The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tinder-Box, by Maria Thompson Daviess This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Tinder-Box Author: Maria Thompson Daviess Release Date: February 1, 2005 [EBook #14863] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TINDER-BOX *** Produced by Kentuckiana Digital Library, David Garcia, Chuck Greif, Leonard Johnson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE TINDER-BOX BY MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS Author of "The Melting of Molly," "Miss Selina Lue," "Sue Jane," Etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN EDWIN JACKSON NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. Published, November, 1913 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO HANNAH DAVIESS PITTMAN WHO BLAZED MY TRAIL AND STILL DOES "You don't need another vine," I answered mutinously. CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS CHAPTER I....THE LOAD CHAPTER II....THE MAIDEN LANCE CHAPTER III....A FLINT-SPARK CHAPTER IV....SWEETER THAN TAMED? CHAPTER V....DEEPER THAN SHOULDERS OR RIBS CHAPTER VI....MAN AND THE ASAFETIDA SPOON CHAPTER VII....SOME SMOLDERINGS CHAPTER VIII....AN ATTAINED TO-MORROW CHAPTER IX....DYNAMITE CHAPTER X....TOGETHER? ILLUSTRATIONS "You don't need another vine," I answered mutinously "He stood calmly in the midst of Sallie's family and baggage, both animate and inanimate "Say, Polk, I let the Pup git hung by her apron to the wheel of your car" His gray eyes were positively mysterious with interrupted dreams "We must not allow the men time to get sore over this matter of the League" "Is this right?" he asked "She's our Mother," he said Scrouged so close to his arm that it was difficult for both of them to walk THE TINDER BOX {1} {2} {3} CHAPTER I THE LOAD All love is a gas, and it takes either loneliness, strength of character, or religion to liquefy it into a condition to be ladled out of us, one to another. There is a certain dangerously volatile state of it; and occasionally people, especially of opposite sexes, try to administer it to each other in that form, with asphyxiation resulting to both hearts. And I'm willing to confess that it is generally a woman's fault when such an accident occurs. That is, it is a mistake of her nature, not one of intent. But she is learning! Also when a woman is created, the winds have wooed star-dust, rose-dew, peach- down, and a few flint-shavings into a whirlwind of deviltry, and the world at large looks on in wonder and sore amazement, as well as breathless interest. I know, because I am one, and have just been waked up by the gyrations of the cyclone; and I'm deeply confounded. I don't like it, and wish I could have slept longer, but Fate and Jane Mathers decreed otherwise. At least Jane decreed, and Fate seems so far helpless to controvert the decree. I might have known that when this jolly, easy-going old Fate of mine, which I inherited from a lot of indolent, pleasure- loving Harpeth Valley Tennesseans, let me pack up my graduating thesis, my B.S., and some delicious frocks, and go off to Paris for a degree from the Beaux Arts in Architecture, we would be caught up with by some kind of Nemesis or other, and put in our place in the biological and ethnological scheme of existence. Yes, Fate and I are placed, and Jane did it. Also, I am glad, now that I know what is going to happen to me, that I had last week on shipboard, with Richard Hall bombarding my cardiac regions with his honest eyes and booming voice discreetly muffled to accord with the moonlight and the quiet places around the deck. I may never get that sort of a joy-drink again, but it was so well done that it will help me to administer the same to others when the awful occasion arrives. "A woman is the spark that lights the flame on the altar of the inner man, dear, and you'll have to sparkle when your time comes," he warned me, as I hurried what might have been a very tender parting, the last night at sea. "Spark"—she's a conflagration by this new plan of Jane's, but I'm glad he didn't know about it then. He may have to suffer from it yet. It is best for him to be as happy as he can as long as he can. "Evelina, dear," said Jane, as she and Mary Elizabeth Conners and I sat in the suite of apartments in which our proud Alma Mater had lodged us old grads, returned for our second degrees, "your success has been remarkable, and I am not surprised at all that that positively creative thesis of yours on the Twentieth Century Garden, to which I listened to- night, procured you an honorable mention in your class at the Beaux Arts. The French are a nation that quickly recognizes genius. I am very happy to-night. All your honors and achievements make me only the more certain that I have chosen the right person for the glorious mission I am about to offer you." "Oh, no, Jane!" I exclaimed, from a sort of instinct for trouble to come. I know that devoted, twenty-second century look in Jane's intense, near-sighted eyes, and I always fend from it. She is a very dear person, and I respectfully adore her. Indeed, I sometimes think she is the real spine in my back that was left out of me, and of its own strength got developed into another and a finer woman. She became captain of my Freshman soul, at the same time she captured the captaincy of the boat crew, on which I pulled stroke, and I'm still hitting the water when she gives the word, though it now looks as if we are both adrift on the high and uncharted seas—or sitting on the lid of a tinder-box, juggling lighted torches. "You see, dear," she went on to say slowly, drawing Mary Elizabeth into the spell-bound circle of our intensity, as we three sat together with our newly-engraved sheepskins on our knees, "for these two years while you have been growing and developing along all your natural lines in a country which was not your own, in a little pool I should call it, out of even sight and sound of the current of events, we have been here in your own land engaged in the great work of the organization and reor ganization which is molding the destinies of the women of our times, and those that come after us. That is what I