THE ENEMY, THE ROD AND THE STAFF
And the days that followed the Senator's prohibition rally at
Sweetbriar were those of carnival for jocund spring all up and down
Providence Road and out over the Valley. Rugged old Harpeth began to
be crowned with wreaths of tender green and pink which trailed down
its sides in garlands that spread themselves out over meadow and farm
away beyond the river bend. Overnight, rows of jonquils in Mrs.
Poteet's straggling little garden lifted up golden candlestick heads
to be decapitated at an early hour and transported in tight little
bunches in dirty little fists to those of the neighbors whose spring
flowers had failed to open at such an early date. In spite of what
seemed an open neglect, the Poteet flowers were always more prolific
and advanced than any others along the Road, much to the pride of the
equally prolific and spring-blooming Mrs. Poteet. And in a spirit of
nature's accord the white poet's narcissus showed starry flowers to
the early sun in the greatest abundance along the Poteet fence that
bordered on the Rucker yard. They peeped through the pickets, and who
knows what challenge they flung to the poetic soul of Mr. Caleb Rucker
as he sat on the side porch with his stockinged feet up on a chair and
his nose tilted to an angle of ecstatic inhalation?
Down at the Plunketts the early wistaria vine that garlanded the front
porch hung thick with long purple clusters which dropped continually
little bouquets of single blossoms with perfect impartiality on the
head of widow and maid, as the compromise of entertaining both young
Bob and Mr. Crabtree at the same time was carried out by Louisa Helen.
And often with the most absolute unconsciousness the demure little
widow allowed herself to be drawn by the wily Mr. Crabtree into the
mystic circle of three, which was instantly on her appearance
dissolved into clumps of two. And if the prodigal vine showered
blessings down upon a pair of clasped hands hid beside Louisa Helen's
fluffy pink muslin skirts nobody was the wiser, except perhaps Mr.
Crabtree.
And perched on the side of the hill the Briars found itself in a
perfect avalanche of blossoms. The snowballs hung white and heavy from
long branches, and gorgeous lilac boughs bent and swayed in the wind.
A clump of bridal wreath by the front gate was a great white drift
against the new green of a crimson-starred burning bush, while over it
all trailed the perfume-laden honeysuckle which bowered the front
porch, decorated trellis and trees and finally flung its blossoms down
the hill to well-nigh cloister Rose Mary's milk-house.
One balmy afternoon Everett brushed aside a spray of the pink and
white blossoms and stood in the stone doorway with his prospecting
kit in his hands. Rose Mary lifted quick welcoming eyes to his and
went on with her work with bowl and paddle. Everett had some time
since got to the point where it was well-nigh impossible for him to
look directly into Rose Mary's deep eyes, quaff a draft of the
tenderness that he always found offered him and keep equanimity enough
to go on with the affairs in hand. What business had a woman's eyes to
be so filled with a young child's innocence, a violet's shyness, a
passion of fostering gentleness, mirth that ripples like the surface
of the crystal pools, and--could it be dawning--love? Everett had been
in a state of uncertainty and misery so abject that it hid itself
under an unusually casual manner that had for weeks kept Rose Mary
from suspecting to the least degree the condition of his mind. There
is a place along the way in the pilgrimage to the altar of Love, when
the god takes on an awe-inspiring phase which makes a man hide his
eyes in his hands with fear of the most abject. At such times with her
lamp of faith a woman goes on ahead and lights the way for both, but
while Rose Mary's flame burned strongly, her unconsciousness was
profound.
"I'm so glad you came," she said with the usual rose signal to him in
her cheeks. "I've been wondering where you were and just a little bit
uneasy about you. Mr. Newsome has been here and wants to see you. He
stayed to dinner and waited for you for two hours. Stonie and Tobe and
all the others looked for you. I know you are hungry. Will you have a
drink of milk before I go with you to get your dinner I saved?"
"What did the Honorable Gid want?" asked Everett, and there was a
strange excitement in his eyes as he laid his hand quickly on a small,
irregular bundle of stones that bulged out of his kit. His voice had a
sharp ring in it as he asked his question.
