The Red Rose and the Briar
ALL through April Judith's project of a play-party languished. She had to
pull steadily against the elders, for not only were the men hard at it
making ready for the putting in of the year's crops, but it was gardening
time as well, when even the women and children are pressed in to help at
the raking up and brush piling. Wood smoke from the clearing fires
haunted all the hollows. Everybody was preparing for the making of the
truck patch. Down on the little groups would drop a cloud and blot out
the bonfire till it became the mere glowing point at the heart of a
shaken opal--for if you are wise you burn brush on a rainy day.
Old Jephthah opposed the plan for the girl's festivity on another ground.
"I've got no objection to a frolic, Jude," he observed quietly, on
hearing the first mention of the matter, "but I wouldn't have no
play-party at this house. Hit's too handy to that cussed still of
Blatch's. A passel of fool boys is mighty apt to go over thar an' fill
theirselves up with corn whiskey, an' the party will just about end up in
a interruption."
He said no more, and Judith made no reply. Though ordinarily she would
have hesitated to go against her uncle's expressed wishes, her heart was
too much set on this enterprise to allow of easy checking. She made no
reply, but her campaign on behalf of the merrymaking went steadily on.
"I wonder you can have the heart to git up play-parties and the like when
Andy and Jeff's a-sufferin' in the jail," Pendrilla Lusk plucked up
spirit to say when the plan was first mooted to her.
Andy and Jeff, the wild young hawks, with the glamour upon them of
lawless, adventurous spirits, and bold, proper lovers, equally fascinated
and terrified the Lusk girls--timid, fluttering pair--and were in their
turn attracted to them by an inevitable law of nature.
"I don't see how it hurts the boys for us to have a dance," rejoined
Judith with asperity. "If we was all to set and cry our eyes out, it
wouldn't fetch 'em back on the mountain any quicker." Then with a teasing
flash, "I'll tell 'em when they git home what you said, though."
"Now, Jude, you're real mean," pleaded Cliantha Lusk sinking to her knees
beside Judith and raising thin little arms to clasp that young woman
around the waist. "You ain't a-goin' to tell them fool boys any sech
truck as that, air ye? Pendrilly jest said it for a sayin'. We'd love to
come to yo' play-party, whenever it is. I _say_ Andy and Jeff! Let 'em
git out of the jail the way they got in."
This is the approved attitude of the mountain virgin; yet Cliantha's
voice shook sadly as she uttered the independent sentiments, and
Pendrilla furtively wiped her eyes in promising to attend the
play-party.
All this was in April. By the time May came in, that dread of a belated
frost which amounts almost to terror in the farmer of the Cumberlands was
ended; the Easter cold and blackberry winter were over, and all the
garden truck was planted. Everybody began whole-heartedly to enjoy the
time of year. The leaves were full size, but still soft; the wind made
hardly any noise among them. In the pasture lot and fence corners near
the house, meadow flowers began to star the green. The frog chorus, so
loud and jubilant in early spring, had subsided now except at night, when
their treble was accompanied by the bass "chug-chug" of the bull-frogs.
The mornings were vocal with the notes of yellow hammer, cuckoos; the
cooing of doves, the squawk of the jay, and the drum of the big
red-headed woodpecker sounded through the summer woods; while always in
the cool of the day came the thrush's song. The early corn was in by mid
April. About the first full moon of May the main crop was planted.
Early in June Judith, walking in the wood, brought home the splendid red
wood lily, and a cluster too of "ratsbane," with its flowers like a
little crown of white wax.
The spring restlessness was over throughout all the wild country; life no
longer stirred and rustled; the leaves hung still in the long sunny
noons. The air was clear, rinsed with frequent showers; the woods were
silent except for birds and cow bells. The crops were laid by. The
huckleberries ripened; the "sarvices" hung thick in the forest. Even the
blackberries were beginning to turn and Andy and Jeff had been back at
home more than a week, when Judith finally succeeded in getting her
forces together and her guests promised. Many of them would have to walk
four or five miles to sing and play for a few hours, tramping back at
midnight to lie down and catch what sleep they could before dawn waked
them to another day of toil. Thursday evening was set for the event. On
Wednesday the Lusk girls coming in to discuss, found Judith with shining
eyes and crimson cheeks, attacking the simple housework of the cabin.
"I wish't you'd sing while I finish my churnin'," the girl said, "I'm so
flustered looks like I can't sca'cely do anything right."
The sisters clasped hands and raised their childish faces. Cliantha had a
thin, high piping soprano like a small flute, and Pendrilla sang
"counter" to it. They were repositories of all the old ballads of the
mountains--ballads from Scotland, from Ireland, from England, and from
Wales, that set the ferocities and the love-making of Elizabeth's time or
earlier most quaintly amidst the localities and nomenclature of the
Cumberlands.
"Sing 'Barb'ry Allen,'" commanded Judith as she swung the dasher with
nervous energy.
