The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 3 February 1916, Page 3

The Storyteller

ROSEMARY ■■ ♦ In the Arlington Cemetery;, near Washington, there is probably no monument more simple and yet more impressive than that which marks the grave of an engineer who died in the government service. It is a single large block of rose quartz. Something about its beautiful color and its clear texture makes it seem especially appropriate as a token of affection for one who has gone. At any rate, so if, seemed to Zackary Lurvey, when he visited Arlington Cemetery. Lurvey lived in our county in Maine, and at the time was attending a political gathering in Washington. He was not a man whose heart was easily touched ; in fact, at home he was considered a ' hard old citizen,' and few liked him; but beneath his harsh exterior he had one tender spot —the memory of his young wife, Rosemary, who had died at the age of twenty, when they had been married only a year. She was a pretty, blue-eyed girl, with a clear, sweet voice. Lurvey had been married twice since Rosemary died, and as the years passed he had grown hard and unscrupulous. No one had ever known him to show gentleness or kindness toward anyone in his later years, and his shrewdness in any business transaction had become proverbial in our county. When old Zackary saw that block of rose quartz at Arlington, memories of blue-eyed Rosemary stirred his tough old heart. He suddenly determined to tear down the granite monument on her grave, and to replace it with a block of that clear rose stone.

His intention was still firm when he returned to Maine; but he had no idea where he could get the rose quartz, for he was a lumberman and had little knowledge of minerals. He had heard, however, that my cousin Addison was interested in minerology, and that we boys from the old academy had of late been roaming round up near the boundary. One day we met him on the road. Usually the old fellow passed us with a surly nod, but that day he pulled in his horse, and remarked that it was ' a fine day for the race,' meaning the human race in general. That was his favorite joke, and was a sure sigh that he was in good humor. ' Never told me how much you made off'n that cut of bird's-eye maple you got hold of on the old Cranston farm,' he said, by way of beginning a conversation. ' Oh, we did pretty well with it, Mr. Lurvey/ Addison replied. 'So I hear,' said he. ' Pretty shrewd you were. I intended to buy up that lot of maple myself, but you were too shrewd for me. D'ye mind saying, now it's over, how you found out that them maples was bird'seye?' We had learned from past experience .never to give away a bit of useful information to old Zack Lurvey. ' Woodpeckers sometimes pick holes in trees,' Addison remarked sagely. The old man shot a questioning glance at us, and then began to talk of something else. ' I wisht I had your legs to run about up there in the great woods. Heard you found gold up at Megan tic." Some say you didn't. Did ye?' 4 Oh, a few little nuggets,' Addison said. We knew that old Zack had learned about our finding the nuggets, and had secretly sent a man up over the boundary to prospect the brooks that flow into Megantic Lake.

' When you was rangin' up that way,' the old man continued, ' d'ye ever come across any rock that was sort of pink-colored, rosy like, and clear all through, real pretty rock?' You mean rose quartz Addison asked. 'I guess that's what ye do call it. Ever see any of that?'

Yes, once in a while, on ledges, where granite, mica, and feldspar crop out,' replied Addison, still on his guard. We could not imagine what old Zack was driving at. . .

• I'd like to git a big piece of that,' said he. ' A nice, big piece that would weigh a ton or two. Wouldn't care if 'twould weigh two or three tons. But I want it to"be clear and have a real rosy color to it.'

Something in the old lumberman's tone surprised. us. We wondered what he wanted" such a huge piece of rose quartz for, but we knew better than to show any curiosity about it. Addison merely remarked that it would not be easy to get a mass of rose quartz of that size, because it usually occurred in not very large outcrops from other rock, and because it was hard to get one without cracking it. ' You don't think you could get me such a piece, then?' old Zack said. ' I'd pay ye well, if you could,' he added.

' Oh, I don't say it couldn't be done,' Addison replied. .' Wal, keep me in mind about this, when you're cruisin' round,' the old lumberman said, and drove on.

'What in the world does he want with that?' Addison said.

We guessed that old Zack had heard that some other mineral substance more valuable was associated with rose quartz, and that he was trying to find out through us where rose quartz abounded. A year passed. We saw bits and chunks of rose quartz here and there, but none of them very large; indeed the prospect of our ever getting a mass of the size t that old Zack wanted was so slight that we soon forgot about the matter.

Time went on until the fall, when typhoid fever broke out at the academy. School closed for several weeks, and a party of us went up to Boundary Camp. While out shooting partridges Hiram Sewell came upon a peculiar boulder. As he was stealing along a little hollow among some cedars, he caught sight of a bit of pink rock almost completely buried in scurf soil and dead leaves. He thought so little about it at the time that he did not even mention it.

