At the Age of Eve Part 32

"Well, he's a pretty decent chap, although he does look deucedly young to be cutting into people--don't you think so?" he asked, not that he really did think so, for Alfred is quite old-looking for his years, but he thought it would place him in a better light--the way he acted yesterday.

"Oh, you'd like a bearded old surgeon who learned so much technique before the war that he hasn't needed to learn any since," I answered, and the breakfast-hour pa.s.sed away with this kind of light, bantering talk.

From that day Richard set about being the most agreeable companion when we were together, and the most devoted lover when we were separated that it has ever been my lot to meet in fact or fiction. I left Charlotteville the next day and he followed me up to the city on the fourth day thereafter, as soon as the doctors p.r.o.nounced Evelyn out of danger. I had not intended stopping over in the city any length of time, but I found Cousin Eunice in a state of despair over the progress, or lack of progress, of her new book.

"Do stay," she begged, as I announced this intention to her, "at least until I get through with the proposal. It's as hard to get your hero to propose nicely as it is to get the gathers of a sleeve to set right. There's always either too much or too little in a given spot.

And it's so provoking, when I'm right in the midst of such a delicate situation, to have Pearl call out to me from the foot of the steps: 'Mrs. Clayborne, here's a jepman at the do' want's to know if your husban's a householder and a freeholder.'

"'Tell him yes, and a _slave-holder_,' I yell back at her; for any woman who really keeps house _is_ a slave."

"What do 'jepmen' want to ask such fool questions for?" I asked wonderingly.

"To avoid election frauds. You see there is so much deviltry right now in politics that the law-enforcement faction is sending men around all over the city to find out every voter, and if he has the right to vote."

"Well, what good does it all do?"

"None; but it gives the poor, overworked housewives one more trip to the front door, in the course of the day.--Then there are agents selling non-rustible wired bust-forms. Pearl never knows what to say to them, either."

"Mercy, what should one say?" I demanded, thinking all of a sudden that maybe my task was going to be too large for me.

"Say anything that comes to your mind, just so it's unfit for publication--nothing milder will do for them," she answered bitterly.

"And Waterloo doesn't give you any trouble while you're trying to work, does he?" I inquired.

"Happily no, for Grapefruit is his consolation and his joy. Never were there such ways of a nursemaid with a man child. Never has anybody invented such tales and games--"

"And spitting contests," I interpolated.

"It's true she taught him that ugly habit," she responded with some dignity, "but all boys learn it sooner or later."

So I stayed and the book grew like a soap-bubble the first week. Then Pearl's brother got into that condition which is always described by our colored servants with much gusto and rolling of white eyeb.a.l.l.s as "'bout ter die," and, whether he ever dies or not, is a matter that the housekeeper knows nothing of. But the servant always leaves, and she did in this case; and upon the Sunday morning thereafter the gas stove in the Clayborne home looked as if gangrene had set in on it. I had magnanimously insisted on doing the cooking; and I didn't know before that a gas stove had to be washed as often as a new-born baby.

Cousin Eunice came out of her cataleptic state on Sunday morning, for she is ashamed to write on the type-writer that day for fear Waterloo will tell it at Sunday-school--and she showed me how to dispose of the week-old egg-sh.e.l.ls and concentrated soup cans which had acc.u.mulated amazingly around the fenders of the range.

"Oh, I think a literary ambition is an evil thing sometimes," she said with a deep sigh, looking around at the house, which she declared was enough to give us all bubonic plague.

"It is--er, disheartening to have you shut up all the week in the little back room up-stairs," Rufe admitted, fishing one of his best gloves out from behind the coal-box. "When you're locked away up there the house looks as empty as a hotel bureau-drawer--and that's the emptiest thing on earth."

"I know it," she answered, looking at him sympathetically. "--Besides, it's wearing to have a book for ever in your mind. Inspiration is so uncertain--and so urgent. I've had it strike me while I was washing my hair; and it's far from pleasant to have to dash the soap out of your eyes while you search all over the house for your note-book and pencil--and the water drips down all over the furniture."

"It must be," Rufe agreed.

"And here lately I've grown so absent-minded that when I go down-town for a little shopping I have to dress with my memorandum in my mouth to keep from going off and forgetting it."

