The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 16, 1915, Page 14

STOTT S b ‘ FOURTEEN THE NONPARTISAN LEADER the valley and burned the call of its grandeur into their eyes. We seemed to be looking across fields and forests and stréams to the dim purple hills that might be the ramparts of the Holy City itself, while just below us lay the little quiet village of the dead whose souls must just have gone ‘be- fore. And after that everybody rose With one accord and began to hurry to start out upon the long roads homeward, just as the great yellow moon rose in the east to balance the red old sun that was sinking in the west. Only the magnate sat still in his place for several long minutes looking out across to old Harpeth, and I wondered wheth- er he was thinking about the Eternal City or how many rails it was going to take to span the valley at his feet. And I—I just stood on the edge of the bluff by myself and let my soul business over in iie corner with its face to the wall to keep it from intrud- ing. . ¢ 2 Dickie has been here a whole week since the barbecue rally, ostensibly : d trying to get me down to making a few A preliminary sketches for the gardens = to his-C. and G. railroad stations, and, - & of course; 1 am going to do them.- I'm interested in them and-1'm sensible of - the honor it is ‘to get the chance ofl making them, but the moon didn’t rise until ‘after .10 o’clock last night,”and I'm getting nervous about that scene’ of sentiment I’'m planning. I can‘t- think of gardens! 5 Still, I am glad he stayed and that everybody has been giving him a party and that Nell is always there, for he hasn’t had time to notice how I'm treating business and coddling— Jane and Polk and ‘Nell and Caroline and Lee and everybody. else, including . Sallie and the dominie, have been all 4 ” 7] : § 4 8 8 / / Wi, Vi U fx | ] ] | { Copyrighty, Yuagy '+ i~ *; ‘vruany. - She began on The way our pioneer ‘ parbe: vo Givles untll Sundown -begins lift .up its wings of rejoicing that my s Crag had got his beautiful desire for O,‘f‘} a.“iy holuosltlzrsnl;fd:li' “';flhmmhtl“fi ; apostrophizing the mother valley so all Ssi: 10A0US ¢ Dight,..whic in Glendale begin at 11 o’clock and pass the limit at 12, and I don't see how they stand so much of not being alone with each other. It is wearing me out. i I had positively decided on my own side steps for the scene of my proposai to the Crag, under the honeysuckle vine that still has a few brave and hearty blossoms to encourage me, with the harvest moon looking on, but moons and honeysuckle blossoms wait for no man and no woman especially. They are both fading, and I've never got the spot to myself more than a minute at a time yet. The Crag, with absolutely no knowledge of my inten- 2 tions, except it may be a psychic one, sits there every night and smokes and Tooks ¢ut as O1d Harpeth and maddens me, while some one of the others walks in and out and around and about and .. sits down beside him, where I want to be. ¢ Angd as for the daytime, I am so busy all day long providing for this perpet- ual house party that I am dead to even R friendship by night. Jane is doing : over Glendale from city limits to the - river, and I have to spend my time keeping the dear town from finding out what is being done to it. She is hunting out everybody’s pet idea or ideal for some sort of change or improvement to his, especially his. & native town, and then leading him - = gently up to accomplishing it so that he will think he has done it entirely by himself, but wlll tell the next man he meets that there is nothing in the world like a fine energeti¢c woman with SEY good horse sense. In fact, Jane is courting the entire male population in a most scandalous fashion and they'll be won before they know it. “Now, that Confederate monument ought to have been built long ago out of that boulder from the river instead of hauling in a slicked .up granite slab - that would er made the Glendale vol- unteers of sixty-one feel uncomfortable like they would do in the beds in the city hotels. Great idea of mine and that Yankee girP’s—great idea—hey?” sputtered Uncle Peter, after Jane had spent the evening down with him and Aunt Augusta. . “It is a fine idea, Uncle Peter,” I agreed, with a concealed giggle. “I've subscribed the first $5 of the $50 for hauling, setting up and inscrib- ing it, and we are going to let the wo- men give half of it out of the egg mon- cy they have got in that Equality Quilting society. Some kind of horse sense epidemic has broken out in this town—horse sense, Evelina, hey?' And he went on down the street perfectly delighted at having at last accomplish- ed his pet scheme. He thought of it as exclusively his own