"General," said Everett as he held the child"s eyes with a straight level compelling glance, "you are right--she must have only the best.
And you "keep care" until he comes. I am going away to-night and I don"t know when I can come back, but you must always--always "keep care" of her--until the good man comes. Will you?"
"I will," answered the General positively. "And if anybody of any kind bothers her or any of them I"ll knock the stuffins outen "em, and Tobe"ll help. But say," he added, as if suddenly inspired by a brilliant idea, "couldn"t you look for him for me? You"d know the good kind of a man and you could bring him here. I would give you one of the spotted puppies to pay for the trouble," and a hot wave engulfed Everett as the trustful friendly young eyes looked straight into his as Stonie made this extremely practical business proposition.
"Yes, General, I will come and bring him to you, and when he comes he will be the best ever--or he will have died in the attempt."
"All right," answered Stonie, completely satisfied with the terms of the bargain, "and you can take your pick of the puppies. Are you going on the steam cars from Boliver?"
"Yes," answered Everett, "and I want to find your Uncle Tucker to ask him--"
"Well, here he is to answer all inquiries at all times," came in Uncle Tucker"s quizzical voice as he stood in the doorway of the barn with a bucket in one hand and a spade in the other. "Old age is just like a hobble that t.i.thers up stiff-jinted old cattle to the home post and keeps "em from a-roving. I haven"t chawed the rope and broke over to Boliver in more"n a month now. Did you leave Main Street a-running east to west this morning?"
"Yes," answered Everett, "still the same old Boliver. But I wanted to see you right away to tell you that I have had a wire from the firm that makes it necessary for me to get back to New York immediately. I must catch that train that pa.s.ses Boliver at midnight."
"Oh, fly away, you can"t pick up and go like that!" exclaimed Uncle Tucker with alarmed remonstrance. "Such a hurry as that are unseemly.
Good-byes oughter to be handled slowly and careful, like chiny, to save smashed feelings. Have you told Rose Mary and the sisters?"
"No; I"ve just come back from Boliver, and I couldn"t find Rose Mary, and Miss Lavinia and Miss Amanda had company. I must go on over to the north field while there is still light to--to collect some--some instruments I--that is I may have left some things over there that I will need. I will hurry back. Will--you tell them all for me?" As Everett spoke he did not look directly at Uncle Tucker, but his eyes followed the retreating form of the General, who, with the completed whip, the nodding baby and the two awakened puppies was making his way down Providence Road in the direction of the circus band. There was a strange controlled note of excitement in his voice and his hands gripped themselves around the handles of his kit until the nails went white with the strain.
"Yes, I"ll tell "em," answered Uncle Tucker with a distressed quaver coming into his voice as he took in the fact that Everett"s hurried departure was inevitable. "I"m sorry you have got to go, boy, but I"ll help you get off if it"s important for you. I"ll have them get your supper early and put up a snack for the train."
"I don"t want anything--that is, it doesn"t matter about supper. I--I will be back to see Miss Lavinia and Miss Amanda before they retire."
And Everett"s voice was quiet with a calmness that belied the lump in his throat at the very mention of the farewell to be said to the two little old flower ladies.
"I"ll go on and tell "em now," said Uncle Tucker with an even increased gloom in his face and voice. "Breaking bad news to women folks is as nervous a work as dropping a basket of eggs; you never can tell in which direction the lamentations are a-going to spatter and spoil things. I"ll go get the worst of the muss over before you get back."
"Thank you," answered Everett with both a laugh and a catch in his voice as they separated, he going out through the field and over the hill and Uncle Tucker along the path to the house.
And a little later Uncle Tucker found Rose Mary moving alone knee deep in the flowers and fruit of her beloved garden. For long moments she bent over the gray-green, white-starred bed of cinnamon pinks which sent up an Arabian fragrance into her face as she carefully threaded out each little weed that had dared rear its head among the white blossoms. As she walked between the rows the tall lilies laid their heads against her breast and kissed traces of their gold hearts on her hands and bare arms, while on the other side a very riot of blush peonies crowded against her skirts. Long trails of pod-laden snap beans tangled around her feet and a couple of round young squashes rolled from their stems at the touch of her fingers. She was the very incarnation of young Plenty in the garden of the G.o.ds, and she reveled as she worked.
