Reba

“ As Reba hurried along to meet her lover this rainy Sunday evening she tried to quench with old arguments the doubts and fears that would, in spite of her, spurt out now and then, like little sharp-tongued flames from a fire that isn't yet dead. It wasn't as if she were young, she told herself. She would never meet anybody else, who would care for her. Not in Ridgefield. She never had, and she was growing older every day. ”

“ It was there in the cemetery, among all the dead people buried underneath the snow, that, out of its darkness and confinement, Reba's soul was born anew—a small flickering little thing at first, wavering between light and darkness for days after its first moment of self-realization, but a spark of life, small and weak as it was, that persisted in existence and cried out night and day for nurture and tender ministration. ”

“ When they began removing life-long restraints from Reba they observed her as eagerly as if (instead of being anything so ruled by the laws of nature as a girl, or even a rose) she were a magical Japanese flower that had only to be dropped into a glass of water to unfold into marvelous beauty.
But Reba disappointed them. For five years Aunt Augusta repeated the two weeks at the fashionable summer-resorts, but it was absolutely useless. ”

“ It flashed across the tortured Reba that to find herself in such a bedroom as this, forced to listen to the laughter, and shrill, delirious shrieks that issued now and again from the bar-room below, her eyes still smarting from what she had seen in that bar-room, was but the just outcome of her relations with Chadwick Booth. The forbiddenness of those relations loomed up before Reba in enormous proportions.
Why, he had never meant to marry her! It had never even occurred to him to make her his wife! ”

“ She had lived all her life with the mill whistle. Would she still be sitting here in the same little room, in the same little chair, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, listening to the same mill-whistle toll off the eventless hours? The monotony of her existence swept over Reba in a big engulfing wave. The lights at the foot of the hill, in spite of herself, melted into a gold sea before her vision. Older people used to tell her, first shaking their heads dismally, to make the most of her childhood. She had thought then that growing old simply meant work instead of play. ”

“ Reba did not fight for strength, struggle for peace of mind during the long convalescing days. Passive and inert, she lay and let nature do with her what it wanted to, looking on a little curiously at the queer workings of its ways, surprised as the days wore on that time was actually working on her its magic cure—making her body a little stronger every week (and with no help from her) , her mind a little better able to face the truth without the old stab of pain. ”

“ There was scarcely a Monday or Thursday evening during the half-dozen weeks that followed that Reba didn't put on a fresh waist and spotless white kid gloves, and steal out after supper to keep her strange tryst. She and her sailor friend always went to the same place of amusement, met at the same hour, at the same spot; always spent the same silent two hours and a half, side by side, in the dim intimate atmosphere of the crowded theater. ”

“ Reba's hands slipped down into her lap. Her eyes fixed themselves on the glass knob of a door across the room. She stared at it in silence, but it was not the knob she saw. Oh, how it hurt! Just to think of his eyes—how it hurt! She winced slightly.
"It isn't as if I were young," she said outloud, in that strange dull voice of hers. "I'm too old to get over it—to wake up healed from it some day," mystifyingly to those who listened Reba went on. "I shall never feel the same toward life again. ”

“ It was more difficult still as time went on, and Reba sank deeper into mysterious silence, as she lay so quiet upon her pillow, gazing sometimes out of the window with those big eyes of hers, at the tell-tale limbs of bare elm and maple (their leaves had not even begun to turn in September) ; sometimes at the wide gold band upon the third finger of her left hand; sometimes, most often, at the cracks upon the ceiling—climbing their difficult ascents slowly, painstakingly, plunging down their precipitous cliffs softly, without hurt—picking herself up and monotonously going on and on. ”

“ They sat there for two hours and a half, with scarcely a word to each other. The music, the close, smothery atmosphere, the proximity of so many vague breathing bodies about her, the ever-shifting, ever-changing conglomeration of events upon the screen before Reba, the oft-recurring stab of consciousness of the big piece of masculinity beside her, filled the girl with queer, new sensations of excitement and curiosity. ”

