MAX AND THE ASAFETIDA SPOON
I do wish the great man who is discovering how to put people into some
sort of metaphysical pickle that will suspend their animations until he
gets ready to wake them up, would hurry up with his investigations, so
he can catch Sallie before she begins to fade or wilt. Sallie, just as
she is, brought to life about five generations from now, would cause a
sensation.
Some women are so feminine that they are sticky, unless well spiced with
deviltry. Sallie's loveliness hasn't much seasoning. Still, I do love
her dearly, and I am just as much her slave as are any of the others. I
can't get out of it.
"Do you suppose we will ever get all of the clothes done for the twins?"
Nell sighed gently as we sat on my porch whipping yards of lace upon
white ruffles and whipping up our own spirits at the same time.
Everybody in Glendale sews for Sallie's children and it takes her all
her time to think up the clothes.
"Never," I answered.
"She's coming, and I do believe she has got more of this ruffling. I see
it floating down her skirt," Nell fairly groaned.
Nell ought to like to sew. She isn't emancipated enough to hate a needle
as I do. But the leaven is working and she's rising slowly. It might be
well for some man to work the dough down a little before she runs over
the pan. That's a primitively feminine wish and not at all in accordance
with my own advanced ideas.
I was becoming slightly snarled with my thread, and I was glad when
Sallie and her sweetness seated itself in the best rocker in the softest
breeze, which Nell had vacated for her.
"Children are the greatest happiness in life and also the greatest
responsibility, girls," she said, in her lovely rich voice that always
melts me to a solution of sympathy whenever she uses it pensively on me.
"Of course, I should be desolate without mine, but what could I do with
them, if I didn't have all of you dear people to help me with them?"
Her wistful dependence had charm.
I looked at the twin with the yellow fuzz on the top of its head that
has hall-marked it as the Kitten in my mind, seated on Sallie's lap with
her head on Sallie's shoulder looking like a baby bud folded against the
full rose, and I couldn't help laughing. Kit had been undressed three
times after her bath this morning while Cousin Martha, Cousin Jasmine
and Mrs. Hargrove argued with each other whether she should or shouldn't
have a scrap of flannel put on over her fat little stomach. Henrietta
finally decided the matter by being impudent and sensible to them all
about the temperature.
"Don't you all 'spose God made the sun some to heat up Kit's stomach?"
she demanded scornfully, as she grabbed the little roly-poly bone of
contention and marched off with her to finish dressing her on the front
porch in the direct rays of her instituted heater.
The household at large at Widegables can never agree on the clothing of
the twins and Henrietta often has to finish their toilets thus, by
force. Aunt Dilsie being reduced by her phthisic to a position that is
almost entirely ornamental, Henrietta's strength of character is the
only thing that has made the existence of the twins bearable to
themselves or other people.
As I have said before, I do wish that some day in the future you will
come under the direct rays of Henrietta's influence, Jane, dear!
"Yes, Sallie, I should call them a responsibility," I answered her with
a laugh, as I reached up my arms for the Kitten. Then, as the little
yellow head snuggled in the hollow that was instituted in the beginning
between a woman's breast and arm for the purpose of just such nestlings,
I whispered as I laid my lips against her little ear, "and a happiness,
too, darling."
And as Sallie rocked and recuperated her breath Nell eyed the ruffle
apprehensively.
"Are you going to let us make another dress for the kiddies, Sallie,
dear?" she finally was forced by her uneasiness to ask, though with the
deepest sweetness and consideration in her voice.
If I am ever a widow with young children I hope they will burn us all up
with the deceased rather than keep me wrapped in a cotton-wool of
sympathy, as all of us do Sallie.
"It's lovely of you, Nell, to want to do more for the babies after all
the beautiful things you and Evelina have made them, and I may be able
to get another white dress apiece for them after I give Cousin James the
bills, that are awful already, but this is some ruffling that I just
forced Mamie Hall to let me bring up to you girls to do for her baby.
The poor little dear is two months old and Mamie is just beginning on
his little dress for him. He has been wearing the plainest little slips.
Mamie says Ned remarked on the fact that the baby was hardly presentable
when you girls stopped in with him to see it the other day, Nell. I
urged her to get right to work fixing him up. It is wrong for children
not to be kept as daintily as their father likes to see them."
How any woman that is as spiritually-minded as I am, and who has so much
love for the whole world in her heart, and such a deep purpose always to
offer it to her fellowmen according to their need of it, can have the
vile temper I possess I cannot see.
