Books: The Road To Providence
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Maria Thompson Daviess >> The Road To Providence
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Then from the Pratt home, directly across the Road, came the Deacon
and Bettie, and the enthusiasm at this point boiled up and ran over
in a perfect foam of joy. And, indeed, the pair made a picture
deserving of every thrill, Bettie in her dove gray muslin and the
Deacon bedight according to Eliza's expert opinion of good form. He
beamed like a gentle old cherub himself, while she giggled and
blushed and nodded to the children as she stepped over the rain of
roses, on up to the very door itself. Immediately following the
children, the congregation filed in and settled itself for the long
prayer, that the Deacon always used to open such solemn occasions.
The singer lady found herself seated between Mother Mayberry and the
Doctor on the end of the pew, and out of the corner of her eye she
essayed a view of his magnificence, but caught him in the act of
making the same pass in her direction. They both blushed, and her
smile was wickedly tantalizing, though she kept her eyes fixed on
the Deacon's face as he began to read the words of the service in
his sweet old voice, with its note of tender affection for the pair
of friends for whom he read them. And she never knew why she didn't
realize it or why she thought of permitting it, but as the
impressive words enfolded the pair at the altar, one of her own
small hands was gently possessed in a warm, strong one, and tightly
clasped. For moments the pair of hands rested on the bench between
them, hid by a filmy fold of the rose gown. There was just nothing
to be done about it that the singer lady could see, so she let
matters rest as they were and gave her attention to trying to keep
the riot in her own heart in reasonable bounds. However, it might
have been a comfort to her to know that across the church, Buck had
captured five of Pattie's sunburned fingers, and Mr. Petway was
sitting so close to Miss Prissy that Mr. Pike came very near being
irreverent enough to nudge the devout Judy. Then what a glorious
time followed the solemn minutes in the church! The very twilight
fell upon the entire wedding party still feasting and rejoicing, and
it was under the light of the early stars that the guests had to
wend their way home. Mother Mayberry was surrounded by a court of
small boys, each one eager for her words of commendation on their
more than exemplary conduct and she smiled and joked them as they
escorted her to her door-step. Cindy had gone on ahead and a light
shone from the kitchen window, which was answered by flashes all
along and across the Road as the various households settled down to
the business of recovering sufficient equilibrium to begin the
conduct of the ordinary affairs of daily life at the morrow sun-up.
"Sit down here on the steps just a minute," pleaded the Doctor with
trepidation in his voice, for the rose lady had found the strength
of mind to reprove him for their conduct in church by ignoring him
utterly at the wedding feast, even going to the point of partaking
of her supper in the overwhelmed company of Sam Mosbey, who not for
the life of him could have told from whence came the courage to ask
for such a compliment, and the result of which had been to send him
back later to the table in a half-famished condition; he not having
been able to feast the eyes and the inner man at the same time.
"Can I trust you?" she demanded of the Doctor in a very small and
reproving voice.
"If that is a condition--yes," he reluctantly consented, as he
looked up at her in the starlight.
"Thank you--you were very grand," she said after she had settled
herself in what she decided to be an uncompromising distance from
him. "You really graced the occasion."
"Miss Wingate," he said slowly, and he turned his head so that only
his profile showed against the dusk of the wistaria vine, "you
wouldn't really be cruel to a country boy with his heart on his
sleeve and only his pride to protect it, would you?"
"I suppose it was unkind, for he was so hungry and couldn't seem to
eat at all; but I saw Mrs. Pike giving him a glorious supper later,
so please don't worry over him." Which answer was delivered in a
meek tone of voice that it was difficult to hold to its ingenuous
note.
The Doctor ignored this feint and went on with the most exquisite
gentleness in his lovely voice that somehow brought her heart into
her throat, and without knowing it she edged an inch or two closer
to him and her hand made an involuntary movement toward his that
rested on the step near her, but which she managed to stop in time.
"You realize, do you not, dear lady, that your friendliness to--to
us all, commands my intensest loyalty? You'll just promise to
remember always that I do understand and go on being happy with us,
won't you--us country folks of Providence Road?" The note of pride
in his voice was struck with no uncertain sound.
"Oh, but it's you that don't--don't--" the singer lady was about to
commit herself most dreadfully by her exclamation in the low dove
notes that alone had no trace of the disastrous burr, when Mother
Mayberry stepped out of the hall door and came and seated herself
beside them.
