CHAPTER XVII
IT wasn't until the last days of October were slipping slowly through a mellow Indian summer into November that Reba felt anything but gladness and thanksgiving for the heaven-sent inspiration that had imbued her with courage sufficient to marry Nathaniel Cawthorne. The realization of the significance of her vows to the vague, distant sailor, and his to her, was a refuge she sought every time her spirit was tried and troubled, a haven of comfort, a promise of escape. Amidst all the fault-finding at 89 Chestnut Street, and ill-feeling directed toward her, Nathan's shy tributes of praise and gentle homage were precious possessions of Reba's which she would take out from their secret place, now and again, and contemplate, as jewels from a hidden box.
As sweet as victory was to Augusta Morgan she felt nothing but rancor for Reba, who had made her pay such a price for triumph. During the week or two preceding her aunts' departure for Maine, Reba endured all sorts of cruelties—long tirades on her "doings" at the Alliance, thrusts at her age, and frequent jibes at her failure to marry. She bore the hectoring in silence, much as in the past, but there was something different about her silence now. It was less meek, and sometimes the impertinent girl actually smiled, Aunt Augusta observed. When Reba smiled, it was when she felt the tiny gold weapon, that some day she might use against Aunt Augusta, pressing against her chest underneath her waist.
Nathan, far away in his boat, plowing steadily along now toward tropical seas, need not have sighed with such frequent hopelessness over his unfitness for the dainty little silk-gowned person who had stooped to marry him, had he known to what advantage he appeared in her home atmosphere. He did not suffer in comparison with the only man with whom Reba came into close contact—her father. For David, distressed over the fast-approaching catastrophe of the all-important Augusta's departure, expressed his disgruntledness in the frequent donning of frayed and worn wearing-apparel, and soiled collars (or else, during meal-time, no collars at all), and constantly ate with his knife and snapped at his food. Nathaniel Cawthorne seemed to Reba made of finer material than her father, and his manners, beside David's, stood out as actually courtly.
Reba kept her marriage guarded very carefully. Nobody guessed, nobody surmised it, but the secret knowledge of it instilled marvelous self-confidence. In her first issue with her father, after Aunt Augusta and Aunt Emma had departed for Maine, it was the constant repetition to herself of the words, "I'm Mrs. Cawthorne! I'm Mrs. Cawthorne!" that kept her from crumpling up and submitting.
The issue had been about a hired-girl. Reba had gone to Union one afternoon, before her aunts had left, and engaged a young Swede to come and help her with the housework. She did not tell her father what she had done until the day Hedwig was due to arrive.
"I'm going to pay her wages," she explained.
"Wages!" her father stormed. "Wages! As if that was all! It's what the creatures waste—waste—throw away into the swill for the pigs! I know—oh, I know! And I'll have to pay for that, won't I? Hired girl! I won't have a hired-girl in this house!"
"But, Father," Reba replied, "you don't expect me to cook, and clean, and nurse, and do everything, do you? Why, how could I ever go out unless there was some one here to leave with mother? You've got to be reasonable."
"Reasonable! Do you know who you're talking to? You'll do as I say as long as you sleep and eat your victuals under my roof." He actually shook a menacing fist at Reba.
She had never seen him like this. He had not dared to resist Aunt Augusta. But, "He can't hurt me, he can't hurt me," Reba told herself. "I'm beyond him now. I'm Mrs. Cawthorne. I'm Mrs. Cawthorne." And outloud she said calmly, "No, Father, I don't think I will do as you say. Of course I can go away," she went on, "if you prefer, but as long as I choose to stay here, and you choose to have me, I'm going to use my own judgment about things a little."
Whatever timid hope Reba had entertained that alone with her parents they might find some basis of companionship, it disappeared after a week or two. Try as she might, she could not reach either of them—her mother even less than her father. Nothing was right that she did for the invalid. Time and again her mother would struggle pathetically with shawl, or piece of clothing, rather than allow Reba to help her. Reba seemed to grate on her mother's nerves. She was aware of the invalid's illy concealed recoil from her touch even before some clumsiness on her part called forth the impatient, "Oh, go away, go away. I'll do it myself somehow or other."
Whenever Reba stole out for an hour of air and exercise, leaving Hedwig in charge, her mother accused her of heartlessness. Whenever she stayed in, sitting long persistent hours by the western window in her mother's room, she was made aware of what a dull companion she was. Reba was not talkative by nature, and the invalid missed sorely the bits of gossip that her sisters used to pick up, and their savory comments.
"If you're going to sit there like a stone statue, I might as well be here alone, I guess," she would complain, and the ready tears of self-pity would start. "O dear, dear," she'd wail. "Here I am sick and helpless, and in terrible pain, robbed of my two only sisters. And it's your fault—all your fault," she'd accuse. "They were the only comfort I had! O dear, dear."
