SOME SMOLDERINGS
I'm a failure! Yes, Jane, I am!
Polk Hayes is an up-to-date, bright man of the world, with lots of
brains and I should say about the average masculine nature, and a great
deal more than the average amount of human charm. However, he has got no
more brains than I have, has had really fewer advantages, and it ought
to be easy for me to hold my own against him. But I am about to fail on
him.
For the last two weeks he has been constantly with Nell and has got her
in a dreamy state that shows in her face and every movement of her slim
body. And yet I know without the shadow of a doubt that he is just
biding his time to try me out and get me on his own terms. My heart
aches for Nell, and I just couldn't see him murder her girlhood, and it
will amount to that if he involves her heart any more than it is. I made
up my mind to have it out with him and accordingly let him come and sit
on my side steps with me late yesterday afternoon, when I have avoided
being alone with him for a month.
"Polk," I asked him suddenly without giving him time to get the
situation into his own hands, skilled in their woman-handling, "do you
intend to marry Nell or just plain break her heart for the fun you get
out of it?"
His dangerous eyes smoldered back at me for a long minute before he
answered me:
"Men don't break women's hearts, Evelina."
"I think you are right," I answered slowly, "they do just wring and
distort them and deform them for life. But I intend to see that Nell's
has no such torturous operation performed on it if I can appeal to you
or convince her."
"When you argue with Nell be sure and don't tell her just exactly the
things _you_ have done to _me_ all this summer through, Evelina." he
answered coolly.
"What do you mean?" I demanded, positively cold with a kind of
astonished fear.
"I mean that I have never offered Nell one half of the torture you have
offered me, every day since you came home, with your damned affectionate
friendliness. When I laugh, you answer it before it gets articulate, and
when I gloom, you are as sympathetic as sympathy itself. I have held
your hand and kissed it, instituting and not quenching a raging thirst
thereby, as you are experienced enough to know. You have made yourself
everything for me that is responsive and desirable and beautiful and
worthy and have put me back every time I have reached out to grasp you.
You don't want me, you don't want to marry me at all, you just want
--excitement. You are as cold as ice that grinds and generates fire.
Very well, you don't have to take me--and I'll get what I can from
Nell--and others."
"Oh, Polk, how could you have misunderstood me like this?" I moaned from
the depths of an almost broken heart. But as I moaned I understood--I
understood!
I'm doing it all wrong! I had the most beautiful human love for him in
my heart and he thought it was all dastardly, cold coquetting. An awful
spark has been struck out of the flint. I'm not worthy to experiment
with this dreadful man-and-woman question. I just laid my head down on
my arms, resting on my knees and cowered at Polk's feet.
"Don't--Evelina, I didn't mean it." he said quickly in a shaken voice.
But he did!
I couldn't answer him and as I sat still and prayed in my heart for some
words to come that would do away with the horror I heard Sallie's voice
from my front walk, and she and Mr. Haley, each carrying a sleeping
twin, came around the corner of the porch.
That interruption was a direct answer to prayer, for God knew that I
just must have time to think before having this out with Polk. I
sometimes feel ashamed of the catastrophes I have to pray quick about,
but what would I do if I couldn't?
I don't know how I got through the rest of this evening, but I did--I
pray for sleep. Amen!
Watching the seasons follow each other in the Harpeth Valley gives me
the agony of a dumb poet, who can feel though not sing.
It was spring when I came down here four months ago, a young, tender,
mist-veiled, lilac-scented spring that nestled firmly in your heart and
made it ache with sweetness that you hardly understood yourself.
But before I knew it the young darling, with her curls and buds and
apple-blooms had gone and summer was rioting over the gardens and fields
and hills, rich, lush colored, radiant, redolent, gorgeous, rose-scented
and pulsing with a life that made me breathless. Even the roads along
the valley were bordered with flowers that the sun had wooed to the
swooning point.
But this week, early as it is, there has been a hint of autumn in the
air, and a haze is beginning to creep over the whole world, especially
in the early mornings, which are so dew-gemmed that they seem to be
hinting a warning of the near coming of frost and snow.
