The Shorn Lamb/Chapter 4
Chapter 4
REBECCA ASKS REFERENCES
From the porch at Mill House the Taylors watched the two figures, one a man, the other either a child or a little old woman, as they made their way along the winding red road. At times they disappeared as the road dipped below a hill and then they would come to view again, after each disappearance looming up a little larger and more distinct to the watchers on the porch.
"The man is young," whispered Evelyn to Myra, "and he is dressed like a gentleman. I am sure he is not a peddler."
"A suitor, perhaps!" suggested her father, ironically. The old man was numb with a kind of intense excitement, but he could still find his tongue and use it to the undoing of his daughters.
"The person with him is an old woman. Look at her mourning veil! It hangs way down over her shoulders," commented Myra. "They say it is bad form to wear such deep mourning nowadays, even for widows!"
"Perhaps this person is doubly widowed," said Evelyn.
"Look, her dresses are short, almost to her knees!" Myra exclaimed as the two figures stood for a moment at the summit of the last little hill before reaching the yard gate.
"Quite shocking!" cried Evelyn.
Spot had made no comments as he watched with his family. His wits were slow, but he realized that something was by the way of happening at Mill House, something that was going to have a bearing on the fortunes of the family.
As Philip Bolling and his little companion approached Mill House, after entering the yard gate, Major Taylor, his son and two daughters arose from their seats and stood in frozen silence. They might have been posing for a photograph of a family group on the front porch, so stiff and ill at ease did they appear. Spottswood, who had been seated on the low step, was in the foreground in the sun, the others back in the shadow of the porch.
The fact that the little old woman had turned out to be a child did not make them burst into laughter as it had Philip on the night before in the sleeper. Nobody felt like laughing. Even Major Taylor's grim humor failed to assert itself. All of them gazed at the child, whose many parcels began slipping from her arms as she stood, her great brown eyes glued to Spottswood, whose yellow hair was shining in the sun.
"Father! Father!" she cried. "I—I—didn't know!" She started towards him and then stopped. "Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I thought—just for a moment—you seemed to be my father. You see the last time I remember him he was in a blue painting smock with the light from the skylight in the studio turning his hair to gold. I see now I was mistaken."
Spottswood looked at her in sullen silence. Her mourning bonnet had slipped to the back of her neck. Her black hair was in great disorder, as the child had never before tried to comb and brush it, that being Mrs. O' Shea's duty. She presented a strange appearance to her kinspeople as she stood before them. She looked from one to the other, shrewdly taking in the hostile attitude of her aunts, whose relationship to herself she partly divined, and then she fixed her attention on her grandfather. She fancied she saw encouragement in his expression.
Major Taylor's heart was behaving strangely. It was beating like a trip hammer and there was something in his throat that bade fair to turn into a sob unless he could swallow it. Could this little elfin creature belong to him? She certainly did not in the least resemble any Taylor that he had ever seen. The Taylors were a stalwart race and as blond as blond could be. There had never been a dark-eyed one in the family that he had known of, although he had heard his father say his grandmother had been a brunette.
The Major looked quizzically from the child to her companion, who stood hat in hand, apparently considering the business in hand to be none of his affair. Although his father's farm was just across the river from Mill House, Philip Bolling's acquaintance with his neighbors had been of the slightest. As a boy he had occasionally been sent to Mill House on an errand, but he had not been there for years, and he realized that he was not recognized by any of them. Little Rebecca had awakened his deepest sympathies and he was determined to see her through her difficulties—even to take her home with him if her own family would have none of her, but he felt it wisest to play the role of casual bystander until the Taylors declared themselves. Although his acquaintance with them was slight, he was well aware of the peculiarities of the Mill House folks. Everybody in the country knew of the grim, caustic wit of the old man and the pride of the daughters of the house and the stolid slowness of Spottswood. The Taylors were important persons, and no matter how much they might hold themselves aloof from their neighbors, their neighbors always managed to know much more about them and their affairs than they relished having known.
Philip remembered as a boy how he had hated to go to Mill House with a message, how the master had always made him feel small and uncomfortable, addressing him with a pretense of politeness, but plainly letting him understand his inferiority. The Taylors' conviction of their own superiority did not at all worry Philip Bolling, the man. If he had not felt so sorry for his little traveling companion he would have been amused by the present situation, but concern for her was uppermost in his mind just now.
"To what fortunate circumstance do we owe this visit?" asked Major Taylor, who had managed to swallow the sob and assume his usual sarcastic manner. "Won't you be seated?"
"No, I thank you," answered Philip, quietly. He had none of the feeling of the little barefoot boy with a message from his father about the harvesting. "I am Philip Bolling, the son of Rolfe Bolling—"
"The devil you are!"