Reba had never had any experience before in the personal care of the invalid. Aunt Emma had always dressed Eunice, bathed her, brushed her hair, and taken complete charge of her at night, sleeping on a cot in one corner of the room. Reba wished her mother would be a little more patient with her in her awkward handling of basin, washcloth, and hairbrush. She would learn in time. But no—always criticism, always irritation, always tears at last. It seemed to Reba that her mother's wrinkled cheeks were never dry. Reba's nights spent on the cot in the corner of her mother's stiflingly close room (open windows caused draughts) were constantly interrupted by demands—to see if "that girl" in the kitchen had got in yet, or if the back door was surely locked, or the back-hall light out; or to turn back a blanket, or get an extra one, or fill the hot-water bag, or mix a pinch of soda in half a glass of boiling water. It was a difficult summer for Reba. She grew pale under the strain of it.
But the hardships she was called upon to bear were trivial as compared to the demands of Aunt Augusta's self-imposed task. Many a night, lying wide awake in Syringa Rand's bare, carpetless north bedroom in the broken-down wooden bed, which no second-hand furniture dealer had thought worth carting away, Augusta and the long-suffering Emma by her side longed dumbly for the comforts and security of 89 Chestnut Street. Syringa's manner of living proved to be cruder than Augusta remembered. The distance from well to kitchen-sink longer; the care of one horse, a cow, and a dozen or so hens more arduous than she supposed, but with Spartan-like severity, she told herself that a little extra work couldn't hurt her. Secretly, she dreaded keenly the approaching winter months, snowbound in the denuded old farm-house, and was in constant terror of the creature—half beast, half man—who shook hairy fists at her every time he saw her and had to be kept behind closed doors. But so long as the reasons which she had given out to Reba, and to her little world in Ridgefield, for undertaking this self-sacrificing task existed, so long, it seemed to her, she must stay by it. No self-respecting woman could abandon a mission of mercy, as broadly advertised as hers had been, simply because it proved disagreeable.
It was the intervention of heaven that released Augusta finally, and at the same time loosed Emma's chains, mercifully flung wide all closed doors for poor Joey Rand, dried Eunice's tears, solaced David, and gave to the unexpecting, unhoping Reba freedom again.
Reba was sitting in her room when her father, one noon, shoved open the door and came in.
"There won't be any need of that hired-girl any more," he exclaimed. "You can tell her to clear out to-morrow. Things are going to be different around here now. There's going to be an end to all this nonsense."
Reba sighed. Must there be more struggle?
"How are you going to manage it, Father?" she asked.
"Oh, you don't think I know what I'm talking about," he replied with some heat. "You don't think that creature downstairs has got to clear out. Well, I do! And she has—she has, I tell you. Read this—read this!" He thrust a letter into Reba's hands.
She lifted it wonderingly. It was from Aunt Augusta. David watched her gloatingly as she drew forth her aunt's letter and unfolded it.
"Oh, how awful!" were her first words.
Dead! Joey Rand dead! And such a death! He had thrown himself out of a second-floor window! Aunt Augusta had seen him, was passing, in fact, just beneath the window on her way to feed the hens. "Joey ought to have been in an asylum anyhow; then such a thing wouldn't have happened." Reba reached the end of the first page and turned the letter over. "But seeing," Aunt Augusta continued, "it has happened, and Emma and I have seen Joey safely across, as we have so many other relations before him, we feel our mission in Machias is completed. We have been a great help and comfort to poor Syringa during her hour of trial, and we both feel we have done the job heaven sent us to do, as well as we could. We are ready now, with clear consciences, to take up again our duties in Ridgefield, and we are coming back to poor Eunice just as soon as Syringa can arrange her affairs.
"For," the letter calmly announced, "we are bringing Syringa with us. She hasn't got any folks but us, and it isn't decent to leave her alone up here, even if her farm hadn't got to be sold for the taxes, which it has. She's the best worker I ever saw. Can do anything there is to do around a house (and barn, too, for that matter), understands nursing invalids from the ground up, and is one of the smartest washers and ironers I ever knew. Tell Reba to tell Mrs. O'Brien we won't need her to wash and iron any more for us after Syringa comes. Syringa's a find. No wages—and a little pension of her own, coming in every year, to dress on and for pin-money. Just her meals will be the only expense to you, David. Tell Reba to dismiss that foreigner she's got in the kitchen, and to get 'the girl's room' ready for Syringa. Reba will stay right in her own room, same as usual. Syringa is used to things plain and simple. Tell Eunice I'll wait and tell her about the funeral when we come. Joey made a nice looking corpse though, after they'd got his beard shaved and his hair trimmed right."
Reba skipped the rest of the details. Joey dead! Aunt Augusta coming back! Aunt Augusta coming back to 89 Chestnut Street! She raised her eyes and looked out of the window. What did it mean? What did it mean to her? Oh, she mustn't jump to conclusions, but didn't it mean—surely didn't it mean the precious little room again up among the chimney-pots and sky-lights?