Books: The Road To Providence
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Maria Thompson Daviess >> The Road To Providence
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"Simple life," he supplied with a smile that held a bit of banter.
"It's not so simple as one would think to balance a pie plate on one
hand and cut around it with a knife so the edges aren't jagged--to
be all consumed within the hour," she answered with spirit, rising
to the slight challenge in his voice and smile. "And there are other
most complicated things I have discovered that--"
But just here she was interrupted by a sally from around the corner
of the Pike house which streamed out across the Road, headed
precisely in their direction. Eliza was in the lead and held little
Teether swung perilously across one slender hip, while she clasped
Martin Luther's chubby fingers in her other hand. And behold, the
transformation of the young stranger was complete beyond belief! His
yellow thatch was crowned by a straw hat, which was circled by a
brand new shoestring, though it gaped across the crown to let out a
peeping curl. Young Ez's garments even had proved a size too large
and the faded blue jeans "britches" were rolled up over his round
little knees and hitched up high under his arms by an improvised
pair of calico "galluses" which were stretched tight over a clean
but much patched gingham shirt. His feet and legs had been stripped
in accordance with the time-ordered custom in Providence that bare
feet could greet May Day, and his little, bare, pink toes curled up
with protest against the roughness of even the dust-softened pike.
Susie May, Billy and young Ez beamed with pride at their share in
the rehabiting of the recent acquisition and waited breathlessly for
words of praise from Miss Wingate and the Doctor.
"Why, who is this?" asked the Doctor quickly with a most gratifying
interest in his big voice, while Miss Wingate came out of the gate
on to the pavement.
"It's the little missionary boy that the Deacon brought Mother
Mayberry. I guess the Lord sent him, for he's too big to come outen
a cabbage," answered Eliza, and as she spoke she settled the hat an
inch farther down over the curls with a motherly gesture. She had
failed to grasp with exactness the situation concerning the advent
of Martin Luther, but was supplying a version of her own that seemed
entirely satisfactory to the youngster's newly acquired friends.
"Spit through teeth," ventured the young stranger, anxious to
display an accomplishment that had been bestowed upon him by Billy
while the "galluses" were in process of construction a few minutes
ago. "Thank ma'am, please," he hastened to add with pathetic loyalty
to some injunction that had been impressed upon his young mind
before his embarkation upon strange seas.
"Let me see you do it," demanded the Doctor, in instant sympathy
with his pride in this newly acquired national accomplishment.
"He hasn't got time to do it now," answered Eliza importantly, as
she hitched Teether a notch higher up on her arm. "I've got to take
him and the baby in to Mother Mayberry to see if his other top-tooth
have come up enough for Maw to rub it through with her thimble."
Though she did not designate Teether as the subject of the operation
the audience understood that it was he and not Martin Luther so
fated.
"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed Miss Wingate in horror, and she reached out
and took Teether into protective arms. The day had been a long and
weary one for Teether Pike and he dropped his tired little head over
on the cool pink muslin shoulder and nestled his aching jaw against
the smooth white neck.
"Hold him still just a second as he is," said Doctor Tom quickly,
and in an instant he had whipped a case from his pocket, selected an
instrument and, inserting his finger between the pink lips, he
rendered unnecessary the agony of the maternal thimble. It had been
done so quickly that Teether himself only nestled a bit closer with
a faint moan, and Miss Wingate looked up at the operator with
grateful eyes. She hugged the limp baby closer and started to speak,
but was interrupted by an anxious question from Eliza.
"Did you cut it?" she demanded.
"Yes," answered the Doctor non-committally.
"Well, Maw'll be mighty mad at you, for Mother Mayberry asked her
last night to let you cut it and she said she'd thimbled the rest of
us and she reckoned he could stand it too. If it was me, I'd let you
cut me wide open and sew me up again if you wanted to," and Eliza
beamed upon the Doctor with an affection that was the acme of
idealization. She had forgotten that only a few hours ago she had
renounced her loyalty at the memory of the oil, but Miss Wingate
smiled in appreciation of this display of further feminine
inconsistency.
"Shucks," said Billy, "you'd holler 'fore he could cut onct. I'm a-
going to let him fix my next stump toe and 'Lias Hoover have got two
warts he can cut off, if he gives him a piece of catgut string to
tie on fish hooks." And Billy looked as if he expected to see the
Doctor entirely overwhelmed at the prospect of so much practice so
easily obtained.
