The Tinder-Box Part 10

"Do you know anything of the character of Mrs. Joshua?" asked Polk, admiringly, but slipping down from his intellectual att.i.tude of mind and body and edging an inch nearer. "Bet she had a strong mind or Joshua never could have pulled off that sun and moon stunt."

"Do you know, Polk, there is one woman in the world who could--could handle you?" I said, as a sudden vision of what Jane would do, if Polk sat on her skirts as he did on mine, flashed across my troubled brain.

"I'd be mighty particular as to who handles me," he answered impudently, "Want to try?" And with the greatest audacity he laid his head gently against my knee. I let it rest there a second and then tipped it back against the arm of the rocker.

"It does hurt me to see a man like Cousin James fairly throttled by women as he is being," I said as I looked across the street and noted that the porch of Widegables was full to overflowing with the household of women.

"Evelina," said Polk, as he stood up suddenly in front of me, "that old Mossback is the finest man in this commonwealth, but from his situation n.o.body can extract him, unless it is a woman with the wiliness of the devil himself. Poison the whole bunch and I'll back you. But we'll have to plot it later on. I see his reverence coming tripping along with a tract in his hand for you and I'll be considerate enough to sneak through the kitchen, get a hot m.u.f.fin-cake that has been tantalizing my nose all this time you have been sentimentalizing over me, and return anon when I can have you all to myself in the melting moonlight in the small hours after all religious folk are in bed. Until then!" And as he went back through the front hall Mr. Haley came down the front walk.

"My dear Miss Shelby, how fortunate I am to find you alone," he exclaimed with such genuine delight beaming from his nice, good, friendly, gray eyes that I beamed up myself a bit out of pure responsiveness.

"I am so glad to see you, Mr. Haley. Hasn't it been a lovely day?" I answered, as I offered him the large rocker Sallie had vacated.

"It has, indeed, and I don't know when I have been as deeply happy. This hour with you will be the very climax of the day's perfections, I feel sure."

I smiled.

To follow you, Jane, I "let a man look freely into my heart and thus encouraged he opened his to mine" and behold, I found Sallie and the twins and Henrietta all squatting in the Dominie's cardiac regions, just as comfortably as they do it at Widegables.

"My sympathies have become so enlisted in the struggle which Mrs.

Carruthers is having to curb the eccentricities of her oldest daughter that I feel I must lay definite plans to help her. It is very difficult for a young and naturally yielding woman like Mrs. Carruthers to discipline alone even so young a child as Henrietta. I know you will help me all you can to help her. Believe me, my dear friend, even in the short time you have been in Glendale you have become a tower of strength to me. I feel that I can take my most difficult and sacred perplexities to you."

Now, what do you think of that, Jane? Be sure and rub this situation in on all the waiting Five disciples. I defy any of them to do so well in less than three months. This getting on a plane of common citizenship with a fellow-man is easy. That is, with some men.

Still while you are getting on the plane somebody else gets the man.

What about that? I didn't want Mr. Haley, but what if I had?

"Yes, Henrietta is a handful, Mr. Haley," I answered with enthusiasm, for even the mention of Henrietta enlivens me and somehow Mr. Haley's getting in the game of "curbing" her stirred up my risibles. "But--but Sallie already has a good many people to help her with the children. I have been trying to--to influence Henrietta--and she does not swear except on the most exasperating occasions now."

"The dear little child created a slight consternation in her Sunday School cla.s.s last week when they were being taught the great dramatic story of Jonah's three days' incarceration in the whale. To quote her exactly, so that you may see how it must have affected the other children, she said: 'I swallowed a live fly onct myself and I'm not d.a.m.n fool enough to believe that whale kept Jonah down three days, alive and kicking, no matter who says so.'

"She then marched out of the cla.s.s and has not returned these two succeeding Sabbaths. It was to talk over the matter I called on Mrs.

Carruthers this afternoon, and I have never had my sympathies so stirred. We must help her, my dear friend!"

I never enjoyed anything more in my life than the hour I spent helping that dear, good, funny man plan first aids to the rearing of Sallie's children. Besides my cooperation he has planned to enlist that of Aunt Augusta, and I was wicked enough to let him do it. In a small village where the inhabitants have no chance at diversions like Wagnerian operas and collapsing skysc.r.a.pers I felt that I had no right to avert the spectacle of Aunt Augusta's disciplining Henrietta.

I'll write you all about it, Jane, in a special delivery letter.

Jasper whipped Petunia with great apparent severity day before yesterday, and we have been having the most heavenly waffles and broiled chicken ever since. I dismissed Jasper for doing it, but Petunia came into my room and cried about it a half-hour, so I had to go out where he was rubbing the silver and forgive him and hire him over.

"When a woman gits her mouth stuck out at a man and the world in general three days hand running they ain't nothing to cure it but a stick," he answered with lofty scorn.

"Yes'm, dat's so," answered Petunia. "I never come outen a spell so easy before." And her yellow face had a pink glow of happiness all over it as she smiled lovably on the black brute.

I went off into a corner and sat down for a quiet hour to think. n.o.body in the world knows everything.