want to talk to you about, and devoutly have I been praying that your heart will be receptive to the call that has claimed the life of Mary Elizabeth and me. There is a particular work, for which you are fitted as no other woman I have ever known is fitted, and I want to lay the case plainly before you to-night. Will you give me a hearing?" And the hearing I gave that beloved and devout woman was the reveille that awakened me to this—this whirlwind that seems to be both inside me and outside me, and everywhere else in the whole world. It's not woman's suffrage; it has gone way down past the road from votes for women. I wish I could have stopped in that political field of endeavor before Jane got to me. She might have left me there doing little things like making speeches before the United States Senate and running for Governor of Tennessee, after I had, single-handed, remade the archaic constitution of that proud and bat-blind old State of my birth; but such ease was not for me. Of course for years, as all women have been doing who are sensible enough to use the brains God gave them and stop depending on their centuries-seasoned intuitions and fascinations, I have been reading about this feminist revolution that seems all of a sudden to have revoluted from nobody knows where, and I have been generally indignant over things {4} {5} {6} {7} {8} {9} whether I understood them or not, and I have felt that I was being oppressed by the opposite sex, even if I could not locate the exact spot of the pain produced. I have always felt that when I got to it I would shake off the shackles of my queer fondness and of my dependence upon my oppressors, and do something revengeful to them. When my father died in my Junior year and left me all alone in the world, the first thing that made me feel life in my veins again was the unholy rage I experienced when I found that he had left me bodaciously and otherwise to my fifth cousin, James Hardin. Cousin James is a healthy reversion to the primitive type of Father Abraham, and he has so much aristocratic moss on him that he reminds me of that old gray crag that hangs over Silver Creek out on Providence Road. Artistically he is perfectly beautiful in an Old-Testament fashion. He lives in an ancient, rambling house across the road from my home, and he is making a souvenir collection of derelict women. Everybody that dies in Glendale leaves him a relict, and including his mother, Cousin Martha, he now has either seven or nine female charges, depending on the sex of Sallie Carruthers's twin babies, which I can't exactly remember, but will wager is feminine. My being left to him was an insult to me, though of course Father did not see it that way. He adored the Crag, as everybody else in Glendale does, and wouldn't have considered not leaving him precious me. Wanting to ignore Cousin James, because I was bound out to him until my twenty-fifth year or marriage, which is worse, has kept me from Glendale all these four years since father died suddenly while I was away at college, laid up with the ankle which I broke in the gymnasium. Still, as much as I resent him, I keep the letter the Crag wrote me the night after Father died, right where I can put my hand on it if life suddenly panics me for any reason. It covers all the circumstances I have yet met. I wonder if I ought to burn it now! But, to be honest with myself, I will have to confess that the explosively sentimental scene on the front porch, the night I left for college, with Polk Hayes has had something to do with my cowardice in lingering in foreign climes. I feel that it is something I will have to go on with some day, and the devil will have to pick up the chips. Polk is the kind of man that ought to be exterminated by the government in sympathy for its women wards, if his clan didn't make such good citizens when they do finally marry. He ought at least to be labeled "poison for the very young." I was very young out on the porch that night. Still, I don't resent him like I do the archaic Crag. And as Jane talked, my seasoned indignation of four years against my keeper flared up, and while she paused at intervals for breath I hurled out plans for his demolishment. I wish now I had been more conservatively quiet, and left myself a loophole, but I didn't. I walked into this situation and shut the door behind me. "Yes, Evelina, I think you will have to insist forcibly on assuming charge of your own social and financial affairs in your own home. It may not be easy, with such a man as you describe, but you will accomplish it. However, many mediocre women have proved their ability to attend to their own fortunes, and do good business for themselves; but your battle is to be fought on still higher grounds. You are to rise and establish with your fellow-man a plane of common citizenship. You do it for his sake and your own, and for that of humanity." "Suppose, after I get up there on that plateau, I didn't find any man at all," I ventured faint-heartedly, but with a ripple of my risibles; the last in life I fear. "You must reach down your hands to them and draw them up to you," she answered in a tone of tonic inspiration. "You are to claim the same right to express your emotions that a man has. You are to offer your friendship to both men and women on the same frank terms, with no degrading hesitancy caused by an embarrassment on account of your sex. It is his due and yours. No form of affection is to be withheld from him. It is to be done frankly and impressively, and when the time comes—" I can hardly write this, but the memory of the wonderful though fanatic light in Jane's eyes makes me able to scrawl it—"that you feel the mating instinct in you move towards any man, I charge you that you are to consider it a sacred obligation to express it with the same honesty that a man would express the same thing to you, in like case, even if he has shown no sign of that impulse toward you. No contortions and contemptible indirect method of attack, but a fearless one that is yours by right, and his though he may not acknowledge it. The barbaric and senseless old convention that denies women the right of selection, for which God has