THE EXODUS
"Well, it just amounts to the whole of Sweetbriar a-rising up and
declaring of a war on Gid Newsome, and I for one want to march in the
front ranks and tote a blunderbuss what I couldn't hit nothing smaller
than a barn door with if I waster try," exclaimed Mrs. Rucker as she
waited at the store for a package Mr. Crabtree was wrapping for her.
"I reckon when the Senator hits Sweetbriar again he'll think he's
stepped into a nest of yellar jackets and it'll be a case of run or
swell up and bust," answered Mr. Crabtree as he put up the two boxes
of baking-powder for the spouse of the poet, who stood beside his wife
in the door of the store.
"Well," said Mr. Rucker in his long drawl as he dropped himself over
the corner of the counter, "looks like the Honorable Gid kinder fooled
along and let Cupid shed a feather on him and then along come somebody
trying to pick his posey for him and in course it het him up. You all
'pear to forget that old saying that it's all's a fair fight in love
and war."
"Yes, fight; that's the word! Take off his coat, strap his galluses
tight, spit on his hands and fight for his girl, not trade for her
like hogs," was the bomb of sentiment that young Bob exploded, much to
the amazement of the gathering of the Sweetbriar clan in the store.
Young Bob's devotion to Rose Mary, admiration for Everett and own
tender state of heart had made him become articulate with a vengeance
for this once and he spat his words out with a vehemence that made a
decided impression on his audience.
"That are the right way to talk, Bob Nickols," said Mrs. Rucker,
bestowing a glance of approval upon the fierce young Corydon, followed
by one of scorn cast in the direction of the extenuating-circumstances
pleading Mr. Rucker. "A man's heart ain't much use to a woman if the
muscles of his arms git string-halt when he oughter fight for her.
Come a dispute the man that knocks down would keep me, not the buyer,"
and this time the glance was delivered with a still greater accent.
"Shoo, honey, you'd settle any ruckus about you 'fore it got going by
a kinder cold-word dash and pass-along," answered the poet
propitiatingly and admiringly. "But I was jest a-wondering why Mr.
Alloway and Miss Rose Mary was so--"
"Tain't for nobody to be a-wondering over what they feels and does,"
exclaimed Mrs. Rucker defensively before the query was half uttered.
"They've been hurt deep with some kind of insult and all we have got
to do is to take notice of the trouble and git to work to helping 'em
all we can. Mr. Tucker ain't said a word to nobody about it, nor have
Rose Mary, but they are a-getting ready to move the last of the week,
and I don't know where to. I jest begged Rose Mary to let me have Miss
Viney and Miss Amandy. I could move out the melojion into the kitchen
and give 'em the parlor, and welcome, too. Mis' Poteet she put in and
asked for Stonie to bed down on the pallet in the front hall with Tobe
and Billy and Sammie, and I was a-going on to plan as how Mr. Tucker
and Mr. Crabtree would stay together here, and I knew Mis' Plunkett
would admire to have Rose Mary herself, but just then she sudden put
her head down on my knee, her pretty arms around me, and held on tight
without a tear, while I couldn't do nothing but rock back and forth.
Then Mis' Poteet she cried the top of Shoofly's head so soaking wet it
give her a sneeze, and we all had to laugh. But she never answered me
what they was a-going to do, and you know, Cal Rucker, I ain't slept
nights thinking about 'em, and where they'll move, have I?"
"Naw, you shore ain't--nor let me neither," answered the poet in a
depressed tone of voice.