My garden has grown into a perfect riot of blooms, but for the last two
weeks queer slugs have begun to eat the tender buds that are forming for
October blooming, and I have been mourning over it by day and by night
and to everybody who will listen.
Aunt Augusta insists that the only thing to do is to get up with the
first crack of dawn and carefully search out each slug, remove it and
destroy it. She says if this is done for a week they will be
exterminated.
I carefully explained it all to Jasper and when I came down to breakfast
he was coming in with three queer green things, also with an injured air
of having been kept up all night. I didn't feel equal to making him go
on with the combat and ignored the question for two days until I saw all
the buds on my largest Neron done for in one night.
I have always been able to get up at the break of day to go
sketching--it was at daybreak that I made my sketch in the Defleury
gardens that captured the French art eye enough to get me my Salon
mention. If I could get up to splash water-colors at that hour, I surely
could rush to the protection of my own roses, so I went to bed with gray
dawn on my mind and the shutters wide open so the first light would get
full in my eyes.
I am glad that it was a good bright ray that woke me and partly dazzled
me, for the sight I had, after I had been kneeling down in the rose bed
for fifteen minutes, was something of a shock to me, though no reason in
the world why it should have been. I can't remember that I ever
speculated as to whether the Crag wore pajamas or not, and I don't see
that I should have been surprised that he did instead of the night shirt
of our common ancestry.
He came around the side of the house out of the sun-shot mist and was
half way down the garden path before I saw him or he saw me, and I must
say that his unconcern under the circumstances was rather remarkable.
He was attired in a light blue silk pajama jacket that was open at the
throat and half way down his broad breast. He had on his usual gray
trousers, but tag's of blue trailed out and ruffled around his bare
ankles, and across his bare heels that protruded from his slippers. His
hair was in heavy tousled black curls all over his head and his gray
eyes were positively mysterious with interrupted dreams. In one hand he
carried a tin can and in the other a small pointed stick, which looked
murderously fitted for the extermination of the marauders.
I was positively nervous over the prospect of his embarrassment when he
should catch sight of me, but there was none.
"Eve!" he exclaimed, with surprise, and a ray of pure delight drove away
the dreams in his eyes. Nobody in the wide world calls me Eve but just
the Crag, and he does it in a queer, still way when he is surprised to
see me, or glad, or sorry, or moved with any kind of sudden emotion.
And queer as it is I have to positively control the desire to answer him
with the correlated title--Adam!
"I forgot to tell you yesterday that I was coming over to get the slugs
for you, dear," he said as he came down the row of roses next to mine,
squatted opposite to where I was kneeling by the bushy, suffering Neron
and began to examine the under side of each leaf carefully. He was the
most beautiful thing I have ever seen in the early light with his great
chest bare and the blue of the pajamas melting into the bronze of his
throat and calling out the gray in his eyes. I had to force myself into
being gardener rather than artist, as we laughed together over the glass
bowl and silver spoon I had brought out for the undoing of the slugs.
Some day I'm going to paint him like that!
[Illustration: His gray eyes were positively mysterious with interrupted
dreams]
I found out about the pajamas from questioning Aunt Martha discreetly.
They seemed so incongruous in relation to the usual old Henry Clay coat
and stock collar, that I had to know the reason why. Mrs. Hargrove's son
was a very worldly man, she says, and wore them. It comforts her to make
them for the Crag to wear in memoriam. He wears the collars Cousin
Martha makes him with her own fingers after the pattern she made his
father's by, for the same reason, and lets Cousin Jasmine cut his hair
because she always cut her father's, Colonel Horton's, until his death.
That accounts for the ante-bellum curls and the irregular tags in the
back. I almost laughed when Cousin Martha was telling me, but I
remembered how a glow rose in my heart when I saw that he still had
Father's little old Confederate comrade tailor cut his coats on the same
pattern on which he had cut Father's, since the days of reconstruction.
Sometimes it startles me to find that with all my emancipation I am very
like other women.
But I wonder what I would do if Sallie attired him in any of the late
Henry's wearing apparel?
"What do you suppose is the why of such useless things as slugs?" I
speculated to stop that thought off sharp as we crawled down the row
together, he searching one side of each bush and I the other.