"Well, of course, I know the Bible do say that they won't be no
marriage or giving in marriage in the hereafter, but I do declare we
all might miss such infairs as these, even in Heaven," she observed
jovially. "Didn't everybody look nice and act nice? Course it was
just country doings to you, honey-bird, but I know you enjoyed it
some even if it were." Like all sympathetic natures Mother Mayberry
fell with ease into the current of any thought, and the young Doctor
reached out and took her hand into his with quick appreciation of
the fact.
"It was so very lovely that it made me--made me want--" the daring
with which the singer lady had begun her defiant remark gave out in
the middle and she had to let it trail weakly.
"Well, I hope it made Mr. Petway want Prissy bad enough to ask her,
along about moon-up," said Mother Mayberry in a practical tone of
voice. "Seems like I hear they voices; and if he IS over there I
don't see how he can get out of co'ting some. It's just in the air
to-night--and WE'D better all be a-going to bed so as to get up
early to start off. Tom Mayberry, seems to me as I remember it, you
looked much less plain favored to-day than common. Did you have on
some new clothes? And ain't you a-going to pass a compliment on
Elinory and me, both with new frocks wored to please you?"
The Doctor laughed and as they all rose together he still held his
mother's hand in his and instead of an answer he bent and kissed it
with a most distinctly foreign-acquired grace.
"That's honey-fuzzle again, Tom Mayberry, if not in words, in acts,"
she exclaimed with a delighted laugh. "But pass it along to Elinory
if only to keep her from feeling lonesome. Let him kiss your hand,
child, he ain't nothing but a country bumpkin that can't talk
complimentary to save his life. Now, go get your bucket of water,
sonny, and don't let in the cat!"
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEST ON PROVIDENCE NOB
"Why, honey-bird; troubles ain't nothing but tight, ugly little buds
the Lord are a-going to flower out for us all, in His good time;
maybe not until in His kingdom. I hold that fact in my heart
always," said Mother Mayberry as she looked down over her glasses at
the singer lady sitting on the top step at her feet.
"I know you do," answered Miss Wingate with a new huskiness rather
than the burr in her voice, which made Mother look at her quickly
before she drew another thread through her needle. "But I was just
thinking about Mrs. Bostick and wishing--oh! I wish we could in some
way bring her son back to her before it is too late. Yesterday
afternoon when I started home she drew me down and asked me if when-
-when I went out into the world again I would look for him and help
him. Is there nothing that can be done about it?"
"I reckon not, child," answered Mother Mayberry gently. "If Will was
to come back now it would be just to tear up her heart some more.
Last night, when I was a-settling of her for bed, I began to talk
about the other five children she have buried under God's green
grass, each in a different county, as they moved from place to
place. I just collected them little graves together and tried to
fill her heart with 'em, and when I left she was asleep with a smile
on her face I ain't seen for a year. It's as I say--a buried baby
are a trouble bud that's a-going to flower out in eternity for a
woman. I'll find a lone blossom and she a little bunch. I'm praying
in my heart that Will's a stunted plant that'll bloom late, but in
time to be sheathed in with the rest. But bless your sweet feeling-
heart, child, and let's keep the smile on our faces for her comfort!
Woman must bend and not break under a sorrow load. Take some of them
calcanthuses to her when you go down for one of them foreign junkets
and ask her to tell you about them little folks of her'n. Start her
on the little girl that favored the Deacon and cut off all his
forelock with the scissors while he were asleep, so he 'most made
the congregation over at Twin Creeks disgrace theyselves with
laughing at his shorn plight the next Sunday. I've got to turn
around 'fore sundown for I've got 'most a day's work to straighten
out the hen house and settle the ruckus about nests. The whole
sisterhood of 'em have tooken a notion to lay in the same barrel and
have to be persuaded some. Now run on so as to be back as early as
you can before Tom comes." And as Mother Mayberry spoke, she began
to gather together her sewing, preparatory to a sally into the world
of her feathered folk.
But before she had watched the singer lady out of sight down the
Road, with her spray of brown blossoms in her one hand and her
garden hat in the other, she espied young Eliza rapidly approaching
from up the Road and there was excitement in every movement of her
slim, little body and in every swish of her short calico skirts, as
well as in the way her long pigtail swung out behind.