"I met this young lady on the train and since she was traveling alone and nobody met her at the Court House I have given myself the pleasure of bringing her safely to her destination. We came over from the Court House on the shuttle engine to the hub factory and walked from the mill. The rest of your granddaughter's baggage is at the mill, left in care of Silas Johnson."
"Whose granddaughter? What granddaughter? How am I to know this is my granddaughter? How am I to know you are the son of Rolfe Bolling?"
"That's as you choose, sir," answered Philip, respectfully, but with an indifference that made the old man open his eyes.
"And I choose to ask you what business you have bringing to my house a young person who claims to be my granddaughter when I know nothing about her and—"
"Exactly!" put in the Misses Taylor, glad of the cue from their father.
Spottswood merely gave a noncommittal "Humph!"
"Excuse me, sir, but you are mistaken in blaming this kind young gentleman for my appearance," cried Rebecca, running past Spottswood up the steps and looking Major Taylor squarely in the eye and all but shaking her fist in his face. "I never saw him until last night, when I went to housekeeping with him on the sleeping car. He was good to me when I was lonesome, having just lost my last stepfather and no one left in the studio. He gave me his lower berth, too, not that I wanted it at all, except that it was kind of difficult to kneel down outside of an upper berth to say one's prayers, and Mrs. O'Shea has told me time and again it is not ladylike to hump up in bed and pray, and I saw no other way to do it. Thanks to Mr. Bolling, I was able to kneel quite devoutly in the aisle. I might just as well have saved my breath, as I was praying that whatever kinspeople I had left in Virginia would be glad to have me come and live with them."
Here Rebecca paused for breath and stood up very straight, her dark eyes flashing their scorn of whatever kinspeople she might have.
"I don't know whether you are my grandfather or not, and what's more, I don't care. In New York there is a home for stray cats and dogs and before they let anybody take one of them away to give it a home that person has to give references and prove that he is a good person to cats or dogs and will be kind to it. Anybody that gives me a home has got to give references."
Major Taylor burst out laughing. His daughters looked shocked and Spottswood listened in amazement to the baiting his father was getting from this little waif.
Philip Bolling smiled. He remembered what the little girl had told him of the rules her Daddy had made her obey, one of them not to sass old folks until they first sassed her.
The little girl smiled, a bit uncertainly.
"It is funny, isn't it?" Now Rebecca laughed, too. "The joke's on me. I can see it. My Daddy, that is my last stepfather, used to tell me if you could see that the joke was on you and laugh at it, before long you could turn it on the other fellow. I'll tell you good-bye," and she gave a sweeping bow, taking in all the group on the porch.
"Where are you going?" asked Major Taylor.
"I am not sure what my movements will be for the next few days," she answered with a primness copied from Mrs. O'Shea, "but for the time being I am going to find Aunt Pearly Gates' house, as I am anxious to see whether she still hatches chickens in her bed, the way my first father used to tell me she did."
A change came into the old man's face. All of the hard lines softened and into his keen blue eyes there crept an expression of infinite longing. Up to that moment he had been almost sure the strange little gypsy-like child was none of his blood. No Taylor could be so dark-eyed and different looking from all other Taylors. When she had laughed and declared the joke was on her, he had seen something that in a way had reminded him of his boy Tom, but then he argued that he had been looking for traces of his boy and it would be easy to fool him.
As for Rebecca's thinking Spot was her father, that was too stagy to be impromptu. But this remark about Aunt Pearly Gates and her hatching chickens in her bed—the conviction of the girl's being of his own flesh and blood came to him like a flash. How could he ever have doubted it? What was mere color of hair and eyes? Even shapes of noses and mouths didn't count for much in heredity compared to a certain spirit that it was possible to hand down.
That was his boy Tom who had been speaking, his Tom who had so boldly stood up for the young Bolling chap who had befriended the little waif on the journey, his Tom who had demanded a reference instead of giving one. By Gad! He was to prove himself her grandfather instead of having her prove herself his granddaughter! He laughed aloud in his glee. He laughed and held out his hands to her.
Not seeing the change in the old man's face or his outstretched hands, Rebecca had turned and started down the steps. She held her head high and on her face was a look of determination not to show her feelings to those persons on the porch. She gave Philip Bolling a little wan smile and stooped to pick up the parcels that had slipped from her arms when she first saw Spottswood. As she stooped, a great wave of physical weakness came over her and she crumpled up in a little, bedraggled black heap.
"Now I am dying!" was the thought that came to her as she fainted, "but Mrs. O'Shea won't be here to attend to this funeral."