"I mighter known that Miss Viney woulder taken it up-headed and
a-lined it out in the scriptures to suit herself until she wasn't deep
in the grieving no more, but little Mis' Amandy's a-going to break my
heart, as tough as it is, if she don't git comfort soon," continued
Mrs. Rucker with a half sob. "Last night in the new moonlight I got up
to go see if I hadn't left my blue waist out in the dew, which mighter
faded it, and I saw something white over in the Briar's yard. I went
across to see if they had left any wash out that hadn't oughter be in
the dew, and there I found her in her little, short old nightgown and
big slippers with the little wored-out gray shawl 'round her shoulders
a-digging around the Maiden Blush rose-bush, putting in new dirt and
just a-crying soft to herself, all trembling and hurt. I went in and
set down by her on the damp grass, me and my rheumatism and all, took
her in my arms like she were Petie, and me and her had it out. It's
the graves she's a-grieving over, we all a-knowing that she's leaving
buried what she have never had in life, and I tried to tell her that
no matter who had the place they would let her come and--"
"Oh, durn him, durn him! I'm a-going clear to the city to git old Gid
and beat the liver outen him!" exclaimed young Bob, while his
sunburned face worked with emotion and his gruff young voice broke as
he rose and walked to the door.
"I wisht you would, and I'll make Cal help you," sobbed Mrs. Rucker
into a corner of her apron. Her grief was all the more impressive, as
she was, as a general thing, the balance-wheel of the whole Sweetbriar
machinery. "And I don't know what they are a-going to do," she
continued to sob.
"Well, I know, and I've done decided," came in Mrs. Plunkett's soft
voice from the side door of the store, and it held an unwonted note of
decision in its hushed cadences. A deep pink spot burned on either
cheek, her eyes were very bright, and she kept her face turned
resolutely away from little Mr. Crabtree, over whose face there had
flashed a ray of most beautiful and abashed delight.
"Me and Mr. Crabtree were a-talking it all over last night while Bob
and Louisa Helen were down at the gate counting lightning-bugs, they
said. They just ain't no use thinking of separating Rose Mary and Mr.
Tucker and the rest of 'em, and they must have Sweetbriar shelter,
good and tight and genteel, offered outen the love Sweetbriar has got
for 'em all. Now if I was to marry Mr. Crabtree I could all good and
proper move him over to my house and that would leave his little
three-room cottage hitched on to the store to move 'em into
comfortable. They have got a heap of things, but most of 'em could be
packed away in the barn here, what they won't let us keep for 'em. If
Mr. Crabtree has got to take holt of my farm it will keep him away
from the store, and he could give Mr. Tucker a half-interest cheap to
run it for him and that will leave Rose Mary free to help him and tend
the old folks. What do you all neighbors think of it?"
"Now wait just a minute, Lou Plunkett," said Mr. Crabtree in a radiant
voice as he came out from around the counter and stood before her with
his eyes fairly glowing with his emotion. "Have you done decided
_yourself_? This is twixt me and you, and I don't want no Sweetbriar
present for a wife if I can help it. Have _you_ done decided?"
"Yes, Mr. Crabtree I have, and I had oughter stopped and told you, but
I wanted to go quick as I could to see Mr. Tucker and Rose Mary. He
gave consent immediately, and looked like Rose Mary couldn't do
nothing but talk about you and how good you was. I declare I began to
get kinder proud about you right then and there, 'fore I'd even told
you as I'd have you." And the demure little widow cast a smile out
from under a curl that had fallen down into her bright eyes that was
so young and engaging that Mr. Crabtree had to lean against the
counter to support himself. His storm-tossed single soul was fairly
blinded at even this far sight of the haven of his double desires, but
it was just as well that he was dumb for joy, for Mrs. Rucker was more
than equal to the occasion.
"Well, glory be, Lou Plunkett, if that ain't a fine piece of news!"
she exclaimed as she bestowed a hearty embrace upon the widow and one
almost as hearty upon the overcome Mr. Crabtree. "And you can't know
till you've tried what a pleasure and a comfort a second husband can
be if you manage 'em right. Single folks a-marrying are likely to gum
up the marriage certificate with some kind of a mistake until it
sticks like fly-paper, but a experienced choice generally runs smooth
like melted butter." And with a not at all unprecedented feminine
change of front Mrs. Rucker substituted a glance of unbridled pride
for the one of scorn she had lately bestowed upon the poet, under
which his wilted aspect disappeared and he also began to bloom out
with the joy of approval and congratulation.
"And I say marrying a widow are like getting a rose some other fellow
have clipped and thorned to wear in your buttonhole, Crabtree; they
ain't nothing like 'em." Thus poet and realist made acknowledgment
each after his and her own order of mind, but actuated by the
identical feeling of contented self-congratulation.
