CHAPTER VII
THE answer to Reba's little blue note was unfortunate in its arrival. For three days she haunted the post-office, morning and evening, to avoid the possibility of its falling into anybody's hands but her own, and then, on the crucial afternoon, Aunt Augusta announced that it was too stormy for Reba to stir out! David could bring the mail home with him, as usual, when he came at six o'clock, if there was any. Reba was wary enough to make no inquiries of her father when he came in, and it wasn't until she had begun on her preserved peach, and David, who had been eating swiftly and silently as usual, at his end of the table, had shoved back his chair, preliminary to leaving the room, that the important missive was tossed before her.
"What's that mean?" he asked briefly.
The letter had been opened! That did not surprise Reba. What brought the color to her face, and made her suddenly choke over the piece of peach she was trying to swallow, was the shock of her unpreparedness. She had planned to submit her scheme to them gently, one by one, and in the spirit of a petitioner—not like this! Still coughing, she reached for the letter, but Aunt Augusta was quicker, and snatched it up first.
"What is it, anyhow?" she remarked, unsuspectingly. "Humph!" she scorned, as her eye fell upon the printed name-head in the corner of the government-envelope. "Begging more money, I suppose. Got hold of Reba's name somehow." Then she drew out the typewritten sheet inside. These were the mystifying words that met her eyes. She read them to herself.
Dear Miss Jerome:
In answer to your inquiry of January 25th, a single room will be available on February the 7th, and we shall be very glad to welcome you here. We enclose our price-list of rooms, including board, also a circular describing our rules and regulations. As there is a great demand for rooms, please let us know your decision immediately.
It was necessary for Aunt Augusta to read this communication through three times, before it conveyed any meaning whatsoever, examine the circulars, inspect the address, and then read the incomprehensible words over again. Even then she was not sure.
"Will you explain that?" she said to Reba, passing the letter back to the girl through Aunt Emma, who handled it meagerly, as if it were something that was likely to explode.
Reba's hand trembled as she received the thin sheet. She stared at it a long while, not knowing what to reply.
"Well?" prodded Aunt Augusta.
"Why, I thought I'd like" Reba started out, without raising her eyes. "It's the Women's New England Alliance I thought Father gives to it—and I"
"Do you mean to say you actually did write and ask about rooms?"
"Yes, I did—I"
"You wrote on your own hook? You actually sat down, without a word to me, or to your mother, or to your father, and asked about single rooms off there in Boston—about single rooms for yourself, to occupy alone,—is that what you did?"
"Well, I"
Aunt Augusta jerked down her glasses. "Have you lost your mind, Rebecca Jerome?" she demanded.
Reba made no reply. She just sat there with stooped shoulders, as if she had been caught in a sudden hailstorm miles away from shelter, and attempted no defense.
"You didn't ask permission because you knew you wouldn't get it," went on Aunt Augusta, "and that's next door to disobedience—that's what it is, and what's more, it's deceitful—sly and deceitful—and you a member of the church! I don't know what came over you. Pass that letter here." Reba obeyed. "There! There!" Aunt Augusta exclaimed, as she ripped the thin page twice in two, "I'll settle that. You write those people that you won't need that room, after all. Understand? And you write 'em to-night, and bring me the answer before you go to bed. You must be crazy, thinking you can go gallivanting off to Boston without a chaperon. Stark crazy!"
Reba's father had stepped noiselessly out of the room. Her mother's cheeks were flushed, and her eyes bright, as usual whenever a little excitement made her forget herself. Aunt Emma, too, had an alert and interested expression. Reba took in all these details as she raised her eyes an instant in one tremulous glance. No one to defend her! She pushed back her chair and rose. She couldn't help with the dishes to-night! Many more breaths of this unfriendly atmosphere, and she would choke. There was a painful pressure in her throat, too, that warned her. Sensational as a sudden exit would be, it was preferable to losing control, here. She crossed the room rapidly, with a heaving chest.
Her rush upstairs was a race between flying feet and sobs that pulled and strained—a tie race, for when at last she reached her bed, and threw herself forward headlong upon it, the violent sobs at the same instant burst forth, one after another—pell-mell—racking, rending, tearing their way through the cultivated, trimmed little paths of the girl's soul—paths which she had taken such pains to lay out and tend—all her pretty self-control trampled and crushed by this sudden fury that shook her from head to foot, possessed her body and soul, made of her just a mindless, will-less thing, crumpled up upon the bed—a thing that, after the first passion had passed, jerked spasmodically at measured intervals and moaned, "Oh, oh, oh!"
For a long time Reba lay there, utterly abandoned, face buried in the pillow, making no attempt whatsoever to recover her composure. The elements had their way for once with her. The storm died down only when it had spent itself. It must have been an hour, at least, before Reba was calm again.
When finally she got up, she groped her way across the room to her bureau, lit the light, and stood staring at her red eyes and disheveled appearance, wonderingly, in the mirror. She had never been gripped and shaken by her feelings before. She was awed and impressed by the experience. She didn't know that it was in her, to cry like that. Could she laugh with such abandon too? Could she defy with such passion, once aroused? What if she should go downstairs to Aunt Augusta now and proclaim her independence? What if she should dare? Her eyes grew big with astonishment as she contemplated the monstrousness of such an act! She didn't do it—it didn't seem quite possible yet, but she didn't sit down and write the letter Aunt Augusta had distinctly told her to write! That didn't seem quite possible either, with her eyes still red, and her breast still heaving from her passionate outcry against the ignominy of her position.
