Books: Rebecca Mary
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Annie Hamilton Donnell >> Rebecca Mary
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7 Rebecca Mary
by Annie Hamilton Donnell
Contents
I. THE HUNDRED AND ONETH
II. THE THOUSAND QUILT
III. THE BIBLE DREAM
IV. THE COOK-BOOK DIARY
V. THE BEREAVEMENT
VI. THE FEEL DOLL
VII. THE PLUMMER KIND
VIII. ARTICLE SEVEN
IX. UN-PLUMMERED
The Hundred and Oneth
Rebecca Mary took another stitch. Then another. "Ninety-sevvun,
ninety-eight," she counted aloud, her little pointed face gravely
intent. She waited the briefest possible space before she took
ninety-nine. It was getting very close to the Time now. "At the
hundred an' oneth," Rebecca Mary whispered. "It's almost it."
Her breath came quicker under her tight little dress. Between her
thin, light eyebrows a crease deepened anxiously.
"Ninety--n-i-n-e," she counted, "one hun-der-ed"--it was so very
close now! The next stitch would be the hundred and oneth. Rebecca
Mary's face suddenly grew quite white.
"I'll wait a m-minute," she decided; "I'm just a little scared.
When you've been lookin' head to the hundred and oneth so LONG and
you get the very next door to it, it scares you a little. I'll wait
until--oh, until Thomas Jefferson crows, before I sew the hundred
and oneth."
Thomas Jefferson was prospecting under the currant bushes. Rebecca
Mary could see him distinctly, even with her nearsighted little
eyes, for Thomas Jefferson was snow-white. Once in a while he
stalked dignifiedly out of the bushes and crowed. He might do it
again any minute now.
The great sheet billowed and floated round Rebecca Mary, scarcely
whiter than her face. She held her needle poised, waiting the
signal of Thomas Jefferson. At any ***[min--?]***min He was coming
out now! A fleck of snow-white was pricking the green of the
currant leaves.
"He's out. Any minute he'll begin to cr--" He was already
beginning! The warning signals were out--chest expanding, neck
elongating, and great white wing aflap.
"I'm just a little scared," breathed the child in the foam of the
sheet. Then Thomas Jefferson crowed.
"Hundred and one!" Rebecca Mary cried out, clearly, courage born
within her at the crucial instant. The Time--the Time--had come.
She had taken her last stitch.
"It's over," she panted. "It always was a-coming, and it's come.
I knew it would. When it's come, you don't feel quite so scared.
I'm glad it's over."
She folded up the great sheet carefully, making all the edges meet
with painful precision. It took time. She had left the needle
sticking in the unfinished seam--in the hundred-and-oneth stitch--
and close beside it was a tiny dot of red to "keep the place."
"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary!" Aunt Olivia always called like that.
If there had been still another name--Rebecca Mary Something Else--
she would have called: "Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary
Something Else!"
"Yes'm; I'm here."
"Where's 'here'?" sharply.
"HERE--the grape-arbor, I mean."
"Have you got your sheet?"
"I--yes'm."
"Is your stent 'most done?"
Rebecca Mary rose slowly to her reluctant little feet, and with the
heavy sheet across her arm went to meet the sharp voice. At last
the Time had come.
"Well?" Aunt Olivia was waiting for her answer. Rebecca Mary
groaned. Aunt Olivia would not think it was "well."
"Well, Rebecca Mary Plummer, you came to fetch my answer, did you?
You got your stent 'most done?" Aunt Olivia's hands were extended
for the folded sheet.
"I've got it DONE, Aunt 'Livia," answered little Rebecca Mary,
steadily. Her slender figure, in its quaint, scant dress, looked
braced as if to meet a shock. But Rebecca Mary was terribly afraid.
"Every mite o' that seam? Then I guess you can't have done it very
well; that's what I guess! If it ain't done well, you'll have to
take it--"
"Wait--please, won't you wait, Aunt 'Livia? I've got to say
something. I mean, I've got all the over-'n'-overing I'm ever going
to do done. THAT'S what's done. The hundred-and-oneth stitch was
my stent, and it's done. I'm not ever going to take the hundred
and twoth. I've decided."
