The Tinder-Box Part 19

"Yes, I do feel drawn in both ways," sighed the poor tender gourd. "And then 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 with the most deceitful unconcern.

"I see him coming to supper and I must go, for I want to be with him all I 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, a situation which seems to be becoming chronic with me now.

If I had it, I'd give another hundred thousand dollars to the cause, to hear that interview between Sallie and the Dominie. I wager he'll never know what happened and would swear it didn't, if confronted with a witness.

And also I felt so nervous with all this asking-in-marriage surging in the atmosphere that it was with difficulty that I sat through supper and listened to Jane and Polk, who had come in with her, plan town sewerage. To-morrow night I knew the moon wouldn't rise until eleven o'clock, and how did I know anyway that Sallie's emanc.i.p.ation might not get started on the wrong track and run into my Crag? His chivalry would never let him refuse a woman who proposed to him and he'll be in danger until I can do it and tell the town about it.

Jane and Polk had promised d.i.c.kie and Nell to motor down Providence Road as far as Cloverbend in the moonlight, and I think Caroline and Lee were going too. Polk looked positively agonized with embarra.s.sed sorrow at leaving me all alone, and it was with difficulty that I got them off. I pleaded the greatest fatigue and my impatience amounted to crossness.

After they had gone I dismissed Jasper and Petunia and locked the back doors, put out all the lights in the house and retired to the side steps, 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 that poured down from Old Harpeth began to be vicious and icy as it nipped my ears and hands and nose and sent a chill down to my very toes.

n.o.body came and there I sat!

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

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

"Evelina," he exclaimed as he burst open my door, flung himself into the firelight 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, "I thought 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 merged and will take the bluff route past Glendale, and give us the shops,--and wants to appoint me the General Attorney for the Southern Section. They want me to come on to New York by the first train. Can you marry me in the morning so we can take the noon express from Bolivar? I won't go without you. Please, dear, please," and as he stood and looked at me in the firelight, all the relief and excitement over his news died out of his lovely eyes and just the want of me filled them from their very depths.

For several interminable centuries of time I stood perfectly still and looked into them daringly, drinking my fill for the first time and offering 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 lips as he folded me tight and safe.

It must have been some time after, I am sure I don't know how long, but I was most beautifully adjusted against his shoulder and he had my hand pressed to his cheek, when the awfulness of what had happened brought me straight 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 what this awful complication was going to lose for the Five to whom I felt more tender in that second than I had ever felt before.

"Done what?" he demanded in alarm, pressing both my hands against his breast 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 and all 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 of me again and held me with a tender fierceness, which had more of suffering in it than pa.s.sion. "I have always wanted you, Eve, since before you went away, but it didn't seem right to ask you to come into a life so enc.u.mbered as mine was. Poverty made it seem impossible, but now, if you will be just a little patient with them all, I can arrange--"

"I was going to arrange all that my own self, and now just see what you have done to me and a whole lot of other women, besides making me miserable all summer," and crowded so close under his chin that he couldn't see my face, I told him all about the tinder-box Jane had loaded 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 mission was about to touch off all the other love affairs in town, when he began to shake so with disrespectful laughter that I felt that my dignity was about to demand that I withdraw coldly from his arms, where I had just got so warm and comfortable and at home; but with the first slight intimation of my intention, which was conveyed by a very feeble indeed loosening of my arms from around his Henry Clay collar, he held me firmly against him and controlled his unseemly mirth, only I could still feel it convulsing his left lung,--though as I had no business being near enough to notice it, I felt it only fair not to.

"Please don't worry about those other Five dear women," he begged, in the nicest and most considerate voice possible so that I tightened my arms again as I listened. "If Miss Mathers doesn't feel justified in giving up the dowries by your--your failure to prove the proposition, we can just invite them all down here and in Glendale and Bolivar and Hillsboro and Providence, to say nothing of the countryside, we can plant them all cozily. I can delicately explain to their choices exactly how to let them manage circ.u.mstances like--" he ill.u.s.trated his scheme just here until it took time for me to get breath to listen to the rest of his apology--"this and there is no telling, with such a start as the cult 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 full in the face as I made my declaration calmly but with the perfect conviction 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 Jane and I and all the most advanced women in the world are trying for is the right and just and the only way for men and women to come logically into the kind of heritage you and I have stumbled into. Absolute freedom and equality between all human beings is going to be the price of Kingdom Come. I shall always be humiliated that I got scared out in the graveyard and didn't do it to you. It is going to be the regret of my life."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Evelina," answered Polk, giving me a shake and a shove over in the direction of the Crag, "you ought to know me better than to think I would answer such a question as Jane put to me, while driving a cranky car in waning moonlight. If you and James will just mercifully betake yourselves out there on the porch in the cold for a few minutes I will try 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 we were 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 his breast for a century of seconds, down on my old front gate, "you are right about the whole question. I see that, and I want to help--but if I'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 can men and women do but cling tight and feel their way--together?