"Go take Martin Luther to show Mrs. Mayberry, Eliza," said Miss
Wingate with a laughing smile over the baby's head at the Doctor and
his practice. "I'll come on with the baby." And with Teether still
embraced she strolled up the walk with Doctor Mayberry at her side.
When they reached the front steps she seated herself on the top one
and slowly lowered the drowsy little chap, until his head rested on
her breast and her arms held him cradlewise. She began a low husky
humming as she rocked herself to and fro, watching breathlessly the
fringed lashes sink over his wearied eyes, until they lay like
shadows on the purple circles beneath. She was utterly absorbed in
getting Teether into a comatose condition, and had neither eyes nor
ears for the Doctor; not that he claimed either.
He sat for some moments watching her and listening breathlessly to
the low music that came out through the wonderful throat, as if from
some master instrument with strings uncouthly muted. And as he
looked, the horrible thought clutched at his own heart. Suppose he
should not be able to free her voice for her! Many others had tried-
-the greatest--and they had all been baffled by the strange
stiffness of the chords. He knew himself to be, in a way, her last
resort. A world of music lovers awaited the result. He had been
obliged to send out two Press bulletins as to her condition within
the week--and she sat on the steps in the twilight humming Teether
Pike to sleep, shut in by the Harpeth Hills with only him to fight
her fight for her. He almost groaned aloud with the pain of it, when
into his consciousness came Mother Mayberry's placid voice shooing
the Pike children home with promises and admonitions. A line from
Doctor Stein's letter flashed into his mind: "And first and above
all I want your mother to put heart and hope into the girl." The
fight was not his alone, thank God, and he knew just how much he
could trust to his mother's heart-building. Why not? Over the land
men were learning to strengthen the man within before attempting to
cure the man without. Hadn't that always been his mother's
unconscious policy out on Harpeth Hills? A deep calm fell into his
troubled spirit and, as the singer lady and Mother escorted the
escort down the walk, he slipped away into his office for an hour
before supper with his reports and microscope.
A half hour later Mother Mayberry came into his office for the
little chat she often took the time for just before the summons to
supper. She seated herself by the open window, through which the
twilight was creeping, and he threw down his pen and came and stood
leaning against the casement.
"Well," she said with a long breath of contentment, "well, I do feel
about ready to get ready to rest. The Pikeses is all in, I heard
Bettie Pratt calling in the Turners and Pratts and Hoovers, Buck
have come home to supper on time, as I know will relieve Hettie
Ann's mind, Squire Tutt just went in the front gate as I come up the
walk and I seen Mis' Bostick light the lamp in the Deacon's study
from my kitchen window a minute ago. They ain't nothing in the world
that makes me so contented as to know that all Providence is a-
setting down to meals at the same time and a-feeding together as one
family, though in different houses. The good Lord will get all the
rendered thanks at the same time and I feel it will please Him--ours
is late on account of Elinory deciding at the last minute to beat up
some clabber cheese with fresh cream for your supper, like she says
they fix it up over in Europe somewhere she lived while she was a-
studying to sing. I come on out so she could have a swing to herself
and not think anybody was a-hurrying of her. It's a riled woman as
generally answers the call of hurry and I never gives it, lessen
it's life or death or a chicken-hawk."
"But, Mother," remonstrated the Doctor with a very real distress in
his voice, "ought you to let her--Miss Wingate--do such things--so
many things? Are you sure she enjoys it and is not just doing it to
help or because she thinks she ought? Or do you--?"
"Well," interrupted Mother decidedly, "it's my opinion they ain't
nothing in the world so heavy as empty hands. She have had to lay
down a music book and I don't know nothing better to offer than a
butter-paddle and a bread-bowl. It's the feeding of folks that
counts in a woman's life, whether it be songs or just bread and
butter. If Elinory's tunes was as much of a success as her riz
biscuits have come to be, I wisht I could have heard her just onct."
"I did, Mother, the first night she sang in America--and it was very
wonderful. When I think of the great opera house, the lights and the
flowers, the audience mad with joy and the applause and--I--I--
wonder how she stands it!"
"Yes," answered Mother, "I reckon wondering how Eve stood things
muster took Adam's mind offen hisself to a very comforting degree.
Courage was the ingredient the good Lord took to start making a
woman with and it's been a-witnessing his spirit in her ever since.
I oughtn't to have to tell you that."
"You don't," Doctor Tom hastened to answer as he smiled down on
Mother. "I only spoke as I did about Miss Wingate because you see
she is--well, what we would call a very great lady and I wouldn't
have her think that I did not realize that-?"
