The Tinder-Box

by Maria Thompson Daviess

  CHAPTER IX

  DYNAMITE

  When a man injures a woman's feelings by any particular course ofconduct to which she objects, the maternal in her rises to the surfaceand she treats and forgives him as she would a naughty child,--but a manmakes any kind of woman-affront into a lover's quarrel. That is whatmasculine Glendale has been doing to its women folks for four days, andI believe everybody has been secretly enjoying it.

  As to the rally, they have stood aside with their hands in their pocketsand their noses in the air, and if it hadn't been for Aunt Augusta andNell and Jane being natural-born carpenters and draymen, we might havehad to give it up and let them go on with it to their own glory.

  When Nell and Jane went to see Mr. Dodd about building the long tablesto serve the barbecue dinner on, he said he was too busy to do it andhadn't even any lumber to sell.

  Then things happened in my back yard that it sounds like a romance towrite about. Jane sent me over to borrow the Crag's team and wagon andHenrietta and Cousin Martha and any of the rest of his woman-impedimentathat I could get. He was out of town, trying a case over at Bolivar, andwouldn't get back until Monday night.

  I am glad he wasn't here, for it would have gone hard with me to treathim in the manner that Jane decided it was best for all the women inGlendale to treat all the men in this crisis. It sounded sweet and coldas molasses dispenses itself to you in midwinter, and I could see it wasa strain on Mamie and Caroline and Mrs. Kirkland, Nell's mother, andyoung Mrs. Dodd, the carpenter's wife,--the Boston girl that married himbefore she realized him,--to keep it up from day to day.

  Besides that I'm going to be a politician's wife--though he doesn't knowit yet--and I want the Crag to be away from the necessity of taking anysides in this civilized warfare. That's one reason I am such ago-between for Uncle Peter and the League, I am making votes for my man,so I consider it all right for me never to deliver any of their messagesto each other as they are given to me, but to twist them intoagreeability to suit myself.

  Sallie said the Dominie was entirely on our side and that was why shewent walking with him Sunday afternoon. All the other men were cool tohim and he is so sensitive.

  But to get back to the back yard. I glory in writing it and want theFive to consider it as almost sacred data, though I hope they will neverhave to do likewise.

  Jane and Nell and Aunt Augusta took the two axes and one large hammerand tore down my back fence while I and the others loaded the planks onthe wagon. Jane appointed Henrietta to sit and hold the slow old horsesin case they should have got demoralized by the militant atmospherepervading Glendale and try to bolt. I never saw any human being enjoyherself as Henrietta did, and it was worth it all just to look into herradiant countenance.

  Jane took all the hard top blows to do herself and left the unlooseningof the lower nails to Aunt Augusta while Nell ripped off the planks thatstuck. I could almost hear Nell's long, polished finger nails go with arip every time she jerked a particularly tough old plank intosubjection, and Aunt Augusta dispensed encouraging axioms about pioneerwork as she banged along behind Jane. Jane herself looked as cool as acucumber, didn't get the least bit ruffled, and had the expression onher face that the truly normal woman has while she is hemming a baby'sflannel petticoat.

  And though during the day many delightful crises were precipitated, themost interesting were the expressions that devastated Polk Hayes's andLee Greenfield's faces as they came around the side of the house to seewhat all that hammering was about.

  "Caroline!" exclaimed Lee, in perfect agony, as he beheld the lady ofhis ardent, though long-restrained, affections poised across the wheelof the wagon tugging at the middle of a heavy plank which Mrs. Dodd andI were pushing up to her, while Mamie, the mother of seven, stood firmlyon top of the wagon guiding it into place.

  "Help!" gasped Polk, as he started to take the ax from Jane by force.

  Then we all stopped while Jane quietly gurgled the molasses of thesituation to them, and sent them on down the street sadder and wisermen. I thought Polk was going to cry on her shoulder before he wasfinally persuaded to go and leave us to our fate, and the expression onLee's face as he looked up at torn, dirty, perspiring Caroline, with asmudge on her nose and blood on her hand from an absolutelyinsignificant scratch, was such as ought to have been on Ned's face ashe ought to have been standing by Mamie with the asafetida bottle.That's mixed up but the Five ought to catch the point.

  It took up all of Saturday afternoon and part of Monday morning, but webuilt those tables, thereby disciplining masculine Glendale with aseverity that I didn't think could have been in us.

  We all rested on Sunday, that is, ostensibly. Jane put down all sorts ofthings on paper that everybody had to do on Monday and on Tuesday.Henrietta sat by her in a state of trance and it did me good to seeSallie out in the hammock at Widegables taking care of both the Kit andthe Pup, laboriously assisted by panting Aunt Dilsie, because Janeexplained to her so beautifully that she needed a lot of Henrietta'stime, that Sallie acquiesced with good-natured bewilderment. Of course,Cousin Jasmine helped her some, but she was busy aiding Cousin Martha tobeat up some mysterious eggs in the kitchen--with the shutters shutbecause it was Sunday. It was something that takes two days to "set" andwas to be the _piece de resistance_, after the barbecue.

  Mrs. Hargrove couldn't help Sallie at all with the kiddies, either,because she was looking through all her boxes and bundles for a letterfrom her son, which she thought said something about favoring woman'srights, and if it is like she thinks it is, she is going to go to thebarbecue and get things nice and hot instead of having them brought toher cold.

  I had hoped to get a few minutes Sunday afternoon to myself so I couldgo up into the garret and look through one of the trunks I brought fromParis with me to see how many sets of things I have got left. I am goingto need a trousseau pretty soon, and I might need it more suddenly thanI expect. I don't see any reason for people's not marrying immediatelywhen they make up their minds, and my half of ours is made up strongenough to decidedly influence rapidity in his. But then I really don'tbelieve that the Crag would care very much about the high lights of atrousseau, and it was just as well that Nell came in to get me to helpher write a letter to National Headquarters to know if she could haveany kind of assignment in the Campaign for the Convention to alter theConstitution in Tennessee when it meets next winter.