"Rose Mary," said Uncle Tucker as he came and stood beside her as she began to train the clambering b.u.t.ter-bean vines around their tall poles, "young Everett has got to go on to New York to-night on the train from Boliver, and I told him you would be mighty glad to help him off in time. I"d put him up a middling good size snack if I was you, for the eating on a train must be mighty scrambled like at best.
We"ll have to turn around to keep him from being late." And it was thus broadside that the blow was delivered which shook the very foundations of Rose Mary"s heart and left her white to the lips and with hands that clutched at the bean vines desperately.
"When did he tell you?" she asked in a voice that managed to pa.s.s muster in the failing light.
"Just a little while ago, and the news. .h.i.t Sister Viney so sudden like it give her a bad spell of asthma, and Sister Amandy was sorter crying and let the jimson-weed smoke get in her mouth and choke her.
They are a-having a kind of ruckus, with n.o.body but Stonie helping "em put Sis" Viney to bed, so I reckon you"d better go in and see "em.
He"s gone over to the north field to get a hammer or something he left and will be back soon. Hurry that black pester up with the supper, I"m so bothered I feel empty," with which injunction Uncle Tucker left Rose Mary at the kitchen steps.
And it was a strenuous hour that followed, in which things were so crowded into Rose Mary"s hands that the fullness of her heart had to be ignored if she was to go on with them. After a time Miss Lavinia was eased back on her pile of pillows and might have dropped off to sleep, but she insisted on having her best company cap arranged on her hair and a lavender shawl put around her shoulders and thus in state take a formal leave of the departing guest--alone. And it was fully a half hour before Everett came out of her room, and Rose Mary saw him slip a tiny pocket testament which had always lain on Miss Lavinia"s table into his inside breast pocket, and his face was serious almost to the point of exhaustion. The time he had spent in Miss Lavinia"s room little Miss Amanda had busily occupied in packing the generous "snack," which Uncle Tucker hovered over and saw bestowed to his entire satisfaction with the traps Everett had strapped up in his room. Stonie"s large eyes grew more and more wistful, and after he and Uncle Tucker retired with their good-byes all said he whispered to Rose Mary that he wanted to say just one more thing to Mr. Mark.
Tenderly Everett bent over the cot until the blush rosebud that Miss Amanda had shyly pinned in his b.u.t.tonhole as her good-by before she had retired, brushed the little fellow"s cheek as he ran his arm under the st.u.r.dy little nightgowned shoulders and drew him as close as he dared.
"Say," whispered Stonie in his ear, "if you see a man that would buy Sniffer"s other two spotted pups I would sell "em to him. I want to get them teeth for Aunt Viney. I could get "em to him in a box."
"How much do you want for them?" asked Everett with a little gulp in his voice as his heart beat against the arm of the young provider a.s.suming his obligations so very early in life.
"A dollar a-piece, I guess, or maybe ten," answered Stonie vaguely.
"I"ll sell them right away at your price," answered Everett. "I"ll see that Mr. Crabtree has them packed and shipped." He paused for a moment. He would have given worlds to have taken the two little dogs with him and have left the money with Stonie--but he didn"t dare.
"And," murmured Stonie drowsily, "don"t forget that good man for Rose Mamie if you see him--and--and--" but suddenly he had drifted off into the depths, thus abandoning himself to the crush of a hug Everett had been hungry to give him.
And out in the starlit dusk he found Rose Mary sitting on the steps, freed at last, with her responsibilities all asleep--and before him there lay just this one--good-by.
Silently he seated himself beside her and as silently lit his cigar and began to puff the rings out into the air. In the perfect flood of perfume that poured around and over them and came in great gusts from the garden he detected a new tone, wild and woodsy, sweet with a curious tang and haunting in its alien and insistent note in the rhapsody of odors.
"There"s something new in bloom in your garden, Lady of the Rose?" he asked questioningly.
"Yes, it"s the roses on the hedges coming out; don"t they smell briary and--good? Just this last night you will be able to carry away with you a whiff of real sweetbriar. To-morrow the whole town will be in bloom. It is now I think if we could only see it." Rose Mary had gained her composure and the poignant wistfulness in her voice was but a part of the motif of the briar roses in the valley dusk.
