Books: The Road To Providence
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Maria Thompson Daviess >> The Road To Providence
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"Perhaps I'll stay always," said the singer lady as she drew close
against the gray print shoulder. "When I look around me I feel as if
I had awakened in a beautiful world with no more dirty, smoky cities
that hurt my throat, no more hot, lighted theaters, no noises, and
everything is just a great big bouquet of soft smells and colors."
As she spoke, Elinor Wingate, who was just a tired girl in the
circle of Mother Mayberry's strong arm, let her great dark eyes
wander off across the meadow to where a dim rim of Harpeth Hills
seemed to close in the valley. Her glance returned to the low, wing-
spreading, brick farm-house, which, vine-covered, lilac-hedged and
maple-shaded, seemed to nestle against the breast of Providence Nob,
at whose foot clustered the little settlement of Providence and
around whose side ran the old wilderness trail called Providence
Road. And her face was soft with a light of utter contentment, for
under that low-gabled roof she was finding strength to hope for the
recovery of her lost treasure, without which life would seem a void.
Then for a moment she looked down the village Road, across which the
trees were casting long afternoon shadows and along which was
flowing the tide of late afternoon social life. Women hung over the
front gates to greet men in from the fields or from down the Road,
girls laughed and chaffed one another or the blushing country boys,
and the children played tag and hop-scotch back and forth along the
way.
"It's all lovely," she said again with a contented little sigh. When
she spoke softly there was not a trace of the burr in her voice and
it was as sweet as a dove note.
"Days like these we had oughter take the world as a new gift from
God," said Mother musingly. "It were a day like this I come with
Doctor Mayberry along the Road to Providence to live, and stopped
right at this gate under this very maple tree, thirty-five years
ago; and thirty of 'em have I lived lonesome without him. I had a
baby at my breast and Tom by my knee when he went away from us, and
I know now it was the call laid on me to take up his work that saved
me. When I got back from the funeral and had laid the baby on the
bed Mis' Jim Petway come a-running up the road crying that Ellen,
her youngest child, were a-choking to death with croup. I never had
a thought but to take his saddle-bags and follow her, and somehow
the good Lord guided my hand amongst his medicines, and with what I
had learned from him and Pa I fought a good fight and saved the
little thing's life, though it took the night to do it. And in one
of them dark hours a sister-to-woman sense was born in me what I
ain't never lost. A neighbor took Tom and they brought my baby to me
and I stayed by Mis' Petway until they weren't no more danger. Next
day it were Squire Tutt's first wife tooken down with the fever and
not the week passed before that very Sam Mosbey were borned. We was
too poor to have a doctor come and live here and they was a doctor
over to Springfield took up my husband's county practice, so I jest
naturally had to do the healing myself, only a-sending for him in
the worst cases. They was a heap of teethers that summer and it kept
me busy looking after 'em. I expect I made mistakes but I kept up me
and the patients' courage by sympathizing and heartening. It didn't
cost nobody nothing and we wasn't so prosperous then that it wasn't
a help for me to do the doctoring when I could, and I mostly were
able. I were glad of the work and did it with a thankful mind; not
as they wasn't times when I felt sick at heart, and in danger of
questioning why, but I tried to steady myself with prayer until I
could find the Everlasting Arm to lean on that is always held out to
the widow and the fatherless. And so a-leaning I have got me and Tom
Mayberry along until now."
"And the whole rest of the world leaning on you," said the lovely
lady as she drew nearer and caught Mother Mayberry's strong hand in
her own slender fingers.
"Well," answered Mother, as she shaded her eyes with her other hand
to look far up the Road toward the Ridge over which they were
waiting for the Doctor's horse to appear, "looks like often hands a-
reaching out for help gives strength before they takes any, and a
little hope planted in another body's garden is apt to fly a seed
and sprout in your own patch. There he is--let's hurry in the
biscuits!"
CHAPTER II
THE SINGER LADY AND THE BREAD-BOWL
"Well, I don't know as I'd like to have her messing around my
kitchen and house, a stranger and a curious one at that. But you
always was kinder soft, Mis' Mayberry," said Mrs. Peavey as she
glanced with provoked remonstrance at Mother Mayberry, who went
calmly on attending to the needs of a fresh hatching of young
chickens. Mrs. Peavey lived next door to the Doctor's house and the
stone wall that separated the two families was not in any way a
barrier to her frequent neighborly and critical visitations. She was
meager of stature and soul, and the victim of a devouring fire of
curiosity which literally licked up the fagots of human events that
came in her way. She was the fly that kicked perpetually in Mother
Mayberry's cruse of placid ointment, but received as full a mead of
that balm of friendship as any woman on the Road.