The July sunshine filtered through the leaves of the big muscadine vine
that covered and sheltered the tiny side porch. Bees boomed about the
ragged tufts of clover and Bouncing Bet that fringed the side yard. The
old hound at the chip pile blinked lazily and raised his head, then
dropped it and slumbered again. Within, the big room was dim and cool.
The high, thin, quavering voices celebrated the love and woe of cruel
Barbara Allen. Judith's dark eyes grew soft and brooding; the nervous
strokes of her dasher measured themselves more and more to the swing of
the old tune.
"I don't see how anybody can be hardhearted thataway with a person they
love," she said softly as the song descended to its doleful end.
The next morning Judith hurried her work that she might get through and
go over to the Bonbright house, there to put in execution her
long-cherished plan of cleaning it and making it fit for Creed's
occupancy that night. Old Dilsey Rust, their tenant, came in to help at
the Turrentine cabin always on occasions like this, or with the churning
or washing; and penetrated with impatience the girl finally left her
assistant in charge of matters and set forth through the woods and across
the fields, the little key which she had carried ever since that morning
in early April in her pocket like a talisman. At last it was to open her
kingdom to her. Behind the bolt that it controlled lay not only the home
of Creed's childhood, but supposably the home of his children. Judith's
heart beat suffocatingly at the thought.
Halfway across she met Huldah Spiller coming up from the Far spring with
a bucket of sulphur water which was held to be good for Jim Cal's
rheumatism.
"Whar ye goin'?" asked Huldah, looking curiously at the broom over
Judith's shoulder, the roll of cloths and the small gourd of soft soap
she carried.
"I'm a-goin' whar I'm a-goin'," returned Judith aggressively. But the
other only smiled. It did not suit her to be offended at that moment.
Instead, "What are you goin' to wear to-night, Judy?" she inquired
vivaciously. It was one of the advantages of waiting on table at a
boarding house in the settlement--pieced out perhaps by the possession of
red hair--that Huldah had the courage to address Judith Barrier as
"Judy."
The hostess of the evening's festivities was half in the mind to pass on
without reply; then her curiosity as to Huldah's costume got the better
of her, and she compromised, with a laconic,
"My white frock--what are you?"
"Don't you know I went down to Hepzibah after you said you was goin' to
have a play-party?" asked Huldah, tossing her head to get the red curls
out of her eyes. "Well, Iley had give me fifty cents on my wages--"
Huldah worked as a servant in her sister's family, which is not uncommon
in the mountains--"an' I tuck it and bought me ten yard of five-cent
lawn, the prettiest blue you ever put yo' eyes on."
"Blue!" A sudden shock went over Judith. She had forgotten; and here
Huldah Spiller would wear a blue dress, and she--oh, the stupidity, the
bat-like, doltish, blindness of it!--would be in white, because it was
now too late to make a change. Out of the very tragedy of the situation
she managed to pluck forth a smile.
"I was aimin' to wear blue ribbons," she said finally. It had just come
into her head that she could pull the blue bow from her hat--that blue
bow with which she had zealously replaced the despised and outcast
red--and so make shift.
"Blue's my best feller's favourite colour," contributed Huldah, picking
up the bucket which she had set down, and starting on. "He 'lows it goes
fine with aurbu'n hair."
"Wade never said that," muttered Judith to herself as she took her way to
the Bonbright place.
But after all one could not be long out of tune with such a summer day.
The spicy odour of pennyroyal bruised underfoot, came to her nostrils
like incense. Even the sickly sweet of jimson blossoms by the draw-bars
of the milking lot was dear and familiar, while their white trumpets
whispered of childish play-days and flower-ladies she had set walking in
procession under the shadow of some big green leaf. Blue--the soft stars
of spider-wort opening among the rocks reminded her of the hue; blue
curls and dittany tangled at the path edge; but the very air itself was
beginning to wear Creed's colour and put on that wonderful, luminous blue
in which the Cumberlands of midsummer melt cerulean into a sky of lapis
lazuli. Creed's colour--Creed's colour--her dark eyes misted as they
searched the far reaches of the hills and found it everywhere.
Jephthah Turrentine used to say that if a man owned enough mountain land
to set his foot on, he owned the whole of the sky above him; it was a
truer word than this old mountain dweller could have known, since the
mere possessor of a city lot, where other tall roofs cut the horizon
high, must content himself with less of the welkin.
Judith opened the door, went in, closed it behind her, and gazed about.
There lay over everything a fine dust; there was the look of decay which
comes with disuse; and the air bore the musty odour of a shut and long
uninhabited house. The Bonbright home had been a good one for the
mountains, of hewn logs, and with four rooms, and two great stone
chimneys. Inside was the furniture which Mary Gillenwaters brought to it
as a bride when her mountain lover came down to Hepzibah and with the
swift ardour of his tribe--this Bonbright's fires of eloquence were all
kindled upon the altar of his mating romance--charmed the daughter of its
one merchant. These added to the already fairly complete plenishings,
many of which had come over the mountains from Virginia when Sevier
opened up the new State, gave an air of abundance, even of sober elegance
to the room.