given her the superior instinct, is to be broken down by just such women as you. A woman less dowered by beauty and all feminine charm could not do it just yet, but to you, to whom the command of men is a natural gift, is granted the wonderful chance to prove that it can be done, honestly and triumphantly, with no sacrifice of the sacredness of womanhood." "Oh, Jane." I moaned into the arm of the chair on which I had bowed my head. I am moaning; now just as much, down in the bottom of my heart. Where are all my gentle foremothers that smiled behind their lace fans and had their lily-white hands kissed by cavalier gentlemen in starched ruffles, out under the stars that rise over Old Harpeth, that they don't claim me in a calm and peaceful death? Still, as much as I would like to die, I am interested in what is going to happen. "Yes, Evelina," she answered in an adamant tone of voice, "and when I have the complete record of what, I know, will be your triumphant vindication of the truth that it is possible and advisable for women to assert their divine right to choose a mate for their sacred vocation of bearing the race, I shall proceed, as I have told you, to choose five other suitable young women to follow your example, and furnish them the money, up to the sum of a hundred thousand dollars, after having been convinced by your experience. Be careful to make the most minute records, of even the most {10} {11} {12} {13} {14} {15} {16} emotional phases of the question, in this book for their guidance. Of course, they will never know the source of the data, and I will help you elucidate and arrange the book, after it is all accomplished." If Jane hadn't had two million dollars all this trouble would not be. "I can never do it!" I exclaimed with horror, "And the men will hate it—and me. And if I did do it, I couldn't write it." I almost sobbed as a vision flashed before me of thus verbally snap-shotting the scene with dear old Dickie as we stood against the rail of the ship and watched the waves fling back silvery radiance at the full moon, and I also wondered how I was to render in serviceable written data his husky: "A woman is the flame that lights the spark—" Also, what would that interview with Polk Hayes look like reproduced with high lights? "Now," she answered encouragingly, "don't fear the men, dear. They are sensible and business-like creatures, and they will soon see how much to their advantage it is to be married to women who have had an equal privilege with themselves of showing their preferences. Then only can they be sure that their unions are from real preferences and not compromises, on the part of their wives, from lack of other choice. Of course, a woman's pride will make her refrain from courtship, as does her brother man, until she is financially independent, and self-supporting, lest she be put in the position of a mendicant." Jane has thought the whole thing out from Genesis to Revelation. Still, that last clause about the mendicant leaves hope for the benighted man who still wants the cling of the vine. A true vine would never want—or be able—to hustle enough to flower sordid dollars instead of curls and blushes. "A woman would have to be—to be a good deal of a woman, not any less one, to put such a thing across, Jane," I said, with a preflash of some of the things that might happen in such a cruel crusade of reformation and deprivation of rights. "That is the reason I have chosen you to collect the data, Evelina," answered Jane, with another of those glorious tonic looks, issuing from my backbone in her back. "The ultimate woman must be superb in body, brain, and heart. You are that now more nearly than any one I have ever seen. You are the woman!" I was silenced with awe. "Jane plans to choose five girls who would otherwise have to spend their lives teaching in crowded cities after leaving college and to start them in any profession they choose, with every chance of happiness, in the smaller cities of the South and Middle West," said Mary Elizabeth gently, and somehow the tears rose in my eyes, as I thought how the poor dear had been teaching in the high school in Chicago the two glorious years I had been frolicking abroad. No time, and no men to have good times with. And there were hundreds like her, I knew, in all the crowded parts of the United States. And as I had begun, I thought further. Just because I was embarrassed at the idea of proposing to some foolish man, who is of no importance to me, himself, or the world in general, down in Glendale, where they have all known me all my life, and would expect anything of me anyway after I have defied tradition and gone to college, five lovely, lonely girls would have to go without any delightful suitors like Richard—or Polk Hayes, forever. And, still further, I thought of the other girls, coming under the influence of those five, who might be encouraged to hold up their heads and look around, and at least help out their Richards in their matrimonial quest, and as I sat there with Jane's compelling and Mary Elizabeth's hungry eyes on me, I felt that I was being besought by all the lovers of all the future generations to tear down some sort of awful barrier and give them happiness. And it was the thought of the men that was most appealing. It takes a woman who really likes them as I do, and has their good really at heart, to see their side of the question as Jane put it, poor dears. Suddenly, I felt that all the happiness of the whole world was in one big, golden chalice, and that I had to hold it steadily to give drink to all men and all women—with a vision of little unborn kiddies in the future. Then, before I could stop myself, I decided—and I hope the dear Lord—I say it devoutly—indeed I do!