Books: The Road To Providence
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Maria Thompson Daviess >> The Road To Providence
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"Honey-bird," she said gently, as she drew the girl to the end of
the porch where the wistaria vine, a whispering maple and the
crimson rambler shut them in from the eyes of all the world save the
spirit of Providence Nob, which brooded down over them in a wisp of
cloud across its sun-reddened top, "here's the place and time and
heart strength to tell you that your Lord have laid the hand of
affliction on you heavy and have tooken back from you the beautiful
voice He gave you to use for a time. I'm a-praying for you to be
able to say His will be done."
For one instant the singer woman went white to the eyes and swayed
back against the vine, then she asked huskily, "Did HE say so?"
"Yes," answered the Doctor's mother gently with her deep eyes
looking into the girl's very soul. "Them treatments was operations
and they is all he dares to make for fear of your losing the
speaking voice what you have got so beautiful. If they is any love
and pity in my heart after I have stopped giving it to you I'm going
to pour some out on Tom Mayberry, for when a man's got to look
sorrow in the eyes he goes blind and don't know what way to turn,
lessen a woman leads him. But he ain't neither here or there and--"
"Where is he?" demanded Miss Wingate in her soft dove notes as she
looked the tragedy-stricken young Doctor's mother straight in the
face, with her dark eyes completely unveiling her heart, woman to
woman. "I--I want HIM!"
"What's left of him is in the office, and you are welcome to the
pieces," answered his Mother, a comprehensive joy rising above the
sorrow in her eyes. "I reckon I can trust him with you, but if you
need any help, call me," she added, as the singer girl fled down the
steps and around to the office wing.
And they neither one of them ever knew how it really happened,
though she insisted on accusing herself and he claimed always the
entire blame, but he had been sitting where his Mother had left him
for an hour or more with his face in his hands when he suddenly
found himself clasped in soft arms and his eyes pressed close
against a bare white throat and a most wonderful dove voice was
murmuring happy, comforting little words that fell down like jewels
into his very heart of hearts. And his own strong arms held very
close a palpitating, cajoling, flower of a woman, who was wooing for
smiles and dimpling with raptures.
"I don't care, I don't, and please don't you!" she pleaded with her
lips against his black forelock.
"I can't help caring! The one thing I asked of all my years of hard
work was to give the music back to you--" and again he buried his
face in the soft lace at her throat.
"You say, do you, that I'll never sing again?" she asked quickly,
and as she spoke she lifted his head in her hands and waited an
instant for the smothered groan with which he answered her.
"Now, listen," she answered him in a voice fairly a-tremble with
joyous passion and as she spoke she laid his ear close over her
heart and held him so an instant. "Does it matter that only you will
ever hear the song, dear?" she whispered, then slipped out of his
arms and across to the other side of the table before he could
detain her.
"No, Tom Mayberry," she said as he reached for her, and her tone was
so positive that he stopped with his arms in the air and let them
sink slowly to his side. "We'll have this question out right here
and if I have trouble with you I'll--call your Mother," and she
laughed as she shook away a tear.
"Please!" he pleaded and his face was both so radiant and so worn
that she had to harden her heart against him to be able to hold
herself in hand for what she wanted to say to him.
"No," she answered determinedly, "and you must listen to every word
I say, for I am getting frightened already and may have to stop."
"I want to talk some myself," he said with the very first smile
coming into his grave young eyes. "I want to tell you that I can't
help loving you, and have ever since I first saw you, but that it
won't do at all for you to marry--marry a Providence country bumpkin
with nothing but a doctoring head on his shoulders. I want you to
understand that--"
"Please don't refuse me this way before I've ever asked you," she
said with a trace of the grand dame hauteur in her manner and voice
that he had never seen before. "I think--I think very suddenly I
have come to realize, Doctor Mayberry, that--that--oh, I'm very
frightened, but I must say it! I wouldn't blame you or your Mother
for not wanting me at all. I--I somehow, I don't seem very great--or
real to myself here in Providence. My training has been all to one
end--useless now--and I'm all unlessoned and unlearned in the real
things of life. I seem to feel that the hot theaters and the crowds
that have looked at me and--am I what she has a right to demand in
your wife?" And, with a proud little gesture, she laid her case in
his hands.
And though she had not expected anything dramatic from him in the
way of refutation of her speech, she was totally unprepared for the
wonderful, absolute silence that met her heroics. He stood and
looked her full in the eyes with a calm radiance in his face that
reminded her of the dawn-light she had seen that morning come over
Providence Nob and his deep smile gave a young prophet look to his
austere mouth. And as she gazed at him she drew timidly nearer, even
around the corner of the table.
