Chapter 2
"I'M REBECCA TAYLOR"
Philip Bolling's little companion paused as the entrance of the train conductor put a stop for the time being to the conversation. The child's ticket was found pinned in the front of her blouse after a nervous search through bags and boxes.
"I forgot where it was because Mrs. O'Shea told me so many times where she had put it," she laughed as the conductor punched it and put it in his pocket. "When anybody keeps on saying the same thing over and over it is hard to remember what the thing is. One telling is a lot easier to remember. You are not going to forget where I'm going are you Mr. Conductor? Somebody will have to tell me where to get off."
"That will be all right, little lady. I see this gentleman has a ticket to the same place. The porter will call you both at six in the morning. That will give you time enough I guess. You have upper twelve."
"I shall be very glad to let the young lady have my lower berth," put in Philip.
"Settle that between you," smiled the blue-uniformed one, as he passed on to the next section.
"I couldn't think of letting you give me your berth," said the girl. "Mrs. O'Shea says the downstairs ones cost more than the upstairs ones, which is quite just, where there is no elevator. I don't mind a bit climbing upstairs now that I know how they look." She had been much interested in watching the porter making down a berth at the other end of the car. "In fact I believe I'd rather mash you than have you mash me, if you don't mind. But there's one thing that worries me."
"And that is?"
"I don't see how I am to say my prayers. Mrs. O'Shea says it is ill bred to hump up in bed and pray and I always knelt down by my bed even when my bed was a divan or just a quilt on the floor, the way it was when Daddy was so sick and I had to sell all the furniture. I don't see how I can kneel down outside an upper berth, do you?"
"No, I do not," laughed Philip, "unless you had a nice fluffy cloud like the cherubs in the pictures. Did Mrs. O'Shea tell you what to do about this matter of kneeling?"
"I think not, but that may have been one of the things she kept on telling me until I forgot."
"Perhaps you would consent to use my berth just for the devotions," he suggested.
"Perhaps—but don't you find it exciting that we are going to the same town?"
"Very exciting! Do you think your friends will meet you?"
"I don't know, but they are not my friends yet. Will yours meet you?"
"No, my people do not know when to expect me."
"Have you some people of your very own—mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers?" she catechized him.
"Yes!"
"How lovely! Don't you adore them?"
"Some of them!"
"Oh, I should just adore real mothers and fathers. I wish you would tell me something about yourself. I have told you every single thing about myself from the very beginning and I don't know a thing about you, not even your name."
"Well, my name is Philip Bolling and I live on a farm about two miles from O Court House," the young man replied.
"Is that all?"
"Yes!"
The child's eyes filled with tears and she looked out of the window into the growing darkness of the spring night at the twinkling lights of a village through which they were rolling. Her mouth resumed the sad droop it had shown before the heavy bonnet was removed.
"What is it?" asked her companion sympathetically. "What is the matter, my dear?"
"Nothing—but—don't you understand how it makes me feel—to have told you all that long tiresome story about myself and then for you only to tell me your name and where you live, like a city directory? I feel so sad that you shouldn't trust me at all when I trusted you so much. I don't usually tell strangers the story of my life, but somehow the way you looked out of your eyes and a something in your voice and our going to housekeeping together and all made me spill over. I am very sorry, sir! I realize now how I must have bored you."
"Oh, but you didn't at all. You interested me intensely. I do trust you," he declared, smiling in her eyes until she smiled into his and the tears went back to whence they came. "I will tell you about myself if you want to know but I don't know where to begin."
That was very simple, the little girl thought.
"At the beginning, of course, the way I did. I told about the studio and my first father and mother."
"All right then, but when the porter gets to our section we must stop talking and go to bed."
"Begin!" she commanded, her eyes shining in anticipation. "Tell about your home first and then your mother and father and sisters and brothers."
"My home is, at least has been, beautiful. I did not know how beautiful until I left it and saw other places similar to it that have been kept up. My father doesn't take much interest in such things and neither did my grandfather before him. It was some way-back ancestor who planned it. Some day I hope to restore it. The place is called The Hedges, because it has a hedge all around the yard. Then there is a sunken garden with another hedge around it. That sunken garden is where I used to play when I was a little chap; and my mother would sit and sew and read and watch me play. There is a fountain with a marble boy holding up a shell, and a stone basin all bordered with moss and ferns. The beds are full of flowers that come up year after year and grow of themselves. I used to keep them weeded but since I have been off to college I fancy my mother and sister have looked after them. There is a sun-dial too, and lovely roses and box bushes that are as big as trees."
