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?"
"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 that way about Cousin Martha myself at the Bunch's age, and we
exchanged a sympathetic smile on the subject.
"Well, what _are_ you going to do, Evelina?" asked Sallie, and she
turned such a young, helpless, wondering face up to me from the center
of her cluster of babies, that my heart almost failed me at the idea of
pouring what seemed to me at that moment the poison of modernity into
the calm waters of her and Cousin Martha's primitive placidity.
"You'll have to live some place where there is a man," she continued,
with worried conviction.
My time had come, and the fight was on. Oh, Jane!
"I don't believe I really feel that way about it," I began in the
gentlest of manners, and slowly, so as to feel my way. "You see, Sallie
dear, and dearest Cousin Martha, I have had to be out in the world so
much--alone, that I am--used to it. I--I haven't had a man's protection
for so long that I don't need it, as I would if I were like you two
blessed sheltered women."
"I know it has been hard, dear," said Cousin Martha gently looking her
sympathy at my lorn state, over her glasses.
"I don't see how you have stood it at all," said Sallie, about to
dissolve in tears. "The love and protection and sympathy of a man are
the only things in life worth anything to a woman. Since my loss I don't
know what I would have done without Cousin James. You must come into his
kind care, Evelina."
"I must learn to endure loneliness," I answered sadly, about to begin to
gulp from force of example, and the pressure of long hereditary
influence.
I'm glad that I did not dissolve, however, before what followed
happened, for in the twinkling of two bare feet I was smothered in the
embrace of Henrietta, who in her rush brought either the Pup or the Kit,
I can't tell which yet, along to help her enfold me.
"I'll come stay with you forever, and we don't need no men! Don't
like 'em no-how!" she was exclaiming down my back, when a drawl from the
doorway made us all turn in that direction.
"Why, Henrietta, my own, can it be you who utter such cruel sentiments
in my absence?" and Polk Hayes lounged into the room, with the same
daring listlessness that he had used in trying to hold me in his arms
out on the porch the night I had said good-by to him and Glendale, four
years ago.
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 citizenship-feeling I had got poured into me from Jane
and had tried on Dickie, good old Dickie, 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, shining 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 shining
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 God 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
Dicky--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.
Yes, why can't I love Polk as I love you, Jane, and have him enjoy it?
Yes, why?
I think if I had Dicky 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 bluster 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. Nobody 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 nobody 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.