"Your work is so wonderful--and real--and you ought to have a wife
who--" By this time she had got much nearer and her voice trailed
off into uncertainty. And still he stood perfectly still and looked
at her.
"She loves me and I love her, so that, do you think, I might--I
might learn? Cindy says I'm a wonder--and remember the custards,"
she finished from somewhere in the region of his collar. "Now that
we've both refused each other do you suppose we can go on and be
happy?" she laughed softly from under his chin.
And the young Doctor held her very close and never answered a word
she said. The strain on him had been very great and he was more
shaken than he wanted her to see. But from the depths of her heart
she understood and pressed closer to him as she gave him a long
silence in which to recover himself. Twilight was coming in the
windows and a fragrant night breeze was ruffling her hair against
his cheek before she stirred in his arms.
"We've got to ask--to ask Mother before--before," she was venturing
to suggest in the smallest of voices in which was both mirth and
tenderness, when a low laugh answered her from the doorway.
"Oh, no you don't," said Mother Mayberry, as she beamed upon them
with the most manifest joy. "I had done picked you out before you
had been here more'n a week, honey-bird. You can have him and
welcome if you can put up with him. He's like Mis' Peavey always
says of her own jam; 'Plenty of it such as it is and good enough
what they is of it.' A real slow-horse love can be rid far and long
at a steady gate. He ain't pretty, but middling smart." And the
handsome young Doctor's mother eyed him with a well-assumed
tolerance covering her positive rapture.
"Are you sure, sure you're not disappointed about--about that peony-
girl?" demanded the singer lady, as she came into the circle of
Mother Mayberry's arm and nozzled her little nose under the white
lawn tie.
"Le'me see," answered Mother Mayberry in a puzzled tone of voice. "I
seem to understand you, but not to know what you are talking about."
"The girl to whom he gave the graduating bouquet with Mrs. Peavey's
peony in it," she whispered, but not so low that the Doctor, who had
come over and put a long arm around them both, couldn't hear.
"Well," answered Mother Mayberry in a judicial tone of voice as she
bestowed a quizzical glance on the Doctor, who blushed to the roots
of his hair at this revelation of the fact of his Mother's
indulgence in personal reminiscence, "I reckon Miss Alford'll be
mighty disappointed to lose him, but I don't know nothing about her
riz biscuits. Happiness and good cooking lie like peas in a pod in a
man's life and I reckon I'll have to give Tom Mayberry, prize, to
you."
"Mother!" exclaimed the Doctor.
"Thank you," murmured Miss Wingate with a wicked glance at him from
his Mother's shoulder that brought a hurried embrace down upon them
both.
"Children," said Mother Mayberry, as she suddenly reached put her
strong arms and took them both close to her breast, "looks like the
Lord sometimes hatches out two birds in far apart nests just to give
'em wing-strength to fly acrost river and hill to find each other.
You both kinder wandered foreign some 'fore you sighted one another,
but now you can begin to build your own nest right away, and I
offers my heart as a bush on Providence Nob to put it in."
CHAPTER IX
THE LITTLE HARPETH WOMAN OF MANY SORROWS
"This here are a curious spell of weather," remarked Mother
Mayberry, as she paused beside the singer lady who was holding
Martin Luther up on the broad window-sill, and with him was looking
disconsolately down the Road. "June's gone to acting like a woman
with nerves that cries just because she can. I'm glad all the
chicken babies are feathered out and can shed rain. Them little
Hoosier pullets have already sprouted tail feathers. They ain't a
one of 'em a-going into the skillet no matter how hungry Tom
Mayberry looks after 'em. If I don't hold you and Cindy back from
spoiling him with chicken-fixings three times a day he'll begin to
show pin feathers hisself in no time."
"He likes chicken better than anything else," murmured Miss Wingate
as she buried a blush in Martin Luther's topknot.
"Well, wanting ain't always a reason for being gave to," said the
Doctor's mother with a chuckle as she admired the side view of the
blush. "But, seeing that he about half feeds hisself by looking at
me and you at the table, I reckon I'll have to let him have two
chickens a day to keep up his strength. Honey-fuzzle are a mighty
satisfying diet, though light, for a growed man. Reckon we can
persuade him to try a couple of slices of old ham onct in a while so
as to give a few broilers time to get legs long enough to fry?"
"We can try," answered the singer lady in a doubtful tone of voice,
for the Doctor's penchant for young chicken was very decided.
