Rose of Old Harpeth by Maria Thompson Daviess

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ROSE OF OLD HARPETH

[Illustration: Rose Mary]

ROSE OF

OLD HARPETH

BY MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS

Author of "Miss Selina Lue," "The Road to Providence,"
"The Melting of Molly," etc.

[Illustration]

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

By W.B. KING

A.L. BURT COMPANY

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

1911

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

I DEDICATE

ROSE MARY

TO MY MOTHER

LEONORA HAMILTON DAVIESS

AND THE WHOLE BOOK

TO MY GRANDMOTHER

MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS

ROSE OF OLD HARPETH

CHAPTER I

ROSE MARY OF SWEETBRIAR

"Why, don't you know nothing in the world compliments a loaf of bread
like the asking for a fourth slice," laughed Rose Mary as she reached
up on the stone shelf above her head and took down a large crusty loaf
and a long knife. "Thick or thin?" she asked as she raised her lashes
from her blue eyes for a second of hospitable inquiry.

"Thin," answered Everett promptly, "but two with the butter sticking
'em together. Please be careful with that weapon! It's as good as a
juggler's show to watch you, but it makes me slightly--solicitous." As
he spoke he seated himself on the corner of the wide stone table as
near to Rose Mary and the long knife as seemed advisable. A ray of
sunlight fell through the door of the milk-house and cut across his
red head to lose itself in Rose Mary's close black braids.

"Make it four," he further demanded over the table.

"Indeed and I will," answered Rose Mary delightedly. And as she spoke
she held the loaf against her breast and drew the knife through the
slices in a fascinatingly dangerous manner. At the intentness of his
regard the color rose up under the lashes that veiled her eyes, and
she hugged the loaf closer with her left hand. "Would you like six?"
she asked innocently, as the fourth stroke severed the last piece.

"Just go on and slice it all up," he answered with a laugh. "I'd
rather watch you than eat."

"Wait till I butter these for you and then you can eat--and watch
me--me finish working the butter. Won't that do as well? Think what an
encouragement your interest will be to me! Really, nothing in the
world paces a woman's work like a man looking on, and if he doesn't
stop her she'll drop under the line. Now, you have your bread and
butter and you can sit over there by the door and help me turn off
this ten pounds in no time."

As she had been speaking, Rose Mary had spread two of the slices with
the yellow butter from a huge bowl in front of her, clapped on the
tops of the sandwiches and then, with a smile, handed them in a blue
plate to the man who lounged across the corner of her table. She made
a very gracious and lovely picture, did Rose Mary, in her light-blue
homespun gown against the cool gray depths of the milk-house, which
was fern-lined along the cracks of the old stones and mysterious with
the trickling gurgle of the spring that flowed into the long stone
troughs, around the milk crocks and out under the stone door-sill.
From his post by the door Everett watched her as she drove her paddle
deep into the hard golden mound in the blue bowl in front of her, and,
with a quick turn of her strong, slender wrist slapped and patted
chunk after chunk of the butter into a more compressed form. The
sleeves of her dress were rolled almost to her shoulders and under the
white, moist flesh of her arms the fine muscles showed plainly. The
strong curves of her back and shoulders bent and sprung under the
graceful sweep of her arms and her round breasts rose and fell with
quickened breath from her energetic movements.

"Now, you're making me work _too_ hard," she laughed; and she panted
as she rested her hand for a second against the edge of the bowl and
looked up at Everett from under a black tendril curl that had fallen
down across her forehead.

"Miss Rose Mary Alloway, you are one large, husky--witch," calmly
remarked the hungry man as he finished disposing of the last half of
one of the thin bread and butters. "Here I sit enchanted by--by a
butter-paddle, when you and I both know that not two miles across the
meadows there runs a train that ought to put me into New York in a
little over forty-eight hours. Won't you, won't you let me go--back to
my frantic and imploring employers?"

"Why no, I can't," answered Rose Mary as she pressed a yellow cake of
butter on to a blue plate and deftly curled it up with her paddle into
a huge yellow sunflower. "Uncle Tucker captured you roaming loose out
in his fields and he trusts you to me while he is at work and I must
keep you safe. He's fond of you and so are the Aunties and Stonewall
Jackson and Shoofly and Sniffer and--"

"And anybody else?" demanded Everett, preparing to dispose of the last
bite.