"Oh, I know you must love it!"
"I do," he answered simply. "I think I love it more than any spot on earth. I have not seen it for four years, as I have not gone home for the holidays. Next to the garden I love the attic at home. It is so quiet up there and so peaceful. My mother and I feel the same way about both of those places. My mother is wonderful, and I have a sister named Betsy, who is a darling girl, and a little brother named Jo, who was a fine youngster when I left home four years ago. He must be a great big toy by now, about fourteen, I think."
"You love your mother and sister and brother a whole lot, don't you?"
"I do indeed!"
"Then I am afraid, 'reasoning by elimination,' as Daddy used to say, that your father is the only one you do not love. You needn't blush so. I'm never going to tell anybody. You said in the beginning that you didn't adore all of your people."
"The truth is my father and I have never understood each other very well. I wanted an education and he didn't see the use of one and we were always pulling against each other because of it. My mother was on my side and we won out but after a long hard fight. And now that I have my degree at college I must go back and work on the farm to pay for it all."
"Do you mind much?"
"Well, I can't say I am hilarious over the prospect but I do want to see my mother and be some help to her. I have known all the time the day of reckoning was coming and now that it has come I am resigned. The farm is needing me too. My father is apt to leave things very much in the hands of the colored people on the place."
"Do you like colored people?" asked the girl. "I have known so few of them myself I don't know whether I like them or not but Daddy said I must try to like them because my own first father had so much feeling and sympathy for them."
"I like the good ones but the ones on our place are not very fine specimens of the race. There is an old Aunt Peachy who is evil beyond belief. She has always lived at 'The Hedges' and was my father's nurse. She and her descendants are a bad lot but it is out of the question to get rid of them. I am going to try to reform them. There is a dear old colored woman who lives across the river from us. She and in fact all of the colored people connected with the Mill House are good. This old woman is bed-ridden—has been for twenty years—but she is more cheerful and useful than most persons who are able to be up and about. She knits and tats day and night, is always ready to give a word of friendly advice to white and black. Many times when a boy I have stolen over across the river when life at The Hedges was dark and dreary and my old friend has cheered me up and I have gone back to farm work feeling better and stronger. Her name is Aunt Pearly Gates and one of her peculiarities is she hatches chickens in her bed."
"Oh, oh! She is the one my father used to tell about. I can remember now all about it. She used to comfort him when he was young. Aunt Pearly Gates! The mere name kind of stands for the entrance to Heaven. I believe she used to belong to my grandfather in those far-off slavery times."
"Why, then you must be going to the Mill House and your grandfather is Major Robert Taylor!"
"Yes, I'm Rebecca Taylor and my father's name was Tom."
"To think of it! I used to see your father when I was sent to the Mill House on errands. He was so kind to me and always had a pleasant word and a joke. I was nothing but a little barefoot boy and as shy as a rabbit and so afraid of Major Taylor I used to pray on the way that the old gentleman wouldn't 'be at home. He usually was there, however."
"Was my grandfather unkind?"
"No, not unkind, but he had a caustic wit, a little over the head of a barefoot boy. He used to look at me through his shaggy eyebrows and what intelligence I had seemed to leave me. I remember when your father left home. I was a very small chap but I remember it well, because after that being sent to the Mill House was more of a torture than ever before, as your father's going seemed to make Major Taylor's wit sharper. I did not know Mr. Tom Taylor had a child. I did hear he had married."
"It is very wonderful for you—my first traveling friend—to have known my father. I wish, somehow, you had known about me too. It is strange my grandfather didn't tell his neighbors about me. But here comes the porter to break up our housekeeping! I do hope I am going to remember to do all the things Mrs. O'Shea told me to do and to leave undone all the things she told me not to do about sleeping cars. I can't help thinking it would be better if the porter would take those little hammocks that he hangs up next the windows and that it would be truly cruel to put babies in because they would always be bumping against the wall, and stretch them across the aisles to catch the people, who must be always falling out of the upper berths."
With which sage observation Miss Rebecca Taylor proceeded to prepare for prayers and bed.