  "Have you made up your mind fully to go in for public life, Nell?" Iasked mildly. "Some of your friends might not like it very muchand--and--"

  "If you mean Polk Hayes, Evelina," Nell answered with the positivenessthat only a very young person can get up the courage to use, "I haveforgot that I was ever influenced by his narrow-minded, primitivepersonality at all. If I ever love and marry it will be a man who canappreciate and further my real woman's destiny."

  "Well, then, that's all right," I answered with such relief in my heartthat it must have showed in my voice and face. I had worried about Nellsince I could see plainly, though she hasn't told me yet, and I am surehe doesn't realize it, that Jane had decided Folk's destiny. Nell is nottwenty-one yet and she will find lots of men in the world that will befully capable of making her believe they feel that way about herdestiny, until they succeed in tying her up to using it for the realutilitarian purposes they are sure such a pretty woman is created for.

  It will take men in general another hundred years yet, and lots ofsuffering, to realize that a woman's destiny is anything but himself,and get to housekeeping with her on that basis.

  Of course, I see the justice and need of perfect equality in all thingsbetween the sexes, emotional equality especially, but I hope the timewill never come when men get as hungry to see their women folks as saidfeminists get to see them, after they have been away about four days outin the Harpeth Valley. It takes a woman's patience to stand the tug.

  The Crag didn't jog into Glendale on his raw-boned old horse untilone-thirty Monday night. I had been watching down Providence Road forhim from my pillow e
ver since I put out my light at eleven, because Janehad decided that it was our duty to go to bed early so as to be as freshas possible for the rally in the morning. She had walked to the gatewith Polk at ten and hadn't come back until eleven, so, of course, shewas ready to turn in. It was just foolish, primitive old conventionthat kept me from slipping on my slippers and dressing-gown--I've gotthe prettiest ones that ever came across the Atlantic, Louise deMereton, Rue de Rivoli, Paris--and going down to the gate to see him forjust a minute. That second he stood undecided in the middle of the roadlooking at my darkened house was agony that I'm not going to put up withvery much longer.

  Scientifically I feel that I'm thinking life with one lobe of my brainand breathing with one lung. Still I made myself go to sleep.

  Everybody believes in God in a different kind of way, and mine satisfiesme entirely. I know that the hairs of my head are numbered and that nota sparrow falls; and I don't stop at that. I feel sure that my tears aremeasured and my smiles are rejoiced over, and when I want a good day tocome to me I ask for it and mostly get it. There never was another likethe one He sent me down this morning on the first slim ray of dawn thatslid over the side of Old Harpeth!

  The sun was warm and jolly and hospitable from the arrival of its firstrays, but the wind was deliciously cool and bracing and full of the wineof October. It came racing across the fields laden with harvest scents,blustering a bit now and then enough to bring down a shower of nuts orto make the yellow corn in the shocks in the fields rustle ominously ofa winter soon to come.

  The maples on the bluff were garmented in royal crimson brocaded withyellow, the buck-bushes that grew along the edges of the rocks werestrung with magenta berries and regiments of tall royal purple ironweeds and yellow-plumed golden-rod were marshaled in squads and clumpsfor a background for the long tables.

  Jane and I with Henrietta were out by the old gray moss rock at thefirst break of day, installing Jasper and Petunia and a few of their_confreres_. Jasper has always been king of all Glendale barbecue-pitsand he had had them dug the day before and filled with dry hickory firesall night, and his mien was so haughty that I trembled for the slavesunder his command. His basket of "yarbs" was under the side of the rockin hoodoo-like shadows and the wagons of poor, innocent, sacrificedlambs and turkeys and sucking-pigs were backed up by the largestinfernal pit. Petunia was already elbow deep in a cedar tub of corn mealfor the pones, and another minion was shucking late roasting-ears andwashing the sweet potatoes to be packed down with the meat by eighto-clock. A wagon was to collect the baked hams and sandwiches andbiscuits and confections of all variety and pedigree from the rest ofthe League at ten o'clock.

  We didn't know it then but another wagon was already being loaded veryprivately in town with ice and bottles, glasses and lemons and mint andkegs and schooners. I am awfully glad that the Equality League hadforgotten all about the wetting up of the rally, because I don't believewe would have been equal to the situation with Aunt Augusta and Janeboth prohibition enthusiasts, but it did so promote the sentiment ofpeace and good cheer during the day for us to all feel that the men hadnot failed us in a crisis, as well as in the natural qualities inherentin their offering for the feast. There was a whole case of Uncle Peter'sprivate stock. Could human nature have done better than that?

  But if we did forget to provide the liquids, I am glad we had theforesight to provide other viands enough to feed a regiment, because awhole army came.

  "Evelina," gasped Jane, as we stood on the edge of the bluff thatcommands a view of almost all the Harpeth Valley stretched out like thevery garden of Eden itself, crossed by silver creeks, lined with broadroads and mantled in the richness of the harvest haze, "can all thosewagons full of people be coming to accept our invitation?"

  "Yes, they're our guests," I answered, with the elation of generationsof rally-givers rising in my breast, as I saw the stream of wagons andcarriages and buggies, with now and then a motor-car, all approachingGlendale from all points of the compass.

  "Have we enough to feed them. Jasper?" she turned and asked in stillfurther alarm.

  "Nothing never give out in Glendale yit, since we took the cover offenthe pits for Old Hickory in my granddad's time," he answered, with atrace of offense in his voice, as he stood over a half tub of buttermixing in his yarbs with mutterings that sounded like incantations. Idrew Jane away for I felt that it was no time to disturb him, when thebasting of his baked meats was just about to begin.

  I was glad that about all the countryside had gathered, unhitched theirwagons, picketed their horses, and got down to the enjoyment of the daybefore the motor-cars bringing the distinguished guests had even startedfrom Bolivar. It was great to watch the farmers slap neighbors on theback, exchange news and tobacco plugs, while the rosy women folksgrouped and ungrouped in radiant good cheer with children squirming andtangling over and under and around the rejoicings.

  "This, Evelina," remarked Jane, with controlled emotion in her voice anda mist in her eyes behind their glasses, "is not only the bone and sinewbut also the rich red blood in the arteries of our nation. I feelhumbled and honored at being permitted to go among them."