"Oh, everybody most along Providence Road," answered Rose Mary
enthusiastically, though not raising her eyes from the manipulation of
the third butter flower. "Can't you go out and dig up some more rocks
and things? I feel sure you haven't got a sample of all of them. And
there may be gold and silver and precious jewels just one inch deeper
than you have dug. Are you certain you can't squeeze up some oil
somewhere in the meadow? You told a whole lot of reasons to Uncle
Tucker why you knew you would find some, and now you'll have to stay
to prove yourself."

"No," answered Mark Everett quietly, and, as he spoke, he raised his
eyes and looked at Rose Mary keenly; "no, there is no oil that I can
discover, though the formation, as I explained to your uncle, is just
as I expected to find it. I've spent three weeks going over every inch
of the Valley and I can't find a trace of grease. I'm sorry."

"Well, I don't know that I care, except for your sake," answered Rose
Mary unconcernedly, with her eyes still on her task. "We don't any of
us like the smell of coal-oil, and it gives Aunt Viney asthma. It
would be awfully disagreeable to have wells of it right here on the
place. They'd be so ugly and smelly."

"But oil-wells mean--mean a great deal of wealth," ventured Everett.

"I know, but just think of the money Uncle Tucker gets for this butter
I make from the cows that graze on the meadows. Wouldn't it be awful
if they should happen to drink some of the coal-oil and make the
butter we send down to the city taste wrong and spoil the Sweetbriar
reputation? I like money though, most awfully, and I want some right
now. I want to--"

"Mary of the Rose, stop right there!" said Everett as he came over
from his post by the door and again seated himself on the corner of
the table. "I _will_ not listen to you give vent to the national
craving. I _will_ hold on to the illusion of having found one
unmercenary human being, even if she had to be buried in the depths of
Harpeth Valley to keep her so." There was banter in Everett's voice
and a smile on his lips, but a bitterness lay in the depths of his
keen dark eyes and an ugly trace of cynicism filtered through the
tones of his voice.

"And wasn't it funny for me to count the little well-chickens before
they were even hatched?" laughed Rose Mary. "That's the way of it, get
together even a little flock of dollars in prospect and they go right
to work hatching out a brood of wants and needs; but it's not wrong of
me to want those false teeth so bad, because it's such a trial to have
your mouth all sink in and not be able to talk plain and--"

"Help, woman! What are you talking about? I never saw such teeth as
you have in all my life. One flash of them would put a beauty show out
of business and--"

"Oh, no, not for myself!" Rose Mary hastened to exclaim, and she
turned the whole artillery of the pearl treasures upon him in mirth at
his mistake. "It's Aunt Viney I want them for. She only has five left.
She says she didn't mind so long as she had any two that hit, but the
hitters to all five are gone now and she is so distressed. I'm saving
up to take her down to the city to get a brand new set. I have eleven
dollars now and two little bull calves to sell, though it breaks my
heart to let them go, even if they are of the wrong persuasion. I
always love them better than I do the little heifers, because I have
to give them up. I don't like to have things I love go away. You see
you mustn't think of going to New York until the spring is all over
and summer comes for good," she continued, with the most delightful
ingenuousness, as she shaped the last of the ten flowers and glanced
from her task at him with the most solicitous concern. "Of course, you
feel as if the smash your lung got in that awful rock slide has healed
all up, and I know it has, but you'll have to do as the doctor tells
you about not running any risks with New York spring gales, won't
you?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose I will," answered Everett, with a trace of
restlessness in his voice. "I'm just as sound as a dollar now and I'm
wild to go with that gang the firm is sending up into British Columbia
to thrash out that copper question. I know they counted on me for the
final tests. Some other fellow will find it and get the fortune and
the credit, while I--I--"

He stared moodily out the door of the milk-house and down Providence
Road that wound its calm, even way from across the ridge down through
the green valley. Rose Mary's milk-house was nestled between the
breasts of a low hill, upon which was perched the wide-winged, old
country house which had brooded the fortunes of the Alloways since the
wilderness days. The spring which gushed from the back wall of the
milk-house poured itself into a stone trough on the side of the Road,
which had been placed there generations agone for the refreshment of
beast, while man had been entertained within the hospitable stone
walls. And at the foot of the Briars, as the Alloway home, hill,
spring and meadows had been called from time immemorial, clustered the
little village of Sweetbriar.

The store, which also sheltered the post-office, was almost opposite
the spring-house door across the wide Road, the blacksmith shop
farther down and the farm-houses stretched fraternally along either
side in both directions. Far up the Road, as it wound its way around
Providence Nob, could be seen the chimneys and the roofs of
Providence, while Springfield and Boliver also lay like smoke-wreathed
visions in the distance. Something of the peace and plenty of it all
had begun to smooth the irritated wrinkle from between Mark Everett's
brows, when Rose Mary's hand rested for a second over his on the table
and her rich voice, with its softest brooding note, came from across
her bowl.

