"Will I cross the fields of Elysium to gaze over the pearly ramparts?"
demanded Everett with boyish enthusiasm, if not a wholly accurate use of mythological metaphor. "Let"s cut supper and go on now! What do you say? Why wait?"
"I"m afraid," laughed Rose Mary as she prepared to close up the wide window and leave everything in shipshape for the night. "A woman oughtn"t to risk feeding a hungry man cold moonbeams instead of hot hoecake. Besides, I have to see everybody safely tucked in before I can leave. Aren"t they all a precious houseful of early-to-bed chickens? The old Sweeties have forgotten there is such a thing as the moon and Stonie hasn"t--found it out--yet." And with a mischievous backward glance, Rose Mary led the way up the lilac path to the Briars on top of the hill just as the old bell sounded two wobbly notes, their uncertainty caused by the rivalry of the General and Tobe over the pulling of the ropes.
And it was quite two hours later that she and Everett made their way across the barn-lot over to the broad, moss-covered Tilting Rock that jutted out from a little hackberry-covered knoll at the far end of the pasture.
"Now look--and smell in deep!" exclaimed Rose Mary excitedly as she pointed back to the Briars.
"Why--why!" exclaimed Everett under his breath, "it"s enchantment!
It"s a dream--am I awake?"
And indeed a very vision spread itself out before the wondering man.
The low roof and wide wings of the Briars, with the delicate traceries of vines over the walls and gables, shone a soft, old-brick pink in the glow of moonlight, and over and around it all gushed a very shower of shimmering white blossoms, surrounding the house like a mist around an early blooming rose. And as he looked, wave on wave of fragrance beat against Everett"s face and poured over his head.
"What is it?" he demanded breathlessly, as if dizzy from a too deep drinking of the perfume.
"Don"t you know? It"s the locust trees that have bloomed out since sunset!" exclaimed Rose Mary in as breathless a tone as his own. "For a week I have been watching and hoping they would be out in the full moon. They are so delicate that the least little cold wind sets them back days or destroys them altogether. I wanted them so very much this year for you, and I was so afraid you would notice them before we got over here where you could get the full effect. I promised you lilacs for being good, but this is just because--because--"
"Because what?" asked Everett quietly.
"Because I felt you would appreciate it," answered Rose Mary, as she sank down on the stone that still held a trace of the warmth from the sun, and made room for Everett beside her with one of her ever-ready, gracious little gestures. "And it"s lovely to have you here to look at it with me," she added. "So many times I have sat here alone with the miracle, and my heart has ached for the whole world to get the vision of it at least. I"ve tried sending my love of it out in little locust prayers to folks over the Ridge. Did you ever happen to get one any spring?"
"Last April I turned down a commission for a false test for the biggest squeeze-out copper people in the world, fifty thousand in it to me. I thought it was moral courage, but I know now it was just on account of the locusts blooming in Harpeth Valley at Sweetbriar. Do you get any connection?" he demanded lightly, if a bit unevenly.
"To think that would be worth all the loneliness," answered Rose Mary gently. "Things were very hard for me the first year I had to come back from college. I used to sit here by the hour and watch Providence Road wind away over the Ridge and nothing ever seemed to come or go for me. But that was only for a little while, and now I never get the time to breathe between the things that happen along Providence Road for me to attend to. I came back to Sweetbriar like an empty crock, with just dregs of disappointment at the bottom, and now I"m all ready every morning to have five gallons of lovely folks-happenings poured into a two-and-a-half-gallon capacity. I wish I were twins or twice as much me."
"Why, you have never told me before, Rose Mary, that you belong to the new-woman persuasion, with a college hall-mark and suffragist leanings. I have made the mistake of putting you in the home-guard brigade and cla.s.sing you fifty years behind your times. Don"t tell me you have an M.A. I can"t stand it to-night."
"No, I haven"t got one," answered Rose Mary with both a smile and a longing in her voice. "I came home in the winter of my junior year.