"And the sight that would please me better than anything else I have
even thought up to want to see," I found myself saying when I became
conscious--I hope I didn't use any of the oaths of my forefathers which
must have been tempting my refined foremothers for generations and which
I secretly admire Henrietta for indulging in on occasions of impatience
with Sallie--"would be Ned Hall left entirely alone with that squirming
baby, that looks exactly like him, when it is having a terrible spell of
colic and Ned is in the midst of a sick headache, with all the other
children cold, hungry, and cross, the cook gone to a funeral, and the
nurse in a grouch because she couldn't go and--and he knowing that Mamie
was attired in a lovely, cool muslin dress, sitting up here on the porch
with us sipping a mint julep and smoking a ten-cent cigar, resting and
getting up an appetite for supper. I want him to have about five years
of such days and then he would deserve the joys of parenthood that he
now does not appreciate."
"Oh, Mamie wouldn't smoke a cigar!" was the exclamation that showed how
much Sallie got of the motif of my eruption.
"Glorious!" exclaimed Nell, with shining eyes.
I must be careful about Nell, she is going this new gait too fast for
one so young. Women must learn to fletcherize freedom if it is not to
give them indigestion of purpose.
"Still Ned provides everything in the world he can think of to help
Mamie," said Caroline, who had come up the walk just in time to fan the
flame in me by her sweet wistfulness, with a soft judiciousness in her
voice and eyes. "And Mamie adores the children and him."
If one man is unattainable to a woman all the other creatures take on
the hue of being valuable from the reflection. Caroline is pathetic!
"It would be robbing a woman of a privilege not to let her trot the
colic out of her own baby," Sallie got near enough in sight of the
discussion to shout softly from the rear.
I have often seen Cousin Martha on one side of the fire trotting the
Pup, and Cousin Jasmine on the other ministrating likewise to the Kit.
so Sallie could take a good nap, which she didn't at all need, on the
long sofa in the living-room at Widegables.
"Ned is a delightful man and, of course, Mamie adores him." Nell agreed
with an attitude of mind like to the attitude of a body sustained on the
top rail of a shaky fence.
"He doubtless would be just as delightful to Mamie standing by dropping
asafetida into a spoon to administer to the baby, as he is dancing with
you at the Assembly, Nell," I said, still frothy around the temper.
"He'll never do it again," was the prompt result I got from my shot.
"The trouble with you, Evelina," said Sallie, with ruminative
reflectiveness in her eyes, "is that you have never been married and do
not understand how noble a man can be under--"
"Yes, I should say that you had hit Evelina's trouble exactly on the
head, Sallie," came in Polk's drawl as he came over the rose hedge from
the side street and seated himself beside Caroline on the steps.
"Well, if I ever have a husband he'll prove his nobility by being
competent to make the correct connection between the asafetida spoon and
his own baby," was the answer that came with so much force that I
couldn't stop it after I fully realized Folk's presence and sex.
"Help!" exclaimed Polk, weakly, while Nell blushed into the fold of her
ruffle, Caroline looked slightly shocked and Sallie wholly scandalized
at my lack of delicacy.
I felt that the place had been reached, the audience provided, and the
time ripe for the first gun in my general revolution planned for
Glendale. I spoke calmly in a perfect panic of fear.
"I am glad Polk is here to speak for the masculine side of the
question," I said, looking all the three astonished women straight in
the face. "Polk, do you or do you not think that a man with a wife and
seven children ought to assume at least some of the domestic strain
resulting therefrom, like dropping the asafetida in the spoon for her
while she is wrestling with the youngest-born's colic?"
"Do I have to answer?" pleaded Polk, with desperation.
"Yes!"
"Then, under the circumstances I think the man ought to say: 'To hell
with the spoon,' grab a gun, go out and shoot up a bear and a couple of
wild turkeys for breakfast, throttle some coin out of some nearby
business corporation, send two to five trained nurses back to the
wigwam, stay down town to lunch and then go home with a tender little
kiss for the madame who meets him fluffy and smiling at the door. That's
my idea of true connubial bliss. Applications considered in the order of
their reception. Nell, you are sweet enough to eat in that blue muslin.
I'm glad I asked you to get one just that shade!"
And the inane chorus of pleased laughs that followed Polk Hayes's
brainless disposal of the important question in hand made me ashamed of
being a woman--though it was funny. Still I bided my time and Polk saw
the biding, I could tell by the expression in the corners of his eyes
that he kept turned away from me.
