Chapter 6 THE ENEMY, THE ROD AND THE STAFF

And the days that followed the Senator's prohibition rally at Sweetbriar were those of carnival for jocund spring all up and down Providence Road and out over the Valley. Rugged old Harpeth began to be crowned with wreaths of tender green and pink which trailed down its sides in garlands that spread themselves out over meadow and farm away beyond the river bend. Overnight, rows of jonquils in Mrs.

Poteet's straggling little garden lifted up golden candlestick heads to be decapitated at an early hour and transported in tight little bunches in dirty little fists to those of the neighbors whose spring flowers had failed to open at such an early date. In spite of what seemed an open neglect, the Poteet flowers were always more prolific and advanced than any others along the Road, much to the pride of the equally prolific and spring-blooming Mrs. Poteet. And in a spirit of nature's accord the white poet's narcissus showed starry flowers to the early sun in the greatest abundance along the Poteet fence that bordered on the Rucker yard. They peeped through the pickets, and who knows what challenge they flung to the poetic soul of Mr. Caleb Rucker as he sat on the side porch with his stockinged feet up on a chair and his nose tilted to an angle of ecstatic inhalation?

Down at the Plunketts the early wistaria vine that garlanded the front porch hung thick with long purple clusters which dropped continually little bouquets of single blossoms with perfect impartiality on the head of widow and maid, as the compromise of entertaining both young Bob and Mr. Crabtree at the same time was carried out by Louisa Helen. And often with the most absolute unconsciousness the demure little widow allowed herself to be drawn by the wily Mr. Crabtree into the mystic circle of three, which was instantly on her appearance dissolved into clumps of two. And if the prodigal vine showered blessings down upon a pair of clasped hands hid beside Louisa Helen's fluffy pink muslin skirts nobody was the wiser, except perhaps Mr. Crabtree.

And perched on the side of the hill the Briars found itself in a perfect avalanche of blossoms. The snowballs hung white and heavy from long branches, and gorgeous lilac boughs bent and swayed in the wind. A clump of bridal wreath by the front gate was a great white drift against the new green of a crimson-starred burning bush, while over it all trailed the perfume-laden honeysuckle which bowered the front porch, decorated trellis and trees and finally flung its blossoms down the hill to well-nigh cloister Rose Mary's milk-house.

One balmy afternoon Everett brushed aside a spray of the pink and white blossoms and stood in the stone doorway with his prospecting kit in his hands. Rose Mary lifted quick welcoming eyes to his and went on with her work with bowl and paddle. Everett had some time since got to the point where it was well-nigh impossible for him to look directly into Rose Mary's deep eyes, quaff a draft of the tenderness that he always found offered him and keep equanimity enough to go on with the affairs in hand. What business had a woman's eyes to be so filled with a young child's innocence, a violet's shyness, a passion of fostering gentleness, mirth that ripples like the surface of the crystal pools, and-could it be dawning-love? Everett had been in a state of uncertainty and misery so abject that it hid itself under an unusually casual manner that had for weeks kept Rose Mary from suspecting to the least degree the condition of his mind. There is a place along the way in the pilgrimage to the altar of Love, when the god takes on an awe-inspiring phase which makes a man hide his eyes in his hands with fear of the most abject. At such times with her lamp of faith a woman goes on ahead and lights the way for both, but while Rose Mary's flame burned strongly, her unconsciousness was profound.

"I'm so glad you came," she said with the usual rose signal to him in her cheeks. "I've been wondering where you were and just a little bit uneasy about you. Mr. Newsome has been here and wants to see you. He stayed to dinner and waited for you for two hours. Stonie and Tobe and all the others looked for you. I know you are hungry. Will you have a drink of milk before I go with you to get your dinner I saved?"

"What did the Honorable Gid want?" asked Everett, and there was a strange excitement in his eyes as he laid his hand quickly on a small, irregular bundle of stones that bulged out of his kit. His voice had a sharp ring in it as he asked his question.

