rebecca Mary knew that they were talking of her, for the man who could do things raised his head and looked directly at her. For a moment their eyes met. Rebecca Mary was furious to feel her cheeks burn and her heart thump. She scowled before she turned her head quickly. She wouldn't look at that table again. I should say not!

There were other tables and other family parties, and, oh, dear! other couples. Old Samuel Johnson knew exactly what he was talking about when he said that "envy is almost the only vice which is practicable at all times and in every place." Rebecca Mary did find it so very very easy to be envious. About the only person she did not envy that afternoon was a short, stout, middle-aged man with a red face, who sat at a table by himself and consumed vast quant.i.ties of hot b.u.t.tered toast.

Rebecca Mary had never imagined there were so many gay, light-hearted people in the world as there were in the Viking room that May afternoon and more would have entered if it had not been for the silken barrier which was held in front of the door by two very haughty waiters. Rebecca Mary felt blue and depressed to the very toes of her common-sense little shoes. She felt so hopelessly out of the gay and brilliant picture. She almost wished that Cousin Susan had not asked her to the Waloo for tea.

"Which shall we have, Rebecca Mary?" Cousin Susan found herself quite incapable of making such a momentous decision without a.s.sistance.

"Lettuce or _foie gras_."

Rebecca Mary did not hesitate a second. She knew. "_Foie gras_," she said promptly. "I've never tasted them, and I've made hundreds of lettuce sandwiches, just thousands of them. What is the use of going to new places if you don't try new things?" There was just a trace of impatience in her low voice as if she thought that Cousin Susan should have known that without being told.

"H-m," murmured Cousin Susan. "The _foie gras_, then. They certainly sound mysterious and adventurous." And having given her order, Cousin Susan looked about her. "Isn't this an attractive place? I've read in the Gazette about the afternoon teas in the Viking room and how popular they were. I suppose all these people are very rich and important. None of them will pay for tea with kitchen curtains." And Cousin Susan's eyes twinkled.

Rebecca Mary's eyes twinkled, too, although really there was nothing very amusing to her in paying for tea with ten yards of any kind of material. It was rather sordid to her and poor and generally horrid, like her very existence.

Cousin Susan looked at her frowning little face and fingered the silver in front of her with hands which although well cared for showed that they were more for use than ornament. Cousin Susan's hands exactly ill.u.s.trated Cousin Susan's heart, which was so big and generous and helpful that the hands were often overworked. As she looked at Rebecca Mary Cousin Susan took a sudden determination and followed an impulse, which was nothing new for her, and which sometimes brought her great satisfaction and sometimes nothing but dissatisfaction.

"Don't frown like that, Rebecca Mary," she commanded like a general speaking to a very small private. "It is a lot easier to put a wrinkle in your forehead than it is to get one out as you'll learn some day. And while we are on the subject of your looks I'm going to take an old cousin's privilege and tell you what I think of you. It's a shame to do it here," she acknowledged ruefully, "but if I take the six-twenty train I shan't have another chance. You know," she went on in a firm low voice, "I don't like the way you live, and your mother wouldn't like it if she knew. Why, you don't get a thing out of your life, Rebecca Mary, not a thing!"

"I don't see what I can do," murmured Rebecca Mary with a twist of her shoulders and a rebellious flash in her gray eyes. "You needn't think I like my life, Cousin Susan. It isn't one I should ever choose. I should say not! But I try to make the best of it."

"But you don't make the best of it. That is just the point. You make such a horrid worst of it. Yes, you do!" as Rebecca Mary indignantly declared that she didn't. "Listen. I've watched you and I never imagined a girl could detach herself from life, real life, as you have done. You haven't any friends, you don't go anywhere but to school, you don't do anything but teach the third grade in the Lincoln school."

At that Rebecca Mary did interrupt and there was a bright red spot on each of her cheeks, like a poppy in a bed of lilies. "It costs money to have a share in real life," she said in a suppressed voice which made you think how very thin the crust of earth around a volcano must be.

"And I haven't any money. You know how awfully little we have and how much it costs to live now. I have to send something home every month and there are always taxes and insurance. And I have to provide for my old age! You have no idea what a nightmare that is," tragically. "I wake up in the night thinking what will happen when I'm too old to teach.

It's--it's ghastly!" It was so ghastly that she shivered, and the poppies left her face so that it was just a field of white lilies.