But on Monday morning genius was burning again, and I stayed through that week, but only in the capacity of a protection against interruptions. We got another cook, for Pearl's brother, like Charles II., was "an unconscionable time a-dying." Richard came every day and every night and was so attentive to the whole family that Rufe rather sarcastically asked one day: "Ann, is Chalmers courting you or me?"

Rufe's words meant little to me then, but later they kept recurring to my mind with a persistency that would make Banquo's ghost appear like a tame and laggard thing. Was Richard hoping to gain, through his friendship with me, the support of the _Times_? He knew that if Rufe's personal influence could not bring about an actual support of him in the coming campaign it would be a factor in having the paper judge his manipulations with a lenient eye.

And now this finally brings me up to that miserable day the following spring, the Ides of March, it was, when the skies fell; and they never fell upon a more wretched, more humiliated, more bitterly disciplined young woman.

As I have said, Richard had made an ideal fiance throughout the time which followed that miserable parting with Alfred, and I had occasion many times to wonder if, after all, I might not have been mistaken about the incompatibility of our natures. Besides, the fascination of the handsome, physical Richard Chalmers was still there; perhaps it was never so strongly and bitterly there as on the fifteenth of March that I have just mentioned.

As the winter wore away, Richard's visits down home here, in the country, had been much further apart, especially since the time for the actual political fight drew nearer; and, from this fact and from the newspapers' more volcanic outbursts, I knew that a gubernatorial contest was about to take place.

But I should never have known it from the man who was most concerned in the race, for, during all this time, Richard never confided one hope nor fear of his to me; and I see now that it was not because he "didn't want to bother my pretty little head about such things," as he occasionally stated, with a fond smile, but because he judged me to be exactly of the same intellectual stripe as his mother and Evelyn.

He thought that I would not have sense enough to understand the situation.

Richard had been out of town a good deal lately on business trips, and the meeting that morning in March, at Rufe's office, was in the nature of an accident. Richard had not known that I was in the city for a day's shopping, so when we accidentally ran across each other on the street, the _Times_ building was the nearest place we might drop into for a little talk.

"Well, you are taking your campaign hard," I said, as I looked at him critically after Rufe had a.s.sured us that we might have the whole morning without interruption, in his own particular little den, as he was going to be out in town. Then Richard had asked him to give orders that we were not to be interrupted, as he particularly wished for a little talk with me.

"Ann, I've had enough to run any man crazy since I saw you last, dear," he said wearily, in answer to my comment on his looks. He dropped down into the nearest chair and put up one hand to shade his eyes from the brilliant morning glare. "This political business is the most infernal--"

"What, Richard?"

He was looking steadily into my eyes, but at my question he looked away; then after a moment moved his chair over closer and caught up my left hand.

"I'm in a devil of a mess, love," he said after a little inward struggle--then with that charming directness of his he ventured--"I want you to promise to help me out."

"Of course I will," I readily agreed.

"Oh, that's not the kind of promise I want," he instantly objected.

"Say it solemnly. Say, 'I'll promise to stick to you.'"

"Why, Richard, you make me fear that something is seriously wrong," I cried in sudden alarm, for my sense of oneness with him had grown so amazingly since those months between the time of my visit to Charlotteville and then, and I felt as entirely identified with his interests as if we were already married. His att.i.tude toward me at the breakfast-table the morning after Alfred's departure was a key-note to the manner in which he strove every day after that to cement this relation; and I know now that this was an immense factor in causing me to allow the engagement to exist through those days of doubt. I had always felt that an engagement was very nearly as binding as a marriage--and Richard had always exercised such a charming right of possession.

"Something is seriously wrong, Ann," he said gravely, and his eyes held mine in a sort of fascinated wonder; "and I expect you to stand by me."

His manner was very grave; and he seemed to be in a serious doubt as to whether or not I would stand by him.

"Tell me about it," I suggested as patiently as I could, for I was trembling with uneasy eagerness.

"Give me your hand and swear that you will stick to me."

"Oh, sweetheart, I'll stick to you if you're a horse-thief," I said, trying to force a laugh.

"Then listen! You know that I want to be governor of this state--"

I nodded my head.

"--And the temperance party is about to go back on me because they think that Major Blake and I are going to form a separate faction and leave out the liquor question."

"Yes, I know."

"Well, that is just what we are going to do--to save the state from the Republicans."

"Well?"