"I"ll see it all right to-morrow and often. Sweetbriar--it"s going to blind me so that I won"t be able to make my way along Broadway.
Everything hereafter will be located up and down Providence Road for me." Everett"s voice held to a tone of quiet lightness and he bravely puffed his rings of smoke out on the breezes.
"Perhaps some day you"ll pa.s.s us again along the road to your Providence," said Rose Mary gently, and the wistful question was all that her woman"s tradition allowed her to ask--though her heart break with its pride.
"Some day," answered Everett, and underneath the quiet voice sounded a savage note and his teeth bit through his cigar, which he threw out into the dew-carpeted gra.s.s. Just then there came from up under the eaves a soft disturbed flutter of wings and a gentle dove note was answered rea.s.suringly and tenderly in kind.
"Rose Mary," he said as he turned to her and laid his hand on the step near her, "once you materialized your heart for me, and now I"m going to do the same for mine to you. Yours, you say, is an old gabled, vine-clad, dove-nested country house, a shelter for the people you love--and always kept for your Master"s use. It is something just to have had a man"s road to Providence lead past the garden gate. I make acknowledgement. And mine? I think it is like one of those squat, heathen, Satsuma vases, inlaid with distorted figures and symbols and toned in all luridness of color, into which has been tossed a poor sort of flower plucked from any bush the owner happened to pa.s.s, which has been salted down in frivolity--or perhaps something stronger.
I"ll keep the lid on to-night, for _you_ wouldn"t like the--perfume."
"If you"d let me have it an hour I would take it down to the milk-house and empty and scrub it and then I could use it to pour sweet cream into. Couldn"t you--you leave it here--in Uncle Tucker"s care? I--I--really--I need it badly." The raillery in her voice was as delicious and daring as that of any accomplished world woman out over the Ridge. It fairly staggered Everett with its audacity.
"No," he answered, coolly disapproving, "no, I"ll not leave it; you might break it."
"I never break the crocks--I can"t afford to. And women never break men"s hearts; they do it themselves by keeping a hand on the treasure so as to take it back when they want it, and so between them both it sometimes gets--shattered."
"Very well, then--the lid"s off to you--and remember you asked for--the rummage, Rose Mary," answered Everett in a tone as light as hers. Then suddenly he rose and stood tall and straight in front of her, looking down into her upraised eyes in the dusk. "You don"t know, do you, you rose woman you, what a man"s life can hold--of nothingness? Yes, I"ve worked hard at my profession and thrown away the proceeds--in a kind of--riotous living. Other men"s vast fortunes have been built on my brains, and my next year I"m going to enter as a penniless thirty-niner. When I came South three months ago I drew the last thousand dollars I had in bank, I have a couple of hundreds left, and that"s all, out of over twenty thousand made in straight fees from mineral tests in the last year. Yes--a bit of riotous living. It"s true about those poor flowers plucked off frail stems off frailer bushes--but--if it hadn"t been--a sort of fair play all around I wouldn"t stand here telling you about it, you in your hedge of briar roses. And now suddenly something has come into my life that makes me regret every dollar tossed to the winds and every cent burned in the fires--and in spite of it all I must make good. I"m going away from you and I don"t know what is going to happen--but as I tell you from now on my feet do not stray from Providence Road, my eyes will turn from across any distance to catch a sight of the crown of old Harpeth, and my heart is in your milk-house to be of any kind of humble use.
Ah, comfort me, rose girl, that I can not say more and that go I must if I catch my train." And he stretched out his hands to Rose Mary as she arose and stood close at his side, her eyes never leaving his and her lips parted with the quick breathing of her lifted breast.
"And you"ll remember, won"t you, when things go wrong, or you are tired, that the sunny corner in the old farm-house is yours? Always I shall be here in Harpeth Valley with my nest in the Briars, and because you are gone I"ll be lonely. But I won"t be in the least anxious, for whatever it is that calls you, I know you will give the right answer, because--because--well, aren"t you one of my own nesties, and don"t I know how strong and straight your wings can fly?"
CHAPTER VIII
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 pa.s.sing again."
"I never just light in pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sured that he was not self-deceived at this slight advance up the steep ascent of his road of true love.