Understanding filtered drop by drop into Aunt Olivia's bewildered
brain. She gasped at the final drop.
"Not ever going to take another stitch?" she repeated, with a
calmness that was awfuler than storm.
"No'm."
"You've decided?"
"Yes'm."
"May I ask when this--this state of mind began?"
Rebecca Mary girded herself afresh. She had such need of recruiting
strength.
"It's been coming on," she said. "I've felt it. I knew all the time
it was a-coming--and then it came."
It seemed to be all there. Why must she say any more? But still
Aunt Olivia waited, and Rebecca Mary read grim displeasure in
capitals across the gray field of her face. The little figure
stiffened more and more.
"I've over-'n'-overed 'leven sheets," the steady little voice went
on, because Aunt Olivia was waiting, and it must, "and you said I
did 'em pretty well. I tried to. I was going to do the other one
well, till you said there was going to be another dozen. I couldn't
BEAR another dozen, Aunt Olivia, so I decided to stop. When Thomas
Jefferson crowed I sewed the hundred-and-oneth stitch. That's all
there's ever a-going to be."
Rebecca Mary stepped back a step or two, as if finishing a speech
and retiring from her audience. There was even the effect of a bow
in the sudden collapse of the stiff little body. It was Aunt
Olivia's turn now to respond--and Aunt Olivia responded:
"You've had your say; now I'll have mine. Listen to me, Rebecca
Mary Plummer! Here's this sheet, and here's this needle in it.
When you get good and ready you can go on sewing. You won't have
anything to eat till you do. I've got through."
The grim figure swept right-about face and tramped into the house as
though to the battle-roll of drums. Rebecca Mary stayed behind,
face to face with her fate.
"She's a Plummer, so it'11 be SO," Rebecca Mary thought, with the
dull little thud of a weight falling into her heart. Rebecca Mary
was a Plummer too, but she did not think of that, unless the un-
swerving determination in her stout little heart was the unconscious
recognition of it.
"I wonder"--her gaze wandered out towards the currant-bushes and
came to rest absently on Thomas Jefferson's big, white bulk--"I
wonder if it hurts very much." She meant, to starve. A long vista
of food-less days opened before her, and in their contemplation the
weight in her heart grew very heavy indeed.
"We were GOING to have layer-cake for supper. I'm VERY fond of
layer-cake," Rebecca Mary sighed, "I suppose, though, after a few
weeks"--she shuddered--"I shall be glad to have ANYTHING--just
common things, like crackers and skim-milk. Perhaps I shall want to
eat a--horse. I've heard of folks--You get very unparticular when
you're starving."
It was five o'clock. They WERE going to have supper at half past.
She could hear the tea things clinking in the house. She stole up
to a window. There was Aunt Olivia setting the layer-cake on the
table. It looked plump and rich, and it was sugared on top.
"There's strawberry jam in between it," mused Rebecca Mary,
regretfully. "I wish it was apple jelly. I could bear it better if
it was apple jelly." But it was jam. And there was honey, too, to
eat with Aunt Olivia's little fluffy biscuits. How very fond
Rebecca Mary was of honey!
Aunt Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway and rang the supper bell in
long, steady clangs just as usual. But no one responded just as
usual, and by the token she knew Rebecca Mary had not taken the
other stitch that lay between her and supper.
"She's a Plummer," sighed Aunt Olivia, inwardly, unrealizing her own
Plummership, as little Rebecca Mary had unrealized hers. Each
recognized only the other's. The pity that both must be Plummers!
Rebecca Mary stayed out of doors until bedtime. She made but one
confidant.
"I've done it, Thomas Jefferson," she said, sadly. "You ought to be
sorry for me, because if you hadn't crowed I shouldn't have sewed
the hundred and oneth. But you're not really to BLAME," she added,
hastily, mindful of Thomas Jefferson's feelings. "I should have
done it sometime if you hadn't crowed. I knew it was coming.