"Dearie me, it do beat all how some plans of life fall down in the
oven," said the Doctor's mother, as she eyed Miss Wingate with her
most quizzical smile quirking up the corners of her humorous mouth.
"Here I put myself to all manner of troubles to go out into the big
world to get a real managing wife for Tom Mayberry and I might just
as well have set cross-handed and waited for Susie Pike or little
Bettie to grow up to the spoiling of him. I thought seeing that
you'd been raised with a silver spoon in your mouth and handed life
on a fringed napkin, so to speak, you would make him stand around
some, but for all I can see you're going to make another Providence
wife. Ain't you got none of the suffering-women new notions at all?"
"I can't help it," answered the singer lady, ducking her head behind
Martin Luther again, but smiling up out of the corners of her eyes.
"Are you just going to drop over into being a poor, down-trodden,
miserable, man-bossed Harpeth Hill's wife, without trying a single
new-fashioned husband remedy on him, with so many receipts for
managing 'em being written down by ladies all over the world, mostly
single ones?" demanded Mother Mayberry, fairly bubbling over with
glee at the singer lady's abashment.
"Yes, I am," answered Miss Wingate sturdily. "I want him to have
just what he wants."
"This are worse and more of it," exclaimed the Doctor's delighted
Mother. "You are got a wrong notion, child! Marriage ain't no slow,
plow-team business these days; it's hitched at opposite ends and
pulling both ways for dear life. Don't you even hope you will be;
able to think up no kind of tantrums to keep Tom Mayberry from being
happy?"
"I don't want to," laughed the infatuated bride prospective.
"Then I reckon I'll have to give up and let you settle down into
being one of these here regular old-fashioned, primping-for-a-man,
dinner-on-the-table-at-the-horn-blow, hanging-over-the-front-gate-
waiting kind of wives. I thought I'd caught a high-faluting bird of
Paradise for him and you ain't a thing in the world but a meadow
dove. But there comes Bettie scooting through the rain with little
Hoover under her shawl. Providence folks have got duck blood, all of
'em, and the more it pours out they paddles. Come in and shake your
feathers, Bettie."
"Howdy all," exclaimed the rosy Mrs. Hoover. "This here rain on the
corn is money in everybody's pocket. I just stopped in to show you
this pink flowered shirt-waist I have done finished for Miss Prissy
Pike. Ain't it stylish?"
"It surely are, Bettie!" exclaimed Mother Mayberry. "I'm so glad you
got it pink."
"And it don't run neither. I tried it," said the proud designer of
the admired garment.
"That's a good sign for the wedding. You can rub happiness that's
fast dyed through any kinder worry suds and it'll come out with the
color left. Any news along the Road?" asked Mother Mayberry, as she
handled the rosy blouse with careful hands.
"Well, Henny Turner says that Squire Tutt are in bed covered up head
and ears with the quilts, but 'Lias says that it are just 'cause
Mis' Tutt have got a happy spell on her and have been exorting of
him. She called all three of them boys in, Bud and Henny and 'Lias,
and made 'em learn a Bible verse a-piece, and I was grateful to her
for her interest, but the Squire cussed so to 'em while she went to
get 'em a cake that I'm afraid the lesson were spoiled for the
chaps."
"I don't reckon it were, Bettie. Good salts down any day, while Evil
don't ever keep long. But I do wish we could get the Squire and Mis'
Tutt to be a little more peaceably with one another. It downright
grieves me to have 'em so spited here in they old age." And Mother
Mayberry's eyes took on a regretful look and she peered over her
glasses at the happy bride. On her buoyant heart she ever carried
the welfare of every soul in Providence and the crabbed old couple
down the Road was a constant source of trouble to her.
"You shan't worry over 'em, Mis' Mayberry," answered pretty Bettie
quickly, "You get every Providence trouble landed right on your
shoulders as soon as one comes. You don't get a chance to do nothing
but deal out ease to other people's bodies and souls, too."
"Well, a cup of cold water held to other folks' mouths is a mighty
good way to quench your own thirst, Bettie child, and I'm glad if it
are gave to me to label out the blessing of ease. But have you been
in to the Deacon's this morning?"
"No'm, I'm a-going to stop as I go along home," answered Bettie. "I
have seed the little raven paddling back and forth, so I guess they
is all right. I must hurry on now, for I see Miss Prissy at the
window looking for me. Ain't my baby a-growing?" she asked, as she
picked little Hoover off of the floor and again enveloped the
bobbing head under her own shawl.
