Mr. Ladd says Riverboro"ll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn"t wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day; and sitting down at your mahogany desk inlaid with garnets, you will write notes stating that Mrs. Abijah Flagg requests the pleasure of Miss Rebecca Randall"s company to tea, and that the Hon. Abijah Flagg, M.C., will call for her on his way from the station with a span of horses and the turquoise carryall!"
Emma Jane laughed at the ridiculous prophecy, and answered: "If I ever write the invitation I shan"t be addressing it to Miss Randall, I"m sure of that; it"ll be to Mrs.-----"
"Don"t!" cried Rebecca impetuously, changing color and putting her hand over Emma Jane"s lips. "If you won"t I"ll stop teasing. I couldn"t bear a name put to anything, I couldn"t, Emmy dear! I wouldn"t tease you, either, if it weren"t something we"ve both known ever so long--something that you have always consulted me about of your own accord, and Abijah too."
"Don"t get excited," replied Emma Jane, "I was only going to say you were sure to be Mrs. Somebody in course of time."
"Oh," said Rebecca with a relieved sigh, her color coming back; "if that"s all you meant, just nonsense; but I thought, I thought--I don"t really know just what I thought!"
"I think you thought something you didn"t want me to think you thought,"
said Emma Jane with unusual felicity.
"No, it"s not that; but somehow, today, I have been remembering things.
Perhaps it was because at breakfast Aunt Jane and mother reminded me of my coming birthday and said that Squire Bean would give me the deed of the brick house. That made me feel very old and responsible; and when I came out on the steps this afternoon it was just as if pictures of the old years were moving up and down the road. Everything is so beautiful today! Doesn"t the sky look as if it had been dyed blue and the fields painted pink and green and yellow this very minute?"
"It"s a perfectly elegant day!" responded Emma Jane with a sigh. "If only my mind was at rest! That"s the difference between being young and grown-up. We never used to think and worry."
"Indeed we didn"t! Look, Emmy, there"s the very spot where Uncle Jerry Cobb stopped the stage and I stepped out with my pink parasol and my bouquet of purple lilacs, and you were watching me from your bedroom window and wondering what I had in mother"s little hair trunk strapped on behind. Poor Aunt Miranda didn"t love me at first sight, and oh, how cross she was the first two years! But now every hard thought I ever had comes back to me and cuts like a knife!"
"She was dreadful hard to get along with, and I used to hate her like poison," confessed Emma Jane; "but I am sorry now. She was kinder toward the last, anyway, and then, you see children know so little! We never suspected she was sick or that she was worrying over that lost interest money."
"That"s the trouble. People seem hard and unreasonable and unjust, and we can"t help being hurt at the time, but if they die we forget everything but our own angry speeches; somehow we never remember theirs.
And oh, Emma Jane, there"s another such a sweet little picture out there in the road. The next day after I came to Riverboro, do you remember, I stole out of the brick house crying, and leaned against the front gate.
You pushed your little fat pink-and-white face through the pickets and said: Don"t cry! I"ll kiss you if you will me!""
Lumps rose suddenly in Emma Jane"s throat, and she put her arm around Rebecca"s waist as they sat together side by side.
"Oh, I do remember," she said in a choking voice. "And I can see the two of us driving over to North Riverboro and selling soap to Mr. Adam Ladd; and lighting up the premium banquet lamp at the Simpson party; and laying the daisies round Jacky Winslow"s mother when she was dead in the cabin; and trundling Jacky up and down the street in our old baby carriage!"
"And I remember you," continued Rebecca, "being chased down the hill by Jacob Moody, when we were being Daughters of Zion and you had been chosen to convert him!"
"And I remember you, getting the flag back from Mr. Simpson; and how you looked when you spoke your verses at the flag-raising."
"And have you forgotten the week I refused to speak to Abijah Flagg because he fished my turban with the porcupine quills out of the river when I hoped at last that I had lost it! Oh, Emma Jane, we had dear good times together in the little harbor.""