“ In spite of the fact that nature had finished with Reba's stature, contour, and features long since, still some sort of late loveliness bloomed upon her during that first fall of hers in Boston.
"Like green apples, picked and put down in a dark cellar before they're ripe," said Katherine Park to Louise Bartholomew one day. "Take them out in December and leave them in the sun a little while and they'll mellow up." ”

“ Reba turned steady eyes toward him. She never felt calmer in her life. The miraculous assurance of the early morning had not deserted her one whit. When she spoke her voice had a glad, defiant tone.
"I'm not the least bit sorry in the world!" she exclaimed.
For months and months Nathan fed his hungry heart on the memory of that reply. And Reba during many of those same months, perplexed and bewildered, strove desperately to call back the wonderful moment in the limousine when, as one inspired, she was consumed with the conviction of the ultimate rightness of her marriage. ”

“ Oh, if once she could reach Ridgefield, if once she could conceal herself deep within the gray impenetrable walls of 89 Chestnut Street, then let them search to their hearts' content, then let them suspect and surmise the worst of her. Once in the little rocking-chair, overlooking the rumbling mills, Reba felt she would be safe from grilling questions, from she knew not what riddling reprimands. ”

“ Reba mounted the steps. As she did so, she heard a loud raucous laugh from within—a man's laugh, followed by the high shrill cackle of a woman. Looking through the open door of the "Grand Hotel," Reba saw near the end of its dimly lighted corridor a sign protruding, reading, "Bar." She hesitated, turning toward the dark road again. ”

“ Surely Cousin Pattie's words were those of a tempter, who would persuade Reba from her straight and difficult path. She would try to forget them. But even in her attempt and while she repeated the words of her favorite hymn, "My Savior, as Thou wilt," her eyes would be seeing Cousin Pattie's symbols—the dead tooth, the silent bell, the pool, the cowardly woman hiding underneath a cross. Her fingers would feel the scarab.
The next morning, after a night of restless sleep, Reba started out for a walk. She could always think best when she was walking. ”

“ Oh, Reba shuddered, felt the horror at last. She, Rebecca Jerome, admired, loved and pitied vague masses of people she had never seen!
Aunt Augusta scornfully remarked at the end of Reba's fourth Sunday-letter home (she wrote, as before, persistently every week) , "Reba's putting on great airs—presuming to get heated up over this war-business. She knows about as much about it, I guess, as a cat! There'll be no living with that girl. She thinks she's being pretty smart, I suppose, with her exclamation-points about Belgium and France!" ”

“ 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 made personalities pulsing and alive for Reba out of those distant countries, which a few weeks ago had been mere names in a history-book to her—irregular, pastel-shaded shapes on a geography map, which Miss Billings used to make her bound and name the chief exports of. It was Miss Park who made out of England something big and strong, like an older brother, sternly protective of the weak and persecuted; of France something inspiring and lovable—like a younger brother perhaps—fun-loving but ready at the first call, smiling but steady in the face of terrific odds ”

“ It was during her second autumn in the city that Reba was offered a position at the Women's Alliance. She did not seek it. It had never occurred to Reba that she possessed qualities useful to an organization like the Women's Alliance. She drifted into her officialdom. But it was none the less precious to her. No secretly ambitious man ever drifted into a high position with more inward joy than Reba acquired her modest desk in the Alliance's office. ”

“ During the dancing-hour one noon Miss Park had said to Reba, as she guided her over the floor in a one-step, "You're doing so well! You'll be all ready for Saturday, won't you?"
"Oh, but I'm not going. I didn't put down my name," blushed Reba.
But why not? You must. Of course you must."
"I don't dance well enough yet."
"Of course you do. Lots better than many. We need you, too. We want to have the number of girls and men as even as possible, and we've lots more men now. ”