"Mother Mayberry," she exclaimed, as she sank breathless on the top
step, "they is a awful thing happened! Aunt Prissy was 'most
disgraced 'bout a box of soap and Bud and 'Lias and Henny might have
got killed and Buck too, because he sent one to Pattie and wrote
what was on the card. I've been so scared I am in the trembles now,
but you said always pray to the Lord and I did it while I was a-
running down to the store to beg Mr. Petway not to make her jump off
from Bee Rock on the Nob like the lady Mis' Peavey read about in the
paper did because the man wouldn't marry her that she was in love
with. Fast as I were a-running I reckon the Lord made out what I
said and beat me to him and told him--"
"'Liza, 'Liza, honey, stop this minute and tell me what you are a-
talking about," demanded Mother Mayberry, with almost as much
excitement in her voice as was trembling in that of the small
talking machine at her feet. "Now begin at the beginning and tell me
just what is the matter with your Aunt Prissy?"
"Nothing now," answered Eliza, taking a fresh breath, "she's a-going
to marry Mr. Petway, only she won't know it until to-night and I've
promised him not to tell her."
"What?" was all that Mother Mayberry managed to demand from the
depths of her astonishment as she sank back in her rocking-chair and
regarded Eliza with positive awe.
"Yes'um, and it were all about them two beautiful boxes of sweet-
smelling soap that he bought in town and have had in the store
window for a week. Buck bought one to send to Pattie for a birthday
present and he wrote, 'When this you see, remember me,' on a card
and put it in the box. I carried it over to her for him and Mr.
Hoover jest laughed, and said Buck meant Pattie didn't keep her face
clean. But Mis' Hoover hugged Pattie and whispered something to her
and told Mr. Hoover to shut up and go see how many children he could
get to come in and be washed up for dinner. Buck was a-waiting for
me around the corner of the store and when I told him how pleased
Mis' Hoover and Pattie were, he--"
"But wait a minute, 'Liza," interrupted Mother Mayberry with a
laugh, "them love jinks twixt Buck and Pattie is most interesting,
but I'm waiting to hear about your Aunt Prissy and Mr. Petway. It's
liable to be serious when two folks as old as they is--but go on
with your tale, honey."
"Well, Buck wrote two of them beautiful 'Remember me' verses on nice
pieces of white paper, in them curlycues the Deacon taught him,
before he got one to suit him and he left one on the counter, right
by the cheese box. While we was gone, along come 'Lias and Bud and
Henny and disgraced Aunt Prissy."
"Why, what did them scamps do?" demanded Mother Mayberry, looking
over her glasses in some perturbation as the end of the involved
narration began to dawn upon her.
"They tooken the other box of soap outen the window and put the
verse in it and carried it down to Aunt Prissy and told her Mr.
Petway sent it to her. It was a joke they said, but they was good
and skeered. I got home then and I seen her and Maw laughing about
it and Aunt Prissy was just as pink and pleased and loving looking
as Pattie were and Maw was a-joking of her like Mis' Pratt--no,
Hoover--did Pattie and all of a sudden I knewed it were them bad
boys, 'cause I seen 'em laughing in a way I knows is badness. Oh,
then I was so skeered I couldn't swoller something in my throat
'cause I thought maybe Aunt Prissy would jump offen Bee Rock when
she found she were so disgraced with Mr. Petway. I woulder done it
myself, for I got right red in my own face thinking about it." And
the blush that was a dawn of the eternal feminine again rose to the
little bud-woman's face.
"It were awful, Eliza child, and I don't blame you for being
mortified over it," said Mother Mayberry with a quick appreciation
of the wound inflicted on the delicacy of the child, and the tale
began to assume serious proportions in her mind as she thought of
the probable result to the incipient affair between the elderly
lovers that had been a subject of prayful hope to her for some time
past. "What did you do?"
"I prayed," answered Eliza in a perfectly practical tone of voice,
"and as I prayed I ran to Mr. Petway as fast as I could. He was
filling molasses cans at the barrel when I got there and they wasn't
nobody in the store, only I seen Bud and Henny peeping from behind
the blacksmith shop and they was right white, they was so skeered by
that time. Then I told him all about it and begged him to let Aunt
Prissy have the box of soap and think he sent it, so her feelings
wouldn't get hurted. I told him I would give him my seventy-five
cents from picking peas to pay for it and that Aunt Prissy cried so
when her feelings was hurted, and she thought so much of him that
she kept her frizzes rolled up all day when she hoped he might be
coming that night to see her and got Maw to bake tea-cakes to pass
him out on the front porch and he MIGHT let her have just that one
little box of soap."
"What did he say, child?" asked Mother Mayberry in a voice that was
positively weak from anxiety and suppressed mirth at Eliza's own
account of her management of the outraged lover.
