Emma Speed Sampson

“ 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." ”

“ On this day Rebecca got safely to her seat on the top step before Spot arrived and had the satisfaction of seeing him swing around the corner of the house, his blue shirt open at the throat, Doctor following close to heel. Spot's hat was in his hand and his yellow hair was gleaming in the sun like ripe wheat. How could anyone look so like her father and be so different?
Her uncle did look at her in passing, and there was an amused expression on his countenance. What made him smile? Suddenly she remembered that her hair was plaited through the buttonholes in the top of her bonnet! ”

“ Aunt Peachy had a strange scuttling glide and could slip herself through an inconceivably small crack. The old woman was feeble, her energy was almost gone, but at moments she would pull herself together and suddenly dart from her chair to investigate something that was going on in another part of the house. Curiosity was her ruling passion and very little happened at The Hedges without her knowledge. By some seemingly occult power she usually managed to know what was going on in the neighborhood, too. No colored person dared come on the place without bringing her some bit of gossip. ”

“ Look at the precious lamb coming down the path to meet me!"
At the top of the hill was a flock of sheep. They were spread out as though on dress parade and peered over the brow of the hill at the girl as she advanced up the path. Their leader had separated himself from the flock and slowly and sedately came to meet Rebecca.
"Lamby, lamby!" she called when about a hundred yards off. "You are mighty sweet and woolly. Do you lie down in these beautiful green pastures, and are you led beside these still waters? Surely one could fear no evil in such a spot. ”

“ Aunt Peachy had dried up to the mere semblance of a human being. Her head, with its band of feathers, was twisted under her poor old body. The strings of beads had some of them burst and the stairs were strewn with bones and bits of colored glass and buttons. The bottle of varnish remover had broken and the pungent mixture had made a pool all around her.
"Don't touch her, my boy! Don't touch her!" Elizabeth commanded. "You must get the coroner! You must, I say! Too many times have I thought of killing her, and now that she is dead some one may try to prove I have killed her, I or you. ”

“ Either Mam' Peachy would come slipping into the sitting room, smelling vilely of whisky and cackling shrilly about Mill folks and their perfidious ways of loving beneath them and marrying above, or Rolfe Bolling would appear in his stocking feet, the shirt that had been put on clean in the morning as filthy as though he had worn it a week.
Elizabeth would receive the young man kindly though stiffly. She saw so few persons outside of her family that her manner was apt to be distant and constrained. Philip was always cordial and pleasant. ”

“ The one Taylor he had always loved and felt easy with had been his brother Tom. Tom had been an ideal big brother, kindly and friendly, never twitting him with being slow-witted. Spottswood was only a little boy when his brother went off to be an artist but he remembered with clearness his grief at his leaving home and then, when he was seventeen and the news came of Tom's death in New York, his poignant though silent suffering had left a mark on the shy, sullen boy. ”

“ Rebecca, with her mug of buttermilk fresh from the churn, with delectable bits of butter floating around in it, and her great crisp corn pone, would seat herself on the lower porch step. The only thing to mar her happiness was the lack of companionship during this luncheon. She could hear the hands laughing and talking in the kitchen, where Aunt Testy was giving them their mid-day meal, and she could see the stalwart back of her silent uncle as he sat at the table at the end of the porch. She often wished she had been "born black" and could join the hands in the kitchen. ”

“ My Philip!" kept singing in Elizabeth's heart as she prepared dinner for her husband on that morning in June. What difference did it make if Aunt Peachy did tell her to put more cracklings in the corn bread? What difference did anything make that was not connected with her Philip?
She longed for the return of her son, her first born, and she dreaded it, too—dreaded it for his sake. Life was not to be what she would have had it be for the boy. ”

“ During the cold months, when work on the farm was slack, Philip had determined to try to repair some of the beautiful old bits of discarded furniture piled up under the eaves of his attic refuge. Some must be scraped with broken glass and some must be treated with a strong concoction to take off the cracking varnish that had been foolishly applied by some Bolling housewife who wanted shiny furniture. Aunt Peachy would sniff suspiciously when the odor of this varnish destroyer reached her nostrils, and then with head on one side she would listen to the mysterious sound of persistent scraping. ”

