Over Paradise Ridge / A Romance

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"Why, Betty!" said mother, keeping the place open in the magazine she was crocheting from, but kissing me so tenderly that I knew she suspected something had happened to me.

"I came home because I had to, and I'll tell you about it just as soon as I come back from out at Sam's, where I have to go as fast as I can on business," I said, as I hurried out to Eph for Redwheels and up to my room for my corduroys and middy blouse. I knew Sam would get his new family off at the station at the cross-roads. I wanted to be at The Briers all established and at work when he got there. I have heard lots of times that possession is nine points of the law, and I was determined to possess all nine.

In less time than it takes to tell it Redwheels and I were spinning away out Providence Road. I had gone out on that road in early April in search of Sam, when I thought nothing could equal the young loveliness of the valley; I had driven Peter out when it was in its May flowering, and back and forth I had gone through all its midsummering, but it had never looked to me as it did when I came down into it from a far country, in the ripeness of its mid-September. All the leaves were still on the trees and many of them still rich green, but there was frost in the air, and along the edges of the early sweet-gum and sugar-maple branches there were crimson and bronze trimmings. Most of the gorgeous, molten-gold grain was in stacks in the fields, and everywhere for miles and miles were stretched the wigwams of the shocked corn, seeming to offer homes for as many homeless as could come and ask shelter. Goldenrod stood up stiff and glorious in all the fence corners, while gnarled vines, fairly dragged down with wild grapes, festooned themselves from tree to tree, some of which were already heavily loaded with their own big, round, blackening walnuts.

Along the road there was a procession of foodstuffs going to town in heavy old farm wagons with their overalled drivers. Wheat in bales and wheat in sacks was piled on wagon after wagon, and I counted eleven teams hauling in loads of shucked ears of corn that looked almost two feet long. Oh, I was glad to think that those people who had fled from a famine-stricken land would meet that procession as soon as they got off the train, and my eyes misted so, as I thought of the joy that must well up in their hearts, that I came very near running over an old pig mother who was waddling across the road in the lead of nine of the fattest little black-and-white sucklings I have ever seen, each one with his tail curled at exactly the same angle. Giving her a wide run I swung off into Brier Lane. The old cardinal that had been so cross to me all summer, when poor Redwheels's puff had disturbed his family, was trillingly glad to see me, and flew almost across my shoulder as he darted and whirled his welcome. And what should I meet in the middle of the lane, evidently off playing hooky where she should not have been, but Mrs. Buttercup and my young spotted namesake! I immediately climbed out of the car and greeted them both so affectionately that, with my arms around Mrs. Buttercup's neck, I persuaded her to go back the way she had come, while I drove along behind her at a suitable snail's pace. I had to stop every once in a while, when she turned around, to assure her that I knew it was best for her to go home with her full udder, as Sam would soon be there to be welcomed and with company to be fed.

After I had turned her into the south meadow gate, opposite the cedar-pole entrance to The Briers, I went up the hill at a lightning pace because the nearer I got to the fledgling and my garden the more anxious I was for a reunion with them both. I met the garden first, as I rounded up in front of the old hovering, red-roofed house that looked more like home to me than any building I had ever seen in my short and eventful life.

There is no love in the world that reciprocates like that of a garden. If you work and love and plan for it, promptly it turns around and over and gives back a hundredfold more than you put into it. All summer long we had been digging out of, picking from, and cutting off of that little plot of ground, and there it was reaching out with more to return to me. Long rows of white and purple cosmos danced and fluttered round-eyed blossoms in welcome, while some bronze xenias fairly bobbed over and kissed my rough garden boots. Miss Editha's cock's-combs strutted in a gorgeous row down the east walk, and what could have been a greater surprise than that handed me by a row of jolly round squash, though I had been sure we had picked the last languishing fluted fruit from the vine the last week of August? But there lay long green vines completely resuscitated by the September rains; and nestled among their draperies of huge leaves were squash and squash, also big yellow blossoms and small green-yellow buds, I was so perfectly delighted at the recovery of my friends that I reached down and patted one of their head branches with its green tendril curls. There were a lot of gorgeous nasturtiums under the window of the living-room; but, of course, nobody expects more of nasturtiums than for them to be faithful unto death by frost. However, I did pick off a red one and proceed to chew it up with the deepest appreciation of its peppery flavor. And as I chewed with smarting tongue I cast my eyes along a row of beans that was fairly loaded with snaps, which made my thumb smart in anticipation of their gathering, until my gaze was suddenly arrested by something that sent me flying down the walk to the south end of the garden.

Now, a few weeks after I had hastily planted those hollyhock seeds Sam and I had sentimentalized over, I had found in Grandmother Nelson's book that hollyhocks never bloom their first season, but have to root and grow about twenty-four months before they blossom; and, somehow, that depressed me because everything in the world seemed slow at that time. How did I know where I would be after all that time, or that I would ever see them bloom, though they were making great leafy heads which both Sam and I strenuously ignored, while every time I went to dig around their roots somebody had done it before me! There they were, perfectly huge with their great fluted leaves, and right at the end of the row an extra-large plant had sent up a tall, green spike on the end of which a great, pink doll-blossom was shaking out her rosy skirts in the afternoon sun. I stood for a minute looking at her in utter rapture. Then I reached out my arms and gathered her in and put a kiss right in the center of her sweet heart. After that I fled to the barn in search of the fledgling.

I found him sheltering in his small jacket five little late chicks that would insist in running out from under the old hen, who was busily engaged hatching out their small brothers and sisters. He was afraid they would get fatally chilled.

"I needed you bad, Betty, if any more of these little ones was to act crazy like this," he said as I cautiously embraced him and his downy babies. "Put these three in your jacket so I can catch the next one that comes out. Old Dommie is 'most through, and then she can take them all." His faith in old Dommie, who to my certain knowledge had hatched two other families since spring, was not misplaced. In less than a half-hour all egg debris of the family advent had been removed and the babies put to bed under her breast and subjected to a sharp peck of her controlling bill.

By this time the sun had begun to drop down over toward Old Harpeth, and a lovely purple was stealing all over the place which mingled with a great veil of blue smoke from over by the spring, where, I felt sure, Dr. Chubb had lighted twenty new altar fires for the welcome of the home-comers. I wanted to go and see the camp, but someway I felt that it was time to go to the gate to meet Sam and his great big children, so down the Byrd and I went.