The Tinder-Box Part 17

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

"Richard the Royal!" I answered in our old _Quartier Latin_ form of greeting. 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 breast at 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 had d.i.c.k in that car with her ever since nine o'clock, almost three hours, showing him the sights of that teeming heavy lush harvest countryside around Bolivar and Glendale, all over which are low-roofed old country houses which brood over families that cl.u.s.ter around the unit that one man and a woman make in their commonwealth. Nell's eyes were sweet as she looked at him. I'll wait and see if I need to worry over him. With the fervor I felt I had a right to, I then avoided the issue of Richard's eyes, put it up to G.o.d and Nell, and introduced him to Jane.

And while the three of them stood waiting for Nell to back up the Buick and put her spark-plug in her pocket,--only Richard calmly took it and put it in his,--the rest of the cars came up the hill and turned into the 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; and Mamie and Cousin Martha, Caroline and several more of the ladies made up the rest of the Committee who had gone to escort the distinguished guests to the rally.

The Crag was in the last car with a perfectly delicious old gray-haired edition of d.i.c.kie, and I almost fell on both their necks at once. What saved them was Polk appearing between us with three long mint-topped gla.s.ses.

I'm glad old d.i.c.k immediately had his eyebrows well tangled in the mint of his julep, for I got my own eyes farther down into Cousin James's deep gray ones than I expected and it was hard to come up. I hadn't had a plunge in them for three days and I went pretty deep.

"Eve!" he said softly, as he raised his gla.s.s and smiled across his green tuft.

Yes, I know he knows that I know, there is an answer to that name when he says it that way, but I'm not going to give it until I am ready and the place is romantically secluded enough to suit me. He just dares me when he says it to me before other people. That reminds me, the harvest moon 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 always chosen moonlight for that catastrophe of my life. I wonder if men have as good times planning the culmination of their suits as I am having with mine?

But I had to come down quickly to a little thing like the rally and give the signal to feed all the five hundred people, who by that time were nice, polite, ravening wolves, for Jasper had uncovered the turkey-pit to 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 in Chicago--that far away from the Harpeth Valley,--but I couldn't do it with my friends of pioneer generations looking on. A man or woman never grows up at all to the woman who has knitted baby socks for them or the man 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 beside her, so that he would be in place to command attention for her when she wanted to speak, and where everybody could hear him when he did.

And while the table was piled high and emptied, and piled high again, so many bouquets of oratory were culled, tied, and cast at the guests along the table that I believe they would have been obliged to pay exclusive attention to them if the things to eat had not been just as odoriferous and substantial. Before dinner was over everybody had spoken that was of a suitable age, and some that had heretofore in the Harpeth Valley been considered of an unsuitable s.e.x.

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

She, as usual, refrained from prejudice-smas.h.i.+ng and stones-at-gla.s.s-houses throwing, and she hadn't said ten sentences before she had the whole feeding mult.i.tude with her.

She began on the way our pioneer mothers had to contrive to keep larders stocked and good things ready for the households, and she tickled the palate of every man present by mentioning every achievement in a culinary way that every woman of his household had made in all the generations that had gone over Harpeth Valley. She called all the concoctions by their right names, too, and she always gave the name of the originator, who was some dear old lady that was sleeping in the Greenwood at the foot of the hill, or in some grave over at Providence or Hillsboro or Bolivar, and who was grandmother or great-grandmother to a hundred or more of the guests. I had wondered why Jane had been poring over that old autograph ma.n.u.script receipt book in my desk for days, and as she paid these modern resurrecting compliments to the long gone cooks, tears and laughed literally deluged the table.

And as she built up, achievement by achievement, the domestic woman-history of the valley, Jane showed in the most insidious way possible how the pioneer women had been really the warp on which had been woven the woof of the whole history of their part of the Nation, political, financial, and religious. I never heard anything like it in all 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 the Harpeth Valley, and built a brake that would stop any whirlwind on the woman-question that might attempt to come in on us over the Ridge from the outside world. They saw her point and were hard hit. When "Votes for Women" gets to coming down Providence Road the farmers will hitch up a wagon and take mother and the children with a well-packed lunch basket to meet it half way. This is a prophecy!