I suppose now I shall have to starve. You'd think it was pretty
hard to starve, I guess, Thomas Jefferson."
Thomas Jefferson made certain gloomy responses in his throat to the
effect that he was always starving; that any contributions on the
spot in the way of corn kernels, wheat grains, angleworms--any
little delicacies of the kind--would be welcome. And Rebecca Mary,
understanding, led the way to the corn bin. In the dark hours that
followed, the intimacy between the great white rooster and the
little white girl took on tenderer tones.
At breakfast next morning--at dinner time--at supper--Rebecca Mary
absented herself from the house. Aunt Olivia set on the meals
regularly and waited with tightening heartstrings. It did not seem
to occur to her to eat her own portions. She tasted no morsel of
all the dainties she got together wistfully. At nightfall the
second day she began to feel real alarm. She put on her bonnet and
went to the minister's. He was rather a new minister, and the
Plummers had always required a good deal of time to make
acquaintance. But in the present stress of her need Aunt Olivia
did not stop to think of that.
"You must come over and--and do something," she said, at the
conclusion of her strange little story. "It seems to me it's time
for the minister to step in."
"What can I do, Miss Plummer?" the embarrassed young man ejaculated,
with a feeling of helplessness.
"Talk to her," groaned Aunt Olivia, in her agony. "Tell her what
her duty is. Rebecca Mary might listen to the minister. All she's
got to do is to take just one stitch to show her submission. It
won't take but an instant. I've got supper all out on the kitchen
table--I don't care if it's ten o'clock at night!"
"It isn't a case for the minister. It's a case for the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children!" fumed the minister's kind
little wife inwardly. And she stole away in the twilight to deal
with little Rebecca Mary herself. She came back to the minister by
and by, red-eyed and fierce.
"You needn't go over; I've been. It won't do any good, Robert.
That poor, stiff-willed, set little thing is starving by inches!"
"I think her aunt is, too!"
"Well, perhaps--I can't help it, Robert, perhaps the--aunt--ought--to."
"My dear!--Felicia!"
"I told you I couldn't help it. She is so hungry, Robert! If you
had seen her--What do you think she was doing when I got there?"
"Crying?"
"Crying! She was laughing. _I_ cried. She sat there under some
grapevines watching a great white rooster eat his supper. His name,
I think, is Thomas Jefferson."
"Yes, Thomas Jefferson," agreed the minister, with the assurance of
acquaintance. For Thomas Jefferson was one of his parishioners.
"Well, she was laughing at him in the shakiest, hungriest little voice
you ever heard. 'Is it good?' she says. 'It LOOKS good.' He was
eating raw corn. 'If I could, I'd eat supper with you when you're
VERY hungry, you don't mind eating things raw.' Then she saw me."
"Well?"
"Well, I coaxed her, Robert. It didn't do any good. Tomorrow
somebody must go there and interfere."
"She must be a remarkably strange child," the minister mused.
He was thinking of the holding-out powers of the three children he
had a half-ownership in.
"I don't think Rebecca Mary IS a child, Robert. She must be fifty
years old, at the least. She and her aunt are about the same age.
Perhaps if her mother had lived, or she hadn't made so many sheets,
or learned to knit and darn and cook--" The minister's kind little
wife finished out her sentence with a sigh. She took up a little
garment in dire straits to be mended. It suggested things to the
minister.
"Can Rhoda darn?"
"RHODA!"
"Or make sheets and bread and things?"
"Robert, don't you feel well? Where is the pain?" But the laugh in
the pleasant blue eyes died out suddenly. Little Rebecca Mary lay
too heavy on the minister's wife's heart for mirth.
Aunt Olivia went into Rebecca Mary's room in the middle of the night.
She had been in three times before.
"She looks thinner than she did last time," Aunt Olivia murmured,
distressedly. "Tomorrow night--how long do children live without
eating? It's four meals now--four meals is a great many for a
little thin thing to go without!" Aunt Olivia had been without four
meals too; she would have been able to judge how it felt--if she had
remembered that part. She stood in her scant, long nightgown,
gazing down at the little sleeper. The veil was down and her heart
was in her eyes.