Reverently Judith moved among the dumb witnesses and servitors of
Bonbright generations. Here was the spinning-wheel, here the cards, and
out in the little room off the porch stood the loom. She had dreams of
replacing these with a sewing machine. Nobody wove jeans any more--but a
good carpet-loom now, _that_ might be made useful. Unwilling to hang the
bedding on bushes for fear of a chance tear from twig or thorn, she
rigged a line in the back yard, and spread quilt and homespun blanket,
coarse white sheets and pillowcases that were yellowing with age, out for
the glad gay wind to play with, for the sunshine to sweeten.
"What a lot of feather beds!" she murmured as she tallied them over.
"That there ticking is better than you can buy in the stores. My, ain't
these light and nice!"
All the warm, sunny afternoon she toiled at her self-appointed labour of
love. She swept and dusted, she scrubbed and cleaned, with capable
fingers, proud of the strength and skill that made her a good housewife;
then bringing in the fragrant, homely fabrics, made up the beds and
placed all back in due order.
"He's boun' to notice somebody's been here and put things to rights," she
said over and over to herself. "If it looks sightly, and seems like home,
mebbe he'll give out the notion of stayin' at Nancy Card's, and come and
live here." She brooded on the bliss of the idea as she worked.
Under the great mahogany four-poster in the front room was slipped a
trundle-bed that she drew out and looked at with fond eyes. No doubt
Creed's boyish head had lain there once. She wished passionately that she
had known him then, all unaware that we never do know our lovers when
they and we are children. Even those playfellows who are destined to be
mates find, all on a day, that the familiar companion who has grown up
beside each has changed into quite a different person.
She rolled the trundle-bed back into place and turned to lift a pile of
bedding that lay apparently on a chest. When it was raised it revealed
the clumsy old cradle that had rocked three generations of Bonbrights.
She stood looking down at it with quickening pulse, then reached a
fluttering hand and touched its small pillow tenderly. Here had rested
that golden head, so many years ago; beside it his mother had sat and
rocked. At the thought Judith was on her knees, her hands falling
naturally upon the side and rocking the small bed. In a strange conflict
of dreamy emotion, she swayed it back and forth a moment, and then--what
woman could resist it?--began to croon an old mountain cradle song.
Suddenly the westering sun got to the level of a half shrouded window and
sent a beam in across Judith's bent head.
"My land!" she whispered, getting to her feet. "I ain't got no call to
stay foolin' here all day. Dilsey'll jest about burn them cakes I told
her to bake, and I ain't fixed my blue bow for my hair yet."
She swept a glance around the speckless room, gathered up her
paraphernalia of cleaning, passed out, locked the door, and set her face
toward home.
In Mary Bonbright's garden, now given over to weeds as the gardens of
dead women are so apt to be, there had grown a singular, half wild rose.
This flower was of a clear blood red, with a yellow heart which its five
broad petals, flinging wide open, disclosed to view, unlike the crimped
and guarded loveliness of the more evolved sisters of the green-house.
Mowed down spring after spring by the scythe of Strubley, the renter, the
vigorous thing had spread abroad, and as Judith stepped from the door its
exultant beauty caught her eye. Flaming shields of crimson, bearing each
its boss of filagree gold, the hosts of the red rose stood up bravely in
the choking grass to which the insensate scythe blade had so often
levelled them, and shouted to the girl of love and joy, and of youth
which was the time for both. Wide petalled, burning red, their golden
hearts open to sun and bee, they were the blossoms for the earth-woman.
She ran and knelt down beside them.
He had said that his favourite colour was blue--but there are no blue
roses. She did not follow it far enough to guess that the man who was
content with the colour of the sky might not get his gaze down close
enough to earth to care for roses. She bent above them gloating on their
fierce, triumphant splendour. Was there ever such a colour? But the stems
were dreadfully short. A sudden purpose grew in her mind. With hasty,
tremulous fingers she gathered an apronful of the blossoms. Once more she
unlocked the front door, hurried back to that bed which she had so
lovingly spread, and on its white coverlet began arranging a great,
glowing wreath, fashioned by setting a circle of red roses petal to
petal.
As she worked Cliantha Lusk's ballad came into her head, and she sang it
under her breath.
"'And they grew and they grew to the old church top
Till they couldn't grow any higher,
And there they twined in a true lover's knot,
The red rose and the briar.'
"No--that ain't it--
"'And there they twined in a true lover's knot,
For all true lovers to admire.'"
True lovers--she crooned the word over and over. It was sweet to say it.
She thrilled through all her strong young body with the delight of what
she was doing.
"He'll wonder who put 'em there," she whispered to herself. "Ef nothin'
else don't take his eye, these here is shore to."