"I'm a-holding in for fear if I breathe on this promise of Mis'
Plunkett's it'll take and blow away. But you all have heard it spoke,"
said the merry old bachelor in a voice that positively trembled with
emotion as he turned and mechanically began to sort over a box of
clothespins, mixed as to size and variety.
"Shoo, Crabbie, don't begin by bein' afraid of your wife, jest handle
'em positive but kind and they'll turn your flapjacks peaceable and
butter 'em all with smiles," and Mr. Rucker beamed on his friend
Crabtree as he wound one of his wife's apron strings all around one of
his long fingers, a habit he had that amused him and he knew in his
secret heart teased her.
"Now just look at Bob tracking down Providence Road a-whistling like a
partridge in the wheat for Louisa Helen. They've got love's young
dream so bad they had oughter have sassaprilla gave for it," and the
poet cast a further glance at the widow, who only laughed and looked
indulgently down the road at the retreating form of the gawky young
Adonis.
"Hush up, Cal Rucker, and go begin chopping up fodder to feed with
come supper time," answered his wife, her usual attitude of brisk
generalship coming into her capable voice and eyes after their
softening under the strain of the varied emotions of the last half
hour in the store. "Let's me and you get mops and broom and begin on
a-cleaning up for Mr. Crabtree before his moving, Lou. I reckon you
want to go over his things before you marry him anyway, and I'll help
you. I found everything Cal Rucker had a disgrace, with Mr.
Satterwhite so neat, too." And not at all heeding the flame of
embarrassment that communicated itself from the face of the widow to
that of the sensitive Mr. Crabtree, Mrs. Rucker descended the steps of
the store, taking Mrs. Plunkett with her, for to Mrs. Rucker the state
of matrimony, though holy, was still an institution in the realm of
realism and to be treated with according frankness.
Meanwhile over in the barn at the Briars Uncle Tucker was at work
rooting up the foundations upon which had been built his lifetime of
lordship over his fields. In the middle of the floor was a great pile
of odds and ends of old harness, empty grease cans, broken
tools, and scraps of iron. Along one side of the floor stood the
pathetically-patched old implements that told the tale of patient
saving of every cent even at the cost of much greater labor to the
fast weakening old back and shoulders. A new plow-shaft had meant a
dollar and a half, so Uncle Tucker had put forth the extra strength to
drive the dull old one along the furrows, while even the grindstone
had worn away to such unevenness that each revolution had made only
half the impression on a blade pressed to its rim and thus caused the
sharpening to take twice as long and twice the force as would have
been required on a new one. But grindstones, too, cost cents and
dollars, and Uncle Tucker had ground on patiently, even hopefully,
until this the very end. But now he stood with a thin old scythe in
his hands looking for all the world like the incarnation of Father
Time called to face the first day of the new régime of an arrived
eternity, and the bewilderment in his eyes cut into Rose Mary's heart
with an edge of which the old blade had long since become incapable.
"Can't I help you go over things, Uncle Tucker?" she asked softly with
a smile shining for him even through the mist his eyes were too dim to
discover in hers.
"No, child, I reckon not," he answered gently. "Looks like it helps me
to handle all these things I have used to put licks in on more'n one
good farm deal. I was just a-wondering how many big clover crops I had
mowed down with this old blade 'fore I laid it by to go riding away
from it on that new-fangled buggy reaper out there that broke down in
less'n five years, while this old friend had served its twenty-odd and
now is good for as many more with careful honing. That's it, men of my
time were like good blades what swing along steady and even, high over
rocks and low over good ground; but they don't count in these days of
the four-horse-power high-drive, cut-bind-and-deliver machines men
work right on through God's gauges of sun-up and down. But maybe in
glory come He'll walk with us in the cool of the evening while they'll
be put to measuring the jasper walls with a golden reed just to keep
themselves busy and contented. How's the resurrection in the wardrobes
and chests of drawers coming on?" And a real smile made its way into
Uncle Tucker's eyes as he inquired into the progress of the packing up
of the sisters, from which he had fled a couple hours ago.