"Oh, I think he just wanted to see you because he likes you," answered Rose Mary with one of her lifted glances and quick smiles. "A body can take their own liking for two other people and use it as a good strong rope just to pull them together sometimes. I'm awfully fond of Mr. Newsome-and you," she added as she came over from one of the crocks with Peter Rucker's blue cup brimming with ice cold cream in her hand and offered it to Everett.

Instead of taking the cup from her Everett clasped his fingers around her slender wrist in the fashion of young Petie and thus with her hand raised the cup to his lips. And as his eyes looked down over its blue rim into hers the excitement in them died down, first into a very deep tenderness that changed slowly into a quiet determination which seemed to be pouring a promise and a vow into her very soul. Something in the strange look made Rose Mary's hand tremble as he finished the last drop in the cup, and again her lovely, always-ready rose flushed up under her long lowered lashes. "Is it good and cold?" she asked with a little smile as she turned away with the cup.

"Yes," answered Everett quietly, "it's all to the good and the milk to the cold."

"Is that a compliment to me and the milk, too?" laughed Rose Mary from over by the table as she again took up her butter-paddle. "It's nice to find things as is expected of them, women good and milk cold, isn't it?" she queried teasingly.

"Yes," answered Everett from across the table.

"And any way a woman must be a comfort to folks, just as a rose must smell sweet, because they're both born for that," continued Rose Mary as she lifted a huge pat of the butter on to a blue saucer. "Men are sometimes a comfort, too-and sweet," she added with a roguish glance at him over the butter flower she was making.

"No, Rose Mary, men are just thorns, cruel and slashing-but sometimes they protect the rose," answered Everett in his most cynical tone of voice, though the excitement again flamed up in his dark eyes and again his hand closed over the kit at his side. "Do you know what I think I'll do?" he added. "I think I'll take old Gray and jog over to Boliver for a while. I'll see the Senator, and I want to get a wire through to the firm in New York if I can. I'll eat both the dinner and supper you have saved when I come back, though it may be late before I get my telegram. Will you be still awake, do you think?"

"I may not be awake, for Stonie got me up so awfully early to help him and Uncle Tucker grease those foolish little turkeys' heads to keep off the dew gaps, but I'll go to sleep on the settee in the hall, and you can just shake me up to give you your supper."

"I'll do nothing of the kind, you foolish child," answered Everett. "Go to bed and-but a woman can't manage her dreams, can she?"

"Oh, dreams are only little day thoughts that get out of the coop and run around lost in the dark," answered Rose Mary, with a laugh. "I've got a little bronze-top turkey dream that is yours," she added.

"Is it one of the foolish flock?" Everett called back from the middle of the plank across the spring stream, and without waiting for his answer he strode down the Road.

And the smile that answered his sally had scarcely faded off Rose Mary's face when again a shadow fell across the plank and in a moment Mr. Crabtree stood in the doorway. Across the way the store was deserted and from the chair he drew just outside the door he could see if any shoppers should approach from either direction.

"Well, Miss Rose Mary, I thought as how I'd drop over and see if you had any buttermilk left in that trough you are fattening Mr. Mark at, for the fair in the fall," he said with a twinkle in his merry little blue eyes. And Rose Mary laughed with appreciation at his often repeated little joke as she handed him a tall glassful of the desired beverage.

"I'm afraid Stonie will get the blue ribbon from over his head if he keeps on drinking so much milk. Did you ever see anybody grow like my boy does?" asked Rose Mary with the most manifest pride in her voice and eyes.

"I never did," answered Mr. Crabtree heartily. "And that jest reminds me to tell you that a letter come from Todd last night a-telling me and Granny Satterwhite about the third girl baby borned out to his house in Colorado City. Looked like they was much disappointed. I kinder give Todd a punch in the ribs about how fine a boy General Stonewall Jackson have grown to be. I never did hold with a woman a-giving away her child, though she couldn't have done the part you do by Stonie by a long sight."

"Oh, what would I have done without Stonie, Mr. Crabtree!" exclaimed Rose Mary with a deep sadness coming into her lovely eyes. "You know how it was!" she added softly, claiming his sympathy with a little gesture of her hand.