Rebecca Mary threw out her arm and sighed. "It LOOKS good, Thomas
Jefferson," she murmured. "When you're VERY hungry you can eat
things raw." Suddenly the child sat up in bed, wide-eyed and wild.
She did not seem to see Aunt Olivia at all.
"Once I ate a pie!" she cried. "It wasn't a whole one, but I should
eat a whole one now--I think I should eat the PLATE now." She swayed
back and forth weakly, awake and not awake.
"Once I ate a layer-cake. There was jam in it. I wouldn't care if
it was apple jelly in it now--I'd LIKE apple jelly in it now. Once
I ate a pudding and a doughnut a-n-d--a--a--I think it was a horse.
I'd eat a horse now. Hush! Don't tell Aunt Olivia, but I'm going
to eat--to--e-at--Thom-as--Jeffer--" She swayed back on the pillows
again. Aunt Olivia shook her in an agony of fear--she was so white--
she lay so still.
"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary PLUMMER!" Aunt Olivia
shrilled in her ear. "You get right out o' bed this minute and come
downstairs and eat your supper! It's high time you had something in
your stomach--I don't care if it's twelve o'clock. You get right
out o' bed REBECCA MARY!"
Aunt Olivia had the limp little figure in her arms, shaking it
gently again and again. Rebecca's startled eyes flew open. In that
instant was born inspiration in the brain of Aunt Olivia. She thought
of an appeal to make.
"Do you want ME to starve, too? Right here before your face and eyes?
I haven't eat a mouthful since you did, and I shan't till you DO."
Rebecca Mary slid to the floor with a soft thud of little brown,
bare feet. Slow comprehension dawned in her eyes. "Are***[--]***
did you say YOU was starving, too?"
"Yes"--grimly.
"Does it hurt you--too?"
"Yes"--unsteadily.
"VERY much?"
"YES."
"Why don't you eat something?"
"Because you don't. I'm waiting for you to."
"Shan't you ever?"
"Not if you don't."
Rebecca Mary caught her breath in a sob. "Shall I be--to blame?"
She was moving towards the door now. With an irresistible impulse
Aunt Olivia gathered her in her arms, and covered her lean little
face with kisses.
"You poor little thing! You poor little thing! You poor little
thing!" over and over.
Rebecca Mary gazed up into the softened face and read something
there. It took her breath away. She could not believe it without
further proof.
"You don't--I don't suppose you LOVE me?" panted Rebecca Mary.
But Aunt Olivia was gone out of the room in a swirl of white
nightgown.
"Everything's on the table," she called back from the stairs.
"I'm going to light a fire. You come right down. I think it's high
time--" her voice trailing out thinly.
"She does," murmured Rebecca Mary, radiant of face.
At half past twelve o'clock they both ate supper, both in their
scant, white nightgowns, both very hungry indeed. But before she
sat down in her old place at the table, Rebecca Mary went round to
Aunt Olivia's place and whispered something rather shyly in her ear.
She had been by herself in a corner of the room for a moment.
"I've sewed the hundred and twoth," Rebecca Mary whispered.
The Thousand Quilt
"Good afternoon," Rebecca Mary said, politely.
The minister's wife was cutting little trousers out of big ones--the
minister's big ones. It was the old puzzle of how to steer clear of
the thin places.
"Boys grow so!" sighed, tenderly, the minister's wife, over her work.
She had not heard the voice from the doorway.
"Good afternoon"--again.
It was a quaint little figure in tight red calico standing there.
It might easily have stepped down from some old picture on the wall.
Rebecca Mary had a bundle in her arms. It was so large that it
obscured breast and face, and only a pair of grave blue eyes,
presided over by thin, light brows, seemed visible to the minister's
wife. The trousers puzzle merged into this one. Now who could--
"Oh! Oh, it's Miss Plummer's little girl Rebecca," she said, cordially.