"Well, they brought on this nice companionable hunt for them, didn't
they?" he asked, looking over into my eyes with a laugh.
"I wanted to see you early this morning anyway," he hastily resumed.
"Sallie and the Dominie sat talking to you so late last night that I
didn't feel it was fair to come across after they left. But I wanted you
so I could hardly get to sleep, and I was just half awake from a dream
of you, when I came into the garden."
"My evenings don't belong to anybody, if you need them, Jamie, and you
don't have to be told that," I answered crossly when I thought what a
grand time I might have been having talking about real things with the
Crag, instead of wrestling with Polk's romantics or Sallie's and Mr.
Haley's gush.
"Go on and tell me all about it, while I crawl after you like a worm
myself," I snapped still further.
"Well, here goes! In the City Council meeting last night your Uncle
Peter told us about the plans that they have made up at Bolivar for
entertaining the C. & G. Commission, and the gloom of Polk and Lee, Ned
and the rest of them could have easily been cut in blocks and used for
cold storage purposes. They are just all down and out about it and no
fight left. Of course, they all lose by the bond issue, but I can't see
that it is bad enough to knock them all out like this. I got up in
mighty wrath and--and I have got myself into one job. My eloquence
landed me right into one large hole, and I am reaching out for a hand
from you."
"Here it is," and I reached over and left a smear of loam across the
back of his hand, while I brought away a brown circle around my wrist
that the responsive grasp of his fingers left. "Do you want me
single-handed to get the bluff line chosen?"
"Not quite, but almost," he answered with another laugh. "You would if
you tried. I haven't a doubt. Do you remember the talk we had the other
night about its seeming inhospitable of you not to invite the other
gentlemen in the Commission over to see you when you invite Hall and his
father? And you know you had partly planned some sort of entertainment
for the whole bunch. You had the right idea at the right place, as you
always do. As you said, we don't want Bolivar to see us with what looks
like a grouch on us at their good fortune, and I think that as the
Commission are all to be here as the guests of a private citizen,
Glendale ought to entertain them publicly. There is no hope to get the
line for us, but I would like those men at least to see what the beauty
of that bluff road would be. The line across the river runs through the
only ugly part of the valley, and while I know in the balance between
dollars and scenery, scenery will go down and out, still it would be
good for them to see it and at least get a vision of what might have
been, to haunt them when they take their first trip through the swamps
across the country there. Now, as you are to have them anyway, I want to
have the whole town entertain the whole Commission and Bolivar with what
is classically called among us a barbecue-rally, the countryside to be
invited. Bolivar is going to give them a banquet, to be as near like
what the Bolivarians imagine they have in New York as possible, and Mrs.
Doctor Henderson is to give them a pink tea reception to which carefully
chosen presentables, like you and me, are to be invited. You remember
that circus day in July?--a rally will be like that or more so. What do
you think?"
"Oh, I think you are a genius to think about it," I gasped, as I sat
down on a very cruet Killarney branch and just as quickly sat up again,
receiving comforting expressions of sympathy from across the bush, to
which I paid no heed. "Those blasé city men will go crazy about it. We
can have the barbecue up on the bluff, where we have always had it for
the political rallies, and a fish-fry and the country people in their
wagons with children tumbling all over everything and--and you will make
a great speech with all of us looking on and being proud of you, because
nobody in New York or beyond can do as well. We can invite a lot of
people up from the City and over from Bolivar and Hillsboro and
Providence to hear you tell them all about Tennessee while things are
cooking and--"
"This rally is to show off Glendale not--the Crag," he interrupted me
with a quizzical laugh.
Now, how did he know I called him the Crag in my heart? I suppose I did
it to his face and never knew. I seem to think right out loud when I am
with him and feel out loud, too. I ignored his levity, that was out of
place when he saw how my brain was beginning to work well and rapidly.
"You mean, don't you, Jamie, that you want to get Glendale past this
place that is--humiliating--swimming with her head up?" I asked softly
past a rose that drooped against my cheek.
Perfectly justifiable tears came to my lashes as I thought what a
humiliation it all was to him and the rest of them, to be passed by an
opportunity like that and left to die in their gray moldiness off the
main line of life--shelved.