And in less than a half-hour he was left to my mercies, anything but
tender. Sallie took Nell and Caroline over home to help her decide how
wide a band of white it would be decorous for her to sew in the neck of
her new black meteor crepe. I see it coming that we will all have to
unite in getting Sallie out of mourning and into the trappings of
frivolity soon and I dread it. It takes so many opinions on any given
subject to satisfy Sallie that she ought to keep a tabulated
advice-book.
"Evelina," said Polk, experimentally, after he had seen them safely
across the street, and he moved along the steps until he sat against my
skirts, "are your family subject to colic?"
"No, they have strong brains instead," I answered icily.
"Said brains subject to colic, though," he mused in an impudent
undertone.
I laughed: I couldn't help it. One of the dangerous things about Polk is
that he gets you comfortable and warm of heart whenever he gets near
you. It wouldn't matter at all to him if you should freeze later for
lack of his warmth, just so he doesn't know about it.
"Polk," I began to say in a lovely serious tone of voice, looking him
square in the eyes and determined that as we were now on the subject of
basic things, like infantile colic, I would have it out with him along
all lines, "there is an awful shock coming to you when you realize
that--"
"That in the heat of this erudite and revolutionary discussion, which an
evil fate led me to drop in on, I have forgotten to give you this
telegram that came for you while I was down at the station shipping some
lumber. Be as easy as you can with me, Evelina, and remember that I am
your childhood's companion when you decide between us." With which he
handed me a blue telegram.
I opened it hastily and found that it was from Richard:
Am coming down to Bolivar with C. & G. Commission. Be deciding
about what I wrote you. Must.
RICHARD.
I sat perfectly still for several seconds because I felt that a good
strong hand had reached out of the distance and gently grabbed me.
Dickie had bossed me strenuously through two years of the time before I
had awakened to the fact that, for his good, I must take the direction
of the affairs of him and his kind on my and my kind's shoulders.
I suppose a great many years of emancipation will have to pass over the
heads of women before they lose the gourd kind of feeling at the sight
of a particularly broad, strong pair of shoulders. My heart sparkled at
the idea of seeing Dickie again and being browbeaten in a good old,
methodical, tender way. I suppose the sparkle in my heart showed in my
eyes, for Polk sat up quickly and took notice of it very decidedly.
"Wire especially impassioned?" he asked, with a smolder in his eyes.
"Not especially." I answered serenely, "One of my friend's father is a
director in the C. & G. and he is coming down with him for the
conference over at Bolivar between the two roads next week."
"Good," answered Polk, heartily, as the flare died out of his eyes.
I was glad he didn't have to see the wire for I wanted to use Polk's
brain a while if I could get his emotions to sleep in my presence. It is
very exasperating for a woman to be offered flirtation when she is in
need of common sense from a man. There are so many times she needs the
one rather than the other, but the dear creatures refuse to realize it,
if she's under forty.
"Polk, do you see any logical, honest or dishonest way to get that Road
to take the Glendale bluff line?" I asked, with trepidation, for that
was the first time I had ever even begun to discuss anything
intelligently with Polk.
"None in the world, Evelina," he answered with a nice, straight,
intellectuality showing over his whole face and even his lazy, posing
figure. "I remonstrated with James and Henry Carruthers both when they
used their influence to have the bonds voted and I told James it was
madness to invest in all that field and swamp property with just a
chance of the shops. The trouble was that James had always left all his
business to Henry, along with the firm's business, for a man can't be
the kind of lawyer James is, and carry the details of the handling of
filthy lucre in the same mind that can make a speech like the one he
made down in Nashville last April, on the exchange of the Judiciary.
James can be the Governor of this good State any time he wants to, or
could, if Henry hadn't turned toes and left him such a bag to hold--no
reference to Sallie's figure intended, which is all to the good if you
like that kind of curves!"
I took a moment to choose my words.
"The C. & G. is going to take that bluff route," I answered calmly from
somewhere inside me that I had never used to speak from before.
"Do you know anything of the character of Mrs. Joshua?" asked Polk,
admiringly, but slipping down from his intellectual attitude 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
nobody 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 muffin-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 class 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 damn
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 class 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 coöperation 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 skyscrapers 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. Nobody
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 attitude 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 nobody 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 retarded 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 Dickie and Mr. Haley
that I couldn't begin to love them in the right way now, I am afraid.
