The Road to Providence

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"You say, do you, that I'll never sing again?" she asked quickly, and as she spoke she lifted his head in her hands and waited an instant for the smothered groan with which he answered her.

"Now, listen," she answered him in a voice fairly a-tremble with joyous passion and as she spoke she laid his ear close over her heart and held him so an instant. "Does it matter that only you will ever hear the song, dear?" she whispered, then slipped out of his arms and across to the other side of the table before he could detain her.

"No, Tom Mayberry," she said as he reached for her, and her tone was so positive that he stopped with his arms in the air and let them sink slowly to his side. "We'll have this question out right here and if I have trouble with you I'll—call your Mother," and she laughed as she shook away a tear.

"Please!" he pleaded and his face was both so radiant and so worn that she had to harden her heart against him to be able to hold herself in hand for what she wanted to say to him.

"No," she answered determinedly, "and you must listen to every word I say, for I am getting frightened already and may have to stop."

"I want to talk some myself," he said with the very first smile coming into his grave young eyes. "I want to tell you that I can't help loving you, and have ever since I first saw you, but that it won't do at all for you to marry—marry a Providence country bumpkin with nothing but a doctoring head on his shoulders. I want you to understand that—"

"Please don't refuse me this way before I've ever asked you," she said with a trace of the grand dame hauteur in her manner and voice that he had never seen before. "I think—I think very suddenly I have come to realize, Doctor Mayberry, that—that—oh, I'm very frightened, but I must say it! I wouldn't blame you or your Mother for not wanting me at all. I—I somehow, I don't seem very great—or real to myself here in Providence. My training has been all to one end—useless now—and I'm all unlessoned and unlearned in the real things of life. I seem to feel that the hot theaters and the crowds that have looked at me and—am I what she has a right to demand in your wife?" And, with a proud little gesture, she laid her case in his hands.

And though she had not expected anything dramatic from him in the way of refutation of her speech, she was totally unprepared for the wonderful, absolute silence that met her heroics. He stood and looked her full in the eyes with a calm radiance in his face that reminded her of the dawn-light she had seen that morning come over Providence Nob and his deep smile gave a young prophet look to his austere mouth. And as she gazed at him she drew timidly nearer, even around the corner of the table.

"Your work is so wonderful—and real—and you ought to have a wife who—" By this time she had got much nearer and her voice trailed off into uncertainty. And still he stood perfectly still and looked at her.

"She loves me and I love her, so that, do you think, I might—I might learn? Cindy says I'm a wonder—and remember the custards," she finished from somewhere in the region of his collar. "Now that we've both refused each other do you suppose we can go on and be happy?" she laughed softly from under his chin.