"That is one of my prayers, to get past humiliations, swimming with my
head up," I added softly, though I blushed from my toes to my top curl
at the necessity that had called out the prayer the last time. It's
awful on a woman to feel herself growing up stiff and sturdy by a man's
side and then to get sight of a gourd-vine tangling itself up between
them. I'm the dryad out of one of my own twin oaks down by the gate,
and I want the other twin to be--
I wonder if his eyes really look to other women like deep gray pools
that you can look deeper and deeper into and never seem to get to the
bottom, no matter if the look does seem to last forever and you feel
yourself blushing and wanting to take your eyes away, or if it is just I
that get so drowned in them!
"You've a gallant stroke, Evelina," he said softly, as I at last gained
possession of my own sight. "And here I am with a hand out to you for
assistance in carrying out your own plan that seems to be just the thing
to--"
"Say, Cousin James. Aunt Marfy says for you to come home to breakfast
right away. Mis' Hargrove won't let nobody begin until you says the
blessing, and Cousin Jasmine have got the headache from waiting for her
coffee. What do you want to fool with Evelina this time of day for
anyway?" And with the delivery of which message and reproof Henrietta
stood on the edge of the path looking down upon us with great and
scornful interest.
"You've got on your night shirt and haven't combed your hair or washed
your face," she continued sternly. "There'll be hell to pay with all the
breakfast getting cold, and I'm empty down to my feet. Come on, quick!"
"Henrietta," I said, sternly, as I rose to my feet, "I've asked you once
not to say ugly words like that."
"I'll go make the lightning toilet, Henrietta. Do run like a good girl
and ask Mrs. Hargrove to let Cousin Jasmine have her cup of coffee right
away. I'll be there before the rest are dead from hunger," and Cousin
James skilfully interrupted the threatened feminine clash as he emptied
my glass bowl into his tin can and stuck the sharp stick in the ground
for future reference. Even Henrietta's pointed allusion to his toilet
had not in the least ruffled his equanimity or brought a shade of
consciousness to his face.
"Mis' Hargrove said that the Bible said not for any woman to say a
blessing at any table or at any place that anybody can hear her, when
Cousin Marfy wanted to be polite to the Lord by saying just a little one
and go on before we was all too hungry," answered Henrietta, in her most
scornfully tolerant voice. "If women eat out loud before everybody why
can't they pray their thank-you out loud like any man?"
"Answer her, Evelina," laughed Cousin James, as he hurried down the walk
away from us.
"Henrietta," I asked, in a calmly argumentative tone of voice as she and
I walked up the path to the house, "didn't Mr. Haley talk to you just
yesterday and tell you how wicked it is for you to use--use such strong
words as you do?"
Mr. Haley had told me just a few days ago that he and Aunt Augusta had
agreed to open their campaign of reform on Henrietta by a pastoral
lecture from him, to be followed strongly by a neighborly one from her.
"No, he never did any such thing," answered Henrietta, promptly--and
what Henrietta says is always the truth, because she isn't afraid of
anybody or anything enough to tell a lie---"he just telled me over and
over in a whole lot of words how I ought to love and be good to Sallie.
If I was to love Sallie that kind of way, he said, I would be so busy I
couldn't do none of the things Sallie don't like to do herself and makes
me do. 'Stid er saying, 'my precious mother, I love you and want to be
good because you want me to,' about every hour, I had better wipe the
twins' noses, and wash the dirt often them, and light Aunt Dilsie's
phthisic pipe, and get things upstairs for Sallie and Miss Jasmine and
everybody when they are downstairs. I'm too busy, I am, to be so
religious. And I'm too hungry to talk any more about it." With which she
departed.
I sank on the side steps and laughed until a busy old bumble-bee came
down from a late honeysuckle blossom and buzzed around to see what it
was all about. Henrietta's statement of the case was a graphic and just
one. Sallie has got a tendril around Henrietta which grows by the day.
Poor tot, she does have a hard and hardening time--and how can I lecture
her for swearing?