"Why, she ain't a mite of trouble, but just a pleasure, Hettie Ann,"
answered Mother with mild remonstrance in her tone. "I expected to
have a good bit of worry with her, having no cook in my kitchen,
'count of waiting for Cindy to get well and come back to me and
nobody easy to pick up to do the work, but she hadn't been here a
week before she was reaching out and learning house jobs. I think it
takes her mind offen her troubles and I can't say her no if it do
help her, not that I want to, for she's a real comfort."
"Well, if it was me I couldn't take no comfort in a play-acting
girl. I'd feel like locking up what teaspoons I had and a-counting
over everything in my house every day. It's just like you, Mis'
Mayberry, to take her in. And I can't sense the why of you're being
so close-mouthed about her. Near neighbors oughter know all about
one another's doings and not have to ask, I say." Mrs. Peavey
sniffed and assumed an air of injured patience.
"Why, Hettie Ann," Mother hastened to answer, "you know as I always
did hold that the give and take of advice from friends is the
greatest comfort in the world, though at times most confusing, and I
thought I told you all about Elinory."
"Well, you didn't. Muster been Bettie Pratt or Mis' Pike you was a-
talking to when you thought it was me," answered her friend with the
injured note in her voice becoming with every word more noticeable.
"Are she rich or poor? Do you know that much?"
"Well now, come to think of it, I don't," answered Mother promptly.
"Connecting up folks and they money always looks like sticking a
price tag on you to them and them to you. I'd rather charge my
friends to a Heaven-account and settle the bill with friendly
feelings as we go along. This poor child ain't got no mother or
father, that I know. All her young life when most girls ain't got a
thought above a beau or a bonnet, she have been a-training of her
voice to sing great 'cause it were in her to do it. And she done it,
too. Then all to onct when she had got done singing in a great big
town hall they call Convent Garden or something up in New York, she
made the mistake to drink a glass of ice water and it friz up her
throat chords. She haven't been able to sing one single tune since.
She have been a-roaming over the earth a-hunting for some sort of
help and ain't found none. Now she have lit at my door and I've got
her in trying to warm and comfort her to enough strength for Tom to
put her voice back into her."
"Well, you don't expect no such thing of Tom Mayberry as that, do
you?" asked Mrs. Peavey with uncompromising and combative frankness.
"That I do," answered the Doctor's mother, and this time there was a
note of dignity in her voice, as she looked her friend straight in
the face. "You know, because I told you about it, Hettie Ann, how
Tom Mayberry cured that big preacher of a lost voice who was a
friend to this Doctor Stein, while the boy wasn't nothing but
serving his term in the hospital. He wrote a paper about it that
made all the doctors take notice of him and he have done it twice
since, though throats are just a side issue from skins with him.
Yes, I'm expecting of him to cure this child and give her back
more'n just her voice, her work in life. I'm one that believes that
the Lord borns all folks with a work to do and you've got to march
on to it, whether it's singing in public places, carrying saddle-
bags to suffering or jest playing your tune on the wash-board at
home. It's a part of his hallelujah chorus in which we've all got to
join."
"Well, I shorely drawed the wash-board fer my instrumint," answered
Mrs. Peavey with a vindictive look across the wall at a line of
clothes fluttering in the breeze.
"And they ain't nobody in Providence that turns out as white a
shirt-song as you do, Hettie Ann. Buck and Mr. Peavey are just
looked at in church Sundays fer the color of they collars," Mother
hastened to say with pride in the glance that followed Mrs. Peavey's
across the wall. "Ain't Tom always a-contriving with you to sneak
one of his shirts into your wash, so as not to hurt me and Cindy's
feelings? I don't see how you get 'em so white."
"Elbow grease and nothing else," answered Mrs. Peavey in a tone of
voice that refused to be mollified. "I've got to be a-going."
"Just wait and look at these chickens; ain't they pretty? Tom sent
all the way to Indiany fer the settin' of eggs fer me and I've just
been a-watching the day for 'em to hatch. I feel they are a-going to
be a credit to me and I'm glad I gave 'em to Ruffle Neck to set on.
She's such a good hoverer and can be depended on to run from the
rain. Now ain't they pretty?" and Mother even looked at Mrs. Peavey
with hope for a word of sympathy in her pleasure--after a thirty
years' experience with her neighbor.
"No," answered her friend, "I don't hold with no fancy chickens.