"Oh, I think he just wanted to see you because he likes you,"
answered Rose Mary with one of her lifted glances and quick smiles. "A
body can take their own liking for two other people and use it as a
good strong rope just to pull them together sometimes. I'm awfully
fond of Mr. Newsome--and you," she added as she came over from one of
the crocks with Peter Rucker's blue cup brimming with ice cold cream
in her hand and offered it to Everett.
Instead of taking the cup from her Everett clasped his fingers around
her slender wrist in the fashion of young Petie and thus with her hand
raised the cup to his lips. And as his eyes looked down over its blue
rim into hers the excitement in them died down, first into a very deep
tenderness that changed slowly into a quiet determination which seemed
to be pouring a promise and a vow into her very soul. Something in the
strange look made Rose Mary's hand tremble as he finished the last
drop in the cup, and again her lovely, always-ready rose flushed up
under her long lowered lashes. "Is it good and cold?" she asked with
a little smile as she turned away with the cup.
"Yes," answered Everett quietly, "it's all to the good and the milk
to the cold."
"Is that a compliment to me and the milk, too?" laughed Rose Mary from
over by the table as she again took up her butter-paddle. "It's nice
to find things as is expected of them, women good and milk cold, isn't
it?" she queried teasingly.
"Yes," answered Everett from across the table.
"And any way a woman must be a comfort to folks, just as a rose must
smell sweet, because they're both born for that," continued Rose Mary
as she lifted a huge pat of the butter on to a blue saucer. "Men are
sometimes a comfort, too--and sweet," she added with a roguish glance
at him over the butter flower she was making.
"No, Rose Mary, men are just thorns, cruel and slashing--but sometimes
they protect the rose," answered Everett in his most cynical tone of
voice, though the excitement again flamed up in his dark eyes and
again his hand closed over the kit at his side. "Do you know what I
think I'll do?" he added. "I think I'll take old Gray and jog over to
Boliver for a while. I'll see the Senator, and I want to get a wire
through to the firm in New York if I can. I'll eat both the dinner and
supper you have saved when I come back, though it may be late before I
get my telegram. Will you be still awake, do you think?"
"I may not be awake, for Stonie got me up so awfully early to help him
and Uncle Tucker grease those foolish little turkeys' heads to keep
off the dew gaps, but I'll go to sleep on the settee in the hall, and
you can just shake me up to give you your supper."
"I'll do nothing of the kind, you foolish child," answered Everett.
"Go to bed and--but a woman can't manage her dreams, can she?"
"Oh, dreams are only little day thoughts that get out of the coop and
run around lost in the dark," answered Rose Mary, with a laugh. "I've
got a little bronze-top turkey dream that is yours," she added.
"Is it one of the foolish flock?" Everett called back from the middle
of the plank across the spring stream, and without waiting for his
answer he strode down the Road.
And the smile that answered his sally had scarcely faded off Rose
Mary's face when again a shadow fell across the plank and in a moment
Mr. Crabtree stood in the doorway. Across the way the store was
deserted and from the chair he drew just outside the door he could see
if any shoppers should approach from either direction.
"Well, Miss Rose Mary, I thought as how I'd drop over and see if you
had any buttermilk left in that trough you are fattening Mr. Mark at,
for the fair in the fall," he said with a twinkle in his merry little
blue eyes. And Rose Mary laughed with appreciation at his often
repeated little joke as she handed him a tall glassful of the desired
beverage.
"I'm afraid Stonie will get the blue ribbon from over his head if he
keeps on drinking so much milk. Did you ever see anybody grow like my
boy does?" asked Rose Mary with the most manifest pride in her voice
and eyes.
"I never did," answered Mr. Crabtree heartily. "And that jest reminds
me to tell you that a letter come from Todd last night a-telling me
and Granny Satterwhite about the third girl baby borned out to his
house in Colorado City. Looked like they was much disappointed. I
kinder give Todd a punch in the ribs about how fine a boy General
Stonewall Jackson have grown to be. I never did hold with a woman
a-giving away her child, though she couldn't have done the part you do
by Stonie by a long sight."
"Oh, what would I have done without Stonie, Mr. Crabtree!" exclaimed
Rose Mary with a deep sadness coming into her lovely eyes. "You know
how it was!" she added softly, claiming his sympathy with a little
gesture of her hand.