With a train of thought started by Henrietta I sat at my solitary
breakfast in a deeply contemplative mood. Life was going to press hard
on Henrietta. And reared in the fossilized atmosphere of Widegables,
which tried to draw all its six separate feminine breaths as one with a
lone, supporting man, how was she to develop the biceps of strength of
mind and soul, as well as body, to meet the conditions she was likely
to have to meet? Still her coming tussle with Aunt Augusta would be a
tonic at least. I was just breaking a last muffin and beginning to smile
when I saw a delegation coming down the street and turning into my front
gate; I rose to meet it with distinction.
Aunt Augusta marched at the head and Nell and Caroline were on each side
of her, while Sallie and Mamie Hall brought up the rear, walking more
deliberately and each carrying a baby, comparing some sort of white tags
of sewing. Cousin Martha was crossing the Road in their wake with her
knitting bag and palm leaf fan.
One thing I am proud of having accomplished this summer is the
establishing of friendly relations with Aunt Augusta. I made up my mind
that she probably needed to have some of my affection ladled out to her
more than anybody in Glendale, and I worked on all the volatile fear and
resentment and dislike I had ever had for her all my life, and I have
succeeded in liquefying it into a genuine liking for the martial old
personality. If Aunt Augusta had been a man she would have probably led
a regiment up San Juan Hill, died in the trenches, and covered herself
and family with glory. She is the newest woman in the Harpeth Valley,
and though sixty years old, she is lineally Sallie Carruthers's own
granddaughter.
"Evelina," she began, as soon as she had martialed her forces into
rocking-chairs, though she had Jasper bring her the stiffest and
straightest-backed one in the house, "I have collected as many women as
I had time to, and have come up here to tell you, and them, that the men
in Glendale are so lacking in sense and judgment that the time has come
for women to stand forth and assume the responsibility of them and
Glendale in general. As the wife of the poor decrepit Mayor, I appoint
myself chairman of the meeting pro tem and ask you to take the first
minutes. If disgrace is threatening us we must at least face it in an
orderly and parliamentary way. And I--"
"Oh, Mrs. Shelby, is it--is it smallpox?" and as Sallie spoke she hugged
up the Puppy baby, who happened to be the twin in her arms, so that she
bubbled and giggled, mistaking her embraces for those of frolicsome
affection.
Mamie turned pale and held her baby tight and I could see that she was
having light spasms of alarm, one for each one of the children and one
for Ned.
"Smallpox, fiddlesticks--I said disgrace, Sallie Carruthers, and the
worst kind of disgrace--municipal disgrace." And as Aunt Augusta named
the plague that was to come upon us, she looked as if she expected it to
wilt us all into sear and dried leaves. And in point of fact, we all did
rustle.
"Tell us about it," said Nell, with sparkling eyes and sitting up in her
low rocker as straight as Aunt Augusta did in her uncompromising seat.
The rest of them just looked helpless and undecided as to whether to be
relieved or not.
"Yes, municipal disgrace threatens the town, and the women must rise in
their strength and avert it," she declaimed majestically with her dark
eyes snapping.
"Yesterday afternoon James Hardin, who is the only patriotic male in
Glendale, put before the Town Council a most reasonable and
pride-bestirring proposition originated by Evelina Shelby, one of
Glendale's leading citizens, though a woman. She wants to offer the
far-famed hospitality of Glendale--which is the oldest and most
aristocratic town in the Harpeth Valley, except perhaps Hillsboro, and
which is not in the class with a vulgarly rich, modern place like
Bolivar, that has a soap-factory and streetcars, and was a mud-hole in
the landscape when the first Shelby built this very house,--to the
Commission of magnates who are to come down about the railroad lines
that are to be laid near us. James agrees with her and urges that it is
fitting and dignified that, when they are through with their vulgar
trafficking over at insignificant Bolivar, they be asked to partake of
real southern hospitality at its fountain head, especially as Evelina is
obliged to invite two of them as personal friends. Do you not see it in
that light?" And Aunt Augusta looked at us with the martial mien of a
general commanding his army for a campaign.