"He didn't say a thing, but he sat down on a cracker box and just
hugged me and laughed until he cried all over my dress and I hugged
back and laughed too, but I didn't know what at. Then he told me
that he didn't ever want Aunt Prissy to know about them bad boys'
foolish joke 'cause he wanted to marry Aunt Prissy and didn't want
her to find out that three young scallawags had to begin his co'ting
for him."
"Did he say all that to you, 'Liza honey, are you sure?" asked
Mother Mayberry, beginning to beam with delight at the outcome of
the horrible situation.
"Yes'm, he did, and I went out and brought Bud and 'Lias and Henny
in and he talked to 'em serious until 'Lias cried and Bud got choked
trying not to. Then he give them all a bottle of soda pop and they
ain't never anybody a-going to tell anybody else about it. He made
them boys cross they hearts and bodies not to. I didn't cross mine
'cause I knew I had to tell you, but I do it now." And Eliza stood
up and solemnly made the mystic sign, thus locking the barn door of
her secret chambers after having quartered the troublesome steed of
confidence on the ranges of Mother Mayberry's conscience.
"Well, 'Liza, a secret oughter always be wrapped up tight and
dropped down the well inside a person, and suppose you and me do it
to this one. And, child, I want to tell you that you did the right
thing all along this line, and it were the Heavenly Father you asked
to help you out that put the right notion in your heart of what to
do."
"Yes'm, I believe He did, and He got hold of Mr. Petway some too, to
make him kind about wanting to marry Aunt Prissy. He are a-going to
ask her to-night and I promised to keep Paw outen the way for him,
'cause Paw WILL get away from Maw and come talk crops with him
sometimes on the front porch. May I go out to the kitchen and get
Cindy to make a little chicken soup for Mis' Bostick now? I can't
get her to eat much to-day."
"Yes, and welcome, Sister Pike," answered Mother Mayberry heartily,
and she shook with laughter as the end of the blue calico skirt
disappeared in the hall. "The little raven have actually begun to
sprout cupid wings," she said to herself as she went around the
corner of the house toward the Doctor's office. "Co'ting are a
bombshell that explodes in the big Road of life and look out who it
hits," she further observed to herself as she paused to train up a
shoot of the rambler over the office door.
The Doctor had just come from over the Ridge, put up his horse and
made his way through the kitchen and hall into his office where he
found his Mother sitting in his chair by the table. He smiled in a
dejected way and seated himself opposite her, leaned his elbows on
the table and dropped his chin into his hands.
"Now, what's your trouble, Tom Mayberry?" demanded his Mother, as
she gazed across at him with anxiety and tenderness striving in
glance and tone. "You've been a-going around like a dropped-wing
young rooster with a touch of malaria for a week. If it's just moon-
gaps you can keep 'em and welcome, but if it's trouble, I claim my
share, son."
"I meant to tell you to-day, Mother," he answered slowly. After a
moment's silence he looked up and said steadily, "I've failed with
Miss Wingate--and I'm too much of a coward to tell her. I feel sure
now that she'll never be able to use her voice any more than she can
in the speaking tones and she--she will never sing again." As he
spoke he buried his face in his hands and his arms shook the table
they rested upon.
For a moment Mother Mayberry sat perfectly still and from the
whispered words on her lips her son knew she was praying. "The
Lord's will be done," she said at last in her deep, quiet voice, and
she laid one of her strong hands on her son's arm. "Tell me about
it, Tom. You ain't done no operation yet."
"Yes, Mother, I have," he answered quietly. "All the different
laryngeal treatments she had tried under the greatest specialists.
Her one hope was to be built up to the point of standing a bloodless
operation with the galvanic shock. I have tried three times in the
last week to release the muscles and start life in the nerves that
control the vocal chords. In the two other cases with which I have
succeeded the response was immediate after the first operation. Now
I dare not risk another tear of the muscles. One reason I didn't
tell her is that I had to count on her losing the fear that she
wouldn't gain the control. You know she thinks they have been only
preliminary treatments and you have heard her laugh as I held her
white throat in my hands. She believes completely in the outcome.
God, to think I have failed her--HER!"
"Yes, Tom, He knows--and Mother understands," his Mother answered
gently.
"And she must be told right away," said the Doctor as he rose and
walked to the window. "It is only fair. Shall I or you tell her?
Choose, Mother, what will be best for her! But can she stand it?"
