CHAPTER XIII
THERE she sat, rigid, stern, admonishing. Reba made an attempt to smile, and raised her bare arm and waved. But there was no sign of recognition from Aunt Augusta. Reba never knew quite how she managed to summon enough courage to raise herself out of the water and expose to Aunt Augusta's merciless gaze her long bare legs and gleaming arms. Somehow, of course, she did accomplish it, for she found herself nervously dressing a minute or so later, teeth chattering (foolishly, for she was not cold) and a feeling in her throat that choked and hurt. What did it mean? Why had she come? Was anything wrong at home? Why couldn't she have written, and have been properly met and received?
When finally Reba was in a presentable costume, she hurried out of the little dressing-room, glanced into the mirror at the end of the corridor, and then hastened up the stairs to the gallery. It was empty. Aunt Augusta was not there. Down the stairs again she rushed—eager, anxious.
"Callers for you in the parlor," called out some one.
"Oh, thank you," gasped Reba.
When she entered the parlor a few minutes later, at the far end of the room she caught a glimpse of a familiar short black-stringed plume, at a familiar angle, on a familiar black-stringed bonnet. Also the white top of her father's head, half hidden by the low dividing-wall between the alcoves. Her father here too! It must be for something of importance.
Aunt Augusta was sitting uncomfortably erect on the edge of her chair, with her black kid-gloved hands crossed in her lap, when Reba approached. Her father, clutching his Sunday derby, sat stooped and crestfallen, with his gaze upon the floor. For an instant Reba wondered if she ought to offer to greet them—they never kissed each other, but shake hands, or something like that. They had been separated for three whole months. The expression on Aunt Augusta's face, however, forbade any salute whatsoever. One full glance at it, and Reba knew she was still unforgiven.
"I—I didn't expect you," she began.
"Evidently," snapped Aunt Augusta, with a withering glance.
"I hope everything's all right at home," pursued Reba, tremulously. Absurd, of course, to be afraid of Aunt Augusta now. She was beyond the power of the old despot, of course. And yet
"That's neither here nor there," said Aunt Augusta. "Sit down," she ordered, and Reba obeyed, from habit. Aunt Augusta straightened herself still more. "Your life here goes beyond my worst suspicions," she rebuked. "I never thought a blood relation of mine would come to this. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the business that has brought your father and me here, but to see you, with my own eyes, Rebecca Jerome, exposing yourself in such unmaidenly fashion, as I just have, and in such low and common company, is a shock I shan't soon get over."
"I wasn't exposing myself," Reba burst out. "It isn't low company. You don't know—you don't understand." Her cheeks were scarlet.
"I should think you would blush," flung out Aunt Augusta. "And they call this a Christian organization in their catalog," she sneered.
"It has taught me more Christianity than I've known all my life," Reba defended.
"Humph!" sniffed Aunt Augusta. "The kind of Christianity that sanctions such bold and daring nakedness as I've just been witnessing isn't my kind, thank you. I never heard such unladylike sounds—such screams and unrefined laughter. Shop-girls I should call them—riff-raff! And you, brought up as you've been, mixing, as an equal, with low, vile company like that, bathing with them"
"It isn't vile," interrupted Reba.
"Young ladies," pursued Aunt Augusta, "or so-called, who use such words as—I don't like even repeating them—such words as, 'darn,' and—'damn'," she whispered. "I heard them!"
"Oh, that doesn't mean anything," Reba replied earnestly. "Not to them. No more than 'Mercy!' or "Gracious!' to you. Just a difference in spelling. That's all."
"You see, David, you see! You see what your child's come to! Taking the Lord's name in vain is just a matter of spelling to her!"
"I don't quite mean that," stumbled Reba, "but, somehow, down here, it's different. You don't feel so—so literal as you do in Ridgefield. What if those girls do work in shops for their living? They're just as good as I am, and so kind and friendly—and I'm so happy and contented here," she broke out. "Oh, don't let's quarrel. I don't want to quarrel."
"Is that the way you do your hair, now?" flashed out the older woman. "Where's your rat? Or aren't you fully dressed yet?"
"They don't wear rats any more," explained Reba. "Don't you like my hair this way?
Aunt Augusta pursed her lips tight, in disapproval. It wasn't propitious, but Reba was willing to go more than half-way to-day.
"Oh, please, do let's be friendly and nice," she persevered. "Do tell me about Mother, and Aunt Emma, and everything at home. I'm so anxious to hear."
"Anxious!" scoffed Aunt Augusta. "Your mother might be dead for all you know, or seem to care."