"Supper's on the table," Jasper announced, after having seen Mr. Haley go down the front walk to-night. Jasper has such great respect for the cloth that never in the world would he have asked Mr. Haley in to supper without having at least a day to prepare for him. Any of my other friends he would have asked, regardless of whether or not I wanted them.

I somehow didn't feel that I could eat alone to-night, but it was too late to go for Sallie or Cousin Jasmine, and besides it is weak-minded to feel that way. Why shouldn't I want to eat by myself?

This is a great big house for just one woman, and I don't see why I have to be that one! I never was intended to be single. I seem to even think double. Way down in me there is a place that all my life I have been laying things aside in to tell some day to somebody that will understand. I don't remember a single one of them now, but when the time comes somebody is going to ask me a question very softly and it is going to be the key that will unlock the treasures of all my life, and he will take them out one by one, and look at them and love them and smile over them and scold over them and be frightened even to swearing over them, perhaps weep over them, and then--while I'm very close--pray over them.

I could feel the tears getting tangled in my lashes, but I forced them back.

Now, I don't see why I should have been sentimentalizing over myself like that. Just such a longing, miserable, wait-until-he-comes--and why-doesn't-he-hurry-or-I'll-take-the-wrong-man att.i.tude of mind and sentiment in women in general is what I have taken a vow on my soul, and made a great big important wager to do away with. There are millions of lovely men in the world and all I have to do is to go out and find the right one, be gentle with him until he understands my mode of attack to be a bit different from the usual crawfish one employed by women from prehistoric times until now, but not later: and then domesticate him in any way that suits me.

Here I've been in Glendale almost three months and have let my time be occupied keeping house for n.o.body but myself and to entertain my friends, planting a flower garden that can't be used at all for nourishment, and sewing on another woman's baby clothes.

I've written millions of words in this book and there is as yet not one word that will help the Five in the serious and important task of proving that they have a right to choose their own mates, and certainly nothing to help them perform the ceremonial.

If I don't do better than this Jane will withdraw her offer and there is no telling how many years the human race will be r.e.t.a.r.ded by my lack of strength of character.

What do men do when they begin to see the gray hairs on their temples and when they have been best-man at twenty-three weddings, and are tired of being at christenings and buying rattles, and things at the club all taste exactly alike, and they have purchased ten different kinds of hair-tonic that it bores them to death to rub on the tops of their own heads?

I don't want any man I know! I might want Polk, if I let him have half a chance to make me, but that would be dishonorable.

I've got up so much nice warm sisterly love for d.i.c.kie and Mr. Haley that I couldn't begin to love them in the right way now, I am afraid.

Still, I haven't seen d.i.c.kie for three months and maybe my desperation will have the effect of enhancing his attractions. I hope so.

Still I am disgusted deeply with myself. I believe if I could experiment with mankind I could make some kind of creature that would be a lot better than a woman for all purposes, and I would--

"Supper's ready and company come," Jasper came to the front door to announce for the third time, but this time with the unctuous voice of delight that a guest always inspires in him. I promptly went in to welcome my materialized desire whoever it happened to be.

The Crag was standing by the window in the half light that came, partly from the candles in their tall old silver candlesticks that were Grandmother Shelby's, and partly from the last glow of the sun down over the ridge. That was what I needed!

"I was coming in from the fields across your back yard and I saw the table lighted and you on the front porch, star-gazing, and--and I got Jasper to invite me." he said as he came over and drew out my chair on one side of that wide square table, while Jasper stood waiting to seat him at the other, about a mile away.

"I wanted you," I answered him stupidly, as I sank into my place and leaned my elbows on the table so I could drop my warm cheeks into my hands comfortably. I didn't see why I should be blushing.

"That's the reason I came then," he answered, as he looked at me across the bowl of musk roses that were sending out waves of sweetness to meet those that were coming in from the honeysuckle climbing over the window.

"If you were ever lonely and needed me, Evelina, you would tell me, wouldn't you?" he asked, as he leaned towards me and regarded me still more closely.

And again those two treacherous tears rose and tangled themselves in my lashes, though I did shake them away quickly as a smile quivered its way to command of my mouth. But I was not quick enough and he saw them.

And what he did was just what I wanted him to do! He rose, picked up his chair and came around that huge old table and sat down at the corner just as near to my elbow as the steaming coffee pot would let him.

"If you wanted me any time, would you tell me, Evelina?" he insisted from this closer range.

"No, I wouldn't," I answered with a laugh. "I would expect you to know it, and come just like you did to-night."

"But--but it was I that wanted you badly in this case," he answered with an echo of the laugh.

But even under the laugh I saw signs of excitement in his deep eyes and his long, lean hands shook as they handed me his cup to pour the coffee.

Jasper had laid his silver and napkin in front of him and retired to admonish Petunia as to the exact crispness of her first waffle.

"What is it?" I asked breathlessly, as I moved the coffee pot from between us to the other side.

"Just a letter that came to me from the Democratic Headquarters in the City, that shook me up a bit and made me want to--to tell _you_ about it. n.o.body else can know--I have been out on Old Harpeth all afternoon fighting that out, and telling you is the only thing I have allowed myself."