"I always thought that was an elegant composition of yours--that farewell to the cla.s.s," said Emma Jane.
"The strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbor of childhood into the unknown seas," recalled Rebecca. "It is bearing you almost out of my sight, Emmy, these last days, when you put on a new dress in the afternoon and look out of the window instead of coming across the street. Abijah Flagg never used to be in the little harbor with the rest of us; when did he first sail in, Emmy?"
Emma Jane grew a deeper pink and her b.u.t.ton-hole of a mouth quivered with delicious excitement.
"It was last year at the seminary, when he wrote me his first Latin letter from Limerick Academy," she said in a half whisper.
"I remember," laughed Rebecca. "You suddenly began the study of the dead languages, and the Latin dictionary took the place of the crochet needle in your affections. It was cruel of you never to show me that letter, Emmy!"
"I know every word of it by heart," said the blushing Emma Jane, "and I think I really ought to say it to you, because it"s the only way you will ever know how perfectly elegant Abijah is. Look the other way, Rebecca. Shall I have to translate it for you, do you think, because it seems to me I could not bear to do that!"
"It depends upon Abijah"s Latin and your p.r.o.nunciation," teased Rebecca.
"Go on; I will turn my eyes toward the orchard."
The Fair Emmajane, looking none too old still for the "little harbor,"
but almost too young for the "unknown seas," gathered up her courage and recited like a tremulous parrot the boyish love letter that had so fired her youthful imagination.
"Vale, carissima, carissima puella!" repeated Rebecca in her musical voice. "Oh, how beautiful it sounds! I don"t wonder it altered your feeling for Abijah! Upon my word, Emma Jane," she cried with a sudden change of tone, "if I had suspected for an instant that Abijah the Brave had that Latin letter in him I should have tried to get him to write it to me; and then it would be I who would sit down at my mahogany desk and ask Miss Perkins to come to tea with Mrs. Flagg."
Emma Jane paled and shuddered openly. "I speak as a church member, Rebecca," she said, "when I tell you I"ve always thanked the Lord that you never looked at Abijah Flagg and he never looked at you. If either of you ever had, there never would have been a chance for me, and I"ve always known it!"
II
The romance alluded to in the foregoing chapter had been going on, so far as Abijah Flagg"s part of it was concerned, for many years, his affection dating back in his own mind to the first moment that he saw Emma Jane Perkins at the age of nine.
Emma Jane had shown no sign of reciprocating his attachment until the last three years, when the evolution of the ch.o.r.e-boy into the budding scholar and man of affairs had inflamed even her somewhat dull imagination.
Squire Bean"s wife had taken Abijah away from the poorhouse, thinking that she could make him of some little use in her home. Abbie Flagg, the mother, was neither wise nor beautiful; it is to be feared that she was not even good, and her lack of all these desirable qualities, particularly the last one, had been impressed upon the child ever since he could remember. People seemed to blame him for being in the world at all; this world that had not expected him nor desired him, nor made any provision for him. The great battle-axe of poorhouse opinion was forever leveled at the mere little atom of innocent transgression, until he grew sad and shy, clumsy, stiff, and self-conscious. He had an indomitable craving for love in his heart and had never received a caress in his life.
He was more contented when he came to Squire Bean"s house. The first year he could only pick up chips, carry pine wood into the kitchen, go to the post-office, run errands, drive the cows, and feed the hens, but every day he grew more and more useful.
His only friend was little Jim Watson, the storekeeper"s son, and they were inseparable companions whenever Abijah had time for play.
One never-to-be-forgotten July day a new family moved into the white cottage between Squire Bean"s house and the Sawyers". Mr. Perkins had sold his farm beyond North Riverboro and had established a blacksmith"s shop in the village, at the Edgewood end of the bridge. This fact was of no special interest to the nine-year-old Abijah, but what really was of importance, was the appearance of a pretty little girl of seven in the front yard; a pretty little fat doll of a girl, with bright fuzzy hair, pink cheeks, blue eyes, and a smile of almost bewildering continuity.
