The Tinder-Box Part 3

Henrietta's chubby little body gave a wriggle of delight, and much sentiment beamed in her rugged, small face, as she answered him with enthusiasm, though not stopping to couch her reply in exactly complimentary terms.

"You don't count, Pokie," she exclaimed, as she made a good-natured face at him.

"That's what Evelina said four years ago--and she has proved it," he answered her, looking at me just exactly as if he had never left off doing it since that last dance.

"How lovely to find you in the same exuberant spirits in which I left you, Polk, dear," I exclaimed, as I got up to go and shake hands with him, as he had sunk into the most comfortable chair in the room, without troubling to bestow that attention upon me.

Some men's hearts beat with such a strong rhythm that every feminine heart which comes within hearing distance immediately catches step, and goes to waltzing. It has been four years since mine swung around against his, at that dance, but I'm glad Cousin Martha was there, and interrupted, us enough to make me drag my eyes from his, as he looked up and I looked down.

"Please help us to persuade Evelina to come and live with James and me, Polk, dear," she said, glancing at him with the deepest confidence and affection in her eyes. There is no age-limit to Polk's victims, and Cousin Martha had always adored him.

"All women do, Evelina, why not you--live with James?" he asked, and I thought I detected a mocking flicker in his big, hazel, dangerous eyes.

"If I ever need protection it will be James--and Cousin Martha I will run to for it--but I never will," I answered him, very simply, with not a trace of the defiance I was fairly flinging at him in either my voice or manner.

Paris and London and New York are nice safe places to live in, in comparison with Glendale, Tennessee, in some respects. I wonder why I hadn't been more scared than I was last night, as the train whirled me down into proximity to Polk Hayes. But then I had had four years of forgetting him stored up as a bulwark.

"But what _are_ you going to do, Evelina?" Sallie again began to question, with positive alarm in her voice, and I saw that it was time for me to produce some sort of a protector then and there--or capitulate.

And I record the fact that I wanted to go home with Sallie and Cousin Martha and the babies and--and live under the roof of the Mossback forever. All that citizens.h.i.+p-feeling I had got poured into me from Jane and had tried on d.i.c.kie, good old d.i.c.kie, had spilled out of me at the first encounter with Polk.

There is a great big hunt going on in this world, and women are the ones only a short lap ahead. Can we turn and make good the fight--or won't we be torn to death? It has come to this it seems: women must either be weak, and cling so close to man that she can't be struck, keep entirely out of the range of his fists and arms,--or develop biceps equal to his.

Jane ought to have had me in training longer, for I'm discovering that I'm weak--of biceps.

"Are you coming--are you coming to live with us, Evelina? Are you coming? Answer!" questioned the small Henrietta, as she stood commandingly in front of me.

"Please, Evelina," came in a coax from Sallie, while the Kit crawled over and caught at my skirt as Cousin Martha raised her eyes to mine, with a gentle echo of the combined wooings.

Then suddenly into Polk's eyes flamed still another demand, that something told me I would have to answer later. I had capitulated and closed this book forever when the deliverance came.

Jasper, a little older, but as black and pompous as ever, stood in the doorway, and a portly figure, with yellow, s.h.i.+ning face, on the step behind him.

"Why, Uncle Jasper, how did you know I was here?" I exclaimed, as I fairly ran to hold out my hand to him.

"Mas' James sont me word last night, and I woulder been here by daybreak, Missie, 'cept I had to hunt dis yere suitable woman to bring along with me. Make your 'beesence to Miss Evelina, Lucy Petunia," he commanded.

"You needn't to bother to show her anything, child," he continued calmly, "I'll learn her all she needs to know to suit us. Then, if in a week she have shown suitable ability to please us both, my word is out to marry her next Sunday night. Ain't that the understanding, Tuny?" he this time demanded.

"Yes, sir," answered the Petunia with radiant but modest hope s.h.i.+ning from her comely yellow face.

"I've kept everything ready for you child, since Old Mas' died, and I ain't never stayed offen the place a week at a time--I was just visiting out Petunia's way when I heard you'd come, and gittin' a wife to tend to us and back to you quick was the only thing that concerned me. Now, we can all settle down comf'table, while I has Tuny knock up some dinner, a company one I hopes, if Miss Martha and the rest will stay with us."

Jasper's manner is an exact copy of my Father's courtly grace, done in sepia, and my eyes misted for a second, as I reciprocated his invitation, taking acceptance for granted.

"Of course they will stay, Uncle Jasper."

"Well," remarked Sallie with a gasp, "you've gone to housekeeping in two minutes, Evelina."

"Jasper has always been a very forceful personality," said Cousin Martha. "He managed everything for your Father at the last, Evelina, and I don't know how the whole town would have been easy about the Colonel unless they had trusted Jasper."

"I like the terms on which he takes unto himself a wife," drawled Polk, as he lighted a cigarette without looking at me. "Good for Jasper!"

"However, it does take a 'forceful personality' to capture a 'suitable woman' in that manner," I answered with just as much unconcern, and then we both roared, while even Sallie in all her anxiety joined in.

The commanding, black old man, and the happy-faced, plump, little yellow woman, had saved one situation--and forced another, perhaps?