"Yes, I do know," answered the store-keeper, his big heart giving
instant response to the little cry. "And on him you've done given a
lesson in child raising to the whole of Sweetbriar. They ain't a child
on the Road, girl or boy, that ain't being sorter patterned after the
General by they mothers. And the way the women are set on him is plumb
funny. Now Mis' Plunkett there, she's got a little tin bucket jest to
hold cakes for nobody but Stonie Jackson, which he distributes to the
rest, fair and impartial. I kinder wisht Mis' Plunkett would be a
little more free with--with--" And the infatuated old bachelor laughed
sheepishly at Rose Mary across her butter-bowl.
"When a woman bakes little crisp cakes of affection in her heart, and
the man she wants to have ask her for them don't, what must she do?"
asked Rose Mary with a little laugh that nevertheless held a slight
note of genuine inquiry in it.
"Just raise the cover of the bucket and let him get a whiff," answered
Mr. Crabtree, shaking with amusement. "'Tain't no use to offer a man
no kind of young lollypop when he have got his mouth fixed on a nice
old-fashioned pound-cake woman," he added in a ruthful tone of voice
as he and Rose Mary both laughed over the trying plight in which he
found his misguided love affairs. "There comes that curly apple puff
now. Howdy, Louisa Helen; come across the plank and I'll give you this
chair if I have to."
"I don't wanter make you creak your joints," answered Louisa Helen
with a pert little toss of her curly head as she passed him and stood
by Rose Mary's table. "Miss Rose Mary, I wanter to show you this
Sunday waist I've done made Maw and get you to persuade her some about
it for me. I put this little white ruffle in the neck and sleeves and
a bunch of it down here under her chin, and now she says I've got to
take it right off. Paw's been dead five years, and I've most forgot
how he looked. Oughtn't she let it stay?"
"I think it looks lovely," answered Rose Mary, eying the waist with
enthusiasm. "I'll come down to see your mother and beg her to let it
stay as soon as I get the butter worked. Didn't she look sweet with
that piece of purple lilac I put in her hair the other night? Did she
let that stay?"
"Yes, she did until Mr. Crabtree noticed it, and then she threw it
away. Wasn't he silly?" asked Louisa Helen with a teasing giggle at
the blushing bachelor.
"It shure was foolish of me to say one word," he admitted with a
laugh. "But I tell you girls what I'll do if you back Mis' Plunkett
into that plum pretty garment with its white tags. I'll go over to
Boliver and bring you both two pounds of mixed peppermint and
chocolate candy with a ribbon tied around both boxes, and maybe some
pretty strings of beads, too. Is it a bargain?" And Rose Mary smiled
appreciatively as Louisa Helen gave an eager assent.
At this juncture a team driven down the Road had stopped in front of
the store, and from under the wide straw hat young Bob Nickols' eager
eyes lighted on Louisa Helen's white sunbonnet which was being flirted
partly in and partly out of the milk-house door. As he threw down the
reins he gave a low, sweet quail whistle, and Louisa Helen's response
was given in one liquid note of accord.
"Lands alive, it woulder been drinking harm tea to try to whistle a
woman down in my day, but now they come a-running," remarked Mr.
Crabtree to Rose Mary, as he prepared to take his departure in the
wake of the pink petticoats that had hurried across the street.
Then for another hour Rose Mary worked alone in the milk-house,
humming a happy little tune to herself as she pounded and patted and
moulded away. Every now and then she would glance down Providence Road
toward Boliver, far away around the bend, and when at last she saw old
Gray and her rider turn behind the hill she began to straighten things
preparatory to a return to the Briars. In the world-old drama of
creation which is being ever enacted anew in the heart of a woman, it
is well that the order of evolution is reversed and only after the
bringing together and marshaling of forces unsuspected even by herself
comes the command for light on the darkness of the situation. Rose
Mary was as yet in the dusk of the night which waited for the voice of
God on the waters, and there was yet to come the dawn of her first
day.