"Well, you can do as you choose," answered Mother placidly as she
prepared to take her departure to see to the finishing up of the
supper, "but I ain't a-letting no foolish pride hold my heart back
from my honey-bird. Love's my bread of life and I offers it free,
high or low. Come on and see how you like that cheese fixing she's
done made for you."
CHAPTER III
THE PEONY-GIRL AND THE BUMPKIN
"There's just no doubt about it, if Tom Mayberry weren't my own son
and I had occasion to know better I'd think he had teeth in his
heels, from the looks of his socks. Every week Cindy darns them a
spell and then I take a hand at it. Just look, Elinory, did you ever
see a worser hole than this?" As Mother Mayberry spoke she held up
for Miss Wingate's interested inspection a fine, dark blue sock.
They were sitting on the porch in the late afternoon and the singer
lady was again at work on a bit of wardrobe for the doll daughter of
her friend Eliza.
"How does he manage such--such awful ones?" asked Miss Wingate with
a laugh.
"That you can't never prove by me," answered his mother as she
slipped a small gourd into the top of the sock and drew a thread
through her needle.
"Sometimes I wish the time when I could turn him barefooted from May
to November had never gone by. But a-wishing they children back in
years is a habit most mothers have got in common, I reckon. When
he's away from me I dream him often at all ages, but it's mostly
from six to eleven I seem to want him. When he were six, with Doctor
Mayberry gone, I took to steadying myself by Tom and at eleven I
made up my mind to give him up."
"Give him up?" asked Miss Wingate as she raised her eyes from her
work. "I don't think you seem to have given him up to any serious
extent." And she smiled as she turned her head in the direction of
the office wing, from which came a low whistled tune, jerkily and
absorbedly rendered.
"Oh, he don't belong to me no more," answered his mother in a placid
tone of voice as she rocked to and fro with her work. "I fought out
all that fight when I took my resolve. I just figured something like
this, Pa Lovell had been a-doctoring on Harpeth Hills for a lifetime
and Doctor Mayberry had gave all his young-man life to answering the
call, a-carrying the grace of God as his main remedy, so now I felt
like the time had come for a Lovell and a Mayberry to go out and be
something to the rest of the world, and Tom were the one to carry
the flag. I seen that the call were on him since he helped me
through a spell of May pips with over two hundred little chickens
before he were five years old, and he cut a knot out of the Deacon's
roan horse by the direction of a book when he weren't but eleven, as
saved its life. That kinder settled it with me and the Deacon both,
though we talked it back and forth for two more years. Then Deacon
took to teaching of him regular and I set in to save all I could
from the thin peeling of potatoes to worser darnings and patches
than this. Would you think they could be any worser?" And she smiled
up over her glasses at the girl opposite her.
"Tell me about it," demanded the singer lady interestedly. "Where
did you send him to school first?"
"Right down here to the City. You see Doctor Mayberry left me this
home, fifty acres and a small life insurance, so they was a little
something to inch and pinch on. You can't save by trying to peel
nothing, but the smallest potatoes have got a skin, and I peeled
close them days. Tom did his part too and he run the plow deep and
straight when he wasn't much taller than the handles. I had done
talked it over with him and asked him would he, and he looked right
in my eyes in his dependable way and said yes he would. That
finished it and he wasn't but eleven; but I don't want to brag on
him to you. If you listen to mothers' talk the world are full of
heroes and none-suches." Again Miss Wingate received the smile from
over Mother Mayberry's glasses and this time it was tinged with a
whimsical pride.
"Please, Mrs., Mayberry, tell me about it; you know I want to hear,"
begged the girl, and she moved her chair nearer to Mother's and
picked up the mate of the blue sock off her knee. "How old was he
when he went to college?"
"Just sixteen, big and hearty and with enough in his head to get
through the examinations. I packed him up, and him and the Deacon
started down Providence Road at sun-up in the Deacon's old buggy. He
looked both man and baby to me as he turned around to smile back;
but I stood it out at the gate until they turned the bend, then I
come on back to the house quick like some kind of hurted animal.
But, dearie me, I never got a single tear shed, for there were Mis'
Peavey with Buck in her arms, shaking him upside down to get out a
brass button he hadn't swallowed. By the time we poured him full of
hot mustard water and the button fell outen his little apron pocket,
I had done got my grip on myself."
"I just can't stand it that you had to let him go," Miss Wingate
both laughed and sobbed.
"Yes, but I ain't told you about the commencement, honey-bird.
