XXV
ROSES OF JOY
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm | ||
THE day before Rebecca started for the South with Miss Maxwell she was in the library with Emma Jane and Huldah, consulting dictionaries and encyclopædias. As they were leaving they passed the locked cases containing the library of fiction, open to the teachers and townspeople, but forbidden to the students.
They looked longingly through the glass, getting some little comfort from the titles of the volumes, as hungry children imbibe emotional nourishment from the pies and tarts inside a confectioner's window. Rebecca's eyes fell upon a new book in the corner, and she read the name aloud with delight: "The Rose of Joy. Listen, girls; is+n't that lovely? The Rose of Joy. It looks beautiful, and it sounds beautiful. What does it mean, I wonder?"
"I guess everybody has a different rose," said Huldah shrewdly. "I know what mine would be, and I+'m not ashamed to own it. I+'d like a year in a city, with just as much money as I wanted to spend, horses and splendid clothes and amusements every minute of the day; and I+'d like above everything to live with people that wear low necks." (Poor Huldah never took off her dress without
"That would be fun, for a while anyway," Emma Jane remarked. "But would+n't that be pleasure more than joy? Oh, I+'ve got an idea!"
"Don't shriek so!" said the startled Huldah. "I thought it was a mouse."
"I don't have them very often," apologized Emma Jane,—"ideas, I mean; this one shook me like a stroke of lightning. Rebecca, could+n't it be success?"
"That+'s good," mused Rebecca; "I can see that success would be a joy, but it does+n't seem to me like a rose, somehow. I was wondering if it could be love?"
"I wish we could have a peep at the book! It must be perfectly elergant!" said Emma Jane. "But now you say it is love, I think that+'s the best guess yet."
All day long the four words haunted and possessed Rebecca; she said them over to herself continually. Even the prosaic Emma Jane was affected by them, for in the evening she said, "I don't expect you to believe it, but I have another idea,— that+'s two in one day; I had it while I was putting cologne on your head. The rose of joy might be helpfulness."
"If it is, then it is always blooming in your dear
"Don't dare to call yourself troublesome! You+'re —you+'re—you+'re my rose of joy, that+'s what you are!" And the two girls hugged each other affectionately.
In the middle of the night Rebecca touched Emma Jane on the shoulder softly. "Are you very fast asleep, Emmie?" she whispered.
"Not so very," answered Emma Jane drowsily.
"I+'ve thought of something new. If you sang or painted or wrote,—not a little, but beautifully, you know,—would+n't the doing of it, just as much as you wanted, give you the rose of joy?"
"It might if it was a real talent," answered Emma Jane, "though I don't like it so well as love. If you have another thought, Becky, keep it till morning."
"I did have one more inspiration," said Rebecca when they were dressing next morning, "but I did+n't wake you. I wondered if the rose of joy could be sacrifice? But I think sacrifice would be a lily, not a rose; don't you?"
The journey southward, the first glimpse of the ocean, the strange new scenes, the ease and delicious freedom, the intimacy with Miss Maxwell, almost intoxicated Rebecca. In three days she was not only herself again, she was another self, thrilling with delight, anticipation, and realization. She
"If I ever succeed in choosing a subject, I must ask if you think I can write well on it; and then I suppose I must work in silence and secret, never even reading the essay to you, nor talking about it."
Miss Maxwell and Rebecca were sitting by a little
"The subject is very important," said Miss Maxwell, "but I do not dare choose for you. Have you decided on anything yet?"
"No," Rebecca answered; "I plan a new essay every night. I+'ve begun one on What is Failure? and another on He and She. That would be a dialogue between a boy and girl just as they were leaving school, and would tell their ideals of life. Then do you remember you said to me one day, `Follow your Saint'? I+'d love to write about that. I did+n't have a single thought in Wareham, and now I have a new one every minute, so I must try and write the essay here; think it out, at any rate, while I am so happy and free and rested. Look at the pebbles in the bottom of the pool, Miss Emily, so round and smooth and shining."
"Yes, but where did they get that beautiful polish, that satin skin, that lovely shape, Rebecca? Not in the still pool lying on the sands. It was never there that their angles were rubbed off and their rough surfaces polished, but in the strife and warfare of running waters. They have jostled against other pebbles, dashed against sharp rocks, and now we look at them and call them beautiful."
She might have been, oh! such a splendid preacher!"
rhymed Rebecca. "Oh! if I could only think and speak as you do!" she sighed. "I am so afraid I shall never get education enough to make a good writer."