  And the sight of dear old Jane "mixing" with those Harpeth Valley farmerfolk was one of the things I have put aside to remember for always. Theyall knew me, of course, and I was a bit teary at their greetings. Bigmotherly women took me in their arms and younger ones laid their babiesin my arms and laughed and cried over me, while every few minutes somerugged old farmer would call out for Colonel Shelby's "little gal" andlook searchingly in my face for the likeness to my fire-eating, oldConfederate, politician father.

  But it was Jane that took them by storm and kept them, too, through thecrisis of the day. Jane is the _reveille_ the Harpeth Valley has beenwaiting for for fifty years. I thought I was, but Jane is it.

  And it was into an atmosphere of almost hilarious enjoyment that thedistinguished Commission arrived a few minutes before noon, just asJasper's barbecue-pits were beginning to send forth absolutely maddeningaromas.

  Nell whirled up the hill first and turned her Buick across the road bythe bluff with that rakish skill of hers that always sends my heart intomy throat. And whom did she have sitting at her blue, embroidered linenelbow but Richard Hall himself? Good old big, strong dandy Dickie, howgreat it was to see him again, and if I had had my own heart in mybreast it would have leaped with delight at the sight of him! But eventhe Crag's that I had exchanged mine for, though it was an entirestranger to Dickie, beat fast enough in sympathy with the dance in myeyes to send the color up to my face in good fashion as I hurried acrossa clump of golden-rod to meet him.

  "Evelina, the Lovely!" he exclaimed in his big booming voice, as he tookme by both shoulders and shook me instead of shaking merely my hand.

  "Richard the Royal!" I answered in our old _Quartier Latin_ form ofgreeting. I didn't look right into his eyes as I always had, however,and something sent a keen pain through the exchanged heart in my breastat the thought that I might be obliged to hurt the dandy old dear.

  But suddenly the sight of Nell's loveliness cheered me. She had hadDick in that car with her ever since nine o'clock, almost three hours,showing him the sights of that teeming heavy lush harvest countrysidearound Bolivar and Glendale, all over which are low-roofed old countryhouses which brood over families that cluster around the unit that oneman and a woman make in their commonwealth. Nell's eyes were sweet asshe looked at him. I'll wait and see if I need to worry over him. Withthe fervor I felt I had a right to, I then avoided the issue ofRichard's eyes, put it up to God and Nell, and introduced him to Jane.

  And while the three of them stood waiting for Nell to back up the Buickand put her spark-plug in her pocket,--only Richard calmly took it andput it in his,--the rest of the cars came up the hill and turned intothe edge of the golden-rod.

  Aunt Augusta was in the first one with the Chairman of the Commission,whose name even would have paralyzed anybody but Aunt Augusta; andMamie and Cousin Martha, Caroline
and several more of the ladies made upthe rest of the Committee who had gone to escort the distinguishedguests to the rally.

  The Crag was in the last car with a perfectly delicious old gray-hairededition of Dickie, and I almost fell on both their necks at once. Whatsaved them was Polk appearing between us with three long mint-toppedglasses.

  I'm glad old Dick immediately had his eyebrows well tangled in the mintof his julep, for I got my own eyes farther down into Cousin James'sdeep gray ones than I expected and it was hard to come up. I hadn't hada plunge in them for three days and I went pretty deep.

  "Eve!" he said softly, as he raised his glass and smiled across hisgreen tuft.

  Yes, I know he knows that I know, there is an answer to that name whenhe says it that way, but I'm not going to give it until I am ready andthe place is romantically secluded enough to suit me. He just dares mewhen he says it to me before other people. That reminds me, the harvestmoon is full to-night and rises an hour later every evening from now on.I don't want to wait another month before I propose to him. I've alwayschosen moonlight for that catastrophe of my life. I wonder if men haveas good times planning the culmination of their suits as I am havingwith mine?

  But I had to come down quickly to a little thing like the rally and givethe signal to feed all the five hundred people, who by that time werenice, polite, ravening wolves, for Jasper had uncovered the turkey-pitto keep them from getting too brown while the lambs caught up with them.

  Jane was the master of ceremonies, because I balked at the last minute.I think I would be capable of managing even a National Convention inChicago--that far away from the Harpeth Valley,--but I couldn't do itwith my friends of pioneer generations looking on. A man or woman nevergrows up at all to the woman who has knitted baby socks for them or theman who has let them ride down the hill on the front of his saddle.

  And at the head of the center table Jane asked the Crag to sit besideher, so that he would be in place to command attention for her when shewanted to speak, and where everybody could hear him when he did.

  And while the table was piled high and emptied, and piled high again, somany bouquets of oratory were culled, tied, and cast at the guests alongthe table that I believe they would have been obliged to pay exclusiveattention to them if the things to eat had not been just as odoriferousand substantial. Before dinner was over everybody had spoken that was ofa suitable age, and some that had heretofore in the Harpeth Valley beenconsidered of an unsuitable sex.

  Jane's speech of welcome made such an impression that it is no wondersome of the old mothers in Israel got up to iterate it, as the dinnerprogressed.

  She, as usual, refrained from prejudice-smashing andstones-at-glass-houses throwing, and she hadn't said ten sentencesbefore she had the whole feeding multitude with her.

  She began on the way our pioneer mothers had to contrive to keep lardersstocked and good things ready for the households, and she tickled thepalate of every man present by mentioning every achievement in aculinary way that every woman of his household had made in all thegenerations that had gone over Harpeth Valley. She called all theconcoctions by their right names, too, and she always gave the name ofthe originator, who was some dear old lady that was sleeping in theGreenwood at the foot of the hill, or in some grave over at Providenceor Hillsboro or Bolivar, and who was grandmother or great-grandmother toa hundred or more of the guests. I had wondered why Jane had been poringover that old autograph manuscript receipt book in my desk for days, andas she paid these modern resurrecting compliments to the long gonecooks, tears and laughed literally deluged the table.