“ My gracious, you've got 'em, Reba!"
"Oh, no, I haven't. I haven't many convictions. On most things I'm still groping, fumbling, waiting—waiting——"
"Naturally," interrupted Cousin Pattie, impatiently. "What do you expect? Rome wasn't built in a day, child. Souls don't get their buildings all up, and streets all laid out spick and span in a moment. What makes me rejoice is, you've got a soul, Reba. ”

“ Nathan had never ridden in a limousine before his wedding-day, and Reba only when Mr. Joseph Horween, the general-manager of the mills at home, had picked her up, on one or two occasions as he had been passing her in his car. The sailor glanced shyly at Reba, and was struck with the harmony between her and the luxurious background. The limousine was lined with dark, purplish-colored broadcloth, and it set off Madame Boulangeat's costume like a velvet-lined box a jewel. It matched the very heliotropes in the tiny bunches of flowers that Reba wore. ”

“ No one had ever talked to her a great deal about her Grandfather Jerome. The members of the household in which she had grown up were chary of paying tributes of praise to anybody—dead or alive. The monument, which Reba's grandfather himself had erected before he died, had been to Reba simply a high shaft of granite. ”

“ Steam-power and electric, even one's two feet, could bring Cousin Pattie nearer to lavender Austria, green Italy or lemon-colored China, but there were no railroads—no tickets issued—for the regions Reba would explore. With large sums of money, and extensive additions made of redbrick and white mortar, Reba's grandfather could realize his great desire, but Reba's was not to be bought, or lured by ambitious quarters. ”

“ She mustn't let such thoughts possess her. She tried to stifle them. He, too—Reba's partner too, out of his reverence for anything so soft and white-handed, so wistful-eyed, so gentle-voiced, so crisply ruffled, pink-sashed, as this feminine creature before him—he, too, tried to keep his thoughts from desecrating so much as the tips of her fingers.
He stayed until the music played "Home, Sweet Home" in the Assembly-hall. They were the only ones left in the parlor when one of the Alliance's hostesses thrust a head in at the door and sang out cheerfully, "Time for everybody to say good-night." ”

“ The fever, too, proved a miraculous short-cut back into the affections of women whose hearts hadn't many avenues of approach. But for Reba's great need of being taken care of, her aunts and Cousin Syringa would never have been given the opportunity of love-begetting service. This was especially significant with the inarticulate Augusta, clumsy and awkward in the use of every form of expression except service. There were moments during the anxious watching-time of Reba's long sickness when the tenderness in Augusta Morgan's heart amounted almost to pain. ”

“ When, however, two or three afternoons and evenings alone together had been passed, and still he had not spoken of marriage, Reba began searching for other causes for his silence. Was it, possibly, she wondered, because he was uncertain of her feelings for him?
She was sure that this was the explanation when, one afternoon, three or four weeks after the revelation on the rocks, he smiled down at her with a kind of hurt-boy, peevish sort of expression, and asked half seriously, half playfully, "Why are you so passive, Becky, still? What are you made of? Why don't you ever let yourself go? ”

“ Aunt Augusta would have spurned him at sight, as a creature who belonged to a lower strata of society; if not actually a foreigner, anyhow, alien to one of Reba's bringing up, and no one for her to hold conversation with. The fact was, Reba didn't hold much conversation with him. There seemed to be little opportunity for speech between them—only the short walk of a half-dozen blocks or so after the performance; and words somehow were out of place after the enthralling experience of a speechless two hours and a half side by side. ”

“ I've got rid of that chap for you, Rebecca, drugged him, asphyxiated him, put him to sleep. He doesn't exist any more."
Reba murmured, "I didn't marry him out of pity."
"Well, all right. You have it your way. He isn't around any more to argue with you about it. It doesn't matter."
Reba glanced away. Her eyes followed a squirrel darting up the trunk of a tree. She had herself well under control now. She ought to, she should think. She had had time enough. ”