—will help that poor man in Glendale if I pick out the wrong one. I'm going to do it. "I accept your appointment and terms, Jane," I said quietly, as I looked both those devout, if fanatic, women in the face. "I pledge myself to go back to Glendale, to live a happy, healthy, normal life, as useful as I can make it. I had intended to do that anyway, for if I am to evolve the real American garden. I can't do better than sketch and study those in the Harpeth Valley, for at least two seasons all around. I shall work at my profession whole-heartedly, take my allotted place in the community, and refuse to recognize any difference in the obligations and opportunities in my life and that of the men with whom I am thrown, and to help all other women to take such a fearless and honest attitude—if Glendale blows up in consequence. I will seek and claim marriage in exactly the same fearless way a man does, and when I have found what I want I shall expect you to put one hundred thousand dollars, twenty to each, at the disposal of five other suitable young women, to follow my example, as noted down in this book—if it has been successful. Shall I give you some sort of written agreement?" "Just record the agreement as a note in the book, and I will sign it," answered Jane, in her crispest and most business- like tone of voice, though I could see she was trembling with excitement, and poor Mary Elizabeth was both awe-struck {17} {18} {19} {20} {21} {22} and hopeful. I'll invite Mary Elizabeth down to Glendale, as soon as I stake out my own claim, poor dear! And here I sit alone at midnight, with a huge, steel-bound, lock-and-keyed book that Jane has had made for me, with my name and the inscription, "In case of death, send unopened to Jane Mathers, Boston, Massachusetts," on the back, committed to a cause as crazy and as serious as anything since the Pilgrimages, or the Quest of the Knights for the Grail. It also looks slightly like trying to produce a modern Don Quixote, feminine edition, and my cheeks are flaming so that I wouldn't look at them for worlds. And to write it all, too! I have always had my opinion of women who spill their souls out of an ink-bottle, but I ought to pardon a nihilist, that in the dead of night, cold with terror, confides some awful appointment he has had made him, to his nearest friend. I am the worst nihilist that ever existed, and the bomb I am throwing may explode and destroy the human race. But, on the other hand, the explosion might be of another kind. Suppose that suddenly a real woman's entire nature should be revealed to the world, might not the universe be enveloped in a rose glory and a love symphony? We'll see! Also, could the time ever come when a woman wouldn't risk hanging over the ragged edge of Heaven to hold on to the hand of some man? Never! Then, as that is the case, I see we must all keep the same firm grip on the creatures we have always had, and haul them over the edge, but we must not do it any more without letting them know about it—it isn't honest. Yes, women must solidify their love into such a concrete form that men can weigh and measure it, and decide for themselves whether they want to—to climb to Heaven for it, or remain comfortable old bachelors. We mustn't any more lead them into marriage blinded by the overpowering gaseous fragrance called romantic love. But, suppose I should lose all love for everybody in this queer quest for enlightenment I have undertaken? Please, God, let a good man be in Glendale, Tennessee, who will understand and protect me—no, that's the wrong prayer! Protect him—no—both of us! CHAPTER II THE MAIDEN LANCE A woman may shut her eyes, and put a man determinedly out of her heart, and in two minutes she will wake up in an agony of fear that he isn't there. Now, as I have decided that Glendale is to be the scene of this bloodless revolution of mine—it would be awful to carry out such an undertaking anywhere but under the protection of ancestral traditions—I have operated Richard Hall out of my inmost being with the utmost cruelty, on an average of every two hours, for this week Jane and I have been in New York; and I have still got him with me. I, at last, became determined, and chose the roof-garden at the Astor to tell him good-by, and perform the final operation. First I tried to establish a plane of common citizenship with him, by telling him how much his two years' friendship across the waters had meant to me, while we studied the same profession under the same masters, drew at the same drawing-boards and watched dear old Paris flame into her jeweled night-fire from Montmarte, together. I was frankly affectionate, and it made him suspicious of me. Then I tried to tell him just a little, only a hint, of my new attitude towards his sex, and before he had had time even to grasp the idea he exploded. "Don't talk to me as if you were an alienist trying to examine an abstruse case, Evelina," he growled, with extreme temper. "Go on down and rusticate with your relatives for the summer, and fly the bats in your belfry at the old moss- backs, while I am getting this Cincinnati and Gulf Stations commission under way. Then, when I can, I will come for you. Let's don't discuss the matter, and it's time I took you back to your hotel." Not a very encouraging tilt for my maiden lance. I've had a thought. If I should turn and woo Dickie, like he does me, I suppose we would be going-so fast in opposite directions that we would be in danger of passing each other without recognizing signals. I wonder if that might get to be the case of humanity at large if women do undertake the tactics I am to experiment with, and a dearth of any kind of loving and claiming at all be the result. I will elucidate that idea and shoot it into Jane. But I have no hope; she'll have the answer ticketed away in the right pigeon-hole, statistics and all, ready to fire back at me. I have a feeling that Jane won't expect such a diary as this locked cell of a book is becoming, but I can select what looks like data for the young from these soul squirmings, and only let her have those for The Five. I don't know which are which now, and I'll have to put down the whole drama. And my home-coming last night was a drama that had in it so much comedy, dashed with tragedy, that I'm a little breathless over it yet. Jane, and my mind is breathing unevenly still. Considering the situation, and my intentions, I was a bit frightened as the huge engine rattled and roared its way along the steel rails that were leading me back, down into the Harpeth Valley. But, when we crossed the Kentucky line, I forgot the horrors of