"It would be nice," answered Mamie, as she turned little Ned over on his
stomach across her knee and began to sway him and trot him at the same
time, which was his signal to get off into a nap. "But Ned said last
night that he had lost so much in the bond subscription, that he didn't
feel like spending any more money for an entertainment, that wouldn't do
one bit of good about the taxes or bonds or anything. The baby was
beginning to fret, so I don't think I understood it exactly."
"I don't think you did," answered Aunt Augusta, witheringly, "That is
not the point at all, and--"
"But Mr. Greenfield said last night, while he was discussing it with
Father, that it would do no good whatever and probably be an
embarrassment to the Commission, our putting in a pitiful bid like that.
He--" but Caroline got no further with the feminine echo of her
masculine opinion-former.
"Peter Shelby put that objection much more picturesquely than Lee
Greenfield," Aunt Augusta snapped. "He said that licking those men's
hands would turn his stomach, after swallowing that bond issue. However,
all this has nothing to do with the case. I am trying to--"
"Polk said last night that he thought it would be much more spectacular
for all the good looking women in town to go when we are invited to Mrs.
Henderson's tea for the big bugs, and dazzle 'em so that it would at
least put Glendale on the map," said Nell, with spirit. "He made me so
mad that I--"
"Mr. Haley thinks that we should be very careful not to feel malice or
envy towards Bolivar, but to rejoice at their good fortune in getting
both roads and the shops, even if it does mean a loss to us. What is
material wealth in this world anyway when we can depend so on--"
Sallie's expression was so beautifully silly and like the Dominie's,
that it was all that I could do not to give vent to an unworthy shout.
Nell saw it as I did and I felt her smother a giggle.
But before Aunt Augusta could get her breath to put the crux of the
matter straight before her feminine tribunal, Aunt Martha beat her to it
as she placidly rocked back and forth knitting lace for a petticoat for
Henrietta.
"Of course, Glendale doesn't really care about the railroad; in fact, we
would much rather not have our seclusion broken in upon, especially as
they might choose the route they have prospected"--with a glance at
Sallie--"but it is to show them our friendliness, more Bolivar than the
actual Commission, and our desire to rejoice with them in their good
fortune. It would be very mean spirited of us to ignore them and not
assist them in entertaining their guests, especially as some of them
must be invited. We've never been in such an attitude as that to
Bolivar!"
"Exactly, Martha," answered Aunt Augusta with relief. "The thought of
proud old Glendale putting herself in an attitude of municipal sulks
towards common Bolivar seemed an unbearable disgrace to me. Didn't we
invite them up for a great fish-fry on the river when they opened that
odious soap factory, and ask them to let us help take care of some of
their delegates when they had the Methodist Conference? They sent one of
the two bishops to you, you remember, Martha, and I am sure your
entertainment of him was so lavish that he went home ill. No man said
us nay in the exercising our right of religious hospitality, why should
they in our civic? We must not allow the town to put us in such an
attitude! Must Not! It was for this that I called this meeting at
Evelina's, as she was the one to propose this public-spirited and
creditable plan."
"But what shall we do if they don't want to have it?" asked Mamie.
"I have asked, when did the men of Glendale begin to dictate to the
women as to whom they should offer their hospitality?" answered Aunt
Augusta, as she arose to her feet. "Are we free women, and have we, or
have we not, command of our own storerooms and our own servants and our
own time and strength?"
And as I looked up at the tall, fierce, white-haired old dame of high
degree, daughter of the women of the Colonies and the women of the
Wilderness days, I got exactly the same sensation I had when I saw the
Goddess of Liberty loom up out of the mist as I sailed into the harbor
of my own land from a foreign one. And what I was feeling I knew every
woman present was feeling in a greater or less degree, except perhaps
Sallie, for her face was a puzzle of sore amazement and a pleading
desire for further sleep.
"Have we or have we not?" Aunt Augusta again demanded, and just then a
most wonderful thing happened!
Jane stood in our midst!
Oh, Jane, you were a miracle to me, but I must go on writing about it
all calmly for the sake of the Five!
I made a mad rush from my rocker to throw myself into her arms, but she
stopped me with one glance of her cold, official eye that quelled me,
and stood attention before Aunt Augusta.