Still, I haven't seen Dickie 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. Nobody 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."
"They want you to be the next Governor," I said quickly. "And you will
be, too," I added, again using that queer place in my brain that seems
to know perfectly unknowable things and that only works in matters that
concern him.
"No!"
"Yes, Your Excellency," I hurled at him defiantly.
"You witch, you," he answered me with a pleased, teasing whimsicality
coming into his eyes. "Of course, you guessed the letter and it was dear
to have you do it, but we both know it is impossible. Nobody must hear
of it, and the telling you has been the best I could get out of it
anyway. Jasper, take my compliments to Petunia, this chicken is
perfection!"
That eighth wonder of the world which got lost was something even more
mysterious than the Sphinx. It was a marvel that could have been used
for women to compare men to. That man sat right there at my side and
ate four waffles, two large pieces of chicken and a liver-wing, drank
two cups of coffee, and then devoured a huge bowl of peaches and cream,
with three muffin-cakes, while enduring the tragedy of the realization
of having to decline the Governorship of his State.
I watched him do it, first in awe and then with a dim understanding of
something, I wasn't sure what. Most women, under the circumstances,
would have gone to bed and cried it out or at least have refused food
for hours. We've got to get over those habits before we get to the point
of having to refuse to be Governors of the States and railroad
presidents and things like that.
And while he ate, there I sat not able to more than nibble because I was
making up my mind to do something that scared me to death to think
about. That gaunt, craggy man in a shabby gray coat, cut ante-bellum
wise, with a cravat that wound itself around his collar, snowy and
dainty, but on the same lines as the coat and evidently of rural
manufacture in the style favored by the flower and chivalry of the day
of Henry Clay, had progressive me as completely overawed for several
minutes as any painted redskin ever dominated a squaw--or as Jasper did
Petunia in my own kitchen.
But after we were left alone with the roses and the candles and his
cigar, with only Jasper's gratified voice mumbling over compliments to
Petunia in the distance, I took my courage in my hands and plunged.
This can he used as data for the Five.
"James." I said, with such cool determination in my voice that it almost
froze my own tongue, "I meant to tell you about it several weeks ago, I
have decided to adopt Sallie and all the children. I intend to legally
adopt the children and just nominally adopt Sallie, but it will amount
to the same thing. I don't have to have your consent but I think it is
courteous to ask for it."
"What!" he exclaimed, as he sat up and looked at me with the expression
an alienist might use in an important examination.
"Yes," I answered, gaining courage with time. "You see, I was crying out
here on the porch with loneliness when you found me. I can't stand this
any longer. I must have a family right away and Sallie's just suits me.
I have to take a great deal of interest in them anyway and it would be
easier if I had complete control of them. It will leave you with enough
family to keep you from being lonely and then we can all be happy
together down into old age."
"Have you said anything about this to Sallie?" he asked weakly as he
dipped the end of his cigar into his glass of water and watched the
sputter with the greatest interest.
"Not yet, but don't you feel sure that she will consent?" I asked, with
confidence in my plan at fever heat. "Sallie is so generous and she
can't want to see me live lonely always, without any family at all. Now,
will she?"
"She would consent!" he answered slowly, and then he laid his head down
on the table right against my arm and shook so that the candlesticks
rattled against the candles. "But I don't," he gasped, and for the life
of me I couldn't tell whether he was crying or laughing, until he sat up
again.
"Eve," he said, with his eyes fairly dancing into mine, "if women in
general mean to walk over political difficulties as you are planning to
walk away with this one of mine, I'm for feminine rule. Don't you dare
say one word about such a thing to Sallie. Of course, it is impossible
as it is funny."
It was a tragedy to have such a lovely scheme as I had thought up on the
spur of the moment, knocked down suddenly by a half dozen positive words
from a mere man, and for a moment my eyes fought with his in open
rebellion. Then I rose haughtily and walked out on the front porch.
"Dear," he said, as he followed me and took my hand in his and drew me
near him, "don't you know that your wanting to put your shoulder under
any burden I may be bearing lifts it completely? There are things in
this situation that you can't understand. If I seem to make sacrifices,
they come from the depths of my heart and are not sacrifices. Will you
believe me?"
How can he help loving Sallie with her so emphatically there?
I answered him I suppose to his liking and he went on across the road to
Widegables and left me alone in the cruel darkness.
Please, God, when things seem to be drowning me like this make me swim
with head up. Amen!