my mission, and I thrilled gloriously at getting hack to my hills. Old Harpeth had just come into {23} {24} {25} {26} {27} {28} {29} sight, as we rounded into the valley and Providence Knob rested back against it, in a pink glow that I knew came from the honeysuckle in bloom all over it like a mantle. I traveled fast into the twilight, and I saw all the stars smile out over the ridge, in answer to the hearth stars in the valley, before I got across Silver Creek. I hadn't let any one know that I was coming, so I couldn't expect any one to meet me at the station at Glendale. There was nobody there I belonged to —just an empty house. I suppose a man coming home like that would have whistled and held up his head, but I couldn't. I'm a woman. Suddenly, that long glowworm of a train stopped just long enough at Glendale to eject me and my five trunks, with such hurried emphasis that I felt I was being planted in the valley forever, and I would have to root myself here or die. I still feel that way. And as I stood just where my feet were planted, in the dust of the road, instead of on the little ten-foot platform, that didn't quite reach to my sleeper steps, I felt as small as I really am in comparison to the universe. I looked after the train and groveled. Then, just as I was about to start running down the track, away from nowhere and to nowhere, I was brought to my senses by a loud boohoo, and then a snubby choke, which seemed to come out of my bag and steamer-blanket that stood in a pile before me. "Train's gone, train's gone and left us! I knew it would, when Sallie stopped to put the starch on her face all over again. And Cousin James, he's as slow as molasses, and I couldn't dress two twins in not time to button one baby. Oh, damn, oh, damn!" And the sobs rose to a perfect storm of a wail. Just at that moment, down the short platform an electric light, that was so feeble that it seemed to show a pine-knot influence in its heredity, was turned on by the station-agent, who was so slow that I perceived the influence of a descent from old Mr. Territt, who drove the stage that came down from the city before the war, and my fellow-sufferer stood revealed. She was a slim, red-haired bunch of galatea, stylish of cut as to upturned nose and straight little skirt but wholly and defiantly unshod save for a dusty white rag around one pink toe. A cunning little straw bonnet, with an ecru lace jabot dangled in her hand, and her big brown eyes reminded me of Jane's at her most inquisitive moments. "If you was on a train, what did you git offen it here for?" she demanded of me, with both scorn and curiosity in her positive young voice. "I don't know why," I answered weakly, not at all in the tone of a young-gallant-home-from-the-war mood I had intended to assume towards the first inhabitant of my native town to whom I addressed a remark. "We was all a-goin' down to Hillsboro, to visit Aunt Bettie Pollard for a whole week, to Cousin Tom's wedding, but my family is too slow for nothing but a funeral. And Cousin James, he's worse. He corned for us ten minutes behind the town clock, and Mammy Dilsie had phthisic, so I had to fix the two twins, and we're done left. I wisht I didn't have no family!" And with her bare feet the young rebel raised a cloud of dust that rose and settled on my skirt. "There they come now," she continued, with the pained contempt still rising in her voice. And around the corner of the station hurried the family party, with all the haste they would have been expected to use if they had not, just two minutes earlier, beheld their train go relentlessly on down the valley to Hillsboro and the wedding celebration. I hadn't placed the kiddie, but I might have known, from her own description of her family, to whom she belonged. First came Sallie Carruthers, sailing along in the serene way that I remembered to have always thought like a swan in no hurry, and in her hands was a wet box from which rose sterns protruded. Next in the procession came Aunt Dilsie, huge and black and wheezing, fanning herself with a genteel turkey-tail fan, and carrying a large covered basket. But the tail-piece of the procession paralyzed all the home-coming emotions that I had expected to be feeling, save that of pure hilarity. James Hardin was carrying two bubbly, squirmy, tousle-headed babies, on one arm, and a huge suitcase in the other hand, and his gray felt hat set on the back of his shock of black hair at an angle of deep desperation, though patience shone from every line of his strong, gaunt body, and I could see in the half light that there were no lines of irritation about his mouth, which Richard had said looked to him like that of the prophet Hosea, when I had shown him the picture that Father had had snapped of himself and the Crag, with their great string of quail, on one of their hunting-trips, just before Father died. "Eve!" he exclaimed, when he suddenly caught sight of me, standing in the middle of the dusty road, with my impedimenta around me, and as he spoke he dropped both babies on the platform in a bunch, and the small trunk on the other side. Then he just stood and looked, and I had to straighten the roar that was arising in me at the sight of him into a conventional smile of greeting, suitable to bestow on an enemy. But before the smile was well launched, Sallie bustled in and got the full effect of it. "Why, Evelina Shelby, you darling thing, when did you come?" she fairly bubbled, as she clasped me in the most {30} {31} {32} {33} {34} {35} hospitable of arms, and bestowed a slightly powdery kiss on both my cheeks. I weakly and femininely enjoyed the hug, not that a man might not have—Sallie is a dear, and I always did like her gush, shamefacedly. "She got often that train that left us, and she ain't got a bit of sense, or she wouldn't," answered the Blue Bunch for me, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "What for did you all unpack outen the surrey, if you sawed the train go by?" she further demanded, with accusing practicality. "Don't you know when youse left?" "Oh, Henrietta," exclaimed Sallie, looking at the young-philosopher with terrified helplessness. "Please don't mind