"Son," said his Mother, as she also rose and stood facing him with
the late afternoon sun falling straight into her face which, lit by
the light without and a fire within, shone with a wonderful
radiance. "Son, don't you know these old Harpeth Hills have looked
down in they day on many a woman open her arms, take a burden to her
heart and start on a long journey up to the Master's everlasting
hills? Sometimes it have been disgrace, or a lifelong loneliness, or
her man hunted out into the night by the law. I have laid still-born
children into my sisters' arms, and I've washed the blood from the
wounds in women's murdered sons, but I ain't never seen no woman
deny her Lord yet and I don't look to see this little sister of my
heart refuse her cup. I'll tell her, for it's my part--but Tom
Mayberry, see that you stand to her when your time comes, as it
surely will."
"Don't you know, Mother, that I would lay down my life to do the
least thing for her?" he asked, with the suffering drawing his young
face into stern, hard lines. "But to do the one thing for her I
might have done has been denied me," he added bitterly.
"No, Tom, there's one thing left to you to give her. Sympathy is
God's box of precious ointment and see that you break yours over her
heart this day. Now, I'm a-going down Providence Road to meet her
and I know the Lord will help me to the right words when the time
comes. I leave His blessing with you, boy!" And she turned and left
him with his softened eyes looking up into her calm face.
Then for a long hour Mother Mayberry worked quietly among her
dependent feather folk and as she worked, her gentle face had its
brooding mother-look and her lips moved as she comforted and
fortified herself with snatches of prayer for the journey through
the deep waters, on which she was to lead this child of her
affection. After the last tangle had been straightened out, each
brood settled in comfortable quarters and the cause of all quarrels
arbitrated, she walked to the front gate and stood looking down the
Road.
And up from the Deacon's house came a little procession that made
her smile with a sob clutching at her heart. The singer lady had
taken Teether from the arms of his mother, who stood happily
exchanging the topics of the times with the Hoover bride, who had
not had thus far sufficient opportunity to expatiate on quite all
the adventures of the wedding journey and kept on hand still a small
store of happenings to recount to her sympathetic neighbors as they
found time and opportunity. The rosy rollicking youngster she had
perched on her shoulder and held him steadily thus exalted by his
pair of sturdy, milk-fed legs. Martin Luther, as usual, clung to her
skirts, Susie Pike danced on before her and the Deacon was walking
slowly along at her side, carefully carrying the rose-garden of a
hat in both his hands. He was looking up at her with his gentle face
abeam with pleasure and Mother Mayberry could hear, as they came
near, that she was humming to him as he lined out some quaint,
early-church words to her. It was a never failing source of delight
to the old patriarch to have her thus fit motives from the world's
great music to the old, pioneer hymns.
"Sister Mayberry," he exclaimed with exultation in his old face, "I
never thought to hear in this world these words of my brother,
Charles Wesley, sung to such heavenly strains as my young sister has
put them this day. Never before, I feel, have they had fit
rendition. While I line the verse, sing them again to Sister
Mayberry, child, that her ears may be rejoiced with mine." And
Mother Mayberry caught at the top of the gate as the girl slipped
the nodding baby down into her arms and in her wonderful muted voice
hummed the Grail motif while the Deacon raised his thin old hands
and lined out the
"Hail, holy, holy, holy Lord,
Whom one in three we know--"
on through its verses to its final invocation of the
"Supreme, essential One, adored
In co-eternal Three."
"The Lord bless you, child, and make His sun to shine upon you," he
said as the last note died away, while Teether chuckled and nozzled
at Mother Mayberry's shoulder. "I must go on back to sit with Mrs.
Bostick and will deposit this treasure with Sister Mayberry," he
added with a smile as he handed the bouquet-hat over the gate.
"Susie, can't you take Teether over to your Aunt Prissy and tell her
that Mother says please give him his milk right away, for it's past
time, and she will come in a few minutes?" asked the singer lady, as
she handed the reluctant baby to the small girl at her side.
"Milk, thank ma'am, please," demanded Martin Luther quickly, having
no intention of being left out of any lactic deal.
"Run ask Cindy," answered Mother Mayberry, as she started him up the
front walk, and came on more slowly with Miss Wingate at her side.
In her soul she was realizing fully the influence the lovely woman
had thrown over the hearts of the simple Providence folk and the
greatness of her own nature was making her understand something of
the loss to those of the outer world whom the great singer would be
no longer able to call within the spell of her wonderful voice.
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