My father was one of the Harpeth Valley boys who went out into the world, and he came back to die under the roof where his fathers had fought off the Indians, and he brought poor little motherless me to leave with the aunts and Uncle Tucker. They loved me and cared for me just as they did Uncle Tucker"s son, who was motherless, too, and a few years after he went out into the world to seek the fortune he felt so sure of, I was given my chance at college. In my senior year his tragedy came and I hurried back to find Uncle Tucker broken and old with the horror of it, and with the place practically sold to avoid open disgrace. His son died that year and left--left--some day I will tell you the rest of it. I might have gone back into the world and made a success of things and helped them in that way, from a distance--but what they needed was--was me. And so I sat here many sunset hours of loneliness and looked along Providence Road until--until I think the Master must have pa.s.sed this way and left me His peace, though my mortal eyes didn"t see Him. And now there lies my home nest swung in a bower of blossoms full of the old sweetie birds, the boy, the calf, puppy babies, pester chickens and--and I"m going to take a large, gray, prowling night-bird back and tuck him away for fear his cheeks will look hollow in the morning. I"m the mother bird, and while I know He watches with me all through the night, sometimes I sing in the dark because I and my nesties are close to Him and I"m not the least bit afraid."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I hope you feel easy in your mind now"]
CHAPTER IV
MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOW
"I hope you feel easy in your mind, child, now you"ve put this whole garden to bed and tucked "em under cover, heads and all," said Uncle Tucker, as he spread the last bit of old sacking down over the end of the row of little sprouting bean vines. "When I look at the garden I"m half skeered to go in the house to bed for fear I haven"t got a quilt to my joints."
"Now, honey sweet, you know better than that," answered Rose Mary as she rose from weighting down the end of a frilled white petticoat with a huge clod of earth and stretched it so as to cover quite two yards of the green shoots. "I haven"t taken a thing of yours but two shirts and one of your last summer seersucker coats. I"m going to mend the split up the back in it for the wash Monday. Aunt Amandy lent me two ap.r.o.ns and a sack and a petticoat for the peony bushes, and Aunt Viney gave me this shawl and three chemises that cover all the pinks. I"ve taken all the tablecloths for the early peas, and Stonie"s shirts, each one of them, have covered a whole lot of the poet"s narcissus.
All the rest of the things are my own clothes, and I"ve still got a clean dress for to-morrow. If I can just cover everything to-night, I won"t be afraid of the frost any more. You don"t want all the lovely little green things to die, do you, and not have any snaps or peas or peonies at all?"
"Oh, fly-away!" answered Uncle Tucker as he tucked in the last end of a nondescript frill over a group of tiny cabbage plants, "there"s not even a smack of frost in the air! It"s all in your mind."
"Well, a mind ought to be sensitive about covering up its friends from frost hurts," answered Rose Mary propitiatingly as she took a satisfied survey of the bedded garden, which looked like the scene of a disorganized washday. "Thank you, Uncle Tucker, for helping me--keep off the frost from my dreams, anyway. Don"t you think--"
"Well, howdy, folks!" came a cheerfully interruptive hail from across the brick wall that separated the garden from the cinder walk that lay along Providence Road, which ran as the only street through Sweetbriar, and Caleb Rucker"s long face presented itself framed in a wreath of budding rose briars that topped the wall in their spring growth. "Tenting up the garden sa.s.s ag"in, Miss Rose Mary?"
"No, we"re jest giving all the household duds a mooning instead of a sunning, Cal," answered Uncle Tucker with a chuckle as he came over to the wall beside the visitor. "What"s the word along the Road?"
"Gid Newsome have sent the news as he"ll be here Sad"ay night to lay off and plow up this here dram or no-dram question for Sweetbriar voters, so as to tote our will up to the state house for us next election. As a state senator, we can depend on Gid to expend some and have notice taken of this district, if for nothing but his corn-silk voice and white weskit. It must take no less"n a pound of taller a week to keep them shoes and top hat of his"n so slick. I should jedge his courting to be kinder like soft soap and mola.s.ses, Miss Rose Mary." And Mr. Rucker"s smile was of the saddest as he handed this bit of gentle banter over the wall to Rose Mary, who had come over to stand beside Uncle Tucker in the end of the long path.