  And as she built up, achievement by achievement, the domesticwoman-history of the valley, Jane showed in the most insidious waypossible how the pioneer women had been really the warp on which hadbeen woven the woof of the whole history of their part of the Nation,political, financial, and religious. I never heard anything like it inall my life, and as I looked down those long tables at those aroused,tense, farmer faces, I knew Jane had cracked the geological crust of theHarpeth Valley, and built a brake that would stop any whirlwind on thewoman-question that might attempt to come in on us over the Ridge fromthe outside world. They saw her point and were hard hit. When "Votes forWomen" gets to coming down Providence Road the farmers will hitch up awagon and take mother and the children with a well-packed lunch basketto meet it half way. This is a prophecy!

  Then, after Jane sat down, I don't believe such a speechifying ever wasbefore as resounded out over the river, even in the time of Old Hickory.Everybody had something to say and got to his feet to say it well, evenif some of them did brandish a turkey wing or a Iamb rib to emphasizetheir points.

  And the women were the funniest things I ever beheld, as we were treatedto one maiden speech after another, issuing from the lips of plumpmatrons anywhere from thirty to sixty. They had never done it before,but liked it after they had tried.

  Mother Mayberry from Providence, who is the grand old woman of the wholevalley, having established her claim to the title thirty years ago bytaking up her dead doctor husband's practice and "riding saddlebags tosuffering ever since," as she puts it, broke the feminine ice by risingfrom her seat by the side of one of the entranced Magnates,--who hadbeen so delighted with her and her philosophies that he could hardly dohis dinner justice,--and addressing the rally in her wonderful old voicewith her white curls flying and her cheeks as pink as a girl's.

  "Children," she said, after everybody had clapped and clapped so shecouldn't get a start for several minutes, "The Harpeth Valley women havebeen a-marching along behind the men for many a day, because theirstrong shoulders had to break undergrowth for both, but now husbands andfathers and sons have got their feet up on the bluff of Paradise Ridge,and it does look like they will be a-reaching down their hands to helpus up, in the break of a new day, to stand by their side; and I, forone, say mount!--I'm ready!"

  A perfect war of applause answered her, and Dickie's father got up to godown the whole length of the table to shake hands with her, but had towait until she came out of the embrace of Nell's fluffy arms, and got ahand free from the Magnate on one side and Aunt Augusta on the other.

  Even Sallie began to look speechful, and I believe she would have got upand spoken a few words on the subject of women, and how they need men tolook after them, but she said something to Mr. Haley, who shook his headand then got up and prosed beautifully to us for ten minutes, and wouldhave gone on longer, if he hadn't seen Henrietta begin to look mutinous.

  The feast had begun at one o'clock, but by Jasper's skilful maneuveringof one gorgeous viand after the other, into the right place, by havingrelays of pones browned to the right turn and potatoes at the properbursting point, it had been prolonged until the shadows of lateafternoon were beginning to turn purple.

  "Don't nobody ever leave one of my barbecue tables until sundown beginsto tetch up the empty bones," has been his boast for years. And as hehad cleared away the last scrap from the last table, he leaned against atree, exhausted and triumphant, with alert, adoring eyes fixed on theCrag, who had risen in his place at the head of the long central table.

  I had felt entirely too far away from him down at the other end with oneof the junior Magnates and Dickie, but I was glad then that I sat so Icould look straight into his face as the light from across the HarpethValley illumined it without, while a wonderful glow lit it from within.

  All of the others had spoken of the achievements of their families andforefathers and vaunted the human history of the valley, but he spokeof the great hill-rimmed Earth Pocket itself. He gave the Earth creditfor the crops that she had yielded up for her children's sustenance. Hedescribed how she had bred forest kings for the building of their homes,granted stores of fuel from her mines for their warming, and nourishedgreat white cotton patches and flocks of sheep to clothe them fromfrosts and winds.

  And as he spoke in a powerful voice that intoned up in the tree-topslike a great deep bell, he turned and looked out over the valley with anexpression like
what must have been on Moses's face when he saw into thepromised land.

  "She's our mother," he said]

  "She's our Mother," he said, as he flung back the long lock from acrosshis forehead and stretched out his strong arm and slender hand towardsthe sun that was dropping fast down to the rim of Old Harpeth. "She hasbared her breasts to suckle us, covered us from sun and snow, and nowshe expects something from us. If she has built us strong and ready,then we are to answer when the world has need of us and her storehousesand mines. We are to give out her invitations and welcome all who arehungry and who come a-seeking. Gentlemen, her wealth and her fertilityare yours--and her beauty!"

  For a long, long minute every face in the assembly was turned to thesetting sun, and a perfect glory rose from the valley and burned thecall of its grandeur into their eyes. We seemed to be looking acrossfields and forests and streams to the dim purple hills that might be theramparts of the Holy City itself, while just below us lay the littlequiet village of the dead whose souls must just have gone before.

  And after that everybody rose with one accord and began to hurry tostart out upon the long roads homeward, just as the great yellow moonrose in the east to balance the red old sun that was sinking in thewest. Only the Magnate sat still in his place for several long minuteslooking out across to Old Harpeth, and I wondered whether he wasthinking about the Eternal City or how many rails it was going to taketo span the valley at his feet.

  And I--I just stood on the edge of the bluff by myself and let my soullift up its wings of rejoicing that my Crag had got his beautiful desirefor apostrophizing the Mother-Valley so all the world might hear. Andthen suddenly it came over me in a great warm, uplifting, awe-inspiringrush that a woman who takes on herself voluntarily the responsibility ofmarrying a poet and an orator and a mystic, who is the complete editionof a Mossback that all those qualities imply, must square her shouldersfor a long, steady, pioneer march through a strange country.

  Could such achievement be for me?

  "Please God!" I prayed right across into the sunset, "make me a fullcup that never fails him!"

  I don't know how long I stood talking with God that way about my man,but when I turned and looked back under the maples everybody was gone,and I could hear the last rattle and whirl going down the hill. For asecond I felt that there was nobody but Him and me left on the hill, buteven in that second my heart knew better.