"Yes, it are, and Mr. Hoover's a-smiling hisself fat by the day,
child," answered Mother Mayberry with a smile. "Do you pass on the
word to Elinory here that Providence husbands wear good, both warp
and woof?"
"That they do, Miss Elinory, and I never seed nothing like 'em in my
travels," called back the bride from the door, as she reefed in her
skirts and sailed out in the downpour.
"Well, your mind oughter be satisfied, child, for Bettie muster seen
a good deal of the world in that three weeks' bridal trip in the
farm wagon," laughed Mother Mayberry at the singer lady by the
window. "Now I'm a-going to swim out to gather eggs and I'll be back
if I don't drown." With which she left the girl and the tot to
resume their watch down the Road for a horse and rider due in not
over two hours' time.
And indeed the last of old June's days seemed in danger of dripping
away from her in tears of farewell. Rain clouds hung low over
Harpeth Hills and drifted down to the very top of Providence Nob. A
steady downpour had begun in the night and held on into the day and
seemed to increase in volume as the hours wore away. The tall maples
were standing depressed-boughed and dripping and the poplar leaves
hung sodden and wet, refusing a glimpse of their silver lining. A
row of bleeding-hearts down the walk were turning faint pink and
drooping to the ground, while every rose in the yard was shattered
and wasted away.
"Rain, rain!" wailed Martin Luther under his breath, as he pressed
his cheek to the window-pane and looked without interest at a
forlorn rooster huddled with a couple of hens under the snowball
bush.
"Don't you want a cake and some milk?" asked the singer lady, as she
gave him a comforting hug and essayed consolation by the offer of a
material distraction.
"No milk, no cake; L-i-z-a, thank ma'am, please" he sobbed a
disconsolate demand for what he considered a good substitute
sunbeam.
"There she comes now, darling," exclaimed the singer lady, with as
much pleasure coming into her face as lit the doleful cherub's at
her side. And from the Pike front door there had issued a small
figure, also enveloped in an old shawl, which made its way across
the puddles with splashing, bare feet. She had her covered dish
under her arm and a bucket dangled from one hand. She answered
Martin Luther's hail with a flash of her white teeth and sped across
the front porch.
And in the course of just ten minutes the experienced young pacifier
had established the small boy as driver to Mother Mayberry's large
rocking-chair, mounted him on the foot of the bed with snapping
switch to crack and thus secured a two-hour reign of peace for his
elders.
"Miss Elinory," she said, as she came and stood close to the singer
lady seated in the deep window, "I'm mighty glad you got Doctor Tom;
and it were fair to the other lady, too. He couldn't help loving you
best, 'cause you are got a sick throat and she ain't. Do you reckon
she'll be satisfied to take Sam Mosbey when she comes again? I'm
sorry for her."
"So am I, Eliza," laughed Miss Wingate softly, as the rose blush
stole up over her cheeks, "but I don't believe she'll need Mr.
Mosbey. Don't you suppose she--that--is--there must be some one down
in the City whom she likes a lot."
"Yes'm, I reckon they is. Then I'll just take Sam myself when I grow
up if nobody else wants him," answered Eliza comfortably. "I'm sorry
to be glad that your throat didn't get well, but Mis' Peavey says
that you never in the world woulder tooken Doctor Tom if you coulder
gone away and made money singing to people. I don't know what me or
him or Mother Mayberry woulder done without you, but we couldn'ter
paid you much to stay. You won't never go now, will you?"
"Never," answered the singer lady, as she drew the little ingenue
close to her side. "And let me whisper something to you, Eliza--I
never--would--have--gone--any--way. I love you too much, you and
Mother Mayberry--and Doctor Tom."
"And Mis' Bostick and Deacon," exclaimed the loyal young raven.
"Miss Elinory, I get so scared about Mis' Bostick right here," she
added, laying her hand on her little throat. "She won't eat nothing
and she can't talk to me to-day. Maw and Mis' Nath Mosbey are there
now and waiting for Doctor Tom to come back. They said not to tell
Mother Mayberry until the rain held up some, but they want her, too.
Can't loving people do nothing for 'em, Miss Elinory?" and with big,
wistful eyes the tiny woman put the question, which has agonized
hearts down the ages.
"Oh, darling, the--loving itself helps," answered the singer lady
quickly with the mist over her eyes.
"I believe it do," answered Eliza thoughtfully.