And in the semi-mist of the dream she finally ascended the hill toward
the Briars with a bucket in one hand and a sunbonnet swinging in the
other. But coming down the trail she met one of the little tragedies
of life in the person of Stonewall Jackson, who was dragging
dejectedly across the yard from the direction of the back door with
Mrs. Sniffer and all five little dogs trailing in his wake. And as if
in sympathy with his mood, the frisky little puppies were waddling
along decorously while Sniffer poked her nose affectionately into the
little brown hand which was hanging without its usual jaunty swing.
Rose Mary took in the situation at a glance and sank down under one of
the tall lilac bushes and looked up with adoring eyes as Stonie came
and took a spread-legged stand before her.
"What's the matter, honey-sweet?" she asked quickly.
"Rose Mamie, it's a lie that I don't know whether I told or not. It's
so curious that I don't hardly think God knows what I did," and the
General's face was set and white with his distress.
"Tell me, Stonie, maybe I can help you decide," said Rose Mary with
quick sympathy.
"It was one of them foolish turkey hens and Tobe sat down on her and
a whole nest of most hatched little turkeys. Didn't nobody know she
was a-setting in the old wagon but Aunt Amandy, and we was a-climbing
into it for a boat on the stormy sea, we was playing like. It was
mighty bad on Tobe's pants, too, for he busted all the eggs. Looks
like he just always finds some kind of smell and falls in it. I know
Mis' Poteet'll be mad at him. And then in a little while here come
Aunt Amandy to feed the old turkey, and she 'most cried when she found
things so bad all around everywhere. We had runned behind the
corn-crib, but when I saw her begin to kinder cry I comed out. Then
she asked me did I break up her nest she was a-saving to surprise
Uncle Tucker with, and I told her no ma'am I didn't--but I didn't tell
her I was with Tobe climbing into the wagon, and it only happened he
slid down first on the top of the old turkey. It don't _think_ like to
me it was a lie, but it _feels_ like one right here," and Stonie laid
his hand on the pit of his little stomach, which was not far away from
the seat of his pain if the modern usage assigned the solar-plexus be
correct.
"And did Tobe stay still behind the corn-crib and not come out to tell
Aunt Amandy he was sorry he had ruined her turkey nest?" asked Rose
Mary, bent on getting all the facts before offering judgment.
"Yes'm, he did, and now he's mighty sorry, cause Tobe loves Aunt
Amandy as well as being skeered of the devil. He says if it was Aunt
Viney he'd rather the devil would get him right now than tell her, but
if you'll come lend him some of my britches he will come in and tell
Aunt Amandy about it. He's tooken his off and he has to stay in the
corn-crib until I get something for him to put on."
"Of course I'll come get some trousers for Tobe and a clean shirt,
too, and I know Aunt Amanda will be glad to forgive him. Tobe is
always so nice to her and she'll be sorry he's sorry, and then it
will be all right, won't it?" And thus with a woman's usual shrinking
from meeting the question ethical, Rose Mary sought to settle the
matter in hand out of court as it were.
"No, Rose Mamie, I ain't sure about that lie yet," asserted the
General in a somewhat relieved tone of voice, but still a little
uneasy about the moral question involved in the case. "Did I tell it
or not? Do you know, Rose Mamie, or will I have to wait till I go to
God to find out?"
"Stonie, I really don't know," admitted Rose Mary as she drew the
little arguer to her and rested her cheek against the sturdy little
shoulder under the patched gingham shirt. "It was not your business to
tell on Tobe but--but--please, honey-sweet, let's leave it to God,
now. He understands, I'm sure, and some day when you have grown a big
and wise man you'll think it all out. When you do, will you tell Rose
Mamie?"
"Yes, I reckon I'll have to wait till then, and I'll tell you sure,
Rose Mamie, when I do find out. I won't never forget it, but I hope
maybe Tobe won't get into no more mess from now till then. Please come
find the britches for me!" And consoled thus against his will the
General followed Rose Mary to the house and into their room, eager for
the relief and rehabiting of the prisoner.
And in a few minutes the scene of the _amende honorable_ between
little Miss Amanda and the small boys was enacted out on the back
steps, well out of sight and hearing of Miss Lavinia. A new bond was
instituted between the little old lady, who was tremulous with
eagerness to keep the culprit from any form of self-reproach, and
Tobe, the unfortunate, who was one of her most ardent admirers at all
times. And it was sealed by a double handful of tea-cakes to both
offenders.