"It"s wonderful how devoted Mr. Newsome is to all his friends,"
answered Rose Mary with a blush. "He sent me three copies of the Bolivar _Herald_ with the poem of yours he had them print last week, and I was just going over to take you and Mrs. Rucker one as soon as I got the time to--"
"Johnnie-jump-ups, Miss Rose Mary, don"t you never do nothing like that to me!" exclaimed Mr. Rucker with a very fire of desperation lighting his thin face. "If Mis" Rucker was to see one verse of that there poetry I would have to plow the whole creek-bottom corn-field jest to pacify her. I"ve done almost persuaded her to hire Bob Nickols to do it with his two teams and young Bob, on account of a sciattica in my left side that plowing don"t do no kind of good to. I have took at least two bottles of her sasparilla and sorgum water and have let Granny put a plaster as big and loud-smelling as a mill swamp on my back jest to git that matter of the corn-field fixed up, and here you most go and stir up the ruckus again with that poor little _Trees in the Breeze_ poem that Gid took and had printed unbeknownst to me.
Please, mam, burn them papers!"
"Oh, I wouldn"t tell her for the world if you don"t want me to, Mr.
Rucker!" exclaimed Rose Mary in distress. "But I am sure she would be proud of--"
"No, it looks like women don"t take to poetry for a husband; they prefers the hefting of a hoe and plow handles. It"s hard on Mis"
Rucker that I ain"t got no const.i.tution to work with, and I feel it right to keep all my soul-squirmings and sech outen her sight. The other night as I was a-putting Petie to bed, while she and Bob was at the front gate a-trying to trade on that there plowing, a mighty sweet little verse come to me about
""The little shoes in mother"s hand Nothing like "em in the land,"
and the tears was in my eyes so thick "cause I didn"t have n.o.body to say "em to that one dropped down on Pete and made him think I was a-going to wash his face, and sech another ruckus as she had to come in to, as mad as hops! If I feel like it, I"m a-going to clean every weed outen the garden for her next week to try and make up to her for--"
"Aw, Mr. Rucker, M-i-s-t-e-r Rucker, come home to get ready for supper," came in a loud, jovial voice that carried across the street like the tocsin of a ba.s.s drum. The Rucker home sat in a clump of sugar maples just opposite the Briars, and was square, solid and unadorned of vine or flower. A row of bright tin buckets hung along the picket fence that separated the yard from the store enclosure, and rain-barrels sat under the two front gutters with stolid practicability, in contrast to the usual relegation of such store-houses of the rainfall to the back of the house and the planting of ferns and water plants under the front sprouts, as was the custom from the beginning of time in Sweetbriar. Mrs. Rucker in a clean print dress and with glossy and uncompromisingly smoothed hair stood at the newly whitewashed front gate. "Send him on home, Rose Mary, or gra.s.s"ll grow in his tracks and yours, too, if he can hold you long enough," she added by way of badinage.
"I"m a-coming, Sally, right on the minute," answered the poet-by-stealth, and he hurried across the street with hungry alacrity. The poem-maker was tall and loose-jointed, and the breadth of his shoulders and long muscular limbs decidedly suggested success at the anvil or field furrow. He made a jocular pa.s.s at placing his arm around the uncompromising waist-line of his portly wife, and when warded off by an only half-impatient shove he contented himself by winding one of her white ap.r.o.n strings around one of his long fingers as they leaned together over the gate for further parley with the Alloways across the road.
"When did you get back, Mrs. Rucker?" asked Rose Mary interestedly, as she rested her arms on the wall and Uncle Tucker planted himself beside her, having brushed away one of the long briar shoots to make room for them both.