"They are still taking things out, talking them over and putting them
right back in the same place," answered Rose Mary with a faint echo of
his smile that tried to come to the surface bravely but had a
struggle. "We will have to try and move the furniture with it all
packed away as it is. It is just across the Road and I know everybody
will want to help me disturb their things as little as possible. Oh,
Uncle Tucker, it's almost worth the--the pain to see everybody
planning and working for us as they are doing. Friends are like those
tall pink hollyhocks that go along and bloom single on a stalk until
something happens to make them all flower out double like peonies. And
that reminds me, Aunt Viney says be sure and save some of the dry
jack-bean seed from last year you had out here in the seed press
for--"
"Say, Rose Mamie, say, what you think we found up on top of Mr.
Crabtree's bedpost what Mis' Rucker were a-sweeping down with a
broom?" and the General's face fairly beamed with excitement as he
stood dancing in the barn door. Tobe stood close behind him and small
Peggy and Jennie pressed close to Rose Mary's side, eager but not
daring to hasten Stonie's dramatic way of making Rose Mary guess the
news they were all so impatient to impart to her.
"Oh, what? Tell me quick, Stonie," pleaded Rose Mary with the
eagerness she knew would be expected of her. Even in her darkest
hours Rose Mary's sun had shone on the General with its usual
radiance of adoration and he had not been permitted to feel the
tragedy of the upheaval, but encouraged to enjoy to the utmost all its
small excitements. In fact the move over to the store had appealed to
a fast budding business instinct in the General and he had seen
himself soon promoted to the weighing out of sugar, wrapping up
bundles and delivering them over the counter to any one of the
admiring Swarm sent to the store for the purchase of the daily
provender.
"It were a tree squirrel and three little just-hatched ones in a
bunch," Stonie answered with due dramatic weight at Rose Mary's plea.
"Mis' Rucker thought it were a rat and jumped on the bed and hollowed
for Tobe to ketch it, and Peg and Jennie acted just like her, too,
after Tobe and me had ketched that mouse in the barn just last week
and tied it to a string and let it run at 'em all day to get 'em used
to rats and things just like boys." And the General cast a look of
disappointed scorn at the two pigtailed heads, downcast at this
failure of theirs to respond to the General's effort to inoculate
their feminine natures with masculine courage.
"I hollered 'fore I knewed what at," answered the abashed Jennie in a
very small voice, unconsciously making further display of the force of
her hopeless feminine heredity. But Peggy switched her small skirts in
an entirely different phase of femininity.
"You never heard me holler," she said in a tone that was skilful
admixture of defiance and tentative propitiation.
"'Cause you had your head hid in Jennie's back," answered the General
coolly unbeguiled. "Here is the letter we comed to bring you, Rose
Mamie, and me and Tobe must go back to help Mis' Rucker some more
clean Mr. Crabtree up. I don't reckon she needs Peg and Jennie, but
they can come if they want to," with which Stonie and Tobe, the
henchman, departed, and not at all abashed the humble small women
trailing respectfully behind them.
"That women folks are the touch-off to the whole explosion of life is
a hard lesson to learn for some men, and Stonie Jackson is one of that
kind," observed Uncle Tucker as he looked with a quizzical expression
after the small procession. "Want me to read that letter and tell you
what's in it?" he further remarked, shifting both expression and
attention on to Rose Mary, who stood at his side.
"No, I'll read it myself and tell you what's in it," answered Rose
Mary with a blush and a smile. "I haven't written him about our
troubles, because--because he hasn't got a position yet and I don't
want to trouble him while he is lonely and discouraged."
"Well, I reckon that's right," answered Uncle Tucker still in a
bantering frame of mind that it delighted Rose Mary to see him
maintain under the situation. "Come trouble, some women like to blind
a man with cotton wool while they wade through the high water and
only holler for help when their petticoats are down around their
ankles on the far bank. We'll wait and send Everett a photagraf of me
and you dishing out molasses and lard as grocer clerks. And glad to do
it, too!" he added with a sudden fervor of thankfulness rising in his
voice and great gray eyes.