her, Evelina. I don't understand her being my child, and nobody does, unless it was Henry's grandmother on his mother's side. You had heard of my loss?" If I hadn't heard of the death of Henry Carruthers, Sallie's elaborate black draperies, relieved by the filmy exquisiteness of white crepe ruches at the neck and wrists, would have proclaimed the fact. Suddenly, something made me look at Cousin James, as he stood calmly in the midst of Sallie's family and baggage, both animate and inanimate, and the laugh that had threatened for minutes fairly flared out into his placid, young prophet face. "Oh, I am so sorry, Sallie, and so glad to see all of you that I'm laughing at the same time," I exclaimed to save myself from the awfulness of greeting a young widow's announcement of her sorrow in such an unfeeling manner. To cover my embarrassment and still further struggles with the laugh that never seemed to be able to have itself out, I bent and hugged up one of the toddlers, who were balancing against the Crag's legs, with truly feminine fervor. "I'm glad to see you, Evelina," said Cousin James gently, and I could see that the billows of my mirth had got entirely past him. I was glad he had escaped, and I found myself able to look with composure at his queer, long-tailed gray coat, which made me know that little old Mr. Pinkus, who had been Father's orderly all through the war, was still alive and tailoring in his tiny shop down by the post-office, though now that Father is dead he probably only does it for Cousin James. The two of them had been his only customers for years. And as I looked, I saw that the locks that curled in an ante-bellum fashion around the Crag's ears, were slightly sprinkled with gray, and remembered how he had loved and stood by Father, even in the manner of wearing Pinkus clothes; my heart grew very large all of a sudden, and I held out my hand to him. He stood calmly in the midst of Sallie's family and baggage, both animate and inanimate. "I'm glad to be at home," I said, gazing straight into his eyes, with a look of affection that you would have been proud of, Jane,—using unconsciously, until after I had done it, the warmth I had tried unsuccessfully on Richard Hall at the Astor, not forty-eight hours ago, but two thousand miles away. And it got a response that puzzles me to think of yet. It was just a look, but there was a thought of Father in it, also a suggestion of the glance he bestowed on Sallie's twins. I remembered that the Crag seldom speaks, and that's what makes you spend your time breathlessly listening to him. "Well, come on, everybody, let's go home and undress, and forget about the wedding," came in Henrietta's positive and executive tones. "Let's go and take the strange lady with us. We can have company if we can't be it. She can sleep {36} {37} {38} {39} other side of me, next the wall." I have never met anybody else at all like Henrietta Carruthers, and I never shall unless Jane Mathers marries and—I sincerely hope that some day she and Jane will meet. And the next ten minutes was one of the most strenuous periods of time I ever put in, in all my life. I longed, really longed, to go home with Sallie and Henrietta, and sleep next the wall at Widegables with the rest of the Crag's collection. But I knew Glendale well enough to see plainly that if I thus once give myself up to the conventions that by Saturday night they would have me nicely settled with his relicts, or in my home with probably two elderly widows and a maiden cousin or so to look after me. And then, by the end of the next week, they would have the most suitable person in town fairly hunted by both spoken and mental influence, to the moonlight end of my front porch, with matrimonial intentions in his pocket. I knew I had to take a positive stand, and take it immediately. I must be masculinely firm. No feminine wiles would serve in such a crisis as this. So, I let Cousin James pack me into his low, prehistoric old surrey, in the front seat, at his side, while Sallie took Aunt Dilsie and one twin with her on the back seat. Henrietta scrouged down at my feet, and I fearingly, but accommodatingly, accepted the other twin. It was a perfect kitten of a baby, and purred itself to sleep against my shoulder as soon as anchored. The half-mile from the station, along the dusty, quiet village streets, was accomplished in about the time it would take a modern vehicle to traverse Manhattan lengthwise, and at last we stopped at the gate of Widegables. The rambling, winged, wide-gabled, tall-columned old pile of time-grayed brick and stone, sat back in the moonlight, in its tangle of a garden, under its tall roof maples, with a dignity that went straight to my heart. There is nothing better in France or England, and I feel sure that there are not two hundred houses in America as good. I'll paint it, just like I saw it to-night, for next Spring's Salon. A bright light shone from the windows of the dining-room in the left wing, where the col lection of clinging vines were taking supper, unconscious of the return of the left-behinds that threatened. And as I glanced at my own tall-pillared, dark old house, that stands just opposite Widegables, and is of the same period and style, I knew that if I did not escape into its emptiness before I got into Cousin Martha's comfortable arms, surrounded by the rest of the Crag's family, I would never have the courage to enter into the estate of freedom I had planned. "Sallie," I said firmly, as I handed the limp Kitten down to Aunt Dilsie, as Henrietta took the other one—"Puppy" I suppose I will have to call the young animal,—from her mother and started on up the walk in the lead of the return expedition, "I am going over to stay in my own home to-night. I know it seems strange, but—I must. Please don't worry about me." "Why, dear, you can't stay by yourself, with no man on the place," exclaimed Sallie, in a tone of absolute panic. "I'll go tell Cousin Martha you are here, while Cousin James unpacks your satchel and things." And she hurried in her descent from the ark, and also hurried in her quest for the reinforcement of Cousin Martha's authority. "I'm going to escape before any