"Madam President," she said in her grandest parliamentary voice, "it was
by accident that I interrupted the proceedings of what I take to be an
official meeting. Have I your permission to withdraw? I am Miss Shelby's
guest, Miss Mathers, and I can easily await her greetings until the
adjournment of this body."
Oh, Jane, and my arms just hungry for you!
"Madam," answered Aunt Augusta, in her grandest manner and a voice so
filled with cordiality that I hardly knew it, "it is the pleasure of the
chair to interrupt proceedings and to welcome you. Evelina, introduce us
all!"
It was all just glorious! I never saw anybody get a more lovely ovation
than Jane did from my friends, for they had all heard about her, read
with awe clippings I showed them about her speeches and--were about
ready for her.
Sallie kissed her on both cheeks, Mamie laid the baby in her arms with a
devout expression, and Nell clung to her with the rapture of the newly
proselyted in her face. Aunt Martha made her welcome in her dearest
manner and Caroline beamed on her with the return of a lot of the fire
and spirit of the youth that hanging on the doled-out affections of Lee
Greenfield had starved in her.
And it was characteristic of Jane and her methods that it took much less
time than it takes me to write it, for her to get all the greetings over
with, explain that she had sent me a letter telling me that she was
coming that must have gone astray, get everybody named and ticketed in
her mind, and get us all back to business.
Aunt Augusta explained the situation to her with so much feeling and
eloquence that she swept us all off our feet, and when she was ready to
put the question again to us as to our willingness to embark on our
defiance of our fellow-townsmen, the answer of enthusiastic acquiescence
was ready for her.
"Of course, as none of you have any official municipal status, the
invitation will have to be given informally, in a social way, to the
Commission through Miss Shelby's friend, Mr. Richard Hall," said Jane,
when Aunt Augusta had called on her to give us her opinion of the
situation in general and the mode of procedure. "We find it best in all
women-questions of the present, to do things in a perfectly legal and
parliamentary way."
"Must we tell them about it or not?" asked Mamie, in a wavering voice,
looking up devoutly at Jane, who had held young Ned against the stiff
white linen shirt of her traveling dress just as comfortably as if he
were her own seventh.
"Did they consult you before deciding to refuse your suggestion?" asked
Jane, calmly and thoughtfully.
"They did not," trumpeted Aunt Augusta.
"Then wouldn't it be the most regular way to proceed to get an
acceptance of the invitation from the Commission and then extend them
one to be present?" pronounced Jane, coolly, seemingly totally
unconscious that she was exploding; a bomb shell.
"It would, and we will consider it so settled," answered Aunt Augusta,
dominatingly.
This quick and revolutionary decision gave me a shock. I could see that
a woman doesn't like to feel that there is a stick of dynamite
between her and a man, when she puts her head down under his chin or her
cheek to his, but advanced women must suffer that. Still I'm glad that
the Crag is on our side of the fence. I felt sorry for Mamie and
Caroline--and Sallie looked a tragedy.
In fact, a shade of depression was about to steal over the spirits of
the meeting when Aunt Augusta luckily called for the discussion of plans
for the rally.
Feeding other human beings is the natural, instituted, physiological,
pathological, metaphysical, and spiritual outlet for a woman's nature,
and that is why she is so happy when she gets out her family receipt
book for a called rehearsal for the functioning of her hospitality. The
revolution went home happy and excited over the martialing of their
flesh pots.
I'm glad Jane is asleep across the hall to-night. If I had had to
shoulder all this outbreak by myself I would have compromised by
instituting a campaign of wheedling, the like of which this town never
suffered before, and then when this glorious rally was finally pulled
off, the cajoled masculine population would have fairly swelled with
pride over having done it!
Of course, by every known test of conduct and economics, their attitude
in the matter is entirely right. Men work to all given points in
straight, clear-cut, logical lines only to find women at the point of
results waiting for them, with unforeseen culminations, which would
have been impossible to them.
And I am also glad the Crag is partly responsible for starting, or at
least unconsciously aiding, this scheme in high finance of mine; and he
is also in reality the silent sponsor for this unhatched revolution. I
am deeply contented to go to sleep with that comforting; thought tucked
under my pillow.