by now, of. course. And the monument is. just the begin- ning of what is going to begln inG-len- dale. Jane says so.. “There could be‘'no better place thnn G this’ rural community to try out a number of theories I have had in po- = Htical economy as related to the activi- ties of women, Evelina,” she.said to me today, looking at me in a benign and slightly confused way from be- . ‘hind her glasses. ‘“Mr.: Hayes and I were. just talking some of them over tonight, and he seems so interested in seeing ‘me institute some of the most important ones. How could you have. ever thought such a man as he is lack- ln_g,_ serlousness_ of purpose, dear?” (To be contmued.) mothers had to contrive to keep larders | ¢, ¢ up tlie empty bones,” has been stocked and good things ready for the | his Loust for years.- And as he-had-| households, and she tickled the palate | ¢leared away the -list-scrap from the of every man present by mentloning | last table he leaned against a-tree, ex- every achievement in a culinary way | hausted and trivmphant,- with alert, that every woman of his household | adoring eyes fixed on the Crag, who ] Bhad made in all the generations that | had risen in his pliee’ at the head of g ad gone over Harpeth valley. She |the long central table: - - . ) v ealled all the concoctions by their | I had felt entirely.4oo far away from iR pight names, too, and she always gave | kim down at the otiter end with one of- { the name of the originator, who was |the junior magnates-and-Dickie;-but I~ try: 4 gome dear old lady that was sleeping | was glad then thatsI sat- so. I could- in the Greenwood at the foot of the |look straight intozhis:face.as-the-light. Ml or in some grave over at Provi- | from across the :Harpeth valley illu- dence or Hillsboro or Bolivar and who | mined ‘it without.vrhile a wondertul 5 was grandmother or great-grandmoth- | glow lit it from weithin.-- - ar to a hundred or more of the guests. | All of the others.had. ipflkfll of the: i had wondered why Jane had been | 2chievements of--their ;families..and. poring over that old autograph manu- | forefathers and yaunted .the buman- script recelpt book in my desk for | history of the vallgy, but he spoke of, g -days, and as she pald these modern the great hill rimmeg- earth pocket it- | resurrecting compliments to the long self. He gave the earth credit. for the gl gone cooks tears and laughs literally | FOPS that she had yielded up “for, ber i deluged the table. children’s sustengnge.. He described 4 And as she built up, achievement by tl:ogdlshe h;‘ghb;:i forest kingt& for the achievement, the domestic woman his- 0;1 tuelllgfr%m hir x'fl;? eg,f grfl::l?é?rd Stores’ tory of the valley Jane showed in the | " o nourisl.:ed‘“ Or.t1gir WAFD:. most insidious way possible how the pat'ches and flocks y b ploneer women had been veally the them from frosts & warp on which had been woven the |~ snq ag he spoke 2 woof of the whole history of their part | tpat intoned up in" of the nation, political, financial and religious. I never heard anything like it in all my life, and as I looked down 1§ those long tables at those aroused, tense, farmer faces I knew Jane had cracked the geological crust of the Harpeth valley and bullt a brake that would stop any whirlwind on the wo- man question that might attempt to | gtrong arm and slénder hand toivard gome in on us over the ridge from the | tho zun that was dropping fast down outside world. They saw her point | ¢, the rim of old Harpeth. " ““She has and were hard hit. When "votes for | pyreq her breasts™ t6 suckle s, cov- women” gets to coming down Provi-|ereq ys from sun and siotw, and not dence road the farmers will hitch up |ghe expects something from us. “If she g wagon and take mother’ and the | p59 phuikt us strorg and- ready then ; children with a well packed lunch bas- | we are to answer “when"the World has £ ket to n:eet it balf way. This IS a |pneeq of us and her Storehouses and prophecy! mines. We are to give” Jut “her invi- Mother Mayberry from Providence, | tations and welcome all Who al'e *hun- who is the grand old woman of the gry and who come a-seek!ng Gentle- twhole_ valley, having established her | pon her wealth and” her feffinty are claim to the title thirty years ago by yours—and her beaity? - taking up her dead doctor husband’s For a long, long tnirufe every “face & practice and “riding saddlebags to suf- 5 : fering ever since,” as she puts it, broke in the assembly-wa furned forthe set the feminine ice by rising from her ting sun, and a perfect glory rose from Beat by the side of one of the entranced : St magnates—who had been so delighted with her and her philosophies that he could hardly do his dinner justice—and addressing