of them come back," I said determinedly to the Crag, who stood there still, just looking at me. "I'm not up to arguing the question to-night, for the trip has been a long one, and this is the first time I have been home since—Just let me have to-night to myself, please." I found myself pleading to him, as he held up his arms to lift me clear of the wheels. His eyes were hurt and suffering for a second, then a strange light of comprehension came from them into mine, like a benediction, as he gently set me on my feet. "Must you, Eve?" "Yes," I answered, with a gulp that went all the way down to my feminine toes, as I glanced across the road at the grim, dark old pile that towered against the starlit sky. "I want to stay in my own house to-night—and—and I'm not afraid." "You won't need to be frightened. I understand, I think—and here's your key, I always carry it in my pocket. Your Father's candle is on the mantel. You shall have to-night to yourself. Good-night, and bless your home-coming, dear!" "Good-night," I answered as I turned away from his kind eyes quickly, to keep from clinging-to him with might and main, and crossed the road to my own gate. With my head up, and trying for the whistle, at least in my heart, I went quickly along the front walk with its rows of blush peonies, nodding along either edge. The two old purple lilacs beside the front steps have grown so large they seemed to be barring my way into my home with longing, sweet embraces, and a fragrant little climb ing rose, that has rioted across the front door, ever since I could remember, bent down and left a kiss on my cheeks. The warm, mellow old moon flooded a glow in front of me, through the big front door, as I opened it, and then hastened to pour into the wide windows as I threw back the shutters. Logs lay ready for lighting in the wide fireplace at the end of the long room, and Father's tobacco jar gleamed a reflected moonlight from its pewter sides from the tall mantel-shelf. The old hooks melted into the dusk of their cases along the wall, and the portrait of Grandfather Shelby lost its fierce gaze and became benign from its place between the windows. {40} {41} {42} {43} {44} {45} I was being welcomed to the home of my fathers, with a soft dusk that was as still and sweet as the grave. Sweet for those that want it; but I didn't. Suddenly, I thrilled as alive as any terror-stricken woman that ever found herself alone any where on any other edge of the world, and then as suddenly found myself in a complete condition of fright prostration, crouched on my own threshold. I was frightened at the dark, and could not even cry. Then almost immediately, while I crouched quivering in every nerve I seemed to hear a man's voice say comfortingly: "You don't need to be frightened." Courageously I lifted my eyes and looked down between the old lilac bushes, and saw just what I expected I would, a tall, gray figure, pacing slowly up and down the road. Then it was that fear came into me, stiffened my muscles and strengthened my soul—fear of myself and my own conclusions about destiny and all things pertaining thereto. I never want to go through such another hour as I spent putting things in order in Father's room, which opens off the living-room, so I could go to bed by candle-light in the bed in which he and I were both born. I wanted to sleep there, and didn't even open any other part of the grim old house. And when I put out the candle and lay in the high, old four-post bed, I again felt as small as I really am, and I was in danger of a bad collapse from self-depreciation when my humor came to the rescue. I might just as well have gone on and slept between Henrietta and the wall, as was becoming my feminine situation, for here my determination to assert my masculine privileges was keeping a real man doing sentry duty up and down a moonlight road all night—and I wanted it. "After this, James Hardin, you can consider yourself safe from any of my attentions or intentions," I laughed to myself, as I turned my face into the pillow, that was faintly scented from the lavender in which Mother had always kept her linen. "I've been in Glendale two hours, and one man is on the home base with his fingers crossed. James, you are free! Oh, Jane!" CHAPTER III A FLINT SPARK The greatest upheavals of nature are those that arrive suddenly, without notifying the world days beforehand of their intentions of splitting the crust of the Universe wide open. One is coming to Glendale by degrees, but the town hasn't found out about it yet. I'm the only one who sees it, and I'm afraid to tell. When Old Harpeth, who has been looking down on a nice, peaceful, man ordained, built, and protected world, woke Glendale up the morning after my arrival and found me defiantly alone in the home of my fathers—also of each of my foremothers, by the courtesy of dower—he muttered and drew a veil of mist across his face. Slight showers ensued, but he had to come out in less than an hour from pure curiosity. I found the old garden heavenly in its riot of neglected buds, shoots, and blooms, wet and welcoming with the soft odors of Heaven itself. It was well I was out early to enjoy it, for that was to be the day of my temptation and sore trial. I am glad I have recorded it all, for I might have forgotten some day how wonderfully my very pliant, feminine attitude rubbed in my masculine intentions as to my life on the blind side of all the forces brought to bear on me to put me back into my predestined place in the scheme of the existence. "Your Cousin James's home is the place for you, Evelina, and until he explained to me how you felt last night I was deeply hurt that you hadn't come straight, with Sallie, to me and to him," said Cousin Martha, in as severe a voice as was possible for such a placid individual to produce. Cousin Martha is completely lovely, and the Mossback gets his beauty from her. She is also such a perfect dear that her influence is something terrific, even if negatively expressed. "I have come to help you get your things together, so you can move over before dinner," she continued with gentle force. "Now, what shall we put in the portmanteau first? I see you