"Ah, I know it's hard for you, Mr. Mark," she said, "and I wish--I
wish--The lilacs will be in bloom next week, won't that help some?"
And the wooing tone in her voice was exactly what she used in coaxing
young Stonewall Jackson to bed or Uncle Tucker to tie up his throat in
a flannel muffler.

"It's not lilacs I'm needing with a rose in bloom right--" But
Everett's gallant response to the coaxing was cut short by a sally
from an unexpected quarter.

Down Providence Road at full tilt came Stonewall Jackson, with the
Swarm in a cloud of dust at his heels. He jumped across the spring
branch and darted in under the milk-house eaves, while the Swarm drew
up on the other bank in evident impatience. Swung bundle-wise under
his arm he held a small, tow-headed bunch, and as he landed on the
stone door-sill he hastily deposited it on the floor at Rose Mary's
feet.

"Say, Rose Mamie," he panted, "you just keep Shoofly for us a little
while, won't you? Mis' Poteet have done left her with Tobe to take
care of and he put her on a stump while he chased a polecat that he
fell on while it was going under a fence, and now Uncle Tuck is
a-burying of him up in the woods lot. Jest joggle her with your foot
this way if she goes to cry." And in demonstration of his directions
the General put one bare foot in the middle of the mite's back and
administered a short series of rotary motions, which immediately
brought a response of ecstatic gurgles. "We'll come back for her as
soon as we dig him up," he added, as he prepared for another flying
leap across the spring stream.

"But, Stonie, wait and tell me what you mean!" exclaimed Rose Mary,
while Everett regarded Stonewall Jackson and his cohorts with
delighted amusement.

"I told you once, Rose Mamie, that Tobe fell on a polecat under a
fence he was a-chasing, and he smells so awful Uncle Tuck have burned
his britches and shirt on the end of a stick and have got him buried
in dirt up to jest his nose. Burying in dirt is the onliest thing
that'll take off the smell. We comed to ask you to watch Shoofly while
he's buried, cause Mis' Poteet will be mad at him when she comes home
if Shoofly smells. We're all a-going to stay right by him until he's
dug up, 'cause we all sicked him on that polecat and we ought in
honor!"

Stonie looked at the Swarm for confirmation of this worthy sentiment,
and it arose in a murmur. The Swarm was a choice congregation of small
fry that trailed perpetually at the heels of Stonewall Jackson, and at
the moment was in a state of seething excitement. Jennie Rucker's
little freckled face was pale under its usual sunburn, as a result of
being too near the disastrous encounter, and her little nose, turned
up by nature in the outset, looked as if it were in danger of never
again assuming its normal tilt. She held small Pete by one chubby
hand, and with a wry face he was licking out an absurd little red
tongue at least twice each moment, as if uncertain as to whether his
olfactory or gustatory nerves had been offended. Billy was standing
with the nonchalant unconcern of one strong of stomach, and the four
other little Poteets, ranging in size from Shoofly, on the floor, to
Tobe, the buried, were shuffling their bare feet in the dust with
evident impatience to be off to gloat over the prostrated but
important member of the family. They rolled their wide eyes at almost
impossible angles, and small Peggy sniffed audibly into a corner of
her patched gingham apron.

"Yes, Stonie," answered Rose Mary judicially, while Everett's
shoulders shook with mirth that he felt it best not to give way to in
the face of the sympathetic Swarm, "you all must stay with Tobe, if he
has to be buried, and go right back as fast as you can. Troubles must
make us stay close by our friends."

"If I get much closer to him I'll throw up," sniffed Jennie, and her
protest was echoed by a groan from Peggy into the apron, while the
area which showed above its folds turned white at the prospect of
being obliged to draw near to this brother in affliction.

"Yes, but you sicked Tobe, with the rest of us, and in this _girls_
don't count. You've got to go back, smell or no smell, sick or no
sick," announced the General firmly, in the decisive tones of one
accustomed to be obeyed.

"Yes, Stonie," came in a meek and muffled tone from the apron, "we'll
go back with you."

"Can't we just set on the fence of the lot--it ain't so far?" pleaded
Jennie in almost a wail. "I'm afraid Pete will cry from the smell if
we go any closter. He's most doing it now."

"Yes, General, let the girls sit on the fence," pleaded Everett, with
his eyes dancing, but a bit of mockery in his voice, "after all they
are--girls, you know."