"Yes, Uncle Tucker, glad and proud to do it," answered Rose Mary
quickly. "Oh, don't you know that if you hadn't seen and understood
because you loved me so, I would have felt it was right to do--to do
what was so horrible to me? I will--I will make up to you and them for
keeping me from--it. What do you suppose Mr. Newsome will do when he
finds out that you have moved and are ready to turn the place over to
him, even without any foreclosure?"
"Well, speculating on what men are a-going to do in this life is about
like trying to read turkey tracks in the mud by the spring-house, and
I'm not wasting any time on Gid Newsome's splay-footed impressions.
Come to-morrow night I'm a-going to pull the front door to for the
last time on all of us and early next morning Tom Crabtree's a-going
to take the letter and deed down to Gid in his office in the city for
me. Don't nobody have to foreclose on me; I hand back my debt dollar
for dollar outen my own pocket without no duns. To give up the land
immediate are just simple justice to him, and I'm a-leaving the Lord
to deal with him for trying to _buy_ a woman in her time of trouble.
We haven't told it on him and we are never a-going to. I wisht I could
make the neighbors all see the jestice in his taking over the land and
not feel so spited at him. I'm afraid it will lose him every vote
along Providence Road. 'Tain't right!"
"I know it isn't," answered Rose Mary. "But when Mrs. Rucker speaks
her mind about him and Bob chokes and swells up my heart gets warm. Do
you suppose it's wrong to let a friend's trouble heat sympathy to the
boiling point? But if you don't need me I'm going down to the
milk-house to work out my last batch of butter before they come to
drive away my cows." And Rose Mary hurried down the lilac path before
Uncle Tucker could catch a glimpse of the tears that rose at the idea
of having to give up the beloved Mrs. Butter and her tribe of
gentle-eyed daughters.
And as she stood in the cool gray depths of the old milk-house Rose
Mary's gentle heart throbbed with pain as she pressed the great cakes
of the golden treasure back and forth in the blue bowl, for it was a
quiet time and Rose Mary was tearing up some of her own roots. Her sad
eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley, which lay in a swoon with the
midsummer heat. The lush blue-grass rose almost knee deep around the
grazing cattle in the meadows, and in the fields the green grain was
fast turning to a harvest hue. Almost as far as her eyes could reach
along Providence Road and across the pastures to Providence Nob,
beyond Tilting Rock, the land was Alloway land and had been theirs for
what seemed always. She could remember what each good-by to it all had
been when she had gone out over the Ridge in her merry girlhood and
how overflowing with joy each return. Then had come the time when it
had become still dearer as a refuge into which she could bring her
torn heart for its healing.
And such a healing the Valley had given her! It had poured the
fragrance of its blooming springs and summers over her head, she had
drunk the wine of forgetfulness in the cup of long Octobers and the
sting of its wind and rain and snow on her cheeks had brought back the
grief-faded roses. The arms of the hearty Harpeth women had been
outheld to her, and in turn she had had their babies and troubles laid
on her own breast for her and their comforting. She had been mothered
and sistered and brothered by these farmer folk with a very
prodigality of friendship, and to-day she realized more than ever
with positive exultation that she was brawn of their brawn and built
of their building.
And then to her, a woman of the fields, had come down Providence Road
over the Ridge from the great world outside--the _miracle_. She
slipped her hand into her pocket for just one rapturous crush of the
treasure-letter when suddenly it was borne in upon her that it might
be that even that must come to an end for her. Stay she must by her
nest of helpless folk, and was it with futile wings he was breasting
the great outer currents of which she was so ignorant? His letters
told her nothing of what he was doing, just were filled to the word
with half-spoken love and longing and, above all, with a great
impatience about what, or for what, it was impossible for her to
understand. She could only grieve over it and long to comfort him with
all the strength of her love for him. And so with thinking, puzzling
and sad planning the afternoon wore away for her and sunset found her
at the house putting the household in order and to bed with her usual
cheery fostering of creaking joints and cumbersome retiring
ceremonies.
