UNCLE TUCKER'S TORCH
"And how do you do, Mr. Crabtree? Glad to see you, suh, glad to see
you again! How is all Sweetbriar? Any new voters since young Tucker,
or a poem or so in the Rucker family? And are you succeeding in
keeping the peace with Mrs. Plunkett for young Bob?" And firing this
volley of questions through the gently agitated smile-veil the
Honorable Gideon Newsome stood in the door of the store, large-looming
and jocular.
"Well, howdy, howdy, Senator, come right in and have a chair in the
door-breeze!" exclaimed Mr. Crabtree as he turned to beam a welcome on
the Senator from behind the counter where he was filling kerosene
cans. "We ain't seen you in most a month of Sundays, and I'm sure glad
you lit in passing again."
"I never just light in passing Sweetbriar, friend Crabtree," answered
the senator impressively. "I start every journey with a stop at
Sweetbriar in view, and it seems a long time until I make the haven I
assure you, suh. And now for the news. You say my friend, Mrs.
Plunkett, is enjoying her usual good health and spirits?"
"Well, not to say enjoying of things in general, but it do seem she
has got just a little mite of spirit back along of this here
bully-ragging of Bob and Louisa Helen. She come over here yesterday
and stood by the counter upwards of an hour before I could persuade
her to be easy in her mind about letting Bob take that frizzling over
to Providence to a ice-cream festibul Mis' Mayberry was a-having for
the church carpet benefit last night. After I told her I would put up
early, and me and her could jog over in my buggy along behind them
flippets to see no foolishness were being carried on, she took it more
easy, and it looked like onct and a while on the road she most come
to the point of enjoying her own self. But I reckon I'm just fooling
myself by thinking that though," and Mr. Crabtree eyed the Senator
with pathetic eagerness to be assured that he was not self-deceived at
this slight advance up the steep ascent of his road of true love.
"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 crap 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
glass of her buttermilk?"
"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 buttermilk.
The imagination of all true lovers is easily exercised about matters
pertaining to the tender passion, 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 god'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 muffins 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 buttermilk, and sassarcak
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 prickly 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 talcum 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 entitled 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 God
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 spaces
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 apron close down over it, then turned with
praiseworthy energy to the huge bowl of unworked butter.
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 glass 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 buttermilk?"
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 buttermilk 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 glass 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 embarrassed. 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 constituents 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, assure 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
entitled 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 butter 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 shore 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 ashore 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 nobody on it,
even if we do leave--the graves."
"Did he say--when--when he expected you to--give up the Briars?" asked
Rose Mary in a guarded tone of voice, as if she wanted to be sure of
all the facts before she told of the climax she saw had not been even
suggested to Uncle Tucker.
"Oh, no; Gid handled the talk mighty kind-like. I think it's better to
let folks always chaw their own hard tack instead of trying to grind
it up friendly for them, cause the swalloring of the trouble has to
come in the end; but Gid minced facts faithful for me, according to
his lights. I didn't rightly make out just what he did expect, only we
couldn't go on as we were--and that I've been knowing for some time."
"Yes, we've both known that," said Rose Mary, still suspending her
announcement, she scarcely knew why.
"He talked like he was a-going to turn the Briars into a kinder orphan
asylum for us old folks and spread-eagled around about something he
didn't seem to be able to spit out with good sense. But I reckon I was
kinder confused by the shock and wasn't right peart myself to take in
his language." And Uncle Tucker sank into a chair, and Rose Mary could
see that he was trembling from the strain. His big eyes were sunk far
back into his head and his shoulders stooped more than she had ever
seen them.
"Sweetie, sweetie, I can tell you what Mr. Newsome was trying to say
to you--it was about me. I--I am going to be his wife, and you and
the aunties are never, never going to leave the Briars. He has just
left here and--and, oh, I am so grateful to keep it--for you--and
them. I never thought of that--I never suspected such--a--door in our
stone wall." And Rose Mary's voice was firm and gentle, but her deep
eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley with the agony of all the ages in
their depths.
But in hoping to conceal her tragedy Rose Mary had not counted on the
light love throws across the dark places that confront the steps of
those of our blood-bond, and in an instant Uncle Tucker's torch of
comprehension flamed high with the passion of indignation. Slowly he
rose to his feet, and the stoop in his feeble old shoulders
straightened itself out so that he stood with the height of his young
manhood. His gentle eyes lost the mysticism that had come with his
years of sorrow and baffling toil, and a stern, dignified power shone
straight out over the young woman at his side. He raised his arm and
pointed with a hand that had ceased to tremble over the valley to
where Providence Road wound itself over Old Harpeth.
"Rose Mary," he said sternly in a quiet, decisive voice that rang with
the virility of his youth, "when the first of us Alloways came along
that wilderness trail a slip of an English girl walked by him when he
walked and rode the pillion behind him when he rode. She finished that
journey with bleeding feet in moccasins he had bought from an Indian
squaw. When they came on down into this Valley and found this spring
he halted wagons and teams and there on that hill she dropped down to
sleep, worn out with the journey. And while she was asleep he stuck a
stake at the black-curled head of her and one by the little, tired,
ragged feet. That was the measure of the front door-sill to the Briars
up there on the hill. Come generations we have fought off the Indians,
we have cleared and tilled the land, and we have gone up to the state
house to name laws and order. In our home we have welcomed traveler,
man and beast, and come sun-up each day we have worshipped at the
altar of the living God--but we've never sold one of our women yet!
The child of that English girl never leaves my arms except to go into
those of a man she loves and wants. Yes, I'm old and I've got still
older to look out for, but I can strike the trail again to-morrow,
jest so I carry the honor of my women folks along with me. We may fall
on the march, but, Rose Mary, you are a Harpeth Valley woman, and not
for sale!"