  "Now?" I questioned myself softly, out over to the yellow moon that hadat last languidly and gracefully risen, putting the finishing touch tothe scene I had been planning for my proposal.

  "Evelina," said the Crag quietly from where he stood leaning against thetallest maple, "shall we stay here forever and ever, or hurry downthrough the cemetery by the short cut to the station to say good-by tothe railroaders as they expect us to do?"

  Nobody ever had a better opening 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 iswhat a courageous man would have done under the circumstances, with anopportunity like that, but I got the worst kind of scare I everexperienced, and answered:

  "How much time have we got? Do you think we can make it?"

  "Plenty," he answered comfortably as I began to quicken my pace to thelittle gate that leads between the hedge into the little half-acre ofthose who rest. Then as I tried to pass him, he caught my hand and mademe walk in the narrow path close at his side.

  Scrounged so close to his arm that it was difficult forboth of them to walk.]

  Now even a very strong-minded woman, who had to go through a littlegraveyard with moonlight making the tombstones glower out from deepshadows of cedar trees, in the depths of which strange birds croak,while the wind rustles the dry leaves into piles as they fall, wouldn'tfeel like honorably proposing to the man she intended to marry, evenif she was scrouged so close to his arm that it was difficult for bothof them to walk, would she?

  I excuse myself this time, but I must hold myself to the same standardthat I want to hold Lee Greenfield to. How do I know that he hasn't hadall sorts of cold, creepy feeling's keeping him from proposing toCaroline?

  I hereby promise myself that I will ask Cousin James to marry me thenext favorable opportunity I get, if I die with fright the next minute,or have to make the opportunity.

  Still, I can't help wondering what does keep him so composed under thecircumstances. Surely he wouldn't refuse me, but how do I know for sure?How does a man even know if a woman is--?

  CHAPTER X

  TOGETHER?

  When business and love crowd each other on a man's desk he calmly putslove in a pigeon-hole to wait for a convenient time and attends strictlyto business, while a woman takes up and coddles the tender passion andstands business over in the corner with its face to the wall to keep itfrom intruding.

  Dickie has been here a whole week since the barbecue-rally, ostensiblytrying to get me down to making a few preliminary sketches for thegardens to his C. & G. railroad stations, and, of course, I am going todo them. I'm interested in them and I'm sensible of the honor it is toget the chance of making them: but the moon didn't rise until after teno'clock last night and I'm getting nervous about that scene of sentimentI'm planning. I can't think of gardens!

  Still, I am glad he stayed and that everybody has been giving him aparty and that Nell is always there, for he hasn't had time to noticehow 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 over my house all dayand into the scandalous hours of the night, which in Glendale begin ateleven o'clock and pass the limit at twelve, and I don't see how theystand so much of not being alone with each other. It is wearing me out.

  I had positively decided on my own side steps for the scene of myproposal to the Crag, under the honeysuckle vine that still has a fewbrave and hearty blossoms to encourage me, with the harvest moonlooking on, but moons and honeysuckle blossoms wait for no man and nowoman especially. They are both fading, and I've never got the spot tomyself more than a minute at a time yet. The Crag, with absolutely noknowledge of my intentions, except it may be a psychic one, sits thereevery night and smokes and looks out at Old Harpeth and maddens me,while some one of the others walks in and out and around and about andsits down beside him, where I want to be.

  And as for the day time, I am so busy all day long, providing for thisperpetual house-party, that I am dead to even friendship by night. Janeis doing over Glendale from city limits to the river, and I have tospend my time keeping the dear town from finding out what is being doneto it.

  She is hunting out everybody's pet idea or ideal for some sort of changeor improvement to his, especially _his_, native town, and then leadinghim gently up to accomplishing it so that he will think he has done itentirely by himself, but will tell the next man he meets that there isnothing in the world like a tine energetic woman with good horse sense.In fact, Jane is courting the entire male population in a mostscandalous fashion, and they'll be won before they know it.

  "Now, that Confederate monument ought to have been built long ago out ofthat boulder from the river instead of hauling in a slicked-up graniteslab that would er made the Glendale volunteers of '61 feeluncomfortable like they would do in the beds in the city hotels. Greatidea of mine and that Yankee girl's--great idea--hey?" sputtered UnclePeter, 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 five dollars of the fifty for hauling,setting up and inscribing it, and we are going to let the women givehalf of it out of the egg-money they have got in that Equality QuiltingSociety--some kind of horse sense epidemic has broken out in this town,horse sense, Evelina, hey?" And he went on down the street perfectlydelighted at having at last accomplished his pet scheme. He thought ofit as exclusively his own by now, of course.

  And
the monument is just the beginning of what is going to begin inGlendale. Jane says so.

  "There could be no better place than this rural community to try out anumber of theories I have had in political economy as related to theactivities of women, Evelina," she said to me to-day, looking at me in abenign and slightly confused way from behind her glasses. "Mr. Hayes andI were just talking some of them over to-night, and he seems sointerested in seeing me institute some of the most important ones. Howcould you have ever thought such a man as he is lacking in seriousnessof purpose, dear?"

  "I feel sure that it was just my own frivolous streak that called outthe frivolous in Polk, Jane dear," I answered with trepidation, hopingand praying that the inquisition would not go much further, and tryingto remember just what I had written her about Polk.

  "It may have been that," Jane answered, in a most naively relieved toneof voice. "But you don't know how happy I am, dear, to see that thatstreak is only an occasional charming vein that shows in you, but thatyou are now settling down steadily to your profession. I feel sure thatwhen these garden drawings are done, you and Mr. Hall will have foundyour correct places in each other's lives and it will be just a gloriousexample of how superbly a man and woman can work together at the sameprofession. Mr. Hardin and I were talking about it just last night outon the side porch, and though he said very little I could see howgratified he was at the honors that had come to you and how much helikes Mr. Hall."

  That settled it, and I made up my mind that when the Harvest Lady leftus to-night to sink behind Old Harpeth, she wasn't going to leave meweakly lonesome. She doesn't set until two o'clock, and I'm going totake all the time I need.