"Rebecca Mary her NIECE," came, a little muffled, from behind the
great bundle.
"Rebecca Mary's nie***--*** Oh, you mean Miss Plummer's niece, and
your whole name is that! But I suppose she calls you Rebecca or
Becky, for short? Walk in, Rebecca."
But Rebecca Mary was struggling with the paralyzing vision of Aunt
Olivia calling her Becky. She had passed by the lesser wonder of
being called Rebecca without the Mary.
"Oh no'm, indeed; Aunt 'Livia never shortens me," gently gasped the
child. And the minister's wife, measuring from the bundle down,
smiled to herself. There did not seem much room for shortening.
"But walk in, dear--you're going to walk in? I hope you have come
to make me a little call?"
Rebecca Mary struggled out of her paralysis. Here was occasion
for new embarrassment. For Rebecca Mary was honest.
"N-o'm I mean, not a LITTLE call. I've come to spend the afternoon,"
she said, slowly, "and I've brought my work."
The bundle--the great bundle--was her work! She advanced into the
room and began carefully to unroll it. It was the turn of the
minister's wife to be paralyzed. She pushed forward a chair, and
the child sat down in it.
"It's my Thousand Quilt that I'm making for Aunt 'Livia," explained
Rebecca Mary. "It's 'most done. There's a thousand pieces in it,
and I'm on the nine hundred and ninety-oneth. I thought proberly
you'd have some work, so I brought mine."
"Yes, I see--" The minister's wife stood looking down at the tight
little red figure among the gorgeous waves of the Thousand Quilt.
They eddied and surged around it in dizzy reds and purples and
greens. She was conscious of being a little seasick, and for relief
she turned back to the puzzle of the little trousers. It had been
in her mind at first to express sorrow at Rhoda's being unfortunately
away--and the boys. Now she was glad she hadn't, for it was quite
plain enough that the visitor had not come to spend the afternoon
with the minister's children, but with the minister's wife.
"It isn't she that's young--it's I," thought the minister's wife,
with kind, laughing eyes. "She's old enough to be my mother."
"How old are you, dear?" she added, aloud.
"Me? I guess you mean Aunt 'Livia, don't you? It's Aunt 'Livia's
birthday I'm making it for, it's going to be a present. Once she
gave me a present on my birthday."
Once!--the minister's wife remembered Rhoda's birthdays and the boys'.
Taken altogether, such a host of little birthdays! But this little
old, old visitor seemed to have had but one.
"My birthday is two days quicker than Aunt 'Livia's is," volunteered
the visitor, sociably. "We're 'most twins, you see. Aunt 'Livia
was fifty-six that time she gave me the present. She's agoing to be
fifty-nine when I give her this quilt--it's taken me ever since to
make it."
The minister's wife looked up from her cutting. So Rebecca Mary was
only fifty-nine!
"It's quite a long quilt," sighed Rebecca Mary. But pride woke in her
eyes as she gazed out on the splendors of the green and purple sea.
"A Thousand Quilt has so many stitches in it, but when you sew'em all
yourself--when you sew every single stitch--" The pride in Rebecca
Mary's grave blue eyes grew and grew.
"Robert," the minister's wife said that night to the minister, "it's
an awful quilt, but you ought to have seen her eyes! It's taken her
three years to make it--maybe you wouldn't be proud yourself!"
"Maybe YOU wouldn't, if Rhoda had made it."
"RHODA! Robert, she sewed one square of patchwork once and it made
her sick. I had to put her to bed. Speaking of 'once' reminds me--
once Rebecca Mary had a birthday present, Robert." She waited a little
anxiously for him to understand. The minister always understood, but
sometimes he made her wait.
"Felicia, are you trying to make me cry?" he said, and she was
satisfied. She went across to him, as she always did when she
wanted to cry herself. The floor was strewn with the tiniest boy's
engine and cars, and she remembered, as she zigzagged among them,
that they had been one of his very last birthday presents.