There's that tear _I_ didn't get to drop a-splashing outen your eyes
on the doll's hat! That day was the most grandest thing that ever
happened to anybody's mother, anywhere in this world. I didn't think
I could go to see him get the diplomy, for with all his saving ways
and working hard in the summer, it had been a pull to make buckle
and tongue meet and there just wasn't nothing left for me to buy no
stylish clothes to wear. I set here a-worrying over it, not that I
minded, but it was hard on the boy to have to make his step-off in
life and his mother not be there to see. And somehow I felt as if it
would hurt Pa Lovell and Doctor Mayberry for me not to be with him.
Then with thinking of Pa Lovell a sudden idea popped into my head.
There was Seliny Lue Lovell right down to the Bluff, on the road to
town, and with Aunt Lovell's fine black silk dress packed away in
the trunk, as good as new, and me and Seliny Lue of almost the same
figger as her mother. That just settled the question and I got up
and washed out my water-waves in a little bluing water to make 'em
extra white, dabbed buttermilk on my face to get off some of the tan
and called over Mis' Peavey and Mis' Pike to let 'em know. The next
morning I started off gay with everybody there to see and sending
messages to Tom."
"Wasn't it fortunate you thought of the dress and lovely for you to
be able to go right by and get it!" exclaimed Miss Wingate, her eyes
as bright as Mother Mayberry's and her cheeks pink with excitement
as the tale began to unfold its dramatic length.
"Yes, and Seliny Lue was glad enough to see me! We laughed and
talked half the night, was up early, and she took a time to rig me
out. It is a stiff black silk, as anybody would be proud of, cut
liberal with real lace collar and cuffs. Seliny Lue said I looked
fine in it. I wisht she could have gone with me, but they wasn't
room for both of us inside the dress." And Mother laughed merrily at
the memory of her borrowing escapade.
"Did Doctor Mayberry know you were coming?" asked the singer lady,
hurrying on the climax of the recital.
"Not a word! He'd gone off the week before taking it sensible, but I
could see hurt mightily about it. I got to the University Hall late,
and 'most everybody in the world looked like they was there. I stood
at the back and didn't hope to see or hear, just thankful to be near
him, but I seen one of them young usher men a-looking hard at me and
he came up and asked me if I wasn't Mr. Thomas Mayberry's mother. He
had knew me by the favor. I told him yes and he took me up to the
very front just as the singing begun. I soon got me and the silk
dress settled, with the bokay all Providence had sent Tom on my
knee, and looked around me. There next to me was the sweetest young-
lady girl I have 'most ever saw, and she smiled at me real friendly.
I was just about to speak when the music stopped and the addressing
began by a tall thin kinder man. Elinory, child, did you ever hear
one of them young men's life-commencement speeches made?" This time
Mother Mayberry peered over the top of her glasses seriously and her
needle paused suspended over the fast narrowing hole in the sock.
"Yes, but I don't think I ever listened very carefully," admitted
Miss Wingate with a smile.
"Well, I felt that if the Lord had gave it to me to stand up there
and say a word of start-off to all them boys setting solemn and
listening, it wouldn't have been about no combination of things done
by men dead and gone, that didn't seem to prove nothing in
particular on nobody. I woulder read 'em a line of scripture and
then talked honest dealing by one another, the measuring out of work
according to the pay and always a little over, the putting of a
shoulder under another man's pressing burden, the respect of women
folks, the respect of theyselves and the looking to the Lord to see
'em through it all. That speech made me so mad I'most forgot it was
time for Tom's valediction. Honey-bird, I wisht you coulder seen him
and heard him."
"I wish I could," answered Miss Wingate with a flush.
"Dearie me, but he was handsome and he spoke words of sense that the
other gray-haired man seemed to have forgot! And they was a farewell
sadness in it too, what got some of them boys' faces to working, and
I felt a big tear roll down and splash right on the lace collar.
Then he sat down and they was a to-do of hollering and clapping, but
I just sat there too happy to take in the rest of what was did.
Sometimes they is a kinder pride swell in a mother's heart that
rises right up and talks to her soul in psalm words, and I heard
mine that day." Mother's eyes softened and looked far away across to
the blue hills.
"What did he do when he saw you?" asked Miss Wingate gently.