Just good dominicks is all I've got any faith in and not much in
them. With strange chickens and girls around your house something
misfortunate is a-going to happen to you, Mis' Mayberry, and I see
it a-coming. Don't say I didn't tell you."
"No, I'll give you credit for your warning," answered Mother
propitiatingly. "How's that pain in your side?" she hastened to ask,
to change the subject from a disagreeable one to what she knew by
experience would prove at least interesting.
"It's a heap better," answered Mrs. Peavey promptly.
"Oh, I'm so glad," exclaimed Mother, immediately beginning to beam
with pride. "I told you Tom could help it with that new kind of dry
plaster he made for you. Ain't it wonderful?"
"Shoo! I never put that on! It didn't have smell enough to do any
good. I knew that as soon as I unrolled it. I just rubbed myself
heavy with that mixture of kerosine, vinegar and gum camfire you've
been making me for twenty years, and I slept uncommon well."
"Oh," answered Mother Mayberry, "I wish you had tried Tom's plaster.
I feel sure--"
"Well, I don't--of anything that a boy like Tom Mayberry knows. If
he lives here a spell and learns from you maybe he'll get some
doctoring sense, but I wouldn't trust him for ten years at the
shortest. But have you heard the news?" A flame of positive joy
flared up in Mrs. Peavey's eyes and flushed her sallow cheeks.
"Why, what is it?" asked Mother with a guarded interest and no small
amount of anxiety, for she was accustomed to the kind of news that
Mrs. Peavey usually took the trouble to spread.
"Well, I knowed what was a-going to happen when I seen Bettie Pratt
setting the chairs straight and marshaling in the orphants at poor
Mis' Hoover's funeral, not but eleven months ago. It'll be a scandal
to this town and had oughter be took notice of by Deacon Bostick and
the Elder. She's got four Turner children and six Pratts and he have
got seven of his own, so Turner, Pratt and Hoover they'll be
seventeen children in the house, all about the same size. Then maybe
more--I call it a disgrace, I do!"
"I don't know," answered Mother, though her eyes did twinkle at the
thought of this allied force of seventeen, "there never was a better
child-raiser than Bettie Pratt and I'll be mighty glad to see them
poor, forlorn little Hoovers turned over to her. They've been on my
mind night and day since they mother died and they ain't a single
one of 'em as peart as it had oughter be. Who told you about it?"
"They didn't nobody tell me--I've got eyes of my own! Just yesterday
I seen her hand a pan of biscuits over the fence to Pattie Hoover
and he had a Turner and two Pratts in the wagon with him coming in
from the field last night. But you can't do nothing about it--she
have got the marrying habit. They are other widows in this town that
have mourned respectable to say nothing of Miss Prissy Pike, that
have never had no husband at all and had oughter be gave a chanct.
Mr. Hoover are a nice man and I don't want to see him made
noticeable in no such third-husband way."
"Course it do look a little sudden," said Mother, "and seventeen is
a good lot of children for one family, but if they love each other--
"
"Love! Shoo! I declare, Mis' Mayberry, looks to me like you swallow
what folks give you in this world whole, pit and all, and never bat
a eye. I've got to go home and put on Buck's and Mr. Peavey's supper
and sprinkle down some of my wash." And without further parley Mrs.
Peavey marched home through a little swinging gate in the wall that
had been for years a gap through which a turbid stream had flowed to
trouble Mother's peaceful waters.
"It do seem Mis' Peavey are a victim of a most pitiful unrest," said
Mother to herself as she watched with satisfaction Ruffle Neck tuck
the last despised little Hoosier under her soft gray breast. "Some
folks act like they had dyspepsy of the mind. Dearie me, I must go
and take a glass of cream to my honey-bird, for that between-meal
snack that Tom Mayberry are so perticular about." And she started
down toward the spring-house under the hill.
And returning a half hour later with the cool glass in her hand, she
was guided by the sound of happy voices to the front porch, where,
under the purple wistaria vine, she found the singer lady absorbed
in the construction of a most worldly garment for the doll daughter
of Eliza Pike, who was watching its evolution with absorbed
interest.
"Pleas'm, Miss Elinory, make it a little bit longer, 'cause I want
her to have a beau," besought the small mother, as she anxiously
watched the measuring of the skirt.
"Want her to have a beau?" asked Miss Wingate with the scissors
suspended over the bit of pink muslin which matched exactly her own
ruffled skirts,
"Yes'm! Pattie Hoover wored shoe-tops all winter and now she's got
foot-dresses and Buck Peavey for a beau."
"Oh, I see," said the singer lady as she smiled down into the eager
little face. "Do you think--er, beaux are--are desirable, Eliza?"