Another might have criticised it as having the air of being glued on, but Abijah was already in the toils and never wished it to move.
The next day being the glorious Fourth and a holiday, Jimmy Watson came over like David, to visit his favorite Jonathan. His Jonathan met him at the top of the hill, pleaded a pressing engagement, curtly sent him home, and then went back to play with his new idol, with whom he had already sc.r.a.ped acquaintance, her parents being exceedingly busy settling the new house.
After the noon dinner Jimmy again yearned to resume friendly relations, and, forgetting his rebuff, again toiled up the hill and appeared unexpectedly at no great distance from the Perkins premises, wearing the broad and beaming smile of one who is confident of welcome.
His morning call had been officious and unpleasant and unsolicited, but his afternoon visit could only be regarded as impudent, audacious, and positively dangerous; for Abijah and Emma Jane were cosily playing house, the game of all others in which it is particularly desirable to have two and not three partic.i.p.ants.
At that moment the nature of Abijah changed, at once and forever.
Without a pang of conscience he flew over the intervening patch of ground between himself and his dreaded rival, and seizing small stones and larger ones, as haste and fury demanded, flung them at Jimmy Watson, and flung and flung, till the bewildered boy ran down the hill howling.
Then he made a "stickin"" door to the play-house, put the awed Emma Jane inside and strode up and down in front of the edifice like an Indian brave. At such an early age does woman become a distracting and disturbing influence in man"s career!
Time went on, and so did the rivalry between the poorhouse boy and the son of wealth, but Abijah"s chances of friendship with Emma Jane grew fewer and fewer as they both grew older. He did not go to school, so there was no meeting-ground there, but sometimes, when he saw the knot of boys and girls returning in the afternoon, he would invite Elijah and Elisha, the Simpson twins, to visit him, and take pains to be in Squire Bean"s front yard, doing something that might impress his inamorata as she pa.s.sed the premises.
As Jimmy Watson was particularly small and fragile, Abijah generally chose feats of strength and skill for these prearranged performances.
Sometimes he would throw his hat up into the elm trees as far as he could and, when it came down, catch it on his head. Sometimes he would walk on his hands, with his legs wriggling in the air, or turn a double somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of the Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls exclaimed, "Isn"t he splendid!" although he often heard his rival murmur scornfully, "SMARTY ALECK!"--a scathing allusion of unknown origin.
Squire Bean, although he did not send the boy to school (thinking, as he was of no possible importance in the universe, it was not worth while bothering about his education), finally became impressed with his ability, lent him books, and gave him more time to study. These were all he needed, books and time, and when there was an especially hard knot to untie, Rebecca, as the star scholar of the neighborhood, helped him to untie it.
When he was sixteen he longed to go away from Riverboro and be something better than a ch.o.r.e boy. Squire Bean had been giving him small wages for three or four years, and when the time of parting came presented him with a ten-dollar bill and a silver watch.
Many a time had he discussed his future with Rebecca and asked her opinion.
This was not strange, for there was nothing in human form that she could not and did not converse with, easily and delightedly. She had ideas on every conceivable subject, and would have cheerfully advised the minister if he had asked her. The fishman consulted her when he couldn"t endure his mother-in-law another minute in the house; Uncle Jerry Cobb didn"t part with his river field until he had talked it over with Rebecca; and as for Aunt Jane, she couldn"t decide whether to wear her black merino or her gray thibet unless Rebecca cast the final vote.
Abijah wanted to go far away from Riverboro, as far as Limerick Academy, which was at least fifteen miles; but although this seemed extreme, Rebecca agreed, saying pensively: "There IS a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed."
This was precisely Abijah"s unspoken thought. Limerick knew nothing of Abbie Flagg"s worthlessness, birth, and training, and the awful stigma of his poorhouse birth, so that he would start fair. He could have gone to Wareham and thus remained within daily sight of the beloved Emma Jane; but no, he was not going to permit her to watch him in the process of "becoming," but after he had "become" something. He did not propose to take any risks after all these years of silence and patience. Not he!