After she had watched the boys disappear in the direction of the barn,
intent on making a great clean-up job of the disaster under Miss
Amanda's direction, Rose Mary wended her way to the garden for a
precious hour of communion with her flowers and vegetable nursery
babies. She had just tucked up her skirts and started in with a light
hoe when she espied Uncle Tucker coming slowly up Providence Road from
the direction of the north woods. Something a bit dejected in his step
and a slightly greater stoop in his shoulders made her throw down her
weapon of war on the weeds and come to lean over the wall to wait for
him.
"What's the matter, old Sweetie--tired?" she demanded as he came
alongside and leaned against the wall near her. His big gray eyes were
troubled and there was not the sign of the usual quizzical smile. The
forelock hung down in a curl from under the brim of the old gray hat
and the lavender muffler swung at loose ends. As he lighted the old
cob his lean brown hands trembled slightly and he utterly refused to
look into Rose Mary's eyes. "What is it, honey-heart?" she demanded
again.
"What's what, Rose Mary?" asked Uncle Tucker with a slight rift in the
gloom. "They are some women in the world, if a man was to seal up his
trouble in a termater-can and swoller it, would get a button-hook and
a can-opener to go after him to get it out. You belong to that
persuasion."
"I want to be the tomato-can--and not be 'swollered'," answered Rose
Mary as she reached over and gently removed the tattered gray roof
from off the white shock and began to smooth and caress its brim into
something of its former shape. "I know something is the matter, and if
it's your trouble it's mine. I'm your heir at law, am I not?"
"Yes, and you're a-drawing on the estate for more'n your share of
pesters, looks like," answered Uncle Tucker as he raised his eyes to
hers wistfully.
"Is it something about--about the mortgage?" asked Rose Mary in the
gently hushed tone that she always used in speaking of this ever
couchant enemy of their peace.
"Yes," answered Uncle Tucker slowly, "it's about the mortgage, and I'm
mighty sorry to have to tell you, but I reckon I'll have to come to
accepting you from the Lord as a rod and staff to hobble on. I--I had
that settlement with the Senator this evening 'fore he left and it
came pretty nigh winding me to see how things stood. Instead of a
little more'n one hundred dollars behind in the interest we are mighty
near on to six, and by right figures, too. It just hasn't measured out
any year, and I never stopped to count it at so much. Gid was mighty
kind about it and said never mind, let it run, but--but I'm not
settled in my mind it's right to hold on like this; he maybe didn't
mean it, but before dinner he dropped a word about being mighty hard
pressed for money to keep up this here white ribbon contest he's
a-running against his own former record. No, I'm not settled in my
mind about the rights of it," and with this uneasy reiteration Uncle
Tucker raised his big eyes to Rose Mary in which lay the exact quest
for the path of honor that she had met in the young eyes of the
General not two hours before. In fact, Uncle Tucker's eyes were so
like Stonie's in their mournful demand for a decision from her that
Rose Mary's tender heart throbbed with sympathy but sank with dismay
at again having the decision of a question of masculine ethics
presented to her.
"I just don't know what to say, Uncle Tucker," she faltered, thus
failing him in his crisis more completely than she had the boy.
"The time for saying has passed, and I'm afraid to look forwards to
what we may have to do," answered Uncle Tucker quietly. "After Gid was
gone on up the road I walked over to Tilting Rock and sat down with my
pipe to think it all over. My eyes are a-getting kinder dim now, but
as far as I could see in most all directions was land that I had
always called mine since I come into a man's estate. And there is none
of it that has ever had a deed writ aginst it since that first Alloway
got it in a grant from Virginy. There is meadow land and corn
hillside, creeks for stock and woodlands for shelter, and the Alloways
before me have fenced it solid and tended it honest, with return
enrichment for every crop. And now it has come to me in my old age to
let it go into the hands of strangers--sold by my own flesh and blood
for a mess of pottage, he not knowing what he did I will believe, God
help me. I'm resting him and the judgment of him in the arms of Mercy,
but my living folks have got to have an earthly shelter. Can you see a
way, child? As I say, my eyes are a-getting dim."