the rally in her wonderful old voice with her white curls flying and her cheeks as pink as a girl's. “Children,” she said after everybody had clapped and clapped so she couldn’t get a start for several minutes, “the Harpeth valley women have - been a-marching along bebind the men for many a day because their strong shoul- ders had to break undergrowth for both, but now husbands and fathers and sons have got their feet up on the E::fl: of Paradise ridge, and it does look e they will be a-reaching down their hands to help us up in the break of a new day to stand by their side, and I for one say mount! I'm ready!” -~ - A perfect war of applause answered her, and Dickie’s father got up to go 1 down the whole length of the table to i phake hands with her, but had to wait fintil she came out of the embrace of Nell's fluffy arms and got a hand free from the magnate on one side and Aunt Augusta on the other. The feast had begun at 1 o’clock, but by Jasper’s skillful maneuvering of one gorgeous viand after the other into the right place by having relays of pones browned to the right turn and potatoes at the proper bursting point, 4t had been prolonged until the shad- : ows of late afternoon were beghmlng 3 to turn purple. : “Don’t nobody ever leave one of my the world might hear. - And then sud- denly it came over me in a great warm, uplifting, awe inspiring rush that a woman who takes on herself voluntari- ly the. respousibility of marrying a poet and an orator and a mystic, who 8 the complete- edition of a ‘mossback ‘that al those qualitles imply, must gquare her shoulders for a long, steady, pioneer march through a’ strange coun- “Could such achievement be for me? “Please God,” I prayed right across into- the sunset;, “make me a full -cup that never fails ‘him!” "1 don’t know how long } stood talk- ing"twith ‘God that way about my man, but when I ‘turned and looked back under the maples everybody was gone, gnd I could hear the last rattle and Whirl going down thie hill. For a sec- ond I felt fhat there was nobody but him and nre left on the hill, but even 1n that Second my heart knew better. “Now?” F questioned myself softly, verto the yellow moon that had atlast” languldly and gracefully risen, putting the finishing touch to the scene >11 Yiad been planning for my proposal. ““Hvelina?” "sald the Crag quietly from where he stood leaning against the tallest maple, “shall we stay here forever and ever or hurry - down through the cemetery by the short cut to the station to say goodby to the rail- roaders, as they expect us to do?” _ Nobody ever had a better opening 7| than that, and I ought to have said, “Be mine, be mine!” with some sort of personal variation of the theme, and have clapped him to my breast and been happy ever after. That is what a courageous man would have done under the circumstances with an op- portunity like that, but I got the worst kind of scare I ever experienced and answered: “How much time have we got? Do you think we can make 1t?” “Plenty,” he answered comfortably as I began to quicken my pace to the little gate that leads between the hedge into the little half acre of those who rest. Then as I tried to pass him he caught my hand and made me walk in the narrow path close at his side. Now, even a strong minded woman who had to go through a little grave- yard with moonlight making the tomb- stones glower out from deep shadows of cedar trees, In the depths of which strange birds croak, while the wind rustles the dry leaves into piles as they fall, wouldn’t feel like honorably pro- posing to the man she intended to marry, even if she was scrouged so | close to his arm that it was difficult for both of them to walk, would she? I excuse myself this time, but I must hold myself to the same standard that I want to hold Lee Greenfield to. How @do I know that he hasn’t had all sorts of ‘cold, creepy feelings keeping him from proposing to Caroline? I hereby promise myself that I will ask. Cousin James to marry me the next favorable opportunity I get if I die with fright the next minute or have to make ‘the opportunity. Still, I can’t help wonderlng what does keep him so composed under the circumstances. Surely he wouldn't re- fuse me, but how do I know for sure? How does a man even know lt a wom- an Is— out over the valley with an expression like what must ‘Have been ofi Mosés’ face when he saw into the romised land. “She’s our mother,”". flung back the long loc his forehead and & iy CHAPTER"® xvuf Togethar? HEN business and love crowd each other on a man’s desk . he calmly puts love in a pi- geon hole to wait for a con- venient time and attends strictly to | ‘business, whfle a woman takes up and coddles the tender passion and