It was a place that many people had never heard about unless you were among the locals who lived there or the elite who chose to vacation there.
If someone ever visited it, then they never forgot it because of the serene, almost mystical beauty of it. It had an incongruous name…Bean Station, Tennessee. Though actually named for two Revolutionary War heroes, both brothers, most figured it was named for the simple bean.

Nestled at the base of the majestic, blue-misted Smokey Mountains, the little settlement or town was just one among many such places surrounded by some of Nature’s grandest beauty, but not every little wide spot in the road had the magnificent Tate Springs Resort and its little miracle mineral springs.

The people of Tennessee were known all over for their close-mouthed attitudes, the multiple legends of both settler families and the Cherokees that populated the lowlands and the mountains, and the Springs’ professed natural healing qualities seemed to be one of those well-kept secrets until right after the Civil War, Samuel Tate built a incredible hotel on twenty-five hundred acres around the springs and it became a world class resort!

Most of the residents of Bean Station were hardworking people who saw very little profit from their rock-riddled farms and the poverty that struck all of the South after the Civil War. It would take eleven years after Sam Tate constructed the Tate Springs Resort before it became a place well populated by the affluent and wealthy. When the Peavine Railroad was completed in 1896, then the world really began to spread and the hotel had changed over into the hands of Thomas Tomlinson. He took the resort and Bean Station into a new era as the 19th Century left and the 20th Century emerged.

It also brought work to families who needed the income desperately. Such were the Lenores. The “moon shining” men of the Lenores and the Lenore women with the eerie Second Sight. These were the people that Rose Lenore came from. One of a brood of seven, and being the middle girl of three, Rose applied for a job as a maid at the Tate Springs Resort and she was hired. She took up residence in the staff quarters of the huge hotel and life for her began to move to a totally different pace.

She found herself among many others just like her, proud, poor hill people taking on the tasks of servants pampering the wealthy “noveau riche” from the East Coast. The new millionaires of automobile making, the industrialists, and the old money. They stared at her as if they did not see her but gave her orders like her pappy gave his hound dogs orders, but she kept her silence and her thoughts to herself and was grateful for the money to send back to her ma to help the ends meet.

The staff united to make a family away from home and in their few leisure hours, they gathered together for the cooking of their homelife that the catered-to guests did not dine upon. They sat at the huge common table and told stories or shared experiences about the guests, especially focusing on the fact that the healing qualities of the mineral springs was a joke. One tow-headed boy from Gatlinburg stated he had heard from his grand pappy that it was the worst tasting water in the world.

The high season began in April when the snows had melted away and the mountains and forests surrounding Bean Station began to turn brilliant green and it lasted until the browns, russets, golds and reds of Autumn had fallen away to give into Winter.

The teens of the 1900’s had seen the end of the Great War “over there”. Boys had come home maimed, broken, and lost in a place where none of their families knew where to find them, except for the men who had seen war themselves. These fellows never opted to work at the hotel but chose to take work in Grainger County in the booming lumber business, another successful offspring of the Peavine.

“A right pretty little thing” as her pappy often referred to her, Rose kept herself to a position that work was work and when the time came, she would find just the right boy, marry, and raise her own brood near her homeplace but for now, she was needed to help out this way. She made friends easily among the young house staff but when one of the males attempted to make overtures, she shunned him away. Her ma had always told her that when “the right’en comes along”, she would know. She had not yet met “the right’en”.

In summer of 1918, the weather smiled like a benevolent god on Bean Station and the Tate Springs Resort. The wildflowers of the rolling hills bloomed in a mad profusion that one could not gaze around without being “accosted” by beauty everywhere. The more genteel of the guests lingered in the one hundred acre park, while the more aggressive took advantage of the eighteen hole golf course, the tennis courts, or the riding stables.

Rose was designated by one of the guests, a well-rounded matron with two very pretty daughters, to go to the stables and find out if they had any mounts befitting the feminine requirements of her daughters. Rose was shy around horses since she had been nearly brained by one of her pappy’s cantankerous mules when he chose to kick out at her. Fortunately, her pappy had moved fast enough to push her out of the way and then thoroughly berated her for spooking the mule. She had ever since treated the four-footed creatures, mules and horses alike, with a wide berth. She felt more content with her ma’s numerous cats and Benny, the old blind hound that lived on the porch now since he could no longer hunt with pappy’s horde.