"About two hours ago," answered Mrs. Rucker. "I found everybody in fine shape up at Providence, and Mis" Mayberry sent Mr. Tucker a new quinzy medicine that Tom wrote back to her from New York just day before yesterday. I made a good trade in hogs with Mr. Hoover for myself and Bob Nickols, too. Mr. Petway had a half-barrel of flour in his store he were willing to let go cheap, and I bought it for us and you-all and the Pot.e.e.t.s. Me and you can even up on that timothy seed with the flour, Mr. Tucker, and I"m just a-going to give a measure to the Pot.e.e.t.s as a compliment to that new Poteet baby, which is the seventh mouth to feed on them eighty-five acres. I"ve set yeast for ourn and your rolls for to-morrow, tell your Aunt Mandy, Rose Mary, and I brought that copy of the _Christian Advocate_ for your Aunt Viney that she lost last month. Mis" Mayberry don"t keep hern, but spreads "em around, so was glad to let me have this one. I asked about it before I had got my bonnet-strings untied. Yes, Cal, I"m a-going on in to give you your supper, for I expect I"ll find the children"s and Granny"s stomicks and backbones growing together if I don"t hurry.
That"s one thing Mr. Satterwhite said in his last illness, he never had had to wait--yes, I"m coming, Granny," and with the encomium of the late Mr. Satterwhite still unfinished Mrs. Rucker hurried up the front path at the behest of a high, querulous old voice issuing from the front windows.
"Well, there"s no doubt about it, no finer woman lives along Providence Road than Sallie Rucker, Marthy Mayberry and Selina Lue Lovell down at the Bluff not excepted, to say nothing of Rose Mary Alloway standing right here in the midst of my own sweet potato vines," said Uncle Tucker reflectively as he glanced at the retreating figure of his st.u.r.dy neighbor, which was followed by that of the lean and hungry poet.
"Yes, she"s wonderful," answered Rose Mary enthusiastically, "but--but I wish she had just a little sympathy for--for poetry. If a husband sprouts little spirit wings under his shoulders it"s a kind thing for his wife not to pick them right out alive, isn"t it? When I get a husband--"
"When you get a husband, Rose Mary, I hope he"ll hump his shoulders over a plow-line the number of hours allotted for a man"s work and then fly poetry kites off times and only when the wind is right,"
answered Uncle Tucker with a quizzical smile in his big eyes and a quirk at the corner of his mouth.
"But I"m going always to admire the kites anyway, even if they don"t fly," answered Rose Mary with the teasing lift of her long lashes up at him. "Maybe just a woman"s puff might start a man"s kite sky high that couldn"t get off right without it. You can"t tell."
"Yes, child," answered Uncle Tucker as he looked into the dark eyes level with his own with a sudden tenderness, "and you never fail to start off all kites in your neighborhood. When I took you as a bundle of nothing outen Brother John"s arms nearly thirty years ago this spring jest a perky encouraging little smile in your blue eyes started my kite that was a-trailing weary like, and it"s sailed mostly by your wind ever since--especially these last few years. Don"t let the breeze give out on me yet, child."
"It never will, old sweetie," answered Rose Mary as she took Uncle Tucker"s lean old hand in hers and rubbed her cheek against the sleeve of his rough farm coat. "Is the interest of the mortgage ready for this quarter?" she asked quietly in almost a whisper, as if afraid to disturb some listening ear with a private matter.
"It lacks more than a hundred," answered Uncle Tucker in just as quiet a voice, in which a note of pain sounded plainly. "And this is not the first time I have fallen behind with Newsome, either. The repairs on the plows and the food chopper for the barn have cost a good deal, and the coal bill was large this winter. Sometimes, Rose Mary, I--I am afraid to look forward to the end. Maybe if I was younger it would be different and I could pay the debt, but I am afraid--if it wasn"t for your aunts, looks like you and I could let it go and make our way somewhere out in the world beyond the Ridge, but they are older than us and we must keep their home as long as we can for "em. Maybe in a few years--Newsome won"t press me, I"m mighty sure. Do you think you can help me hold on for "em? I don"t matter."
"We"ll never let it go, Uncle Tuck, never!" answered Rose Mary pa.s.sionately as she pressed her cheek closer to his arm. "I don"t know why I know, but we are going to have it as long as they--and you, _you_ need it--and I"m going to die here myself," she added with a laughing sob as she shook two tears out of her lashes and looked up at him with adorning stars in her eyes.