  And as serious and solemn as I feel over taking such a step for two as Iam deciding on, I can't help looking forward to scribbling a terse andimpersonal account of my having proposed to the man of my choice in thisstrong-minded book, adding a few words of sage advice for the Five,locking it and handing it, key and all, to Jane with a dramatic demandthat she put her hundred thousand dollars in the Trust Company and beginto choose the Five from those she has had in mind.

  Then before she has had time to read it, I am going to sneakily get itback and blot or tear out some of the things I have written. I candecide later what will be data and what will be dangerous to the cause.

  "And you will be glad to have me--come and live for a time in your homelife, dear?" Jane recalled me to the question in hand by sayingwistfully. "I feel that I have never had such good friends before,anywhere, as these of yours are to me, Evelina," she added.

  That's one time I got Jane completely in my arms and showed her what areally good hugging means south of Mason and Dixon's line. From laterdevelopments I am glad she had that slight initiation. It must have beenserviceable to her New England disposition.

  Then just as I was going to ask some of the plans she--and Polk--hadmade, over came Cousin Jasmine, with Cousin Annie and Mary, with Mrs.Hargrove puffing along behind them. They had come to see Jane, but Iwas allowed to stay and have my breath knocked out by their mission.

  It seems Jane had got a great big book from some firm in New York thattells alt about herb-growing, and how difficult it is to get the onesneeded for condiments and perfumes, and offering to buy first-classlavender and thyme and bergamot and sweet fern and things of that kindin any quantities at a good price. She had shown it to the little oldladies who had been secretly grieving at the separation from theirgarden out on their poorly rented farm, and the leaven had worked--onMrs. Hargrove also. They go back to the farm and she with them! She haddecided on raising mint to both dry and ship fresh, because he of thegay pajamas always liked to have it strong and fresh for the julep ofhis ancestors. I hope she won't forget to take that pattern of Japaneseextraction with her and make some for the Crag now and then, for it willsave my time. Horrors!

  "We have fully decided on our course of action, Jane, and Evelina,dears," said Cousin Jasmine in a positive little manner that she wouldhave been as incapable of a month ago, as is a pet kitten of barking atthe family dog, "but we do so dread to break it to dear James, becausewe feel that he may think we are not happy under his roof and bedistressed. Do you believe we shall be able to make him see that we mustpursue our independent life, though always needing the support of hisaffection and interest?"

  "I believe you will, Cousin Jasmine," I said, wanting to both laugh andcry to see the Crag's burdens begin to roll off his shoulders like this.And the tears that didn't rise would have been real ones, too, for Ifound that, down in the corner of my heart, I had adored the picture ofmy oak with the tender little old vines clinging around him. It was theproducing gourd I had most objected to and I couldn't see but she wouldbe there until I unclasped her tendrils.

  But I was forgetting that, in the modern theory of thought-waves, it isthe simplest minds that get the ripples first and hardest. Sallie cameover just as soon as the other delegation had got home to take the twinsoff her hands. Jane had gone upstairs to make more calculations on ourreconstruction, and I was trying to get a large deep breath.

  "Evelina." she said, as she sank in a chair near me and fastened herlarge, very young-in-soul, eyes on mine, "were you just joking Nell, ordid you mean it, when you said the other day that you thought it wouldbe cowardly of a woman not to show a man that she loved him, if he forany reason was not willing to make the first advances to her?" Sallie isperfectly lovely in the faint lavender and pink things that Jane madeher decide to get in one conversation, whereas while Nell and Carolineand I had been looking up and bringing her surreptitious samples of allcolors from the store all summer.

  "Well, I don't know that I exactly meant Nell to take it all to heart,"I answered without the slightest suspicion of what was coming. "But I dothink, Sallie, it would be no more than honest, fearless, and within awoman's own greater rights."

  "Mr. Haley was saying the other evening that a woman's sweet dependencewas a man's most precious heritage," Sallie gently mused out on theatmosphere that was beginning to be pretty highly charged.

  "Doesn't a woman have to depend on her husband's tenderness and care allof the time--time she is bearing a child, Sallie, even up to theasafoetida spoon crisis?" I asked with my cheeks in a flame butdetermined to stand my ground. "It does seem to me that nature puts herin a position to demand so much support from him in those times that sheought to rely on herself when she can. Especially as she is likely tobring an indefinite number of such crises into their joint existence."

  Sallie laughed, for she remembered the high horse I had mounted on thesubject of Mamie and Ned Hall the day after the Assembly dance.

  And as I laughed suddenly a picture I had seen down at the Hall'sflashed across my mind. I had gone down to tell Mamie something AuntAugusta wanted her to propose next day at a meeting of the EqualityLeague about drinking water in the public school building. Mamie haslearned to make, with pink cheeks and shining eyes, the quaintest littlespeeches that always carry the house--and even made one at a publicmeeting when we invited the men to hand over our fifty dollars for themonument. Ned's face was a picture as he held a ruffle of her muslingown between his fingers while she stood up to do it.

  But the picture that flashed through my mind was dearer than that and Iput it away in that jewel-box that I am going to open some day for myown man.

  Both Mamie's nurse and cook had gone to the third funeral of the seasonand Mamie was feeding the entire family in the back yard. The kiddieswere sitting in a row along the top of the back steps, eating cookiesand milk, with bibs around their necks,--from the twelve year oldJennie, who had tied on hers for fun, down to the chubby-kins next tothe baby,--and Mamie was sitting flat on the grass in front of themnursing little Ned, with big Ned sitting beside her with his arm aroundboth her and the baby. He was looking first down into her face, and thenat the industrious kiddie getting his supper from the maternal fount,and then at the handsome bunch on the steps, as he alternately munched abite of his cookie and fed Mamie one, to the delight of the children.The
expression on his face as he looked at them, and her, and ate andlaughed, is what is back of all that goes to make the American nationthe greatest on earth. Amen!

  "Sallie," I said, as I reached out and took her plump white hand inmine, "our men are the most wonderful in the world and they are ours anyway we get them. They don't care how it is done, and neither do we, justso we belong in the right way."