"Oh, well, yes, they can," answered Stonewall Jackson in a
magnanimously disgusted tone of voice. "They always get girls when
they don't want to do anything. Come on, Tobe'll be crying if we don't
hurry. Billy, you help Jennie drag Pete, so he can go fast!"

But during the conference the disgusted toddler had been pondering the
situation, and at this mention of his being dragged back to the scene
of offense he had made a quick sally across the plank that spanned the
spring branch and with masculine intuition as to the safe place in
time of danger, he had plunged head foremost into Rose Mary's skirts,
so that only his small fat back showed to the enemy.

"Please go on, Stonie, and leave him with me--he's just a baby,"
pleaded Rose Mary.

"All right," answered the General, "Tobe don't care about him; he'd
just make us go slow," and thus dropping young Peter into the category
of impedimenta, the General departed at top speed, surrounded, as he
came, by the loyal Swarm. On the day of his birth Aunt Viney's choice
for a name for the General had balanced for some hours between that
of the redoubtable Abner the Valiant, of old Testament fame, and her
favorite modern hero, Jackson of the stonewall nature. And in her
final choice she had seemed so to impress the infant that he had
developed more than a little of the nature of his patron commander. At
all times Stonie commanded the Swarm, and also at all times was
strictly obeyed.

Then seeing herself thus deserted by her companions, Shoofly began a
low, musical hum of a wail and walled large eyes up at Everett, at
whose feet she was seated. In instant sympathetic response he applied
the toe of his shoe to the small of the whimpering tot's back and
proceeded awkwardly, though with the best intentions in the world, to
follow the General's directions as to pacification. Rose Mary laughed
as she took a tin-cup from a nail in the wall, and filling it with
milk from one of the crocks, she knelt at the side of the deserted one
and held the brim to the red lips of Shoofly's generous mouth. With a
series of gurgles and laps the consoling draft was quickly consumed
and the whimperer left by this double ministration in a state of
placid contentment.

Peter the wise had stood viewing these attentions to the other baby
with stolid imperturbability, but as Rose Mary turned away to her
table he licked out his pink tongue and bobbed his head toward the
milk crocks, while his solemn eyes conveyed his desire without words.
Peter's vocabulary was both new and limited, and he was at all times
extremely careful against any wastefulness of it. His lips quivered as
if in uncertainty as to whether he was to be left out of this lactic
deal, and his eyes grew reproachful.

"Why, man alive, did you think I had forgotten you!" exclaimed Rose
Mary as she turned with the cup to one of the crocks standing in the
water, at the sight of which motion relief dawned in the serious eyes
of the young petitioner. Filling the cup swiftly, she lifted the
youngster in her arms and came over to sit in the door beside Shoofly
at Everett's feet. With dignified deliberation Peter began to consume
his draft in slow gulps, and after each one he lifted his eyes to Rose
Mary's face as if rendering courteous appreciation for the consumed
portion. His chubby fingers were clasped around her wrist as she held
the cup for him, and her other hand cuddled one of his bare,
briar-scratched knees. The picture had its instituted effect on
Everett, and he bent toward the little group in the doorway and rested
his elbows on his knees as his world-restless eyes softened and the
lines around his mouth melted into a smile.

"Rose Mary," he said with an almost abashed note in his deep voice,
"we'll dispense with the lilacs--they're not needed as retainers, and
I don't deserve them."

"But being good will bring you the lilacs of life; whether you think
you deserve them or not, I'm afraid it's inevitable," answered Rose
Mary, as she smiled up at him with instant appreciation of his change
of mood.

"Well, I'll try it this once and see what happens," answered Everett
with a laugh. "Indeed, I'm ashamed of having shown you any impatience
at all--to think of impatience in this heaven country of hospitality
amounts to positive sacrilege. Shrive me--and then bring on your
lilacs!"

"Then you'll stay with us until it's safe for you to go North and I
won't have to worry about you any more?" exclaimed Rose Mary,
delighted, as she beamed up over Pete's tow-head that had dropped with
repletion on her breast. Shoofly, who, true to her appellation, had
been making funny little dabs of delight at a fly or two which had
buzzed in her direction, had crawled nearer and burrowed her head
under Rose Mary's knee, rolled over on her little stomach and gone
instantaneously and exhaustedly to sleep. Rose Mary adjusted a
smothering fold of her dress and continued in her rejoicing over
Everett's surrender to circumstance inevitable.

"And do you think you can dig some more in the fields? Don't happiness
and hoe mean the same thing to most men?" she questioned with a laugh.