"You could worry about plenty of other things to better advantage," said Miss Maxwell, a little scornfully. "Be afraid, for instance, that you won't understand human nature; that you won't realize the beauty of the outer world; that you may lack sympathy, and thus never be able to read a heart; that your faculty of expression may not keep pace with your ideas,—a thousand things, every one of them more important to the writer than the knowledge that is found in books. Æsop was a Greek slave who could not even write down his wonderful fables; yet all the world reads them."
"I did+n't know that," said Rebecca, with a half sob. "I did+n't know anything until I met you!"
"You will only have had a high school course, but the most famous universities do not always succeed in making men and women. When I long to go abroad and study, I always remember that there were three great schools in Athens and two in Jerusalem, but the Teacher of all teachers came out of Nazareth, a little village hidden away from the bigger, busier world."
"Mr. Ladd says that you are almost wasted on Wareham." said Rebecca thoughtfully.
"He is wrong; my talent is not a great one, but no talent is wholly wasted unless its owner chooses to hide it in a napkin. Remember that of your own gifts, Rebecca; they may not be praised of men, but they may cheer, console, inspire, perhaps, when and where you least expect. The brimming glass that overflows its own rim moistens the earth about it."
"Did you ever hear of The Rose of Joy?" asked Rebecca, after a long silence.
"Yes, of course; where did you see it?"
"On the outside of a book in the library."
"I saw it on the inside of a book in the library," smiled Miss Maxwell. "It is from Emerson, but I+'m afraid you have+n't quite grown up to it, Rebecca, and it is one of the things impossible to explain."
"Oh, try me, dear Miss Maxwell!" pleaded Rebecca. "Perhaps by thinking hard I can guess a little bit what it means."
" `In the actual—this painful kingdom of time and chance—are Care, Canker, and Sorrow; with thought, with the Ideal, is immortal hilarity—the rose of Joy; round it all the Muses sing,' " quoted Miss Maxwell.
Rebecca repeated it over and over again until she had learned it by heart; then she said, "I don't want to be conceited, but I almost believe I do understand it, Miss Maxwell. Not altogether, perhaps, because it is puzzling and difficult; but a little,
(Since all gold hath alloy),
Thou 'lt bloom unwithered in this heart,
My Rose of Joy!
Now I+'m going to tuck you up in the shawl and give you the fir pillow, and while you sleep I am going down on the shore and write a fairy story for you. It+'s one of our `supposing' kind; it flies far, far into the future, and makes beautiful things happen that may never really all come to pass; but some of them will,—you+'ll see! and then you+'ll take out the little fairy story from your desk and remember Rebecca."
"I wonder why these young things always choose subjects that would tax the powers of a great essayist!" thought Miss Maxwell, as she tried to sleep. "Are they dazzled, captivated, taken possession of, by the splendor of the theme, and do they fancy they can write up to it? Poor little innocents, hitching
Adam Ladd had been driving through Boston streets on a cold spring day when nature and the fashion-mongers were holding out promises which seemed far from performance. Suddenly his vision was assailed by the sight of a rose-colored parasol gayly unfurled in a shop window, signaling the passer-by and setting him to dream of summer sunshine. It reminded Adam of a New England apple-tree in full bloom, the outer covering of deep pink shining through the thin white lining, and a fluffy, fringe-like edge of mingled rose and cream dropping over the green handle. All at once he remembered one of Rebecca's early confidences,—the little pink sunshade that had given her the only peep into the gay world of fashion that her childhood had ever known; her adoration of the flimsy bit of finery and its tragic and sacrificial end. He entered the shop, bought the extravagant bauble, and expressed it to Wareham at once, not a single doubt of its appropriateness crossing the darkness of his masculine mind. He thought only of the joy in Rebecca's eyes; of the poise of her head under the apple-blossom canopy. It was a trifle embarrassing to return an hour later and buy a blue parasol for Emma Jane Perkins, but it seemed increasingly difficult, as the years went on, to remember her existence at all the proper times and seasons.
This is Rebecca's fairy story, copied the next day and given to Emily Maxwell just as she was going to her room for the night. She read it with tears in her eyes and then sent it to Adam Ladd, thinking he had earned a share in it, and that he deserved a glimpse of the girl's budding imagination, as well as of her grateful young heart.
XXV
ROSES OF JOY
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm | ||