Rose of Old Harpeth Part 11

"Not a bit of doubt in my mind she enjoyed it greatly, suh, greatly, and I consider the cause of diverting her grief has advanced a hundred per cent by her consenting to go at all. Did any of the other Sweetbriar friends avail themselves of the Providence invitation--Miss Rose Mary and er--any of the other young people?"

"No, Miss Rose Mary didn't want to go, though Mr. Rucker woulder liked to hitch up the wagon and take her and Mis' Rucker and the children.

She have been mighty quiet like sinct Mr. Everett left us, though she'd never let anybody lack the heartening of that smile of hern no matter how tetched with lonesome she was herself. When the letters come I just can't wait to finish sorting the rest, but I run with hers to her, like Sniffie brings sticks back to Stonie Jackson when he throws them in the bushes."

"Ahm--er--do they come often?" asked the Senator in a casual voice, but his eyes narrowed in their slits and the veil became impenetrable.

"Oh, about every day or two," answered the unconsciously gossipy little bachelor. "Looks like the whole family have missed him, too.

Miss Viney has been in bed off and on ever since he left, and Miss Amandy has tooken a bad cold in her right ear and has had to keep her head wrapped up all the time. Mr. Tucker's mighty busy a-trying to figure out how to c.r.a.p the farm like Mr. Mark laid off on a map for him to do--but he ain't got the strength now to even get a part of it done. If Miss Rose Mary weren't strong and bendy as a hickory saplin she couldn't prop up all them old folks."

"Yes," answered the Senator in one of his most judicial and dulcet tones as he eyed the little bachelor in a calculating way as if deciding whether to take him into his confidence, "what you say of Mr.

Alloway's being too old to farm his land with a profit is true. I have come this time to talk things over with him and--er--Miss Rose Mary.

Did I understand you to say our friend Everett is still in New York?

Have you heard of his having any intention of returning to Sweetbriar any time soon?"

"No, I haven't heard tell of his coming back at all, and I'm mighty sorry and disappointed some, too," answered Mr. Crabtree with an anxious look coming into his kind eyes. "I somehow felt sure he would scratch up oil or some kind of pay truck out there in the fields of the Briars. I shipped a whole box of sand and gravel for him according to a telegram he sent me just last week and I had sorter got my hopes up for a find, specially as that young city fellow came out here and dug another bag full outen the same place not any time after that. He had a map with him, and I thought he might be a friend of Mr. Mark's and asked him, but he didn't answer; never rested to light a pipe, even, so I never found out about him. I reckon he was just fooling around and I hadn't oughter hoped on such a light ration."

"When was it that the man came and prospected?" asked the Senator with a quick gleam coming into his ugly little eyes and the smile veil took on another layer of density, while his hand trembled slightly as he lighted his cigar.

"Oh, about a week ago," answered Mr. Crabtree. "But I ain't got no hopes now for Mr. Tucker and the folks from him. We'll all just have to find some way to help them out when the bad time comes."

"The way will be provided, friend Crabtree," answered the Senator in an oily tone of voice, but which held nevertheless a decided note of excitement. "Do you know where I can find Mr. Alloway? I think I will go have a business talk with him now." And in a few minutes the Senator was striding as rapidly as his ponderosity would allow up Providence Road, leaving the garrulous little storekeeper totally unconscious of the fuse he had lighted for the firing of the mine so long dreaded by his friends.

"Well now, Crabbie, don't bust out and cry into them dried apples jest to swell the price, fer Mis' Rucker will ketch you sure when she comes to buy 'em for to-morrow's turnovers," came in the long drawl of the poet as he dawdled into the door and flung the rusty mail-sack down on to the counter in front of Mr. Crabtree. "They ain't a thing in that sack 'cept Miss Rose Mary's letter, and he must make a light kind of love from the heft of it. I most let it drop offen the saddle as I jogged along, only I'm a sensitive kind of cupid and the buckle of the bag hit that place on my knee I got sleep-walking last week while I was thinking up that verse that '_despair_' wouldn't rhyme with '_hair_' in for me. Want me to waft this here missive over to the milk-house to her and kinder pledge his good digestion and such in a gla.s.s of her b.u.t.termilk?"

"No, I wisht you would stay here in the store for me while I take it over to her myself. I've got some kind of business with her for a few minutes," answered Mr. Crabtree as he searched out the solitary letter and started to the door with it. "Sample that new keg of maple drip behind the door there. The cracker box is open," he added by way of compensation to the poet for the loss of the b.u.t.termilk.

The imagination of all true lovers is easily exercised about matters pertaining to the tender pa.s.sion, and though Mr. Crabtree had never in his life received such a letter he divined instantly that it should be delivered promptly by a messenger whose mercury wings should scarcely pause in agitating the air of arrival and departure. And suiting his actions to his instinct he whirled the envelope across the spring stream to the table by Rose Mary's side with the aim of one of the little G.o.d's own arrows and retreated before her greeting and invitation to enter should tempt him.

"Honey drip and women folks is sweet jest about the same and they both stick some when you're got your full of 'em at the time,"

philosophized the poet as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Say, Crabbie, don't tell Mis' Rucker I have come home yet, please. I want to go out and lay down in the barn on the hay and see if I can get that '_hair-despair_' tangle straightened out. She hasn't seen me to tell me things for two hours or more and I know I won't get no thinking done this day if I don't make the barn 'fore she spies me."

And with furtive steps and eyes he left the store and veered in a round-about way toward the barn.

And over in the milk-house Rose Mary stood in the long shaft of golden light that came across the valley and fell through the door, it would seem, just to throw a glow over the wide sheets of closely written paper. Rose Mary had been pale as she worked, and her deep eyes had been filled with a very gentle sadness which lighted with a flash as she opened the envelope and began to read.

"Just a line, Rose girl, before I put out the light and go on a dream hunt for you," Everett wrote in his square black letters. "The day has been long and I feel as if I had been drawn out still longer. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and there's no balm of Gilead in New York. I can't eat because there are no cornmeal m.u.f.fins in this howling wilderness of houses, streets, people and noise. I can't drink because something awful rises in my throat when I see cream or b.u.t.termilk, and sa.s.sarcak doesn't interest me any more. I would be glad to lap out of one of your crocks with Sniffie and the wee dogs.

"And most of all I'm tired to see you. I want to tell you how hard I am working, and that I don't seem to be able to make some of these stupid old gold backs see things my way, even if I do show it to them covered with a haze of yellow pay dust. But they shall--and that's my vow to--

"I wish I could kneel down by your rocking-chair with Stonie and hear Uncle Tucker chant that stunt about '_the hollow of His hand_.' Is any of that true, Rose Mamie, and are you true and is Aunt Viney as well as could be expected, considering the length of my absence? I've got the little Bible book with Miss Amanda's blush rose pressed in it, and I put my hand to my breast-pocket so often to be sure it is there and some other things--letter things--that the heat and friction of them and the hand combined have brought out a great patch of p.r.i.c.kly heat right over my heart in this sizzling weather. I know it needs fresh cold cream to make it heal up, and I haven't even any talc.u.m powder.

How's Louisa Helen and doth the widow consent still not at all? Tell Crabtree I say just walk over and try force of arms and not to--That force of arms is a good expression to use--literally in some cases.

Something is the matter with my arms. They don't feel strong like they did when I helped Uncle Tucker mow the south pasture and turn the corn chopper--they're weak and--and sorter useless--and empty. Tell Stonie he could beat me bear-hugging any day now. Has Tobe discovered any new adventure in aromatics lately, and can little Poteet sit up and take notice? Help, help, I'm getting so homesick that I'm about to cry and fall into the ink!

"Good night--with all that the expression can imply of moonlight coming over the head of old Harpeth, pouring down its sides, rippling out over the corn-fields and flooding over a tall rose girl thing who stands in the doorway with her 'nesties' all asleep in the dark house behind her--and if any man were lounging against the honeysuckle vine getting a last puff out of his cigar I should know it, and a thousand miles couldn't save him. I'm all waked up thinking about it, and I could smash--Good night!

M.E.

P.S. I don't think it at all square of you not to let Stonie sell me the little dogs. Women ought to keep out of business affairs between men."

And as she turned the last page, slipped it back into place and promptly began at the beginning of the very first one, Rose Mary's face was an exquisite study in what might have been ent.i.tled pure joy.

Her roses rioted up under her lashes, her rich lips curled like the half-blown bud between the flower of her cheeks, and her eyes shone like the two first stars mirrored in a woman's pool of life. Also it is one of the mysteries of the drama why a woman will scan over and over pages whose every letter is chiseled inches deep into her heart; and exactly one-half hour later Rose Mary was still standing motionless by her table, with the letter outspread in her hand.

And this was a very wonderful woman Old Harpeth had cradled in the hollow of His hand, nurtured on the richness of the valley and breathed into her with ever-perfumed breath the peace of faith--in G.o.d and man, for to any but an elemental, natural, faith-inspired woman of the fields would have come crushing, cruel, tearing doubts of the man beyond the hills who said so little and yet so much. However, Rose Mary was one of the order of fostering women whose arms are forever outheld cradle-wise, and to whose breast is ever drawn in mother love the child in the man of her choice, so her days since Everett's hurried departure had been filled with love and longing, with faith and prayers, but there had been not one shadow of doubt of him or his love for her all half-spoken as he had left it.

And added to her full heart had been burdens that had made her hands still fuller. She had gone on her way day by day pouring out the richness of her life and strength where it was so sorely needed by her feeble folk, with a song in her heart for him and them and to answer every call from along Providence Road. Thus it is that the motive power for the great cycles that turn and turn out in the wide s.p.a.ces between time and eternity, regardless of the wheels of men that whirl and buzz on broken cog with shattered rim, is poured through the natures of women of such a mold for the saving of His nations.

At last Rose Mary folded her letter, hesitated, and with a glint of the blue in her eyes as her lashes fell over a still rosier hint in her cheeks, she tucked it into the front of her dress and smoothed and patted the folds of her ap.r.o.n close down over it, then turned with praiseworthy energy to the huge bowl of unworked b.u.t.ter.

And it was nearly an hour later, still, that the Honorable Gid loomed in the doorway under the honeysuckle vines, a complacent smile arranged on his huge face and gallantry oozing from every gesture and pose.

"Why, Mr. Newsome, when did you come? How are you, and I'm glad to see you!" exclaimed Rose Mary all in one hospitable breath as she beamed at the Senator across her table with the most affable friendship. Rose Mary felt in a beaming mood, and the Honorable Gid came under the shower of her affability.

"Do have that chair by the door, and let me give you a gla.s.s of milk,"

she hastened to add as she took up a cup and started for the crocks with a still greater accession of hospitality. "Sweet or b.u.t.termilk?"

she paused to inquire over her shoulder.

"Either handed by you would be sweet" answered the Senator with praiseworthy ponderosity, and he shook out the smile veil until the very roots of his hair became agitated.

"Yes, Mr. Rucker says my b.u.t.termilk tastes like sweet milk with honey added," laughed Rose Mary, dimpling from over the tall jar. "He says that because I always pour cream into it for him, and Mrs. Rucker won't because she says it is extravagant. But I think a poet ought to have a dash of cream in his life, if just to make the poetry run smoother--and orators, too," she added as she poured half a ladleful of the golden top milk into the foaming gla.s.s in her hand and gave it to the Senator, who received it with a trembling hand and gulped it down desperately; for this once in his life the Honorable Gideon Newsome was completely and entirely embarra.s.sed. For many a year he had had at his command florid and extravagant figures of speech which, cast in any one of a dozen of his dulcet modulations of voice, were warranted to tell on even the most stubborn masculine intelligence, and ought to have melted the feminine heart at the moment of utterance, but at this particular moment they all failed him, and he was left high and dry on the coast of courtship with only the bare question available for use.

"Miss Rose Mary," he blurted out without any preamble at all, and drops of the sweat of an agony of anxiety stood out all over the wide brow, "I have been talking with Mr. Alloway, and I have come to you to see if we can't all get together and settle this mortgage question to the profit of all concerned. I lent him that money six years ago with the intention of trying to get you to be my wife just as soon as you recovered from your--your natural grief over the way things had gone with you and young Alloway. I have waited longer than I had any intention of doing, because I was absorbed in this political career I had begun on, but now I see it is time to settle matters, as the farm is running us all into debt, and I'm very much in need of you as a wife. I hope you see it in that light, and the marriage can't take place too soon to suit me. You are the handsomest woman in my district, and my const.i.tuents can not help but approve of my choice."

Something of the Senator's grandiloquence was returning to him, and he regarded Rose Mary with the pride of one who has appraised satisfactorily and is about to complete a proposed purchase.

And as for Rose Mary, she stood framed against the fern-lined dusk at the back of the milk-house like a naiad startled as she emerged from her tree bower. Quickly she raised her hand to her breast and just as quickly the pressure of the letter laying there against her heart sent a flood over her face that had grown pale and still, but she raised her head proudly and looked the Senator straight in the face with a questioning, hurt surprise.

"You didn't make the terms clear when you lent the money to us," she said quietly.

"Well," he answered, beginning to take heart at her very tranquil acceptance of the first bombardment, "I thought it best to let a time elapse to soothe your deceived affections and cure your humiliation.

For the time being I was content to enjoy culling the flowers of your friendship from time to time, but I now feel no longer satisfied with them, but must be paid in a richer harvest. We will take charge of this place, a.s.sure a comfortable future for the aged relatives in your care, and as my wife you will be both happy and honored." The Senator was decidedly coming into his own, and smile, glance and voice as he regarded Rose Mary were unctuous. In fact, through their slits his eyes shot a gleam of something that was so hateful to Rose Mary that she caught her breath with horror, and only the sharp corner of her letter pressed into her naked breast kept her from reeling. But in a second she had herself in hand and her quick mother-wit was aroused to find out the worst and begin a fight for the safeguarding of her nesties--and the nest.

"And if I shouldn't want to--to do what you want me to?" she asked, and she was even able to summon a smile with a tinge of coquetry that served to draw the wily Senator further than he realized.

"Oh, I feel sure you can have no objections to me that are strong enough to weigh against thus providing suitably for your old relatives," was the bait he dangled before her humiliated eyes. "It is the only way to do it, for Mr. Alloway is too old to care any longer for the place, which has been run at a loss for too long already. We may say that in accepting me you are accepting their comfortable future. Of course you could not expect things to go on any longer in this impossible way, as I have need of the home and family I am really ent.i.tled to, now could you?" The Senator bent forward and finished his sentence in his most beguiling tone as he poured the hateful glance all over her again so that her blood stopped in her veins from very fear and repulsion.

"No," she said slowly, with her eyes down on the bowl of b.u.t.ter on the table before her; "no, things couldn't go on as they have any longer. I have felt that for some time." She paused a second, then lifted her deep eyes and looked straight into his, and the wounded light in their blue depth was shadowed in the pride of the glance.

"You are right--you must not be kept out of your own any longer. But you will--will you give me just a little time to--to get used to--to thinking about it? Will you go now and leave me--and come back in a few days? It is the last favor I shall ever ask of you. I promise when you come back to--to pay the debt." And the color flooded over her face, then receded, to leave her white and controlled.

"I felt sure you would see it that way; immediately, immediately, my dear," answered the Senator, as he rose to take his departure. A triumphant note boomed in his big gloating voice, but some influence that it is given a woman to exhale in a desperate self-defense kept him from bestowing anything more than an ordinary pressure on the cold hand laid in his. Then with a heavy jauntiness he crossed the Road, mounted his horse and, tipping his wide hat in a conquering-hero wave, rode on down Providence Road toward Boliver.

And for a long, quiet moment Rose Mary stood leaning against the old stone table perfectly still, with her hand pressing the sharp-edge paper against her heart; then she sank into a chair and, stretching her arms across the cold table, she let her head sink until the chill of the stone came cool to her burning cheeks. So this was the door that was to be opened in the stone wall--she had been blind and hadn't seen!

And across the hills away by the sea he was tired and cold and hungry--with only a few hundred dollars in his pocket. He was discouraged and overworked, and a time was coming when she would not have the right to shelter his heart in hers. Once when he had been so ill, before he ever became conscious of her at all, his head had fallen over on her breast as she had tended him in his weakness--the throb of it hurt her now. And perhaps he would never understand. She couldn't tell him because--because of his poverty and the hurt it would give him--not to be able to help--to save her. No, he must not know until too late--and _never_ understand! Desperately thus wave after wave swept over her, crushing, grinding, mocking her womanhood, until, helpless and breathless, she was tossed, well nigh unconscious, upon the sh.o.r.e of exhaustion. The fight of the instinctive woman for its own was over and the sacrifice was prepared. She was bound to the wheel and ready for the first turn, though out under the skies, "_stretched as a tent to dwell in_," the cycle was moving on its course turned by the same force from the same source that numbers the sparrows.

"Rose Mary, child," came in a gentle voice, and Uncle Tucker's trembling old hand was laid with a caress on the bowed head before she had even heard him come into the milk-house, "now you've got to look up and get the kite to going again. I've been under the waters, too, but I've pulled myself ash.o.r.e with a-thinking that nothing's a-going to take _you_ away from me and them. What does it matter if we were to have to take the bed covers and make a tent for ourselves to camp along Providence Road just so we all can crawl under the flap together? I need nothing in the world but to be sure your smile is not a-going to die out."

"Oh, honey-sweet, it isn't--it isn't," answered Rose Mary, looking up at him quickly with the tenderness breaking through the agony in a perfect radiance. "It's all right, Uncle Tucker, I know it will be!"

"Course it's all right because it _is_ right," answered Uncle Tucker bravely, with a real smile breaking through the exhaustion on his face that showed so plainly the fight he had been having out in his fields, now no longer his as he realized. "Gid has got the right of it, and it wasn't honest of us to hold on at this losing rate as long as we did. There is just a little more value to the land than the mortgage, I take it, and we can pay the behind interest with that, and when we do move offen the place we won't leave debt to n.o.body on it, even if we do leave--the graves."