  "Then you don't think it would be any harm for me to tell Mr. Haley Ithink I could live on eighteen hundred dollars a year, until he getssent to a larger church?" was the bomb that, thus encouraged, Sallieexploded in my face.

  I'm awfully glad that I didn't get a chance to answer, for I don't wantto be responsible for the future failure or success of Mr. Haley'sministry. Just then Henrietta burst into the room with the Kitten in herarms.

  "Keep her for me, Evelina, please, ma'am," she said, with the dearestlittle chuckle, but not forgetting the polite "please," which Jane hadhad to suggest to her just once. What you've done for that waywardunmanageable genius of a child, Jane dear, makes you deserve ten of yourown. That is--help!

  "Cousin Augusta and Nell and Dickie and me is a going out to watch theman put the dyn'mite in the hole to blow the creek right up andGlendale, too, so they can see if they is enough clean water to put inthe waterworks," she continued to explain. "Nell is a-going to takeDickie in her car, and Cousin Augusta is a-going to take me and UnclePeter in her buggy. Dilsie have got the Kit and Cousin Marfy isa-watching to see she don't do nothing wrong with her. Oh, may I go,Sallie? Jane said I must always ask you."

  "Yes, dearest," answered Sallie, immensely flattered by the deferencethus paid her.

  "How wonderful an influence the little talks Mr. Haley has had withHenrietta have had on her," she said, with such a happy glow on her faceas the reformed one departed that I succeeded in suppressing the laughthat rose in me at the memory of Henrietta's account of the first one ofthe series.

  Men need not fear that the time will ever come when they will cease toget the credit for making Earth's wheels go around, from the femaleinhabitants thereof. So I smiled to myself and buried my face in thefragrance under the bubbly Puppy girl's chin and coaxed her arms to clasparound my neck.

  They are the holy throb of a woman's life--babies. Less than tenwouldn't satisfy me unless well scattered in ages, Jane. On somequestions I am not modern.

  "Still I do feel so miserable leaving Cousin James so alone all winter,"Sallie continued with the most beautiful sympathy in her voice, as shelooked out of the window towards Widegables. "I wonder if I ought tomake up my mind to stay with him? He loves the children so, and you knowthe plans of Cousin Jasmine and the others to go back to their farm."

  "But he'll have his mother left," I said quietly but very encouragingly.I seemed to see the little green tendril that had unclasped from the oakturning on its stem and winding tight again.

  "Miss Mathers was encouraging Cousin Martha to go to Colorado to seeElizabeth and her family for a long visit this winter. She hasn't seenElizabeth since her mother died and she was so much interested in theeasy way of traveling these days, as Miss Mathers described it, that sheasked her to write for a time-table and what a ticket costs, just thismorning. I really ought not to desert Cousin James."

  "But think how lonely Mr. Haley is down in the parsonage and of hisinfluence on Henrietta," I urged.

  "Yes, I do feel drawn in both ways," sighed the poor tender gourd. "Andthen you will be here by yourself, so you can watch over Cousin James,as much as your work will allow you, can't you, Evelina?"

  "Yes, I'll try to keep him from being too much alone," I answered withthe most deceitful unconcern.

  "I see him coming to supper and I must go, for I want to be with him allI can, if I am to leave him so soon. I may not make up my mind to it,"with which threat Sallie departed and left me alone in the gloaming, asituation which seems to be becoming chronic with me now.

  If I had it, I'd give another hundred thousand dollars to the cause, tohear that interview between Sallie and the Dominie. I wager he'll neverknow what happened and would swear it didn't, if confronted with awitness.

  And also I felt so nervous with all this asking-in-marriage surging inthe atmosphere that it was with difficulty that I sat through supperand listened to Jane and Polk, who had come in with her, plan townsewerage. To-morrow night I knew the moon wouldn't rise until eleveno'clock, and how did I know anyway that Sallie's emancipation might notget started on the wrong track and run into my Crag? His chivalry wouldnever let him refuse a woman who proposed to him and he'll be in dangeruntil I can do it and tell the town about it.

  Jane and Polk had promised Dickie and Nell to motor down Providence Roadas far as Cloverbend in the moonlight, and I think Caroline and Lee weregoing too. Polk looked positively agonized with embarrassed sorrow atleaving me all alone, and it was with difficulty that I got them off. Ipleaded the greatest fatigue and my impatience amounted to crossness.

  After they had gone I dismissed Jasper and Petunia and locked the backdoors, put out all the lights in the house and retired to the sidesteps, determined to be invisible no matter who called--and wait!

  And for one mortal hour there I sat alone in that waning old moonlight,that grew colder and paler by the minute, while the stiff breeze thatpoured down from Old Harpeth began to be vicious and icy as it nipped myears and hands and nose and sent a chill down to my very toes.

  Nobody came and there I sat!

  Finally, with the tears tangling icily in my lashes, I got up and wentinto the house and lighted the fat pine under the logs in the hall. Theyhad lain all ready for the torch for a whole year, just as I had lainfor a lifetime until a few weeks ago. Then suddenly they blazed--as Ihad done.

  My condition was pitiable. I felt that all nature had deserted me, theclimate, Indian summer, the harvest moon and my own charm, but my headwas up and I was going to crackle pluckily along to my blaze, so Iturned towards the door to go across the road and put my fate to thetest, even if I took pneumonia standing begging at his front door. Ihoped I would find him in the lodge and--

  "Evelina," he exclaimed as he burst open my door, flung himself into thefirelight and seized my arm like a robber baron of the Twelfth Century,making a grab for his lady-love in the midst of her hostile kindred, "Ithought I would never get here! I ran all the way up from the office.Here's a telegram from Mr. Hall that says that the two roads have mergedand will take the bluff route past Glendale, and give us the shops,--andwants to appoint me the General Attorney for the Southern Section. Theywant me to come on to New York by the first train. Can you marry me inthe morning so we can take the noon express from Bolivar? I won't gowithout you. Please, dear, please," and as he stood and looked at me inthe firelight, all the relief and excitement over his news died out ofhis lovely eyes and just the want of me filled them from their verydepths.