"It was--Robert, what do you think the present was? I'll give you
three guesses, but I advise you to guess a rooster."
"Thomas Jefferson," murmured the minister, as one who was acquainted.
"Yes, that is his name. How did you remember? She is very fond of
him--he is her intimatest friend, she says. So she is under great
obligations to her aunt. It's a large quilt, but it's none too
large to 'cover' Thomas Jefferson. I'm going to help her buy a
lining and cotton batting."
"Cracked corn will make a good lining, but cotton bat--"
"Robert, this is not a comedy! If you'd seen Rebecca Mary, and
the quilt, you'd call it a tragedy. You couldn't surprise me any
if you told me she'd quilted it herself!"
Down the road from Aunt Olivia's farm, across its southern boundary
fence, romped and shouted all day long the Tony Trumbullses. No one,
except possibly their mother, was quite certain how many of them
there were; it was a dizzy process to take their census. They were
never still, in little brown bare limbs nor shrill voices. From sunup
to sundown the Tony Trumbullses raced and laughed. Certainly they
were happy.
The minister's wife had not dared to tell her Caller of the afternoon
that the minister's children were down there shouting and racing with
the little Tony Trumbullses. Dear, no! --not after Rebecca Mary in
the course of conversation had said that Aunt Olivia did not countenance
the Tony Trumbullses. Rebecca Mary did not say "countenance," but it
meant that.
"Her aunt won't let her play with them, Robert. And she'd like to--
you needn't tell me Rebecca Mary wouldn't like to! I saw it in her
poor little solemn eyes. Besides, she said she asked her aunt once
to let her. Robert, aunts are cruel; I never knew it before. They've
no business bringing up little Rebecca Marys!"
"My dear! Felicia!" But in the minister's eyes was agreement.
Aunt Olivia took afternoon naps with punctilious regularity--Aunt
Olivia herself was punctilious regularity. At half past one, day
upon day, she hung out the dish towel, hung up her kitchen apron,
and walked with unswerving course into her bedroom. There, disposed
upon the dainty bed in rigid lines of unrest, she rested. The naps
were often long ones.
A little after the afternoon that Rebecca Mary spent at the minister's
the birthday quilt was finished. The thousandth tiny piece was neatly
over-'n'-overed to its gorgeous expanse. But Rebecca Mary was not
content. She longed to make it complete. She wanted to surprise
Aunt 'Livia with it, as Aunt 'Livia on that momentous birthday of
her own had surprised her with the little fluff-ball of yellow down
that had grown into Thomas Jefferson. That had been such a beautiful
surprise, but this--Aunt 'Livia had seen the quilt so many, many times!
She had taught Rebecca Mary's stiff little fingers to set the first
stitches in it; she had made her rip out this purple square and that
pink-checked one, and this one and that one and that. Oh, Aunt 'Livia
was ACQUAINTED with the quilt! It would not be much of a surprise.
But Rebecca Mary set her little pointed chin between her little brown
palms and pondered, and out of the pondering grew a plan so ambitious
and so daring that Rebecca Mary gasped in the throes of it. But she
held her ground and entertained it intrepidly. She even grew on
friendly terms with it in the end. Here was a way to surprise Aunt
'Livia; Rebecca Mary would do it! That it would entail an almost
endless amount of work did not daunt her: Rebecca Mary was a Plummer,
and Plummers were not to be daunted. The long vista of patient hours
of trying labor that the plan opened up before her set her blood
tingling like a warrior's on the eve of battle. What were long,
patient hours to a Plummer? Rebecca Mary girded up her loins and
went to meet them.
Thereafter at Aunt Olivia's nap times Rebecca Mary disappeared.
Day upon day, week upon week, she stole quietly away when the door
of Aunt Olivia's bedroom shut. The first time she went oddly loaded
down with what would have appeared--if there had been any one for
it to "appear" to be a bundle of long sticks. She made two trips
into the unknown that first day. The second time the bundle looked
much like that one over which her grave blue eyes had peered at the
minister's wife when she went to spend the afternoon with her.
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