When she stepped into the diagonally patterned of sunlight and shade interior of the stable, she saw no one but several stalls filled with horses.
She did not want to cross over the straw filled floor, knowing it was intermixed with manure droppings and mud. It would bring Mr. Linely, the hotel manager, down on her if she soiled the fine carpets of the hotel with muck from the stable. When no one came into sight, she began to fidget and finally called out.

“Is anyone heah?”

No answer.

She tried again. “Is there anybody heah?”

“Yep.” came a low, languid reply.

Rose leaned forward as far as she dared without having to step farther in and craned her neck to see who had spoken. She saw only a tall, slim form coming toward her in the shadowy interior. When he had almost reached her, he became framed in a shaft of sunlight and she could see his face.

He stood at least six foot two with coal black hair and odd light blue eyes. She, being only five-four, had to look up at him and she felt an odd chill run through her. His light eyes literally leaped out at a person within the tanned complexion of his angular face. By that one glance at him, she knew he was at least half Cherokee with a throw down gift of the pale blue eyes from some white Scottish ancestor. She felt herself shiver with that all too unwanted feeling that she had come by natural from her ma, the second sight. There was something special about this man and she did not want to know what it was.

“And what would you be needing?” he demanded in the same voice but she realized that there was nothing surly about it.

“One of the guests wants to know if fen you got any proper horses for her daughters to ride. You know…side saddle and all that.” Rose spoke up, determined to hide her discomfort.

“Sure do.” he answered, and then continued, “Just send them on down heah and I’ll take care of it.”

He stopped and then after pausing for a moment, he spoke again. “Tell’em to ask  for Lee. And your name is?”

“Rose Lenore.” she spoke up proudly.

“Glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Rose. I am Lee Blackwing.”

“You’re Injun?” she ask before she thought.

“Yep, rightly am. My ma is all Cherokee but my pa was a half-breed and he gave me my name, all of it. Lee for the general and Blackwing for him.”

“Well, Lee, I send the young ladies down.” Rose answered and turned to escape before that eerie feeling got any worse.

It would be a few days before Rose would see Lee again. As the weather continued to be magnificent, the regular wealthy families began to arrive. Rose had seen or heard of them all except the Statten family. When word of their imminent arrival was passed amongst the staff, the stories of their wealth proceeded them. Some said it came from shipping and others said it came from newspapers, but all agreed on one thing that the family was immensely rich.

They arrived early on a Monday morning and no expense had been spared to welcome them in style. Mr. and  Mrs. Statten and their son, Gregory. There was quite a buzz among the young women in the staff about how handsome and charming Gregory was. One maid had overheard a young lady of another well-to-do family telling her friend about Gregory. How he was such a catch being single, unattached to anyone, and thoroughly gorgeous and deliciously rich. The flurry the young man was stirring up was not only among the young female servants of the hotel but also among their counterparts, the young female guests.

Rose listened to the idle gossip but kept her own counsel. Her ma had always taught her that gossiping was a useless waste of time and a sin since the Good Book did say “to bear false witness against thy neighbor” was one of the Ten Commandments. It seemed hardly fair to say all the “oohing” and “ahhing” over young Statten was “false witness” but still gossiping was a sin…a major sin.

She did happen to be in the main hall when the carriage pulled up from the railway station and the family entered the Tate. Both the father and the son were tall men while the mother was short, slender and beautiful. The father looked austere and authoritative but his son was a combination of both parents, beautiful and with a regal bearing like his mother and a strong personage about him like his father. Even Rose, who tried to put very little stock in a person’s looks, could not help but admit that Gregory Statten was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. Perhaps a year ago before she came to work at the hotel, she would have felt that she had not had much experience in judging a man’s looks, but in that year, she had seen many good looking men come through the hotel but Gregory was the most handsome she had seen yet.

When she was assigned to personally attend to Mrs. Statten, even though the lady had her own personal maid, she became the envy of all of the maid staff. She knew she had been given the job because of her diligence at work and also because she kept her mouth shut and never divulged anything about the guests to anyone, except for perhaps ma when Rose got one of her rare trips back home. Mr. Linely valued discretion in his employees and Rose was exactly that. Her friends mumbled something ugly about favoritism but Rose ignored it as she had been brought up to do. She believed that they only envied her the opportunity to be around Gregory in closer quarters.

In truth, Rose could not figure what all the fuss was about her being around Gregory Statten. It was strictly against hotel policy for the staff to fraternize with the guests. It was not just a class distinction thing but a rule to keep problems from arising.