"I've written every week," gently Reba reminded.
"And haven't heard a word from us in thirteen and a half weeks. Not from one of us—your father included—except for those business letters. I know. I've kept tabs. Not a word, and still you could stay on here, selfishly enjoying yourself, not sure but what we were all dead. It's high time, young lady, for you to have to think about somebody else besides Rebecca Jerome."
"Perhaps I have been selfish—a little," acknowledged Reba generously. "Perhaps I ought to have come home for over a Sunday. I can now. I will, sometime soon."
"You'll come for longer than for over a Sunday," gloatingly nodded Aunt Augusta. Then, turning to the crestfallen man beside her, who was still gazing carpetward, "Tell her, David. You better tell her what brought you and me down on this expensive trip."
David glanced over at Reba. "You've got to come home, Reba," he murmured. "We come down to fetch you home."
The tone of her father's voice alarmed Reba. Was it money? Had they lost all their money?
"What's happened? Tell me what's happened, Father."
"You tell her, Augusta," he appealed.
Reba turned to her aunt. There was a kind of sanctimonious expression about her, the same pious look which Reba had seen there before, especially on Communion Sundays at home after Aunt Augusta had raised her head from silent prayer.
"Well, Aunt Emma and I aren't going to make our home in Ridgefield any more," she announced impressively.
"Where are you going to make it?" gasped Reba.
"We're going to live with Cousin Syringa up in Machias. She's all alone up there with that half-witted boy of hers, and we're going to help her out."
"But—but—" feebly remonstrated Reba, "she's always been alone with him since he was born thirty years ago, hasn't she? You never felt you had to go before, did you? Why just now? Why do you have to go just now?"
"It's come to us as our duty," she told Reba briefly.
"But she—Cousin Syringa's just a cousin, while Mother's your own sister, and"
"Syringa has no daughter," cut in Aunt Augusta, "while Eunice has got you to take care of her," she brought out with a triumphant smile.
"When do you plan to go?"
"As soon as I can get you properly trained into the care of your mother."
"Oh, but please," burst out Reba, a little hysterically, "couldn't you—couldn't you please put it off for a little while? Till I finish a few of the things I've begun here? Just out of kindness to me, I mean?"
"I've put it off already twenty-five years—out of kindness to you," replied Aunt Augusta. "You've been relieved from taking care of your own mother ever since you grew up. I guess you can afford to give up a little of your own pleasure now, out of kindness to us, who've been doing your work for you all this time."
"But I never went to boarding-school," Reba's voice trembled, "nor to college, nor never mixed with young people my own age, and—and I am getting it all here. I'm taking such interesting courses! But I've been here only three months, and one can't get much in three months. If you would—if you could put off going, I mean, till I had had a year, or perhaps two here, then I'd come home happily, and take care of Mother all the rest of my life."
"My mind is quite made up to go immediately, and I don't change my mind, as you know."
It was no use. Reba saw with sickening certainty that it was no use to plead. Aunt Augusta had made up her mind. Aunt Augusta, the invincible, the unconquerable, had found a way to defeat Reba—to crush her. No use to cry for mercy. Oh, no use to beg for grace. A wave of self-pity swept over Reba. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to get away from this hard cruel woman who was so eager to thwart her happy adventure. Cousin Syringa lived meagerly in a neglected, illy-equipped farm-house on the outskirts of Machias, Maine, but Aunt Augusta, all other devices failing, was ready to endure any personal annoyance or hardship rather than to be ignored by one to whom once her slightest wish had been law. Anything to break Reba's defiance. Anything to make the girl submit to the old authority again.
Alone, later, in the little oblong room, Reba sat and gazed out at the glowing sky with a hard tense expression on her gentle mouth. She had got to leave the glow. She had got to go home. There was no escape. She had got to go home, and grow old and dried and bloodless in the gray mausoleum. And all because of the spite of an old embittered woman. It was ungenerous of Aunt Augusta; it was cruel of her; it was unchristian. It was a hundred times more unchristian than Lollie's "darn it" or Mamie's "damn"!
Of course she must go. No other way was open. Certain precepts of right and wrong were graven deep in her heart. Her duty lay clear and straight before her. In New England—or in that corner of it where Ridgefield was located—a daughter's obligation to a helpless parent was absolute. Reba had watched many a young woman grow middle-aged and gray, and some young men, in such service. Betrothals were prolonged for years and years, as a matter of course, or broken, abandoned entirely, rather than to fail in performing the first duty to a dependent father or mother. The hills around Ridgefield, Reba well knew, were dotted with remote, lonely little farm-houses, where hopes and young dreams were slowly fading year by year, as the spark of life in the old white-haired lady, or trembling man, who always sat in the high-backed rocker by the front window, miraculously lingered on, like the vitality in the broken limb of an old tree in the orchard. And now Reba's little new-born dreams—just a litter of fumbling half-blind mites of life now, with their eyes scarcely open—must die, too, slowly, one by one, while she performed her duty as a daughter.