At last she was at liberty to fling her exhausted body down on the
cool, patched, old linen sheets of the great four-poster which had
harbored many of her foremothers and let herself drift out on her own
troubled waters. Wrapped in the compassionate darkness she was giving
way to the luxury of letting the controlled tears rise to her eyes and
the sobs that her white throat ached from suppressing all day were
echoing on the stillness when a voice came from the little cot by her
bed and the General in disheveled nightshirt and rumpled head rose by
her pillow and stood with uncertain feet on his own springy place of
repose.
"Rose Mamie," he demanded in an awestruck tone of voice that fairly
trembled through the darkness, "are you a-crying?"
"Yes, Stonie," she answered in a shame-forced gurgle that would have
done credit to Jennie Rucker in her worst moments of abasement before
the force of the General.
"Does your stomach hurt you?" he demanded in a practical though
sympathetic tone of voice, for so far in his journey along life's road
his sleep had only been disturbed by retributive digestive causes.
"No," sniffed Rose Mary with a sob that was tinged with a small laugh.
"It's my heart, darling," she added, the sob getting the best of the
situation. "Oh, Stonie, Stonie!"
"Now, wait a minute, Rose Mamie," exclaimed the General as he climbed
up and perched himself on the edge of the big bed. "Have you done
anything you are afraid to tell God about?"
"No," came from the depths of Rose Mary's pillow.
"Then don't cry because you think Mr. Mark ain't coming back, like
Mis' Rucker said she was afraid you was grieving about when she
thought I wasn't a-listening. He's a-coming back. Me and him have got
a bargain."
"What about, Stonie?" came in a much clearer voice from the pillow,
and Rose Mary curled herself over nearer to the little bird perched on
the edge of her bed.
"About a husband for you," answered Stonie in the reluctant voice that
a man usually uses when circumstances force him into taking a woman
into his business confidence. "Looked to me like everybody here was
a-going to marry everybody else and leave you out, so I asked him to
get you one up in New York and I'd pay him for doing it. He's a-going
to bring him here on the cars his own self lest he get away before I
get him." And the picture that rose in Rose Mary's mind, of the
reluctant husband being dragged to her at the end of a tether by
Everett, cut off the sob instantly.
"What--what did you--he say when you asked him about--getting the
husband--for you--for me?" asked Rose Mary in a perfect agony of mirth
and embarrassment.
"Let me see," said Stonie, and he paused as he tried to repeat
Everett's exact words, which had been spoken in a manner that had
impressed them on the General at the time. "He said that you wasn't
a-going to have no husband but the best kind if he had to kill
him--no, he said that if he was to have to go dead hisself he would
come and bring him to me, when he got him good enough for you by doing
right and such."
"Was that all?" asked Rose Mary with a gurgle that was well nigh
ecstatic, for through her had shot a quiver of hope that set every
pulse in her body beating hot and strong, while her cheeks burned in
the cool linen of her pillow and her eyes fairly glowed into the
night.
"About all," answered the General, beginning to yawn with the
interrupted slumber. "I told him your children would have to mind me
and Tobe when we spoke to 'em. He kinder choked then and said all
right. Then we bear-hugged for keeps until he comes again. I'm sleepy
now!"
"Oh, Stonie, darling, thank you for waking up and coming to comfort
Rose Mamie," she said, and from its very fullness a happy little sob
escaped from her heart.
"I tell you, Rose Mamie," said the General, instantly, again
sympathetically alarmed, "I'd better come over in your bed and go to
sleep. You can put your head on my shoulder and if you cry, getting me
wet will wake me up to keep care of you agin, 'cause I am so sleepy
now if you was to holler louder than Tucker Poteet I wouldn't wake up
no more." And suiting his actions to his proposition the General
stretched himself out beside Rose Mary, buried his touseled head on
her pillow and presented a diminutive though sturdy little shoulder,
against which she instantly laid her soft cheek.
"You scrouge just like the puppy," was his appreciative comment of
her gentle nestling against his little body. "Now I'm going to sleep,
but if praying to God don't keep you from crying, then wake me up,"
and with this generous and really heroic offer the General drifted off
again into the depths, into which he soon drew Rose Mary with him,
comforted by his faith and lulled in his strong little arms.