"Yes'm, I do," answered the bud of a woman, as she drew nearer and
said with an expression of one bestowing a confidence, "When I'm let
down to my feet I'm going to have Doctor Tom for my beau, if you
don't get him first."
"I'm sure you needn't worry about that, Eliza," Miss Wingate
hastened to exclaim with a rising color. "I wouldn't interfere with
your plans for the world--if I could."
"Well, you take him if you can get him," answered Eliza generously;
"somebody'll grow up by that time for me. But he couldn't make you
take oil, could he?" she asked doubtfully, the memory of yesterday's
escape lurking in her mind and explaining her most unfeminine
generosity.
Miss Wingate eyed her for a moment with mirth fairly dancing over
her face, "Yes," she said with a laugh, "I believe he could!"
"Elinory, child," said Mother as she came out from the front hall,
"here we are a half hour late with this cream, and both of us under
promise solemn to Tom to have it down by four o'clock. 'Liza, honey,
how's the baby?"
"He have got a new top-tooth and throwed up onct this morning,"
answered Eliza in a practical tone of voice.
"Dearie me," said Mother anxiously, for the Pike teether had up to
this time been the Doctor's prize patient. "I wonder if your Maw
remembered the lime water faithful?"
"I expect she forgot it, for she was whipping Susie for sassing Aunt
Prissy, and Bud for saying fool," answered Eliza, not at all
hesitating to lay bare the iniquities of her family circle.
"I'm sorry they did like that," said Mother with real concern at the
news of such delinquencies.
"Yes'm, Susie told Aunt Prissy Mis' Peavey said she were a-setting
her cap fer Mr. Hoover and it made Bud mad 'cause he fights 'Lias
Hoover and he called her a fool. He hadn't oughter done it, but he's
touchy 'bout Aunt Prissy and so's Paw. There comes Deacon and a
little boy with him."
As she spoke, Mother rose to greet Deacon Bostick who had turned in
the front gate and got as far up the front walk as the second
snowball bush. The Deacon was tall, lean, bent and snow-crowned,
with bright old eyes that rested in a benediction on the group on
the porch that his fine old smile confirmed. By the hand he led a
tiny boy who was clad in a long nondescript garment and topped off
by a queer red fez, pulled down over a crop of yellow curls, a
strange little exotic against the homely background of Mother
Mayberry's lilac bushes.
"Sister Mayberry," said the deacon as he paused at the foot of the
steps, "this is Martin Luther Hathaway who was left at my house this
morning by the Circuit Rider, as he came through from Springfield on
his way to Flat Rock, to be delivered to you, along with his letter.
I trust his arrival is not unexpected to you."
"No, indeed, Deacon, I was hoping for him though not exactly
expecting him. A month ago while you was sick, our missionary
society had news of a missionary and his wife down at Springfield
who wanted to go up to Chicagy to study some more about some heathen
matter, and couldn't quite make it with two children. My cousin
Seliny Lue down to the Bluff have took the little girl and we sent
five dollars and a letter saying to send the boy to me for the
summer. Come to Mother Mayberry, sonny," and Mother sat down on the
lowest step and stretched out her arms to the little ward of the
church militant.
Martin Luther's big blue eyes, which were set in his head like those
of a Raphael cherub, looked out from under a huge yellow curl that
fell over his forehead, straight into Mother's gray ones for a
moment, and sticking his pink thumb into his mouth, he sidled into
her embrace with a little sigh of evident relief.
"Eat some, thank ma'am, please," he whispered into her ear by way of
a return of the introduction. His little mother tongue had evidently
suffered a slight twist by his birth and sojourn in a foreign
country, but it served to express the normal condition of all
inhabitants of boy-land.
"Of course he's hungry, bless his little heart," answered Mother as
she removed the fez and ruffled up the damp curls. "Run fetch the
tea-cake bucket from the kitchen safe, 'Liza, and won't you come sit
down, Deacon?"
"No, thank you, Sister," answered the Deacon with a glance of real
regret at the comfortable rocker Miss Wingate had hastened to draw
forward into a sunny but sheltered corner of the porch, "I'm on my
way to take tea with Sister Pratt. I'm to meet Mrs. Bostick there.
How's the throat, child?" And his smile up at the singer lady was
one of the most sympathetic interest.
"Better, thank you, I think," said Miss Wingate, answering both
question and smile. "How well you are looking to-day, Deacon!"
"Why, I'm made over new by that boy of a Doctor," said the Deacon,
fairly beaming with enthusiasm. "Your cure will be only a matter of
time, a matter of time, my dear--Squire Tutt to the contrary," he
added with a chuckle.