have unpacked very little, and I am glad that it confirms me in my feeling that your coming over here for the night was just a dutiful sentiment for your lost loved ones, and not any unmaidenly sense of independence in the matter of choice where it is best for you to live. Of course, such a question as that must be left to your guardian, and of course James will put you under my care." "I—I really thought that perhaps Cousin James did not have room for me, Cousin Martha," I answered meekly. "How many families has he with him now?" I asked with a still further meekness that was the depths of wiliness. "There are three of us widows, whom he sustains and comforts for the loss of our husbands, and also the three Norton girls, cousins on his father's side of the house, you remember. It is impossible for them to look after their plantation since their father's death robbed them of a protector, at least, even though he had been paralyzed since Gettysburg. James is a most wonderful man, my dear—a most wonderful man. Though as he is my son I ought to think it in silence." "Indeed he is," I answered from the heart. "But—but wouldn't it be a little crowded for him to have another—another vine—that is, exactly what would he do with me? I know Widegables is wide, but that is a houseful, isn't it?" {46} {47} {48} {49} {50} {51} "Well, all of us did feel that it made the house uncomfortably full when Sallie came with the three children, but you know Henry Carruthers left James his executor and guardian of the children, and Sallie of course couldn't live alone, so Mrs. Hargrove and I moved into the south room together, and gave Sallie and the children my room. It is a large room, and it would be such a comfort to Sallie to have you stay with her and help her at night with the children. She doesn't really feel able to get up with them at all. Then Dilsie could sleep in the cabin, as she ought to on account of the jimsonweed in her phthisic pipe. It would be such a beautiful influence in your lonely life, Evelina, to have the children to care for." I wondered if Cousin Martha had ever heard that galatea bunch indulge in such heartfelt oaths as had followed that train down the track last night! "It would be lovely," I answered—and the reply was not all insincerity, as I thought of the darkness of that long night, and the Bunch's offer of a place at her sturdy little back "next the wall." "But I will be so busy with my own work, Cousin Martha, that I am afraid I couldn't do justice to the situation and repay the children and Sallie for crowding them." "Why, you couldn't crowd us, Evelina, honey," came in Sallie's rich voice, as she sailed into the room, trailing the Pup and the Kit at her skirts and flying lavender ribbons at loose ends. "We've come to help you move over right away." "Well, not while I have a voice in the affairs of my own husband's niece! How are you, Evelina, and are you crazy, Sallie Carruthers?" came in a deep raven croak of a voice that sounded as if it had harked partly from the tomb, as Aunt Augusta Shelby stood in the doorway, with reproof on her lips and sternness on her brow. "Peter and I will have Evelina move down immediately with us. James Hardin has as much in the way of a family as he can very well stand up under now." And as she spoke, Aunt Augusta glared at Sallie with such ferocity that even Sallie's sunshiny presence was slightly dimmed. "Are you ready, Evelina? Peter will send the surrey for your baggage," she continued, and for a moment I quailed, for Aunt Augusta's determination of mind is always formidable, but I summoned my woman's wit and man's courage, and answered quickly before she fairly snatched me from under my own roof-tree. "That would be lovely, Aunt Augusta, and how are you?" I answered and asked in the same breath, as I drew near enough to her to receive a business-like peck on my cheek. "I expect to have you and Uncle Peter to look after me a lot, but somehow I feel that Father would have liked—liked for me to live here and keep my home—his home—open. Some way will arrange itself. I haven't talked with Cousin James yet," I felt white feathers sprouting all over me, as I thus invoked the masculine dominance I had come to lay. "You'll have to settle that matter with your Uncle Peter, then, for, following his dictates of which I did not approve, I have done our duty by the orphan. Now, Evelina, let me say in my own person, that I thoroughly approve of your doing just as you plan." And as she uttered this heresy, she looked so straight and militant and altogether commanding, that both Cousin Martha and Sallie quailed. I felt elated, as if my soul were about to get sight of a kindred personality. Or rather a soul-relative of yours, Jane. "Oh, she would be so lonely, Mrs. Shelby, and she—" Sallie was venturing to say with trepidation, when Aunt Augusta cut her short without ceremony. "Lonely, nonsense! Such a busy woman as I now feel sure Evelina is going to be, will not have time to be lonely. I wish I could stay and talk with you further about your plans, but I must hurry back and straighten out Peter's mind on that question of the town water-supply that is to come up in the meeting of the City Council to-day. He let it be presented all wrong last time, and they got things so muddled that it was voted on incorrectly. I will have to write it out for him so he can explain it to them. I will need you in many ways to help me help Peter be Mayor of Glendale, Evelina. I am wearied after ten years of the strain of his office. I shall call on you for assistance often in the most important matters," with which promise, that sounded like a threat, she proceeded to march down the front path, almost stepping on Henrietta, who was coming up the same path, with almost the same emphasis. There was some sort of an explosion, and I hope the kind of words I heard hurled after the train were not used. "That old black crow is a-going to git in trouble with me some day, Marfy," Henrietta remarked, as she settled herself on the arm of Cousin Martha's chair, after bestowing a smudgy kiss on the little white curl that wrapped around one of the dear old lady's pink little ears. I had felt t...