"Yes, hoe to the death and the devil take the last man at the end of
the row, fortune to the first!" answered Everett with a return of his
cynical look and tone.

"Oh, but in the world some men just go along and chop down ugly weeds,
stir up the good, smelly earth for things to grow in, reach over to
help the man in the next furrow if he needs it, and all come home at
sundown together--and the women have the supper ready. That's the kind
of hoeing I want you to do--please dig me up those teeth for Aunt
Viney and I'll have johnny-cake and fried chicken waiting for you
every night. Please, sir, promise!" And Rose Mary's voice sounded its
coaxing, comforting note, while her deep eyes brooded over him.

"I promise," answered Everett with a laugh. "I tell you what I think I
will do. As I understand it, the Briars has about three hundred acres,
all told. I have been all over it for the oil and there is none in any
paying quantities. But in this kind of formation any number of other
things may crop up or out. I am going to go over every acre of it
carefully and find exactly what can be expected of it. There may be
nothing of any value in a mineral way, but as I go I am going to make
soil tests, and then put it all down on a complete map and figure out
just what your Uncle Tucker ought to plant in each place for years to
come. It will kill a lot of time, and then it might be doing something
for you dear people, who have taken a miserable, cross invalid of a
stranger man in out of the wet and made a well chap of him again.

"Do you know what you have done for me? That day when I had tramped
over from Boliver just to get away from the Citizens' Hotel and myself
and perched upon Mr. Alloway's north lot fence like a miserable
funeral crow, I had reached my limit, and my spirit had turned its
face to the wall. I had been down South six weeks and couldn't see
that I felt one bit stronger. I had just heard of this copper
expedition from one of the chaps, who had written me a heedlessly
exultant letter about it, and I was down and out and no strength left
to fight. I was too weak to take it like a man, and couldn't make up
my mind to cry like a woman, though I wanted to. Just as it was at its
worst your Uncle Tucker appeared on the other side of the fence, and
when he looked at me with those great, heaven-big eyes of his I fell
over into his arms with a funny, help-has-come dying gasp. As you
know, when I woke I was anchored in the middle of that puffy old
four-poster in my room under the blessed roof of the Briars and you
were pouring something glorious and hot down my throat, while the
wonderful old angel-man in the big gray hat, who had got me out in the
field, was flapping his wings around on the other side of the pillows.
I went to sleep under your very hands--and I haven't waked up
yet--except in ugly, impatient ways. I never want to."

"I wonder what you would be like--awake?" said Rose Mary softly, as
she gently lowered the head of young Peter down into the hollow of her
arm, where, in close proximity to Shoofly's, he nodded off into the
depths. "I think I'm afraid to try waking you. I'm always so happy
when Aunt Viney has snuffed away her asthma with jimson weed and got
down on her pillow, and I have rubbed all her joints; when the General
has said his prayers without stopping to argue in the middle, and
Uncle Tucker has finished his chapter and pipe in bed without setting
us all on fire, that I regard people asleep as in a most blessed
condition. Won't you please try and stay happy, tucked away fast here
at the Briars, without wanting to wake up and go all over New York,
when I won't know whether you are getting cold or hungry or wet or a
pain in your lungs?"

"Again I promise! Just wake me enough to go out and hoe for you is all
I ask--your row and your kind of hoeing."

"Maybe hoeing in my row will make you finish your own in fine style,"
laughed Rose Mary. "And I think it's wonderful of you to study up our
land so Uncle Tucker can do better with it. We never seem to be able
to make any more than just the mortgage interest, and what we'll wear
when the trunks in the garret are empty I don't see. We'll have to
grow feathers. Things like false teeth just seem to be impossible."

"Do you mean to tell me that the Briars is seriously encumbered?"
demanded Everett, with a quick frown showing between his brows and a
business-keen look coming into his eyes.

"The mortgage on the Briars covers it as completely as the vines on
the wall," answered Rose Mary quickly, with a humorous quirk at her
mouth that relieved the note of pain in her voice. "I know we can
never pay it, but if something could be done to keep it for the old
folks _always_, I think Stonie and I could stand it. They were born
here and their roots strike deep and twine with the roots of every
tree and bush at the Briars. Their graves are over there behind the
stone wall, and all their joys and sorrows have come to them along
Providence Road. I am not unhappy over it, because I know that their
Master isn't going to let anything happen to take them away. Every
night before I go to sleep I just leave them to Him until I can wake
up in the morning to begin to keep care of them for Him again. It was
all about--"

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