"Oh, I didn't pay much attention to him when he come up to me, or
let on how I felt. That sweet child next to me had done found out I
was his mother, I couldn't help telling her. And then she had sent
for her father, who was the head Dean man, and about the time Tom
came up, he was there shaking hands with me and telling me how proud
the whole University was of Tom and about the great scholarship for
him to go to New York to study he had got, and that he must go. It
didn't take me hardly two seconds to think a mortgage on the house
and fifty acres, the cows and all, so I answered right up on time
that go he should. While I was a-talking Tom had gave the bokay from
Providence to the girl, what he had been knowing all the time at her
father's house. And she had her nose buried in one of Mis' Peavey's
pink peonys, a-blushing as pretty as you please over it at that
country bumpkin of mine with all his fine manners. That Miss Alford
is one of the most sweet girls you ever have saw. She and me have
been friends ever since. She comes out to see me in her ottermobile
sometimes. She ain't down to the City now, for I had a picture card
from some place out West from her, but when she comes back I'm a-
going to ask her to come up and have a stay-a-week-in-the-house
party for you; and she can bring her brother. You might like him.
The four of you can have some nice junketings together. Won't that
be fine?"
"Y-e-s," answered the singer lady slowly, "but I'm afraid I'm not
able now to interest anybody, and my voice, when I speak--I--I--Will
it be soon?" Her question had a trace of positive anxiety in it and
her joy was most evidently forced.
"Oh, not till June rose time! And your voice now sounds like a
angel's with a bad cold. I'll tell Tom about it, he'll be so
pleased. Her father was such a friend to him and as proud of him now
as can be."
"Did Doctor Mayberry stay in the City--after his graduation?" asked
Miss Wingate, a trace of anxiety in her voice.
"That he didn't! He come on home with me that night, got into his
overalls and begun to plow for winter wheat by sun-up the next
morning. We made a good crop that year and the mortgage wasn't but a
few hundred dollars, what we soon paid. We've been going up ever
since. Tom reminds me of a kite, and I must make out to play tail
for him until I can pick him out a wife."
"Have you thought of anybody in particular?" asked the lovely lady
without raising her eyes from her work. She had commenced operations
on the blue sock unnoticed by Mother, who was taken up in the
unfolding of her tale.
"Not yet," answered she cheerfully. "I mustn't hurry. Marrying ain't
no one-day summer junket, but a year round march and the woman to
raise the hymn tune. I take it that after a mother have builded up a
man, she oughter see to it that he's capped off fine with a wife,
and then she can forget all about him. I've got my eyes open about
Tom and I'm going to begin to hunt around soon."
"I wonder just what kind of a wife you--you will select for him,"
murmured Miss Wingate with her eyes still on the sock, which she was
industriously sewing up into a tight knot on the left side of the
heel.
"Well, a man oughter marry mostly for good looks and gumption; the
looks to keep him from knowing when the gumption is being used on
him. Tom's so say-nothing and shy with women folks that he won't be
no hard proposition for nobody. But with that way of his'n I'm
afraid of his being spoiled some. I have to be real stern with
myself to keep from being foolish over him."
"But you want his wife to--to love him, don't you?" asked Miss
Wingate, as she raised very large and frankly questioning eyes to
Mother Mayberry, who was snipping loose threads from her completed
task.
"Oh she'll do that and no trouble! But a man oughter be allowed to
sense his wife have got plenty of love and affection preserved, only
he don't know where she keeps the jar at. As I say, I don't want Tom
Mayberry spoiled. What did I do with that other sock?" And Mother
began to hunt in her darning bag, in her lap and on the floor.
"Here it is," answered Miss Wingate as she blushed guiltily. "I--
darned it." And she handed her handiwork over to Mother Mayberry
with trepidation in voice and expression.
"Well, now," said Mother, as she inspected the tight little wad on
the blue heel. "It was right down kind of you to turn to and help me
like this, but, honey-bird, Tom Mayberry would walk like a hop toad
after he'd done got it on. You have drawn it bad. I don't know no
better time to learn you how to darn your husband's socks than right
now on this one of Tom's. You see you must begin with long cross
stitches in the--Now what's all this a-coming!" And Mother Mayberry
rose, looked down the Road and hurried to the sidewalk with the
darning bag under her arm and her thimble still on her finger.
Up the middle of the Road came, in a body, the entire juvenile
population of Providence at a break-neck speed and farther down the
street they were followed by Deacon Bostick, coming as fast as his
feeble old legs would bring him. Eliza Pike headed the party with
Teether hitched high up en her arm and Martin Luther clinging to her
short blue calico skirt. They all drew up in a semicircle in front
of Mother Mayberry and Miss Wingate and looked at Eliza expectantly.
On all occasions of excitement Eliza was both self-constituted and
unanimously appointed spokesman. On this occasion she began in the
dramatic part of the news without any sort of preamble.
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