“ Just as I never could decide that the old baboon was not a person, so I can't quite believe Aunt Peachy is one. She mumbles the strangest things while I am there and keeps looking at me with her eyes shining like a rat's. Her eyes are not a bit like a baboon's. All monkey people have sad, soft eyes. No matter how mischievous they are, they always have a kind of mournful expression as though they had been kind of cheated in not having souls. ”

“ Sometimes he would climb a willow tree, hiding from her until she was in midstream, jumping from stone to stone, and then he would suddenly call out like a screech owl, and be highly delighted if Rebecca should start with fright and slip into the shallow water, wetting her little shoes.
Jo taught her many things besides how to bluff a cowardly ram; lore that is almost instinctive knowledge with children born in the country. She drank in the information greedily, taking in all Jo told her as shining truth. ”

“ Who on earth could be up in the attic?" said Philip.
"Oh, you couldn't have," insisted Betsy, a gay note in her voice, a note that had been woefully lacking lately.
"You know Mam' Peachy is afraid to death of the attic, and the stairs would be fat man's misery for father."
The girl laughed happily. Life wasn't so hard after all. Her handsome lover had shown himself to be so much in earnest that she could not but hope for the future. She wouldn't marry Spottswood while her father and his father were having this terrible law suit, but after a bit things surely would adjust themselves. ”

“ Doctor was like some man who had passed the period of puppy love without being even exposed to the malady, but who, in sober middle-age, had caught the disease and was taking it harder than he would had he had it in his youth. His master's conversation was good enough in its way, but it was nothing to the endearing baby-talk Rebecca was pouring into his twitching, silken ears. A masculine pat was about all he ever got from Spottswood, but this adorable girl was fondling him, rubbing his nose, scratching his throat and picking burrs out of his fur. ”

“ May the Lord have mercy on my soul!" cried Major Taylor. "Here, Myra; you, Evelyn, don't stand there like two pop-eyed fools! Go have Testy make waffles. Cook some roe-herring and broil a squab. Didn't you hear this young man say my granddaughter is hungry? She has eaten no breakfast! Go telephone for the doctor, Spot! I never saw such a dumb lot of fools in my life. Here Mr. Bolling, bring my granddaughter into the chamber."
"Wouldn't it be better to take her to the room over the back parlor, Father?" suggested Myra. ”

“ Rolfe Bolling always locked up his jug and Aunt Peachy always stole from him what liquor she wanted.
"Liquor's harder an' harder to git," said Rolfe, as he took a great gulp from the tin cup.
Elizabeth sniffed disdainfully. The smell of the whisky was sickening to her. There had been moments in those twenty-five years of her life at The Hedges when she had felt that she would go mad and smash the brown jug. She had even had the courage to remonstrate with her husband and the old negress, trying to them to be more abstemious, but that was in the early days. ”

“ Had Goliath of Gath shown as much discretion as this pugnacious ram he might have lived to fight again. The animal uttered a meek little "Baa," turned tail and made a dignified exit up the pink path to where his admiring females stood midway up the hill.
Rebecca laughed and looked at the boy with more admiration than she had felt at first.
"Aren't you afraid of him?"
"That ol' ram! Naw! He can't hurt a flea! All you have to do is shake a stick at him."
"He would have killed me if I hadn't jumped into the house of Faithful Heart." ”

“ Philip smiled and Old Abe congratulated himself that he was able to impart some wisdom to the young man who had taken such a superior tone with him. The old man was rather pleased that Mam' Peachy was to be dethroned. He had been under the thumb of his powerful mother for so long that it would be pleasant to know that no longer was she to be the boss of The Hedges. He was desperately afraid of his mother, but she could hardly blame this affair on him. If she was going to work any of her charms she would naturally work them on the young master. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was shed room enough for any and all farming implements, but the natural shiftlessness of the darkeys, born on the Bolling place with generations of shiftless masters, had prevented their ever seeing the necessity of order and care in such matters. Philip had forgotten how absolutely careless the running of the farm was. It seemed strange to him that anybody as parsimonious as was his father should be negligent in such things things that represented money. Rolfe Bolling's one idea had been to save cash, but his natural slothfulness always had been his handicap. ”

“ 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. ”