The Tinder-Box Part 4

Yes, why can't I love Polk as I love you, Jane, and have him enjoy it?

Yes, why?

I think if I had d.i.c.ky off to myself for a long time, and very gently led him up to the question of loving him hard in this new way, he might be induced to sip out of the cup just to see if he liked it--and it might be just what he craved, for the time being; but I doubt it. He would storm and bl.u.s.ter at the idea.

Of course the Crag would let a woman love him in any old kind of new or experimental way she wanted to, if it made her happy. He would take her cup of tenderness and drink it as if it were sacramental wine, on his knees. But he doesn't count. He has to be man to so many people that there is danger of his becoming a kind of superman. Think of the old Mossback being a progressive thing like that! I laughed out loud at the idea--but the echo was dismal.

I wonder if Sallie will marry him.

And as I sat and thought and puzzled, the moonlight got richer and more glowing, and it wooed open the throats of the thousand little honeysuckle blossoms, clinging to the vine on the trellis, until they poured out a perfect symphony of perfume to mingle in a hallelujah from the lilacs and roses that ascended to the very stars themselves.

I had dropped my head on my arms, and let my eyes go roaming out to the dim hills that banked against the radiant sky, when somebody seated himself beside me, and a whiff of tobacco blew across my face, sweet with having joined in the honeysuckle chorus. n.o.body said a word for a long time, and then I looked up and laughed into the deep, gray eyes looking tenderly down into mine. With a thrill I realized that there was one man in the world I could offer the chalice to and _trust_ him to drink--moderately.

"Jamie," I said in a voice as young as it used to be when I trailed at his heels, "thank you for letting me be contrary and independent and puzzling. I have been busy adventuring with life, in queer places and with people not like--like us. Now I want a little of real living and to think--and feel. May I?"

"You may, dear," the Crag answered in a big comfortable voice, that was a benediction in itself. "I understood last night when you told me that you wanted to come home alone. I can trust Jasper with you, and I am going to sleep down at the lodge room, right across the road here, so I can hear you if you even think out loud. No one shall worry you about it any more. Now will you promise to be happy?"

I could not answer him, I was so full of a deepness of peace. I just laid my cheek against the sleeve of his queer old gray coat, to show him what I could not say.

He let me do it, and went on smoking without noticing me.

Then, after a little while, he began to tell me all about Father and his death, that had come so suddenly while he seemed as well as ever, and how he had worried about my probably not wanting to be left to him, and that he wanted me to feel independent, but to please let him do all that I would to help me, and not to feel that I was alone with n.o.body to love me. That he was always there, and would be forever and ever.

And he did stay so late that Jasper had to send him home!

There is such a thing as a man's being a father and mother and grown sister and brother and a college-chum and a preacher of the Gospel and a family physician to a woman--with no possibility of being her husband either. She wouldn't so drag such a man from his high estate as to think of such a worldly relation in connection with him.

I have certainly collected some phenomena in the reaction of a woman's heart this day. Did you choose me wisely for these experiments, Jane?

It takes a woman of nerve to go to housekeeping in a tinder-box, when she isn't sure she even knows what flint is when she sees it, and might strike out a spark without intending it at all.

CHAPTER IV

SWEETER WHEN TAMED?

I wonder if men ever melt suddenly into little boys, and try to squirm and run back to hide their heads in their mothers' skirts. It is an open secret that starchy, modern women often long to wilt back into droopy musk roses, that climb over gates and things, but they don't let each other. When I feel myself getting soluble, I write it out to Jane and I get a bracing cold wave of a letter in reply. The one this morning was on the subject of love, or, at least, that is what Jane would have said it was on. She wrote:

Yes, it is gratifying to know that Mary Elizabeth is so happily engaged to the young teacher who has been in her work with her. She writes that she was encouraged by our resolution, at last to be her best self while in his presence as she had not had the courage to do last year. You see, Evelina? And also, you are right in your conclusion that there is not enough abstract love in this world of brotherhood and sisterhood; that the doctrine of divine love calls us to give more and more of it. We cannot give too much! But also, considerations for the advancement of the world call for experiments by the more illumined women along more definite and concrete lines. How old is this Mr. Hayes, on whom you have chosen to note the reactions of sisterly affection? Are you sure that he is not a fit subject for your consideration in the matter of a choice for a mate?

Remember to be as frank in your expressions of regard for him as he is in his of regard for you. That is the crux of the whole matter. Be frank, be courageous! Let a man look freely into your heart, and thus encouraged he will open his to you. Then you will both have an opportunity to judge each other with reference to a life-long union. It is the only way; and remember what rests on you in this matter. The destinies of many women are involved.

I don't say this in a spirit of levity, but I do wish Polk Hayes and Jane Mathers were out on the front steps in the moonlight, after a good supper that has made him comfortable, Jane to be attired in something soft that would float against his arm, whether she wanted it to or not!

I believe it would be good for Jane, and make things easier for me. Be frank with Polk as to how much he asphyxiates me? I know better than to blow out the gas like that! No, Jane!