"I hold the Deacon's other hand when he sets by Mis' Bostick! He
wants me, and she smiles at us both. I don't like to leave 'em for
one single minute. I have to wait now for Cindy to get the dinner
done, but then I'm a-going to run. Why, there goes Mother Mayberry
outen the gate under a umbrella! And Aunt Prissy asked me to get a
spool of number fifty thread from her to sew some lace on a
petticoat Mis' Hoover have done finished for her. If I was to go to
get married I'd make some things for my husband, too, and not so
much for myself. I wouldn't want so many skirts unless I knewed he
had enough shirts."
"But, Eliza," remonstrated Miss Wingate, slightly shocked at this
rather original idea of providing a groom with a trousseau, "perhaps
he would rather get things for himself."
"No'm, he wouldn't," answered Eliza positively. "I ain't a-going to
say anything to Aunt Prissy about it 'cause you never can tell what
will hurt her feelings, but I want you to get Mis' Hoover to show
you how and make three nice shirts for Doctor Tom, so you can wash
one while he wears the other and keep one put away for Sunday. That
is the way Maw does for Paw and all the other folks on the Road does
the same for they men. Mis' Peavey can show you how to iron them
nice, for she does the Deacon's for me and Mother Mayberry is too
busy to bother with such things 'count of always having to go to
sick folks even over to the other side of the Nob. Cindy don't
starch good. You'll do for Doctor Tom nice, now you've got him,
won't you?"
"Yes, Eliza, I will," answered the singer lady meekly, as this
prevision of the life domestic rose up and menaced her. She even had
a queer little thrill of pleasure at the thought of performing such
superhuman tasks for what was to be her individual responsibility
among Providence men along the Road. The certainty that she would
never be allowed to perform such offices at machine and tub actually
depressed her, for the thought had brought a primitive sense of
possession that she was loath to dismiss; the passion for service to
love being an instinct that sways the great lady and her country
sister alike. "Do you think he--will let me?" she asked of her
admonisher.
"Just go on and do it and don't ask him," was the practical answer.
"There he comes now leading his horse and he have been to see Mis'
Bostick. I can get the dinner and run on to meet him and hear how he
thinks she are," she exclaimed as she seized her dish and bucket and
disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
And a few minutes later, as Doctor Mayberry was unsaddling his horse
in the barn a lithe figure enveloped as to head and shoulders in one
of Cindy's kitchen aprons darted under the dripping eaves and stood
breathless and laughing in the wide door.
"I saw you come up the Road," said the singer lady, as she divested
herself of the gingham garment, "and I was dying to get out in the
rain, much to Cindy's horror. You are late."
"Not much," answered the young Doctor, slipping out of his rain coat
and coming over to stand beside her in the door. "What have you been
doing all morning?"
"I've been being--being lectured," she answered, as she looked up in
his face with dancing dark eyes.
"Who did it to you?" he asked, taking her fingers into his and
drawing her farther back from the splash of the rain drops.
"Your Mother and then Eliza Pike," she answered with a low laugh.
"Eliza is afraid I won't 'do for you' in proper Providence style and
I'm very humble and--I--I want to learn. She thinks I ought to begin
on some--some shirts for you right now and I'm going to. What color
do you prefer?"
"Horrors!" exclaimed the Doctor, positively blushing at the thought
of the very lovely lady engaged in such a clothing mission.
"I knew you wouldn't have any confidence in them" answered Miss
Wingate mournfully, "and I haven't myself, but still I was willing
to try."
"Oh, yes, I have!" the young Doctor hastened to exclaim. "Better
make them suitable for traveling, for I've got marching orders in
the noon mail. Are you ready to start to Italy on short notice and
then on to India?"
"What?" demanded the singer lady with alarmed astonishment.
"Yes," answered the young Doctor coolly. "The Commission writes that
my reports on Pellagra down here are complete enough now for them to
send some chap down to continue them, while I go on to Southern
Italy for a study of similar conditions there and then on to India
for a still more exhaustive examination. The Government is
determined to stamp this scourge out before it gets a hold, and it's
work to put out the fire before it spreads. Better hurry the shirts
and pack up your own fluff."
"But I'm not going a step or a wave," answered the singer girl
defiantly. "I'm too busy here now. I don't ever intend to leave
Mother as long as I live. I don't see how you can even suggest such
a thing to me."
"Do you know what leaving Mother is like?" asked the young Doctor,
as he looked down on her with tenderness in his gray eyes and Mother
Mayberry's own quizzical smile on his lips. "It's like going to
sleep at night with a last look at Providence Nob,--you wake up in
the morning and find it more there than ever. She was THERE on sunny
mornings over in Berlin and THERE on gray days in London and I had
her on long hard hospital nights in New York. Just come with me on
this trip and I promise she and Old Harpeth will be here when we get
back. Please!"
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