"You are thinking entirely too much of your old age. You are robbing your youth for it. It is perfectly ridiculous for you to make such a nightmare of the future. I know it isn't entirely your fault. Your mother is rabid on the subject. She has brought you and Grace up to think of old age as a blood-thirsty old beast who has to be fed with youth. Yes, I know all about your Aunt Agnes and your second Cousin Lucy. But, my dear, they could have saved and saved and their money might have been lost just when they needed it. You can't be sure of keeping money no matter how you save it. That's why I spend mine." She looked at the dainty expensive sandwiches the waiter placed before her and laughed. "It's gospel truth, my dear," she went on soberly, "that the only thing you can be sure of taking into the future is what you can remember, the memory of the good times you have had, the people you have met, the places you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard. Don't you know that youth should enjoy things for old age to remember? And take it from me, Rebecca Mary, that the old find their greatest pleasure in recalling their youth. Will you have cream or lemon in your tea? Lemon always seems more like a party to me."

Rebecca Mary took the lemon while a puzzled frown appeared between her two eyebrows. "It isn't that I don't like my work, Cousin Susan," she said slowly, "for I do. I love children, and I love to teach. If I had a million I should want to teach somewhere, in a settlement or a mission, you know. But I'll admit that the future does scare me blue. Suppose I should be ill, suppose----"

"Suppose fiddlesticks!" Cousin Susan broke in impatiently.

"It's all very well for you to talk. You have some one to take care of you, a husband, and----"

"My dear, you can't guarantee a husband any more than you can a savings account. Women are left penniless widows every day. Don't misunderstand me, Rebecca Mary. I believe in a certain amount of saving, but I don't believe in sacrificing everything in the present to a future you may never have. How do you know you will live to grow old? How do you know that a grateful pupil won't leave you an income?--that has happened if you can believe the newspapers. How do you know that you won't make your own fortune in some marvelous way? That's the loveliest part of life, Rebecca Mary. You don't know what is waiting for you around the corner so you might as well expect riches as poverty; better in my opinion. I'd always rather look forward to a fried chicken than a soup bone hashed."

Rebecca Mary had to giggle when Cousin Susan suggested that a grateful pupil might leave her an income. That was even more improbable than that she would make a fortune for herself.

"Cousin Susan," she giggled scornfully, "You are a perfect silly!"

"That may be," admitted Cousin Susan, "but I'm telling you good solid sense. A proper amount of pleasure is as necessary to the real development of human beings as bread or boots. Every one admits that now. And you're not getting a proper amount, my dear. You aren't getting any! Why, you aren't living, you only breathe, and life is more than breathing. You are naturally impulsive. Can't you let yourself enjoy life instead of fear it? Yes, you are afraid of it. I've watched you.

And from what you say I imagine that your room-mate was just another like you. I'm glad she has gone home. And your clothes are a scandal.

How many years have you worn that suit?"

Rebecca Mary's face turned a bright crimson to match the red-hot indignation inside of her. How dared Cousin Susan talk to her like that?

She was doing the best she could. She shouldn't tell Cousin Susan how old her blue serge was. It was none of Cousin Susan's business.

"You wouldn't feel so shut out of the world if you looked like other people and went where other people go. I don't suppose you speak an unprofessional word all day," went on Cousin Susan with growing indignation at what she considered the waste of a perfectly good girl.

"It's a crime, Rebecca Mary Wyman! A crime! And you needn't boast about your old age provision when you haven't the brains to make a sensible one. I'm as poor as a church mouse myself. Your Cousin Howard will never make more than a decent living, and we have two children to feed and clothe and educate. I hadn't any more business to come here for tea than I would have to go to the Zoo and buy a baboon for a parlor ornament.

But if I don't do something occasionally to make a day stand out, something that it is a pleasure to remember, I never should be able to keep on patching Elsie's petticoats, and darning Kittie's stockings. I know,--I know!--Rebecca Mary, that when you are young you live in the future, and when you are old you live in the past. Some one has said that memories are the only real fountain of youth. And that's true. A girl is young such a short time that she has to cram the days full if she wants to be sure of a happy old age. I can't imagine anything more awful than to have no good times to remember. And all pleasures aren't like the tea here. Such a lot of them can be had for nothing. You can get such fun just out of companionship, and the world is full of people with whom we were meant to be friends. Why, life now means helping other people to have a good time instead of moping off by yourself. You should know that, Rebecca Mary. I know I sound like a sermon, but it is all so true. You must not turn your back to people and hide in a corner. You must face the world and take what you can and give what you can. I wish you would promise me something?" she asked eagerly.