The Star in the Window (Stokes)/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
REBA sat a long while that night in the dark, in her rocking chair by the window, but she did not rock. Her palms did not lie upturned in her lap. She sat on the edge of her chair tensely, with her elbows on the window-sill, and tried to warm her cold hands and cool her hot face by pressing her clammy fingers hard against her burning cheeks and forehead. She had slipped the scarab, which was hung onto a string, about her neck. It was carved out of wood—a rough imitation of the genuine thing, but it was curious and foreign, and she picked it up every now and then and held it in her fingers. She had read that in Egypt scarabs were put into the tombs of the dead, as some sort of symbol or sign of the soul's awakening. Had Cousin Pattie left the scarab with her, in her tomb, to suggest her awakening? Were Cousin Pattie's jibes at New England women really thrusts at her? And were Cousin Pattie's interpretations of life correct? Why, if humility before God's will, selflessness, resignation, were unwelcome in His sight, then what refuge was there for her? 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. The farther behind she left the unfriendly atmosphere of 89 Chestnut Street, the clearer her vision always became. It was somewhat the same with the town itself; not with lower Ridgefield—lower Ridgefield was Italy, and Greece and Sweden—but with the part of the town to which she was indigenous. She always wanted to get away from the frowning front-doors and gaping windows of Ridgefield proper. Her mother and aunts devoured passers-by, relishing most the ones they could disapprove of the most heartily. Reba always felt that she was being devoured in like manner when she walked by the houses of the people who had been cut up into morsels at 89 Chestnut Street.
Ridgefield was a typical New England town of some three or four thousand people. Running through its Main Street it had a double-track electric carline connecting it with the city of Union, eighteen miles away. Its Main Street was a typical New England Main Street—elm-shaded, bordered on each side by a gravel sidewalk, becoming brick when it passed the single brick business block on the left, and concrete with big cracks in it when it straggled up over the knoll in front of Masonic Hall. There was the usual collection of public buildings on Main Street, with the usual sprinkling of A-roofed dwelling-houses in between. There was the customary town-hall painted ginger-snap brown, the syndicate drugstore, glaringly up-to-date with plate-glass windows and modern yellow signs. There was the usual over-supply of churches, and the several garages made over from old blacksmith shops, with red pumps out in front bearing placards announcing in amateurish lettering the price of gasoline. A little out of the town, there was the railroad station called "the depot," built of wood, painted dirty gray, by which express-trains whizzed at a terrific speed with merely a shrill whistle in way of recognition. There was a river, too; so of course there were mills in Ridgefield.
This morning Reba hurried past the mills, across the river, along Main Street, by the last church on Main Street, by the last garage, by the granite post that marked the town-line at last, out into the open country. She had no plan, no destination in mind when she set out. She simply wanted to get away from familiar sights and sounds, from houses, from eyes. She was surprised to discover she had walked so far when she saw in the distance before her the granite posts of the cemetery gate. The cemetery was at least two miles from the town-hall. Not until she saw the posts did it occur to Reba to enter the quiet white city of the dead, where no one stared and no one criticized.
It was here that Reba's grandfather lay buried. Often on Memorial Days she had visited his lot. It had never meant anything more to her than the place where she would lie herself sometime. 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. It had never had any special connection with her, until to-day, when with difficulty she slowly approached it over the slippery crust of the snow.
She saw it a long way off, rising lofty and triumphant before her. The severe New England winter had succeeded in obliterating completely most of the other stones, and the few whose tops did appear had a huddled, shrinking look, like sheep in a snowstorm. All but the girl's grandfather's proud shaft of granite, the winter had disregarded. Reba, standing small and wind-blown before it, felt something of her grandfather's indomitable spirit, as she gazed up and saw his name rearing itself up boldly above all the other snow-conquered inscriptions, chiseled clearly against the pale blue of the winter-morning sky. For the first time in her life she felt pride in her inheritance. The vision of her pioneer grandfather had suddenly jostled her out of her smug belief in passive righteousness.
She was all alone in the cemetery—all alone with his monument. Suddenly she pulled off her glove, leaned, and laid her small bare hand against the cold surface of the granite. "His blood running warm right here in my fingers!" she exclaimed to herself, and a second after, the whistle of the distant mills, which her grandfather had put the energy of his red blood into, boomed out the noon hour!
It was as if he spoke to Reba, and she, gazing away off toward the horizon, replied outloud, "I believe Cousin Pattie's right," and again a moment later, "I believe Cousin Pattie's right!"
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.
Reba's mother and aunts observed nothing out of the ordinary in the girl as she helped them that day clear up after dinner. There was no trace visible of her experience as she walked back and forth, from refrigerator to stove, from stove to table, over the well-worn path which her feet had traveled for so many years, and afterward took her sewing and sat down in her mother's bedroom by the western window. Her fingers threaded the needle, knotted the thread, made the long, even rows of stitches as usual, but her thoughts were darting here and there—zigzag, like a frightened domesticated canary who had chanced to hop out of his cage into the mystifying space of out-of-doors.
She was assailed with doubts, tortured with misgivings, time and time again during the days that followed. In fact, her state of mind was like the tide, fluctuating between low, dark periods of doubt, and high, bright ones of conviction. But it was like an incoming tide, and every new wave of assurance came a little nearer to her old ideals, built upon the shore, and destroyed them at last, making of the old fortress, where she had found comfort and shelter for years, a shapeless mound of resistless sand at last, which she grieved and mourned over as something loved and lost.
She had no plan, no program of escape. She groped blindly. She wished she could feel the pressure of a specific ambition, like Cousin Pattie; or the driving incentive of some visible goal. What she was hungry for, what she desired was of such intangible quality! 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. It was hardly to be put into words. She couldn't have told herself what the thing was which she desired.