She undressed slowly and crawled into bed, lying awake for a long time, quivering with suspense, dreading the moment of Aunt Augusta's approach. It was Aunt Emma, however, who finally appeared on the threshold, explaining that she had been sent to fetch that letter. Reba spoke tremblingly from her pillow.
"My head ached a little," she said. "Tell Aunt Augusta that I'll write it in the morning."
Aunt Augusta would not speak to Reba in the morning. Even Aunt Emma's and the invalid's greetings were mere grunts. She was not allowed to help with the preparation of breakfast—briefly told please to keep out of the kitchen this morning, and the twenty minutes at the table, over the eggs, baked potatoes, doughnuts and coffee, were ominously silent. Afterward, when she approached the dishpan placed in the kitchen sink, preparatory to washing the dishes, as usual, Aunt Augusta snatched the dishcloth out of her hands and shoved her out of her place.
"When that letter's written will be time enough for your assistance," she snapped.
Reba turned her back, went up to her room, and remained there all the morning, embroidering on a centerpiece, keeping her fingers busy with filling in the petals of a large rose with various shades of pink silk, concentrating her eyes and fingers on the six-inch white linen circle, bound tightly over embroidery hoops, while her thoughts ran far and wide, and her tumultuous feelings circled large areas. At noon her mind was made up. Only in defiance lay self-respect. She must prove now the stuff she was made of, or forever after hang her head before her grandfather's proud shaft of granite. It was while her cheeks were still hot with her resolve that Reba wrote to the Women's New England Alliance and told them she would take the room. She ran out and mailed the letter before dinner that noon.
After supper that same night, Aunt Augusta, who had been waiting all day for some sign of surrender from Reba, patience and curiosity tried to the point of exhaustion, inquired briefly, abruptly, "What about that letter?"
Reba had come into her mother's room for her work-bag which always hung on a certain door-knob there. She was on her way out, when her aunt's question hit her square in the chest.
"Why—why—what letter?" she stammered, trying to prepare herself for the conflict.
"You know well enough."
Reba fumbled with a ribbon-bow on her work-bag, eyes upon it, and backed up against the door-casing for support.
"I don't see what harm it can do me to go to Boston for a little while," she parried. "I want your approval, of course, but I'm twenty-five—and"
"Haven't you answered that letter yet?" cut in Aunt Augusta crisply.
"Yes, I've answered it."
"Oh, you have!" Relief was obvious in Aunt Augusta's voice. "Why didn't you say so?"
"I've told them I'd take the room," Reba murmured.
Only the clock replied for ten seconds or so.
"You told them what?" Aunt Augusta gasped.
"I told them I'd take the room," Reba replied more clearly, and suddenly she raised her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, squarely met the stare of the monsters peering at her over the rims of Aunt Augusta's glasses. She drew in her breath deep. "I'm going to Boston," she announced. "I'm going to Boston if it kills me," she repeated in a low voice; and David, from his hiding-place in the adjoining dining-room, was surprised to catch a look about the girl with her head thrown up like that, and her eyes steely and hard, that reminded him of the crayon of his father at the age of nineteen, hanging upstairs in the spare-chamber.
It had been warfare before, but after Reba's announcement it was proclaimed warfare, and Aunt Augusta bent every nerve, resorted to any measure, any device, legitimate or otherwise, that might help to stamp out this astonishing menace to her power. She appealed to the girl's ineffectual father; suggested financial obstructions; went so far as to attempt to cancel the room at the Alliance; urged the minister at the church to point out to the erring girl the wickedness of her persistence. But in spite of everything, Reba dragged down her little humpbacked trunk from the third floor, and grimly set about putting her things into it. The same determination that she had practiced for so many years in her pursuit of resignation stood stanchly by her in her new quest. Timid and fearful as she was by nature, she was strong in her capacity for suffering for what she believed to be right.
And she did suffer. Many a time, during the fortnight that preceded Reba's departure, her heart was near the breaking-point. She could not have borne many more days of contest. She longed for one kind word—one kind look before she left the old familiar scenes. She passionately desired the good omen of one God-be-with-you-till-we-meet-again. But she didn't have it. Even on that last night, when she sought one little expression of goodwill from her own mother, she was refused it.
She had approached her mother's wheel-chair timidly, hopefully. They were alone in the room.
"I'm going away to-morrow, Mother," she had murmured. "Won't you say good-by?"
Her mother had replied accusingly: "If I were well and you were sick, I'd do anything I could not to make you more miserable. You're a selfish girl, I'm afraid, Reba."
The only comfort Reba had during those last days at home was her father's non-committal silence. He expressed himself neither on one side nor the other, but somehow Reba felt that he was not displeased with her—wholly. He was as gruff as ever, and showed no disposition to stand behind her in her single-handed struggle, but he did ask her how much money she would like, and went so far on the day of her departure as to drive her down to the station himself.
It was when the train that was to bear her away on her new pilgrimage of self-expression drew puffing up beside the Ridgefield station, and Reba wondered whether it was the vibration of the platform made by the approaching monster or her knees trembling with her misgivings, that her father suddenly exclaimed:
"Well, well, I guess you're really off! I didn't suppose you'd have the spunk. No, when it came right down to it, I didn't suppose you'd have the spunk, Reba!"