Of course money could buy an outsider to fill the position of companion and comforter to her invalid mother. In some parts of the world, under some circumstances, it might be done with honor—but not in Ridgefield. No. If any such possibility did occur to Reba, she banished it instantly as unworthy. Only the close relationship of Aunt Augusta to her mother, and the gradual drift of circumstances, had made it ethically possible for her to attempt her present adventure at all. She must go home. There was no choice. She must go home. She must submit, stoop, and lift the heavy cross that Aunt Augusta so gloatingly cast upon her young shoulders.
The thought of the very atmosphere of Ridgefield (even with Aunt Augusta in Machias) was soul-shivering to Reba. She smiled to herself bitterly in the dark. She could not wear the pretty new gowns in Ridgefield. People would think her extravagant and extreme. The twenty-dollar hat would look out of place in the Jerome pew on Sunday and there was nowhere else to wear it. If she returned even with the style of dressing her hair changed, it would be discussed, she supposed. In Ridgefield you felt critical eyes gazing at you from behind shrouded windows as you walked along past the houses. Everybody knew you in Ridgefield, had always known you, and if you did anything unexpected, you became marked and conspicuous. And of what use in Ridgefield, she cried out to the pink glow in the city sky, was diving, and one-stepping, and folk-dancing for "old maids" her age? And in such a place, where congenial groups never met together to exchange opinions in friendly conversation, how soon the little interest aroused in her by her courses in drama, and art, and current events, would starve for lack of nourishment!
"Oh, how I hate Ridgefield!" she murmured fiercely to herself. "How I hate Ridgefield!" Until that moment she didn't know she could detest innocent, inanimate things so heartily, such as streets, and houses, and buildings. The town-hall and the Methodist church on Main Street flashed before her vision. They were horrible buildings, depressing buildings, bilious-looking buildings painted yellowish brown. The vision, too, of the front of 89 Chestnut Street flashed before her. Its ponderous overhanging roof, ponderous cornice, ponderous windows with heavy frowning caps, and heavy sills and heavy brackets, loomed large before her. She saw the green shades in those windows pulled down tight as usual. She saw the ground-glass oval-topped panels in the double front door exclaiming "O" at her as usual, every time she turned in the driveway. She heard her mother's querulous voice, complaining as usual; her father, grumbling over expense as usual; she saw herself sitting in her prim little room as usual—growing old—growing old as usual! Oh, what would Cousin Pattie do in her place? What roundabout way of escape would Cousin Pattie discover?
Her father and Aunt Augusta had intended that Reba should return with them the following day, but she had refused to do that. She had told them she would assume her responsibilities as daughter, but she would not assume them to-morrow, nor the next day either! There were affairs here that she owed some obligations to. They had given her no notice; she was sorry; she couldn't possibly manage to return to Ridgefield for ten days or so, she thought.
It was the next morning when Reba was dressing that she spied Cousin Pattie's scarab in a corner of her jewel-box. Her heart felt very sad and heavy after her restless night. She picked up the scarab, and let it lie a moment in her palm, then shook her head over it, and sighed. "My resurrection!" she murmured bitterly. "No use, Cousin Pattie," she whispered, and shrugged her shoulders. "A girl's first duty is to her parents," she thought. "There's no getting around that—unless she's married. And I'm not. I'm not married." She smiled crookedly, then abruptly glanced up, as if she had stumbled upon something that startled her. "I'm not married," she said outloud, and abruptly sat down on the edge of her bed, closing her hand tight over the scarab. "No. I'm not married," she told herself for the third time, her eyes round and large now.
She sat there on the edge of her unmade bed for a long time, half an hour perhaps, staring fixedly out at the gray slate-covered roofs. What if there were a prior claim upon her? Startling supposition! What if actually she were bound by law to somebody whom the very Bible taught she must cleave to and desert all others to follow? Reba did not see the roofs outside her window, as she sat and stared at them, nor the escape-pipes puffing out cottony clouds of steam against the blue sky, nor the spinning chimney-pots. It was "Number Four" she saw, dressed in burlapish cloth, tall, and stooped, and awkward.