Jasper's home-coming dinner party was a large and successful one. Two of the dear little old Horton lady-cousins got so impatient at Cousin Martha's not bringing me back to Widegables that they came teetering over to see about it, heavily accompanied by Mrs. Hargrove, whose son had been Cousin James's best friend at the University of Virginia, and died and left her to him since I had been at college. The ponderosity of her mind was only equaled by that of her body. I must say Petunia made a hit with the dear old soul, by the seasoning of her chicken gravy.

Sallie wanted to send the children home, but Jasper wouldn't let her, and altogether we had eleven at the table.

Polk maneuvered for a seat at the head of my festive board, with a spark of the devil in his eyes, but Jasper's sense of the proprieties did not fail me, and he seated Cousin Martha in Father's chair, with great ceremony.

And as I looked down the long table, bright with all the old silver Jasper had had time to polish, gay with roses from my garden, that he had coaxed Henrietta into gathering for him, which nodded back and forth with the bubbling babies, suddenly my heart filled to the very brim with love of it all--and for mine own people.

But, just as suddenly, a vision came into my mind of the long table across the road at Widegables, with the Mossback seated at one end with only two or three of his charges stretched along the empty sides to keep him company.

I wanted him to be here with us! I wanted him badly, and I went to get him. I excused myself suddenly, telling them all just why. I didn't look at Polk, but Cousin Martha's face was lovely, as she told me to run quickly.

I found him on the front porch, smoking his pipe alone, while the two little relics, whom he had had left to dine with him, were taking their two respective naps. Our dinner was late on account of the initiation of Petunia, and he had finished before we began.

"I stole most of your family to-day," I plunged headlong into my errand, "but I want you, too, most of all."

"You've got me, even if you do prefer to keep me across the road from you," he answered, with the most solemn expression on his face, but with a crinkle of a smile in the corners of his deep eyes.

I can't remember when I didn't look with eagerness for that crinkle in his eyes, even when I was a child and he what I at that time considered a most glorious grownup individual, though he must have been the most helpless hobbledehoy that ever existed.

"You don't need another vine," I answered mutinously.

"You know I want you, but Jasper's is the privilege of looking after you," he answered calmly. "I want you to be happy, Evelina," and I knew as I raised my eyes to his that I could consider myself settled in my own home.

"Well, then, come and have dinner number two with me," I answered with a laugh that covered a little happy sigh that rose from my heart at the look in the kind eyes bent on mine.

I felt, Jane, you would have approved of that look! It was so human to human.

He came over with me, and that was one jolly party in the old dining-room. They all stayed until almost sunset, and almost everybody in town dropped in during the afternoon to welcome me home, and ask me where I was going to live. Jasper and Petunia hovering in the background, the tea-tray out on the porch set with the silver and damask all of them knew of old, and the appearance of having been installed with the full approval of Cousin Martha and James and the rest of the family, stopped the questions on their lips, and they spent the afternoon much enlivened but slightly puzzled.

Time doesn't do much to people in a place like the Harpeth Valley, that is out of the stream of modern progress; and most of my friends seem to have just been sitting still, rocking their lives along in the greatest ease and comfort.

Still, Mamie Hall has three more kiddies, which, added to the four she had when I left, makes a slightly high, if charming, set of stair-steps.

Mamie also looks decidedly worn, though pathetically sweet. Ned was with her, and as fresh as any one of the buds. Maternity often wilts women, but paternity is apt to make men bloom with the importance of it. Ned showed off the bunch as if he had produced them all, while Mamie only smiled like an angel in the background.

A slight bit of temper rose in a flush to my cheeks, as I watched Caroline Lellyett sit on the steps and feed cake to one twin and two stair-steps with as much hunger in her eyes for them as there was in theirs for the cake. Lee Greenfield is the responsible party in this case, and she has been loving him hopelessly for fifteen years. Lots of other folks wanted to marry her, but Lee has pinned her in the psychic spot and is watching her flutter.

Polk departed in the trail of Nell Kirkland's fluffy muslin skirts, smoldering dangerously, I felt. Nell has grown up into a most lovely individual, and I felt uneasy about her under Folk's ministrations. Her eyes follow him rather persistently. On the whole, I am glad Jane committed me to this woman's cause. I'll have to begin to exercise the biceps of Nell's heart--as soon as I get some strength into my own.

And after they had all gone, I sat for an hour out on the front steps of my big, empty old house, and enjoyed my own loneliness, if it could be called enjoying. I could hear the Petunia's happy giggle, answering Jasper's guttural pleasantries, out on the cabin porch behind the row of lilac bushes. I do hope that Petunia gets much and the right sort of courting during this week that Jasper has allowed her!

With the last rays of the sun, I had found time to read a long, dear letter from Richard Hall, and though I had transferred it from my pocket to my desk, while I dressed for the afternoon, its crackle was still in my mind. I wondered what it all meant, this dissatisfied longing that human beings send out across time and distance, one to and for another.

If a woman's heart were really like a great big golden chalice, full to the brim with the kind of love she is taught G.o.d wants her to have in it for all mankind, both men and women, why shouldn't she offer drafts of it to every one who is thirsty, brothers as well as sisters? I wonder how that would solve Jane's problem of emotional equality! I do love d.i.c.ky--and--and I do love Polk--with an inclination to dodge. Now, if there were enough of the right sort of love in me, I ought to be able to get them to see it, and drink it for their comforting, and have no trouble at all with them about their wanting to seize the cup, drain all the love there is in it, shut it away from the rest of the world--and then neglect it.