Kate Wiggin - New Chronicles of Rebecca

“I don’t know. Father’s just been sent for to see about a sick woman over to North Riverboro. She’s got to go to the poor farm.”

This fragment of news speedily brought Miss Sawyer, and her sister Jane as well, to the door, which commanded a view of Mr. Perkins and his wagon. Mr. Perkins, the father of Rebecca’s bosom friend, was primarily a blacksmith, and secondarily a selectman and an overseer of the poor, a man therefore possessed of wide and varied information.

“Who is it that’s sick?” inquired Miranda.

“A woman over to North Riverboro.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“Can’t say.”

“Stranger?’

“Yes, and no; she’s that wild daughter of old Nate Perry that used to live up towards Moderation. You remember she ran away to work in the factory at Milltown and married a do—nothin’ fellow by the name o’ John Winslow?”

“Yes; well, where is he? Why don’t he take care of her?”

“They ain’t worked well in double harness. They’ve been rovin’ round the country, livin’ a month here and a month there wherever they could get work and house-room. They quarreled a couple o’ weeks ago and he left her. She and the little boy kind o’ camped out in an old loggin’ cabin back in the woods and she took in washin’ for a spell; then she got terrible sick and ain’t expected to live.”

“Who’s been nursing her?” inquired Miss Jane.

“Lizy Ann Dennett, that lives nearest neighbor to the cabin; but I guess she’s tired out bein’ good Samaritan. Anyways, she sent word this mornin’ that nobody can’t seem to find John Winslow; that there ain’t no relations, and the town’s got to be responsible, so I’m goin’ over to see how the land lays. Climb in, Rebecca. You an’ Emmy Jane crowd back on the cushion an’ I’ll set forrard. That’s the trick! Now we’re off!”

“Dear, dear!” sighed Jane Sawyer as the sisters walked back into the brick house. “I remember once seeing Sally Perry at meeting. She was a handsome girl, and I’m sorry she’s come to grief.”

“If she’d kep’ on goin’ to meetin’ an’ hadn’t looked at the men folks she might a’ be’n earnin’ an honest livin’ this minute,” said Miranda. “Men folks are at the bottom of everything wrong in this world,” she continued, unconsciously reversing the verdict of history.

“Then we ought to be a happy and contented community here in Riverboro,” replied Jane, “as there’s six women to one man.”

“If ‘t was sixteen to one we’d be all the safer,” responded Miranda grimly, putting the doughnuts in a brown crock in the cellar-way and slamming the door.

The Perkins horse and wagon rumbled along over the dusty country road, and after a discreet silence, maintained as long as human flesh could endure, Rebecca remarked sedately:

“It’s a sad errand for such a shiny morning, isn’t it, Mr. Perkins?”

“Plenty o’ trouble in the world, Rebecky, shiny mornin’s an’ all,” that good man replied. “If you want a bed to lay on, a roof over your head, an’ food to eat, you’ve got to work for em. If I hadn’t a’ labored early an’ late, learned my trade, an’ denied myself when I was young, I might a’ be’n a pauper layin’ sick in a loggin’ cabin, stead o’ bein’ an overseer o’ the poor an’ selectman drivin’ along to take the pauper to the poor farm.”

“People that are mortgaged don’t have to go to the poor farm, do they, Mr. Perkins?” asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her home farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like a shadow over her childhood.

“Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an’ her husband hadn’t got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You have to own something before you can mortgage it.”

Rebecca’s heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a certain stage in worldly prosperity.

“Well,” she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and growing hopeful as she did so; “maybe the sick woman will be better such a beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and say he’s sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation that was once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That’s how it came out in a story I’m reading.”

“I hain’t noticed that life comes out like stories very much,” responded the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.

A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches, and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly to its door.

As they drew near the figure of a woman approached—Mrs. Lizy Ann Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.

“Good morning, Mr. Perkins,” said the woman, who looked tired and irritable. “I’m real glad you come right over, for she took worse after I sent you word, and she’s dead.”

Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children’s ears. Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world reveling in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving in the fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks or tossing it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling after the summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the birds singing for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping, adding its note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.

“I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o’ day,” said Lizy Ann Dennett.

“Her soul passed upward to its God Just at the break of day.”

These words came suddenly into Rebecca’s mind from a tiny chamber where such things were wont to lie quietly until something brought them to the surface. She could not remember whether she had heard them at a funeral or read them in the hymn book or made them up “out of her own head,” but she was so thrilled with the idea of dying just as the dawn was breaking that she scarcely heard Mrs. Dennett’s conversation.

“I sent for Aunt Beulah Day, an’ she’s be’n here an’ laid her out,” continued the long suffering Lizy Ann. “She ain’t got any folks, an’ John Winslow ain’t never had any as far back as I can remember. She belongs to your town and you’ll have to bury her and take care of Jacky—that’s the boy. He’s seventeen months old, a bright little feller, the image o’ John, but I can’t keep him another day. I’m all wore out; my own baby’s sick, mother’s rheumatiz is extry bad, and my husband’s comin’ home tonight from his week’s work. If he finds a child o’ John Winslow’s under his roof I can’t say what would happen; you’ll have to take him back with you to the poor farm.”

“I can’t take him up there this afternoon,” objected Mr. Perkins.

“Well, then, keep him over Sunday yourself; he’s good as a kitten. John Winslow’ll hear o’ Sal’s death sooner or later, unless he’s gone out of the state altogether, an’ when he knows the boy’s at the poor farm, I kind o’ think he’ll come and claim him. Could you drive me over to the village to see about the coffin, and would you children be afraid to stay here alone for a spell?” she asked, turning to the girls.

“Afraid?” they both echoed uncomprehendingly.

Lizy Ann and Mr. Perkins, perceiving that the fear of a dead presence had not entered the minds of Rebecca or Emma Jane, said nothing, but drove off together, counseling them not to stray far away from the cabin and promising to be back in an hour.