"Yes, I do know," answered the store-keeper, his big heart giving instant response to the little cry. "And on him you've done given a lesson in child raising to the whole of Sweetbriar. They ain't a child on the Road, girl or boy, that ain't being sorter patterned after the General by they mothers. And the way the women are set on him is plumb funny. Now Mis' Plunkett there, she's got a little tin bucket jest to hold cakes for nobody but Stonie Jackson, which he distributes to the rest, fair and impartial. I kinder wisht Mis' Plunkett would be a little more free with-with-" And the infatuated old bachelor laughed sheepishly at Rose Mary across her butter-bowl.

"When a woman bakes little crisp cakes of affection in her heart, and the man she wants to have ask her for them don't, what must she do?" asked Rose Mary with a little laugh that nevertheless held a slight note of genuine inquiry in it.

"Just raise the cover of the bucket and let him get a whiff," answered Mr. Crabtree, shaking with amusement. "'Tain't no use to offer a man no kind of young lollypop when he have got his mouth fixed on a nice old-fashioned pound-cake woman," he added in a ruthful tone of voice as he and Rose Mary both laughed over the trying plight in which he found his misguided love affairs. "There comes that curly apple puff now. Howdy, Louisa Helen; come across the plank and I'll give you this chair if I have to."

"I don't wanter make you creak your joints," answered Louisa Helen with a pert little toss of her curly head as she passed him and stood by Rose Mary's table. "Miss Rose Mary, I wanter to show you this Sunday waist I've done made Maw and get you to persuade her some about it for me. I put this little white ruffle in the neck and sleeves and a bunch of it down here under her chin, and now she says I've got to take it right off. Paw's been dead five years, and I've most forgot how he looked. Oughtn't she let it stay?"

"I think it looks lovely," answered Rose Mary, eying the waist with enthusiasm. "I'll come down to see your mother and beg her to let it stay as soon as I get the butter worked. Didn't she look sweet with that piece of purple lilac I put in her hair the other night? Did she let that stay?"

"Yes, she did until Mr. Crabtree noticed it, and then she threw it away. Wasn't he silly?" asked Louisa Helen with a teasing giggle at the blushing bachelor.

"It shure was foolish of me to say one word," he admitted with a laugh. "But I tell you girls what I'll do if you back Mis' Plunkett into that plum pretty garment with its white tags. I'll go over to Boliver and bring you both two pounds of mixed peppermint and chocolate candy with a ribbon tied around both boxes, and maybe some pretty strings of beads, too. Is it a bargain?" And Rose Mary smiled appreciatively as Louisa Helen gave an eager assent.

At this juncture a team driven down the Road had stopped in front of the store, and from under the wide straw hat young Bob Nickols' eager eyes lighted on Louisa Helen's white sunbonnet which was being flirted partly in and partly out of the milk-house door. As he threw down the reins he gave a low, sweet quail whistle, and Louisa Helen's response was given in one liquid note of accord.

"Lands alive, it woulder been drinking harm tea to try to whistle a woman down in my day, but now they come a-running," remarked Mr. Crabtree to Rose Mary, as he prepared to take his departure in the wake of the pink petticoats that had hurried across the street.

Then for another hour Rose Mary worked alone in the milk-house, humming a happy little tune to herself as she pounded and patted and moulded away. Every now and then she would glance down Providence Road toward Boliver, far away around the bend, and when at last she saw old Gray and her rider turn behind the hill she began to straighten things preparatory to a return to the Briars. In the world-old drama of creation which is being ever enacted anew in the heart of a woman, it is well that the order of evolution is reversed and only after the bringing together and marshaling of forces unsuspected even by herself comes the command for light on the darkness of the situation. Rose Mary was as yet in the dusk of the night which waited for the voice of God on the waters, and there was yet to come the dawn of her first day.