Then, after Jane sat down, I don't believe such a speechifying ever was before 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, even if some of them did brandish a turkey wing or a Iamb rib to emphasize their points.

And the women were the funniest things I ever beheld, as we were treated to one maiden speech after another, issuing from the lips of plump matrons 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 whole valley, having established her claim to the t.i.tle thirty years ago by taking up her dead doctor husband's practice and "riding saddlebags to suffering ever since," as she puts it, broke the feminine ice by rising from her seat by the side of one of the entranced Magnates,--who had been so delighted with her and her philosophies that he could hardly do his dinner justice,--and addressing the rally in her wonderful old voice with her white curls flying and her cheeks as pink as a girl's.

"Children," she said, after everybody had clapped and clapped so she couldn't get a start for several minutes, "The Harpeth Valley women have been a-marching along behind the men for many a day, because their strong shoulders had to break undergrowth for both, but now husbands and fathers 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 help us up, in the break of a new day, to stand by their side; and I, for one, say mount!--I'm ready!"

A perfect war of applause answered her, and d.i.c.kie's father got up to go down the whole length of the table to shake hands with her, but had to wait until she came out of the embrace of Nell's fluffy arms, and got a hand 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 up and spoken a few words on the subject of women, and how they need men to look after them, but she said something to Mr. Haley, who shook his head and then got up and prosed beautifully to us for ten minutes, and would have 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 maneuvering of one gorgeous viand after the other, into the right place, by having relays of pones browned to the right turn and potatoes at the proper bursting point, it had been prolonged until the shadows of late afternoon were beginning to turn purple.

"Don't n.o.body ever leave one of my barbecue tables until sundown begins to tetch up the empty bones," has been his boast for years. And as he had cleared away the last sc.r.a.p from the last table, he leaned against a tree, exhausted and triumphant, with alert, adoring eyes fixed on the Crag, 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 one of the junior Magnates and d.i.c.kie, but I was glad then that I sat so I could look straight into his face as the light from across the Harpeth Valley illumined it without, while a wonderful glow lit it from within.

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She's our mother," he said]

"She's our Mother," he said, as he flung back the long lock from across his forehead and stretched out his strong arm and slender hand towards the sun that was dropping fast down to the rim of Old Harpeth. "She has bared her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to suckle us, covered us from sun and snow, and now she 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 storehouses and mines. We are to give out her invitations and welcome all who are hungry and who come a-seeking. Gentlemen, her wealth and her fertility are yours--and her beauty!"

For a long, long minute every face in the a.s.sembly was turned to the setting sun, and a perfect glory rose from the valley and burned the call of its grandeur into their eyes. We seemed to be looking across fields and forests and streams to the dim purple hills that might be the ramparts of the Holy City itself, while just below us lay the little quiet village of the dead whose souls must just have gone before.

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

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

Could such achievement be for me?

"Please G.o.d!" I prayed right across into the sunset, "make me a full cup that never fails him!"

I don't know how long I stood talking with G.o.d 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 a second I felt that there was n.o.body but Him and me left on the hill, but even in that second my heart knew better.

"Now?" I questioned myself softly, out over to the yellow moon that had at last languidly and gracefully risen, putting the finis.h.i.+ng touch to the scene I had been planning for my proposal.

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

n.o.body 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 is what a courageous man would have done under the circ.u.mstances, with an opportunity like that, but I got the worst kind of scare I ever experienced, 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 the little gate that leads between the hedge into the little half-acre of those who rest. Then as I tried to pa.s.s him, he caught my hand and made me walk in the narrow path close at his side.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Scrounged so close to his arm that it was difficult for both of them to walk.]

Now even a very strong-minded woman, who had to go through a little graveyard with moonlight making the tombstones glower out from deep shadows of cedar trees, in the depths of which strange birds croak, while the wind rustles the dry leaves into piles as they fall, wouldn't feel like honorably proposing to the man she intended to marry, even if she was scrouged so close to his arm that it was difficult for both of them to walk, would she?

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

I hereby promise myself that I will ask Cousin James to marry me the next 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 the circ.u.mstances. Surely he wouldn't refuse me, but how do I know for sure?

How does a man even know if a woman is--?