Yet, when she was cleaning the immense suite that the Stattens had rented for the season, she could not help but notice how Gregory always smiled at her or spoke nicely to her as if she were far more than just a servant. Such was not the case of his parents or his mother’s personal maid, Clairrine, who snubbed her as if she were not even there. Still, Rose had an uneasy feeling when she was around Gregory, especially the time she brought up some brandy and fine cigars to the suite’s drawing room for Gregory and some of his male friends, most of which were also guests at the resort. When she entered the room, the talking stopped and Gregory stepped forward personally to take the tray from her. He smiled at her with a dazzling effect and said very politely. “Thank you, Rose.”

She did a quick bobbing curtsy and then ask, her eyes properly downcast.
“Do you need any thing else, Mistah Statten?”

“No, I think this will be just fine.” he answered but then he leaned closer to her and said in almost a whisper, “Please call me Gregory when we are alone. We are too close to the same age, my dear, for you to call me mister.”

She raised startled eyes to him at the familiarity in the statement but said nothing other than a jerking nod of her head. Curtsying once again, she turned and fled from the room, closing the big double doors behind her but not before she over heard someone make a soft remark and then laughter followed it. She could not make out what had been said but she suspected that it had to do with her and it was not something flattering. She vowed then to keep a wider space between herself and Gregory Statten.

The Stattens were the subject of choice at the staff evening meal that night. Rose was probed by many of them, mostly female, for all the tidbits she could give which were none. She refused to discuss the subject, choosing to say nothing in favor of keeping her job. While the others frowned at her for being close-mouthed, she noticed a look of approval from Wilson, the house staff manager, and she also became aware suddenly of being scrutinized very deeply by Lee Blackwing.

In some hotels, the stable hands and the house staff were definitely not ones to intermix but not so was the case of the Tate. All of them, with the exception of Mr. Linely, Wilson, and Mrs. Groves, the head cook, were all people of the local area and therefore, not inclined to be judgmental of their own.

As Rose returned to her quarters for the night, a small room she shared with another girl named Mary Jean, she had a surprise waiting for her. Sitting on her small bed table was a large vase with two dozen perfect red long stemmed roses and a tiny ornate card with only the message. “They pale against your beauty, sweet Rose. G.”

Rose felt herself grow weak in the knees and without realizing it, she sat down quickly on the side of the narrow bed, more a cot than a bed. Mary Jean had greeted her at the door, with a grin as wide as the Tennessee Valley and as full of dangerous knowledge as a gun loaded with bullets.

“Ain’t they pretty?” she gushed and as Rose stared into her roommate’s face, she saw both envy and malice. Mary Jean was considered by many to be the prettiest girl on the east side of the Smokies. It would be all over the hotel that Gregory Statten had sent roses to Rose by morning, if it had not already spread by now. Rose knew that Mr. Linely was not going to like it.
He would believe Rose guilty of encouraging the rich guest’s attention instead of the truth, which was the opposite way around.

Rose went to bed that night, deeply troubled. When the alarm sounded before dawn, she opened her eyes and it was the first thought on her mind.
When the glorious roses greeted her as she sat up, she tried to form something she could say that make people realize that she was not trying to overstep her boundaries. Nothing sufficient came to mind. Then she remembered another bit of her ma’s advice, “If you ain’t done nothing wrong, then carry yourself as so. Let the tongues wag, it will only be gossip and nothing more.”

She decided to remove herself from the line of fire. She would ask Wilson to replace her with someone else as the personal maid of the Statten suite. She wanted no more problems. She needed her job and her family needed her job and it was far more important a need that she believed that Gregory Statten would ever understand.

Besides, it made her feel a bit uppity in a way, because she was rejecting his attentions and not he rejecting hers. Money or no money, people had their pride and her family was known all over those mountains for being one of the proudest yet.

Wilson was more than glad to grant her request. She suggested giving it to her roommate, Mary Jean, who wanted it enough to not care about gossip or any ending result. Once again, Rose felt that her strong instincts or her “second sight” had stood her well. She had avoided a possible future incident that could, in her case, have disastrous effects.

The changeover traveled as quickly through the grapevine as had the other and Rose once again found herself greeted by her fellow co-workers with warmth and approval in their smiles. She found herself humming a tune of contentment.

That night when she returned to her room once again, she was met by a dreamy-eyed Mary Jean who seemed lost in some dreams of false grandeur of illusion, but what pleased her the most was right beside the ornate vase of still blushing but fading roses was a Mason jar, like the ones her pappy left moonshine in when he found one left in the tree hollows near his still, but in this Mason jar was one simple wild white mountain lily. Without asking anyone, she knew it had come from “the right’en”, Lee Blackwing.