And in the semi-mist of the dream she finally ascended the hill toward the Briars with a bucket in one hand and a sunbonnet swinging in the other. But coming down the trail she met one of the little tragedies of life in the person of Stonewall Jackson, who was dragging dejectedly across the yard from the direction of the back door with Mrs. Sniffer and all five little dogs trailing in his wake. And as if in sympathy with his mood, the frisky little puppies were waddling along decorously while Sniffer poked her nose affectionately into the little brown hand which was hanging without its usual jaunty swing. Rose Mary took in the situation at a glance and sank down under one of the tall lilac bushes and looked up with adoring eyes as Stonie came and took a spread-legged stand before her.

"What's the matter, honey-sweet?" she asked quickly.

"Rose Mamie, it's a lie that I don't know whether I told or not. It's so curious that I don't hardly think God knows what I did," and the General's face was set and white with his distress.

"Tell me, Stonie, maybe I can help you decide," said Rose Mary with quick sympathy.

"It was one of them foolish turkey hens and Tobe sat down on her and a whole nest of most hatched little turkeys. Didn't nobody know she was a-setting in the old wagon but Aunt Amandy, and we was a-climbing into it for a boat on the stormy sea, we was playing like. It was mighty bad on Tobe's pants, too, for he busted all the eggs. Looks like he just always finds some kind of smell and falls in it. I know Mis' Poteet'll be mad at him. And then in a little while here come Aunt Amandy to feed the old turkey, and she 'most cried when she found things so bad all around everywhere. We had runned behind the corn-crib, but when I saw her begin to kinder cry I comed out. Then she asked me did I break up her nest she was a-saving to surprise Uncle Tucker with, and I told her no ma'am I didn't-but I didn't tell her I was with Tobe climbing into the wagon, and it only happened he slid down first on the top of the old turkey. It don't think like to me it was a lie, but it feels like one right here," and Stonie laid his hand on the pit of his little stomach, which was not far away from the seat of his pain if the modern usage assigned the solar-plexus be correct.

"And did Tobe stay still behind the corn-crib and not come out to tell Aunt Amandy he was sorry he had ruined her turkey nest?" asked Rose Mary, bent on getting all the facts before offering judgment.

"Yes'm, he did, and now he's mighty sorry, cause Tobe loves Aunt Amandy as well as being skeered of the devil. He says if it was Aunt Viney he'd rather the devil would get him right now than tell her, but if you'll come lend him some of my britches he will come in and tell Aunt Amandy about it. He's tooken his off and he has to stay in the corn-crib until I get something for him to put on."

"Of course I'll come get some trousers for Tobe and a clean shirt, too, and I know Aunt Amanda will be glad to forgive him. Tobe is always so nice to her and she'll be sorry he's sorry, and then it will be all right, won't it?" And thus with a woman's usual shrinking from meeting the question ethical, Rose Mary sought to settle the matter in hand out of court as it were.

"No, Rose Mamie, I ain't sure about that lie yet," asserted the General in a somewhat relieved tone of voice, but still a little uneasy about the moral question involved in the case. "Did I tell it or not? Do you know, Rose Mamie, or will I have to wait till I go to God to find out?"

"Stonie, I really don't know," admitted Rose Mary as she drew the little arguer to her and rested her cheek against the sturdy little shoulder under the patched gingham shirt. "It was not your business to tell on Tobe but-but-please, honey-sweet, let's leave it to God, now. He understands, I'm sure, and some day when you have grown a big and wise man you'll think it all out. When you do, will you tell Rose Mamie?"

"Yes, I reckon I'll have to wait till then, and I'll tell you sure, Rose Mamie, when I do find out. I won't never forget it, but I hope maybe Tobe won't get into no more mess from now till then. Please come find the britches for me!" And consoled thus against his will the General followed Rose Mary to the house and into their room, eager for the relief and rehabiting of the prisoner.

And in a few minutes the scene of the amende honorable between little Miss Amanda and the small boys was enacted out on the back steps, well out of sight and hearing of Miss Lavinia. A new bond was instituted between the little old lady, who was tremulous with eagerness to keep the culprit from any form of self-reproach, and Tobe, the unfortunate, who was one of her most ardent admirers at all times. And it was sealed by a double handful of tea-cakes to both offenders.