But what is a woman going to do when she is young and hearty and husky, with the blood running through her veins at a two-forty rate, when her orchard is in bloom, the mocking-birds are singing the night through, and she is not really in love with anybody? The loneliness does fill her heart full of the solution of love, and she has got to pour off some of it into somebody's life. There is plenty of me to be both abstract and concrete, at the same time, and I thought of Uncle Peter.

Uncle Peter Is the most explosive and crusty person that ever happened in Glendale, and it takes all of Aunt Augusta's energy, common-sense and force of character to keep him and the two chips he carries on his shoulders, as a defiance to the world in general, from being in a constant state of combustion. He has been ostensibly the Mayor of Glendale for twenty-five years, and Aunt Augusta has done the work of the office very well indeed, while he has blown up things in general with great energy. He couldn't draw a long breath without her, but of course he doesn't realize it. He thinks he is in a constant feud with her and her s.e.x. His ideas on the woman question are so terrific that I have always run from them, but I concluded that it would be a good thing for me to liquefy some of my vague humanitarianism, and help Aunt Augusta with him, while she wrestles with the City Council on the water question. Anyway, I have always had a guarded fondness for the old chap.

I chose a time when I knew Aunt Augusta had to be busy with his report of the disastrous concrete paving trade the whole town had been sold out on, and I lay in wait to capture him and the chips. This morning I waited behind the old purple lilac at the gate, which immediately got into the game by sweeping its purple-plumed arms all around me, so that not a tag of my dimity alarmed him as he came slowly down the street.

"Uncle Peter," I said, as I stepped out in front of him suddenly, "please, Uncle Peter, won't you come in and talk to me?"

"Hey? Evelina?"

"Yes, Uncle Peter, it's Evelina," and I hesitated with terror at the snap in his dear old eyes, back under their white brows. Then I let my eyes uncover my heart full of the elixir I had prepared for him, and offered him as much as he could drink.

"I'm lonely," I said, with a little catch in my voice.

"Lonely--hey?" he grumbled, but his feet hesitated opposite my gate.

In about two and a half minutes I had him seated in a cus.h.i.+oned rocker on the south side of the porch. Jasper had given us both a mint julep, and Uncle Peter was much Jess thirsty than he had been for a long time.

Aunt Augusta is as temperate in all things as a steel ramrod.

"You see, Uncle Peter, I needed you so that I just had to kidnap you," I said to him, as he wiped his lips with a pocket-handkerchief, as stiffly starched as was his wife herself.

"Why didn't you go over and live in James's hennery--live with James--hey?"

he snapped, with the precision of a pistol cap.

To be just, I suppose Aunt Augusta's adamant disposition accounts, to some extent, for Uncle Peter's explosive way of thinking and speaking. A husband would have to knock Aunt Augusta's nature down to make any impression whatever on it. Uncle Peter always has the air of firing an idea and then ducking his head to avoid the return shot.

"His house is so full, and I need a lot of s.p.a.ce to carry on my work," I answered him, with the words I have used so often in the last two weeks that they start to come when the Petunia asks me if I want waffles or batter-cakes for supper.

"Well, Sallie Carruthers will get him, and then there'll be a dozen more to run the measure over--children--hey? All girls! A woman like Sallie would not be content with producing less than a dozen of her kind--hey?"

His chuckle was so contagious that I couldn't help but join him, though I didn't like it so very much. But why shouldn't I? Sallie is such a gorgeous woman that a dozen of her in the next generation will be of value to the State. Still, I didn't like it. I didn't enjoy thinking of Cousin James as so serving his country.

"Carruthers left her to James--he'll have to take care of her. Henry turned toes in good time. Piled rotten old business and big family on to James's shoulders, and then died--good time--hey? Get a woman on your hands, only thing to do is to marry or kill her. Poor James--hey?" He peered at me with a twinkle in his eyes that demanded a.s.sent from me.

"Why, Uncle Peter, I don't know that Sallie has any such idea. She grieves dreadfully over Mr. Carruthers, and I don't believe she would think of marrying again," I answered, trying to put enough warmth in my defense to convince myself.

"Most women are nothing but gourd-vines, grow all over a corn-stalk, kill it, produce gourds until it frosts, and begin all over again in the next generation. James has to do the hoeing around Sallie's roots, and feed her. Might as well marry her--hey?"

"Does--does Cousin James have to support Sallie and the children, Uncle Peter?" I asked, coming with reluctance down to the rock-bed of the discussion.

"Thinks he does, and it serves him right--serves him right for starting out to run a widow-ranch in the first place; it's like making a collection of old shoes. He let Henry Carruthers persuade him to mortgage everything and buy land on the river for the car-shops of the new railroad, which just fooled the town out of a hundred thousand dollars, and is going by on the other side of the river with the shops up at Bolivar. If James didn't get all the lawing in Alton County they would all starve to death--which would be hard on the const.i.tution of old lady Hargrove, and her two hundred-weight."

"Oh, has Cousin James really lost all of his fortune?" I asked, and I was surprised at the amount of sympathetic dismay that rose in me at the information.

"Everything but what he carries around under that old gray hat of his--not so bad a fortune, at that!--hey?"

I feel I am going to love Uncle Peter for the way he disdainfully admires Cousin James.