"I can't see any other shelter than the Briars, Uncle Tucker, and
there isn't going to be any other," answered Rose Mary as she stroked
the old hat in her hand. "You know sometimes men run right against a
stone wall when a woman can see a door plainly in front of them both.
She just looks for the door and don't ask to know who is going to open
it from the other side. Our door is there I know--I have been looking
for it for a long time. Right now it looks like a cow gate to me," and
a little reluctant smile came over Rose Mary's grave face as if she
were being forced to give up a cherished secret before she were ready
for the revelation.
"And if the gate sticks, Rose Mary, I believe you'll climb the fence
and pull us all over, whether or no," answered Uncle Tucker with a
slightly comforted expression coming into his eyes. "You're one of the
women who knot a bridle out of a horse's own tail to drive him with.
Have you got this scheme already geared up tight, ready to start?"
"It's only that Mr. Crabtree brought word from town that the big
grocery he sells my butter to would agree to take any amount I could
send them at a still larger price. If we could hold on to the place,
buy more cows and all the milk other people in Sweetbriar have to sell
I believe I could make the interest and more than the interest every
year. But if Mr. Newsome needs the money, I am afraid--he might not
like to wait. It would be a year before I could see exactly how things
succeed--and that's a long time."
"Yes, and it would mean for you to just be a-turning yourself into
meat and drink for the family, nothing more or less, Rose Mary. You
work like you was a single filly hitched to a two-horse wagon now, and
that would be just piling fence rails on top of the load of hay you
are already a-drawing for all of us old live stock. You couldn't work
all that butter."
"Don't you know that love mixed in the bread of life makes it easy for
the woman to work a large batch for her family, Uncle Tucker?--and why
not butter? Will you talk to Mr. Newsome the next time he comes and
see what he thinks of the plan? I would tell him about it
myself--only I--I don't know why, but I don't--want to." Rose Mary
blushed and looked away across the Road, but her confusion was all
unnoticed by Uncle Tucker, who was busily lighting a second pipeful of
tobacco.
"Yes, I'll talk to him and Crabtree both about it," he answered
slowly. "I can't hardly bear the idea of your doing it, child, and if
it was just me I wouldn't hear tell of it, but Sister Viney and Sister
Amandy--moved they'd be like a couple of sprouts of their own
honeysuckle vine that you had pulled up and left in the sun to wilt.
Home was a place to grow in for women of their day, not just a-kinder
waiting shack between stations like it has come to be in these times
of women's uprising--in the newspapers."
"We don't get much new woman excitement out here in Harpeth Valley,
Uncle Tucker," laughed Rose Mary, glad to see him rise once more from
the depth of his depression to his usual philosophic level. "You
wouldn't call--er--er Mrs. Poteet a modern woman, would you?"
"Fly-away, Peggy Poteet is the genuine, original mossback and had
oughter be expelled from the sex by the confederation president
herself," answered Uncle Tucker as they both glanced down past the
milk-house where they saw the comely mother of the seven at her gate
administering refreshment in the form of bread and jam to all of her
own and quite a number of the other members of the Swarm, including
the General and the reclothed and shriven Tobe. "If there is another
Poteet output next April we'll have to report her," he added with a
laugh.
"But there never was a baby since Stonie like little Tucker," answered
Rose Mary in quick defense of the small namesake of whom Uncle Tucker
was secretly but inordinately proud.
"Yes, and I'm a-going to report you to the society of suppression of
men folks as a regular spiler, Rose Mary Alloway, if you don't keep
more stern than you are at present with me and Stonie, to say nothing
of all the men members of Sweetbriar from Everett clean on through
Crabtree down to that very young Tucker Poteet. You are one of the
women that feed and clothe and blush on men like you were borned a
hundred years ago and nobody had told you they wasn't worth shucks.
Are you a-going to reform?"
"I'll try when I get time," answered Rose Mary with a smile as she
bestowed both a fleeting kiss and the old hat on Uncle Tucker's
forelock over the wall. "Now I want to run in and make a few cup
custards, so I can save one for Mr. Mark when he gets home to-night.
He loves them cold. Little cooking attentions never spoil men, they
just nourish them. Anyway, what is a woman going to have left to do in
life if she sheds the hovering feathers she keeps to tuck her nesties
underneath?"