"There, bless my heart, if my ears ain't heard two testimonies to
Tom Mayberry all in one minute!" exclaimed Mother with a delighted
laugh. "Have a cake, won't you, Deacon?" she asked, offering the
bucket.
She then established Eliza and the small stranger on the edge of the
steps, with an admonition as to the disposal of the crumbs over on
to the grass, and filled both pairs of hands with the crisp discs.
Eliza spread the end of her short blue calico skirt over Martin
Luther's chubby knees, and they both proceeded to eat into the
improvised napkin with the utmost comradeship. Miss Wingate had
strolled down to the gate with the Deacon and had paused on the way
to decorate the buttonhole of his shiny old coat with a bit of the
white lilac nodding over the wall.
"'Liza, child," said Mother as she glanced at Martin Luther with a
contemplative eye, "when you're done eating run over and ask your
Maw to send me a pair of Billy's britches and a shirt. No, maybe
young Ez's 'll be better, and bring 'em and Martin Luther on back to
the kitchen to me." With which she disappeared into the house,
leaving the munchers to finish their feast alone.
And in an incredibly short time the last crumb, even those rescued
from the skirt, had disappeared and Eliza had led Martin Luther down
the walk, across the Road and around the corner of the Pike cottage,
while the Deacon still lingered talking to Miss Wingate at the gate.
Eliza had taken upon herself, with her usual generalship, the
development of Mother Mayberry's plan for the arraying of the young
stranger in what Providence would consider a civilized garb.
And for some minutes Miss Wingate stood leaning over the top rail of
the low gate idly watching a group of Pratts, Turners, Mosbeys,
Hoovers and Pikes playing a mysterious game, which necessitated wild
dashes across a line drawn down the middle of the Road in the white
dust, shrill cries of capture and frequent change of base. The day
had been a long sunshiny one, full of absorbing interests, and as
she stood drinking in the perfume from a spray of lilac she had
broken to choose the bit for the Deacon, she suddenly realized that
not one minute had she found in which to let the horrible dread
creep close and clutch at her throat. Helping along in the
construction of a bucket of tea-cakes, the printing of four cakes of
butter, the simmering of a large pan of horehound syrup and the
excitement of pouring it into the family bottles that Mother was
filling against a sudden night call from some crouper down or across
the Road, to say nothing of a most exciting pie, that had been
concocted entirely by herself from a jar of peaches and frilled
around with the utmost regard for its artistic appearance, to which
could be added the triumph of the long-tailed pink gown for the
daughter of young Eliza, had kept her busy and--with a quick smile
she had to admit to herself, happy. Indeed the remembrance of the
rapid disappearance of the pie and Doctor Mayberry's blush when,
after he had eaten two-thirds of it, his mother had informed him of
the authorship, brought a positive glow of pleasure to her cheeks.
Such a serious, gentle, skilful young Doctor as he was--and "a
perfect dear" she went as far as admitting to herself, this time
with a low laugh.
And as if her pondering on his virtues had had power to bring a
materialization, suddenly Doctor Tom stood in front of her on the
other side of the gate. He had come from up the Road while she had
been looking down in the other direction, and in his hand he held a
spray of purple lilacs which he had broken from a large bush that
hung over the fence from the Pratt yard into the Road and also
spread itself a yard or two into Hoover territory.
"Aren't they lovely and plumy?" she asked, as she took the bunch he
offered and laid the purple flowers against the white ones she held
in her hand. "These are so much darker than Mrs. Mayberry's purple
ones. I wonder why."
"Some years they bloom lighter than Mother's and other years still
darker--just another one of the mysteries," he answered as he leaned
against the gate-post and looked down at her with a smile. He was
tall, and strong, and forceful, with a clean-cut young face which
was lit by Mother Mayberry's very own black-lashed, serene gray
eyes, and his very evident air of a man of affairs had much of the
charm of Mother Mayberry's rustic dignity. His serge coat, blue
shirt and soft gray tie had a decided cut of sophistication and were
worn with a most worldly grace that was yet strangely harmonious
with his surroundings. For with all of his distinctions in
appearance and attainments, as a man he struck no discord when
contrasted with Mr. Pike's shirt-sleeved, butternut-trousers
personality and he seemed but the flowering of Buck Peavey's store-
clothes ambitions. The accord of it all struck Miss Wingate so
forcibly that unconsciously she gave voice to the feeling.
"How at home you are in all this--this?" she paused and raised her
eyes to his with a hint of helplessness to express herself within
them.
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