If only Cousin Pattie hadn't gone to San Domingo, she might have joined her. If only she were not quite so old, she might apply at a boarding-school and assume the rôle of a young girl. If only—if only Thus her meditations always began, and might have continued to begin, ad infinitum, if Cousin Pattie's postcard hadn't arrived, mailed from a port Reba had never heard of. It had only three words on it, but they were written clearly, underlined blackly, and enclosed by quotation marks. "In spite of," were the words. Reba flushed at sight of them.
A few days later, when there blew onto the floor in the very path of her broom, when she was sweeping her father's "study," a small paper folder, the spirit of Cousin Pattie's postcard message was burned deep into her heart. It was a folder from an organization to which her father had for many years sent small contributions.
Reba was familiar with its name. The Women's New England Alliance was well known. But not until she picked up the folder did Reba know exactly what its work was. It was located in Boston, and offered social advantages, and opportunities for mental improvement, to women living away from home. It endeavored to fill the place of that home—provided pleasant shelter, wholesome food, social attractions. It was a kind of working girls' or business-women's club, with an initiation fee of one dollar, and yearly dues of fifty cents. It wasn't limited to working women. Any girl or woman could join.
Reba leaned her broom in a corner of the room and sat down with her bit of paper, on the edge of a chair, and read more.
There were evening classes, it seemed, offered by the Alliance to its members for a small fee, in millinery, manicuring and nursing; in current events and history; in swimming and gymnastics; in etiquette and dancing. There were weekly talks on recent fiction, the theatre and music. Every Saturday evening there was a home entertainment in the parlors of the Alliance's headquarters, to promote friendliness among the members. Every Sunday there were prayer-meetings and Bible classes.
Reba had never been to Boston unaccompanied. She had never spent a night away from Ridgefield without one of her aunts. But it flashed across her that they might trust her for a little while to the care of an organization sanctioned by her father's support. What if they should grant her their permission? What if she had only to ask? Lessons in swimming and gymnastics! Lessons in etiquette and dancing! Every Saturday an entertainment to promote friendliness!
The very next morning, surreptitiously Reba wrote a very careful little note on her light-blue note-paper, with the gold filigreed J in one corner, to inquire if there was a single room she could occupy for a few weeks during February or March. And after she mailed this small, sealed blue bomb at the Ridgefield post-office, she approached the little brick temple of the Ridgefield Trust Company and, with pounding heart, and knees that trembled, entered it.
Reba knew that she had some money of her own, somewhere. Ever since she had become of legal age, her father had been in the habit of bringing her papers to sign occasionally, which she always did, without annoying him with questions. It irritated him to be questioned. Besides, she had all the spending-money she needed, which he gave to her gruffly whenever she asked for it, which wasn't often. Money had been of little use to Reba in her pursuit of self-abnegation.
She was painfully ill at ease when at last she found herself facing Mr. James Perkins, the president of the Ridgefield Trust Company, and one of the members of the Standing Committee at the Congregational Church.
"How do you do?" she murmured primly.
"How-do-you-do, how-do-you-do, how-do-you-do," Mr. Perkins replied effusively three times, and shoved up a chair and asked her to be seated.
Reba accepted the extreme edge of the chair, and somehow got out the explanation of her call at last. She thought perhaps she ought to know—being over eighteen, and all that—if there was money of hers down here at the bank, and in case she should ever want to draw out a little—or anything like that—just how one did such things.
Mr. Perkins gave a loud laugh and slapped one of his well-stuffed pepper-and-salt trouser-legs, just above the knee, then stood up. "Come with me, come with me," he said in a deep voice, his eyes twinkling mysteriously. "Come with me."
Reba rose, and followed Mr. Perkins across the hall, then down a winding iron staircase, through some grilled gates, into a tiny, crypt-like space, electric-lighted, underground somewhere. Its walls appeared to be made of steel—metal of some kind, anyhow—and were peppered with numbers and key-holes. Mr. Perkins stood up on tiptoe and tapped two of the numbers with his keyring.
"Bulging, bulging, bulging," he announced. "And your father says you'll need another box pretty soon, he's afraid. All yours, all yours, all yours, Miss Jerome. First mortgage bonds, every one of 'em, so I understand," he went on, enigmatically to Reba, "four and five per cent. first mortgage bonds. Nothing risky, nothing risky, nothing risky, Miss Jerome."
Reba stared at the little numbers.
"And if I should ever want a little of what's up there?" she asked.
"Oh my, oh my, oh my! No need to disturb those," replied Mr. Perkins, in his big-voice way. "No need at all—not with a deposit in your own name of something over $20,000 up above," he motioned ceilingward. "Just make out a check, just make out a check, just sit down and make out a check, Miss Jerome."
"I see," replied Reba. She showed no surprise over her deposit. She felt none. Sums of money exceeding amounts which she was accustomed to were vague and unreckonable. "Thank you very much," she went on politely to Mr. Perkins, as they moved out toward the daylight streaming down the winding stairway; and then, just as she started to ascend, "I suppose you would be willing to help me make out a check," she faltered, "if I should ever need to."
"Certainly, certainly, certainly! But there's your father, you know,—your own father, Miss Jerome."
"Oh, would you mind not telling my father just yet—that I—that I've been here?" she pleaded. "Later, of course, but not now—not just now," she floundered, blushing deeply at the realization that she was stooping to actual deceit. "Oh, I don't know what you can think of me," she broke off. She had sat before Mr. Perkins before she joined the church. "It was mostly from curiosity. Cousin Pattie said that I—that my grandfather—I thought I ought to know at least—it seemed to me"
Mr. Perkins' big, soft hand suddenly reached out and patted Reba's shoulder. "You come to me any time you want to, Miss Jerome," he said. "Any time you want to. I won't tell tales out of school."