But the next spring, when Mr. Kennard, our preceptor, was giving us a talk on mineralogy, Hiram was reminded of it.

' I saw a mighty pretty piece of rose quartz up at Boundary Camp,' he said. - ' I don't know how large it was, because I didn't stop to kick the dead leaves away from it. I was after a flock of partridges.' He went on to tell us just where he had seen the rock. One cloudy day in the following August, while we were at work stacking hay in the meadow below Boundary Camp, Addison set out for the place Hiram had described, to look for the rose quartz. He came back at dark much elated. 'That's a fine piece of rose quartz Hiram saw up there last fall,' he said. ' I found it. It isn't a ledge; there's no ledge there. I think it's a stray mass left by the glacial ice in the drift period. We have never seen any other rose quartz up there, you know.' ' But how large is it?' we asked. ' Will it weigh

a ton?' 'More, I think. I didn't dig it entirely out of the gravel. It's fine color—lovely. If old Zackary doesn't want it, I should like if for a specimen, to set by the door at home. It's a beauty.' A few days later he and I went up there, and took a shovel and a crowbar with us. Addison had not exaggerated either the size or the beauty of the boulder. It measured four feet and an inch in length, by two feet eleven in width, and by, almost the same in depth, and there were no sharp angles. It carried the rose tint deep into the glassy clear depths of the stone. ' We covered it over with dead leaves and brush, and left it there for the time being. In order to take it out we should have to wait for snow, and then, after: swamping a road up through the spruce woods from the hay meadows, drag it out by sled.

The next day we met Lurvey on the road, and Addison asked him whether he still wanted to get the block of rose quartz he had spoken of before. Have ye found something of the sort?' the old lumberman asked.

' I think we have about what you want.' ' Where d'ye find it?' he asked. ' Well, it's a long way from here,' Addison replied, guardedly. 'lt will take a number of men several days to get it. But it is a beautiful rock. Do you want it enough to make it worth our while to get it?' Old Zack asked numerous questions about the size and color of the boulder. At last he said, 'lf what you've got is as handsome as you tell me, I'll give ye 250 dollars for it. But mind ye, I make no promise till I've seen the stone.'

'That's fair enough, Mr. Lurvey,' Addison replied. ' If it isn't what we say it is, don't take it.'« So the matter rested until late in December, when the old squire gave us the use of a double team, which was going to the meadow stacks for hay, and four men, to get the boulder and draw it home. I was in bed with a bad cold at the time, and Addison went up alone to superintend the task. It took them two days to get the boulder, which they placed in the middle of a load of hay, down to the farm. Theodora and Ellen were in raptures over it when the men rolled it out of the hay. ' Oh, don't let's sell it!' they exclaimed,/ The old squire, too, was impressed with the beauty of the stone, but he said at once that we must keep our agreement with old Zack.

We sent word to the old lumberman, and a few days later he drove over to see the stone. We had unloaded the boulder in the waggon house, and it lay there on two pieces of plank. Addison rolled back the door and showed it to old Zack. The old man looked it over, walked round it, and then stood regarding it thoughtfully for some time. At last he turned to us. ' I'll take it,' he said.

Without attempting to argue over the price, he took out his pocket-book and counted out twenty-five tendollar notes; he hesitated a moment and then added another to the pile, and handed it all to Addison. He glanced at the stone again, remarked to the old squire that we needed more snow for logging, and drove away.

' Is that really old Zack?' said I. Doesn't act like him,' Addison remarked and

the old squire cast a thoughtful look after the departing sleigh. The next day we delivered the pink boulder to Lurvey at the Mills. We still wondered what he intended to do with it. Collecting mineral specimens was not much like Zackary Lurvey. Later that winter we heard that he had the boulder in his room, at the Mills.

We sent 50 dollars of the money to Hiram, and proceeded to forget all about the boulder. But the following November Willis and Ben Murch, who had been out hunting, told us that they had seen the boulder, set as a gravestone, in a little burial ground a mile and a-half beyond Lurvey's Mills. Afterward we saw it there ourselves, set handsomely in a granite' base about two feet high, on which, was cut the single word, ' Rosemary.' The other graves in the little burying ground were neglected, but old-fashioned garden flowers —one a root of rosemary bloomed about this one, and the grass round it was neatly mowed. There, against a background of young green pines, the rosy boulder of quartz stood, a monument to the blue-eyed Rosemary and to the one tender chord in a hard old heart.