After she had watched the boys disappear in the direction of the barn, intent on making a great clean-up job of the disaster under Miss Amanda's direction, Rose Mary wended her way to the garden for a precious hour of communion with her flowers and vegetable nursery babies. She had just tucked up her skirts and started in with a light hoe when she espied Uncle Tucker coming slowly up Providence Road from the direction of the north woods. Something a bit dejected in his step and a slightly greater stoop in his shoulders made her throw down her weapon of war on the weeds and come to lean over the wall to wait for him.

"What's the matter, old Sweetie-tired?" she demanded as he came alongside and leaned against the wall near her. His big gray eyes were troubled and there was not the sign of the usual quizzical smile. The forelock hung down in a curl from under the brim of the old gray hat and the lavender muffler swung at loose ends. As he lighted the old cob his lean brown hands trembled slightly and he utterly refused to look into Rose Mary's eyes. "What is it, honey-heart?" she demanded again.

"What's what, Rose Mary?" asked Uncle Tucker with a slight rift in the gloom. "They are some women in the world, if a man was to seal up his trouble in a termater-can and swoller it, would get a button-hook and a can-opener to go after him to get it out. You belong to that persuasion."

"I want to be the tomato-can-and not be 'swollered'," answered Rose Mary as she reached over and gently removed the tattered gray roof from off the white shock and began to smooth and caress its brim into something of its former shape. "I know something is the matter, and if it's your trouble it's mine. I'm your heir at law, am I not?"

"Yes, and you're a-drawing on the estate for more'n your share of pesters, looks like," answered Uncle Tucker as he raised his eyes to hers wistfully.

"Is it something about-about the mortgage?" asked Rose Mary in the gently hushed tone that she always used in speaking of this ever couchant enemy of their peace.

"Yes," answered Uncle Tucker slowly, "it's about the mortgage, and I'm mighty sorry to have to tell you, but I reckon I'll have to come to accepting you from the Lord as a rod and staff to hobble on. I-I had that settlement with the Senator this evening 'fore he left and it came pretty nigh winding me to see how things stood. Instead of a little more'n one hundred dollars behind in the interest we are mighty near on to six, and by right figures, too. It just hasn't measured out any year, and I never stopped to count it at so much. Gid was mighty kind about it and said never mind, let it run, but-but I'm not settled in my mind it's right to hold on like this; he maybe didn't mean it, but before dinner he dropped a word about being mighty hard pressed for money to keep up this here white ribbon contest he's a-running against his own former record. No, I'm not settled in my mind about the rights of it," and with this uneasy reiteration Uncle Tucker raised his big eyes to Rose Mary in which lay the exact quest for the path of honor that she had met in the young eyes of the General not two hours before. In fact, Uncle Tucker's eyes were so like Stonie's in their mournful demand for a decision from her that Rose Mary's tender heart throbbed with sympathy but sank with dismay at again having the decision of a question of masculine ethics presented to her.

"I just don't know what to say, Uncle Tucker," she faltered, thus failing him in his crisis more completely than she had the boy.

"The time for saying has passed, and I'm afraid to look forwards to what we may have to do," answered Uncle Tucker quietly. "After Gid was gone on up the road I walked over to Tilting Rock and sat down with my pipe to think it all over. My eyes are a-getting kinder dim now, but as far as I could see in most all directions was land that I had always called mine since I come into a man's estate. And there is none of it that has ever had a deed writ aginst it since that first Alloway got it in a grant from Virginy. There is meadow land and corn hillside, creeks for stock and woodlands for shelter, and the Alloways before me have fenced it solid and tended it honest, with return enrichment for every crop. And now it has come to me in my old age to let it go into the hands of strangers-sold by my own flesh and blood for a mess of pottage, he not knowing what he did I will believe, God help me. I'm resting him and the judgment of him in the arms of Mercy, but my living folks have got to have an earthly shelter. Can you see a way, child? As I say, my eyes are a-getting dim."