  For several interminable centuries of time I stood perfectly still andlooked into them daringly, drinking my fill for the first time andoffering him a like cup in my own.

  "Eve," he said so softly that I doubt if he really spoke the word.

  "Adam!" I let myself go, and at last pressed my answer against his lipsas he folded me tight and safe.

  It must have been some time after, I am sure I don't know how long, butI was most beautifully adjusted against his shoulder and he had my handpressed to his cheek, when the awfulness of what had happened brought mestraight up on my own feet and almost out of his arms.

  "Oh, how could you have done it!" I fairly wailed, as I thought of whatthis awful complication was going to lose for the Five to whom I feltmore tender in that second than I had ever felt before.

  "Done what?" he demanded in alarm, pressing both my hands against hisbreast and drawing me towards him again.

  "Asked me to marry you when I--"

  "I have been fighting desperately to see some way to offer myself andall my impedimenta to you all this time, and this has made it all right,don't you see, dear?" he interrupted me to say, as he
took possession ofme again and held me with a tender fierceness, which had more ofsuffering in it than passion. "I have always wanted you, Eve, sincebefore you went away, but it didn't seem right to ask you to come into alife so encumbered as mine was. Poverty made it seem impossible, butnow, if you will be just a little patient with them all, I canarrange--"

  "I was going to arrange all that my own self, and now just see what youhave done to me and a whole lot of other women, besides making memiserable all summer," and crowded so close under his chin that hecouldn't see my face, I told him all about the tinder-box Jane hadloaded and then set me on the lid to see that it exploded.

  I had just worked myself up to the point of how my incendiary missionwas about to touch off all the other love affairs in town, when he beganto shake so with disrespectful laughter that I felt that my dignity wasabout to demand that I withdraw coldly from his arms, where I had justgot so warm and comfortable and at home; but with the first slightintimation of my intention, which was conveyed by a very feeble indeedloosening of my arms from around his Henry Clay collar, he held mefirmly against him and controlled his unseemly mirth, only I could stillfeel it convulsing his left lung,--though as I had no business beingnear enough to notice it, I felt it only fair not to.

  "Please don't worry about those other Five dear women," he begged, inthe nicest and most considerate voice possible so that I tightened myarms again as I listened. "If Miss Mathers doesn't feel justified ingiving up the dowries by your--your failure to prove the proposition, wecan just invite them all down here and in Glendale and Bolivar andHillsboro and Providence, to say nothing of the countryside, we canplant them all cozily. I can delicately explain to their choices exactlyhow to let them manage circumstances like--" he illustrated his schemejust here until it took time for me to get breath to listen to the restof his apology--"this and there is no telling, with such a start as thecult has got in the Harpeth Valley already, how far ft will spread.Please forgive me, dear!"

  "Yes," I answered doubtfully. Then I raised my head and looked him fullin the face as I made my declaration calmly but with the perfectconviction that I still have and always will have, world without end."Yes, but don't you think for one minute I don't _know_ that what Janeand I and all the most advanced women in the world are trying for is theright and just and the only way for men and women to come logically intothe kind of heritage you and I have stumbled into. Absolute freedom andequality between all human beings is going to be the price of KingdomCome. I shall always be humiliated that I got scared out in thegraveyard and didn't do it to you. It is going to be the regret of mylife."

  "Truly, I'm sorry, sweetheart," he answered most contritely. "If I wereto take my hat and go back to the gate and come in again properly andlet you do it, would that make you feel any better?"

  "No, it wouldn't," I answered quickly because why should I be separatedfrom him all the two and a half minutes it would take to play out thatfarce, when I have been separated from him all the twenty-five yearsthat stretch from now back until the day of my birth? "I am going tobear it bravely and hold up my head and tell Jane--"

  "I wouldn't bother to hold up my head to tell her, Evelina," came fromthe doorway in Polk's delighted drawl as he and Jane stepped into theroom. "Pretty comfortably placed, that head, I should say."

  "Oh, Jane!" I positively wailed as I extracted myself from the Crag'sgray arms and buried myself in Jane's white serge ones that opened toreceive me. And the seconds that I rested silently there Polk spent inshaking both of the Crag's hands and pounding him on the back so that Igrew alarmed.

  "I didn't do it, Jane, I didn't do it," I almost sobbed with fear ofwhat her disappointment was going to be. "He beat me to it!"

  "Truly. I'm sorry," Cousin James added to my apology as he stood withhis arm on Polk's shoulder.

  "I dare you, _dare_, you to tell 'em, Jane," Polk suddenly said, comingover and putting a hand on one of my shoulders and one on Jane's.

  "Evelina and Mr. Hardin," Jane answered gallantly with her head assumingits lovely independent pose, but with the most wonderful blush spreadingthe beauty that always ought to have been hers all over her one-timeplain face, "the wager stands as won by Evelina Shelby. She had properlyprepared the ground and sowed the seed of justice and right thinkingthat I--I harvested to-night. I had the honor of offering marriage toMr. Hayes just about fifteen minutes ago. I consider that mode ofprocedure proved as feasible and as soon as I have received my answer,whatever it is, I shall immediately proceed with making the endowmentand choosing the five young women according to the agreement."

  "Polk!" I exclaimed, turning to him in a perfect panic of alarm. Couldhe be trifling with Jane?

  "Evelina," answered Polk, giving me a shake and a shove over in thedirection of the Crag, "you ought to know me better than to think Iwould answer such a question as Jane put to me, while driving a crankycar in waning moonlight. If you and James will just mercifully betakeyourselves out there on the porch in the cold for a few minutes I willtry and add my data to this equality experiment with due dignity. Go!"

  We went!

  "Love-woman," whispered the Crag, after I had broken it to him that wewere going to be a Governor of Tennessee, and not a railroad attorney,and he had crooned his "Swing Low" over me and rocked me against hisbreast for a century of seconds, down on my old front gate, "you areright about the whole question. I see that, and I want to help--but ifI'm stupid about life, will you hold my hand in the dark?"

  "Yes," I answered with both generosity and courage.

  And truly if the world is in the dusk of the dawn of a new day, what canmen and women do but cling tight and feel their way--together?