"I can't see any other shelter than the Briars, Uncle Tucker, and there isn't going to be any other," answered Rose Mary as she stroked the old hat in her hand. "You know sometimes men run right against a stone wall when a woman can see a door plainly in front of them both. She just looks for the door and don't ask to know who is going to open it from the other side. Our door is there I know-I have been looking for it for a long time. Right now it looks like a cow gate to me," and a little reluctant smile came over Rose Mary's grave face as if she were being forced to give up a cherished secret before she were ready for the revelation.

"And if the gate sticks, Rose Mary, I believe you'll climb the fence and pull us all over, whether or no," answered Uncle Tucker with a slightly comforted expression coming into his eyes. "You're one of the women who knot a bridle out of a horse's own tail to drive him with. Have you got this scheme already geared up tight, ready to start?"

"It's only that Mr. Crabtree brought word from town that the big grocery he sells my butter to would agree to take any amount I could send them at a still larger price. If we could hold on to the place, buy more cows and all the milk other people in Sweetbriar have to sell I believe I could make the interest and more than the interest every year. But if Mr. Newsome needs the money, I am afraid-he might not like to wait. It would be a year before I could see exactly how things succeed-and that's a long time."

"Yes, and it would mean for you to just be a-turning yourself into meat and drink for the family, nothing more or less, Rose Mary. You work like you was a single filly hitched to a two-horse wagon now, and that would be just piling fence rails on top of the load of hay you are already a-drawing for all of us old live stock. You couldn't work all that butter."

"Don't you know that love mixed in the bread of life makes it easy for the woman to work a large batch for her family, Uncle Tucker?-and why not butter? Will you talk to Mr. Newsome the next time he comes and see what he thinks of the plan? I would tell him about it myself-only I-I don't know why, but I don't-want to." Rose Mary blushed and looked away across the Road, but her confusion was all unnoticed by Uncle Tucker, who was busily lighting a second pipeful of tobacco.

"Yes, I'll talk to him and Crabtree both about it," he answered slowly. "I can't hardly bear the idea of your doing it, child, and if it was just me I wouldn't hear tell of it, but Sister Viney and Sister Amandy-moved they'd be like a couple of sprouts of their own honeysuckle vine that you had pulled up and left in the sun to wilt. Home was a place to grow in for women of their day, not just a-kinder waiting shack between stations like it has come to be in these times of women's uprising-in the newspapers."

"We don't get much new woman excitement out here in Harpeth Valley, Uncle Tucker," laughed Rose Mary, glad to see him rise once more from the depth of his depression to his usual philosophic level. "You wouldn't call-er-er Mrs. Poteet a modern woman, would you?"

"Fly-away, Peggy Poteet is the genuine, original mossback and had oughter be expelled from the sex by the confederation president herself," answered Uncle Tucker as they both glanced down past the milk-house where they saw the comely mother of the seven at her gate administering refreshment in the form of bread and jam to all of her own and quite a number of the other members of the Swarm, including the General and the reclothed and shriven Tobe. "If there is another Poteet output next April we'll have to report her," he added with a laugh.

"But there never was a baby since Stonie like little Tucker," answered Rose Mary in quick defense of the small namesake of whom Uncle Tucker was secretly but inordinately proud.

"Yes, and I'm a-going to report you to the society of suppression of men folks as a regular spiler, Rose Mary Alloway, if you don't keep more stern than you are at present with me and Stonie, to say nothing of all the men members of Sweetbriar from Everett clean on through Crabtree down to that very young Tucker Poteet. You are one of the women that feed and clothe and blush on men like you were borned a hundred years ago and nobody had told you they wasn't worth shucks. Are you a-going to reform?"

"I'll try when I get time," answered Rose Mary with a smile as she bestowed both a fleeting kiss and the old hat on Uncle Tucker's forelock over the wall. "Now I want to run in and make a few cup custards, so I can save one for Mr. Mark when he gets home to-night. He loves them cold. Little cooking attentions never spoil men, they just nourish them. Anyway, what is a woman going to have left to do in life if she sheds the hovering feathers she keeps to tuck her nesties underneath?"

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