"Come on in, the egg-nog's fine," Rufe called out to us as we came up
the walk to the side gate this morning, a beautiful Christmas morning,
after a long tramp down through the wood lot and up the ravine.
"Come on out, the ozone's finer," Cousin Eunice sang back at him; then
stopped still, leaned against the gate-post and looked up at the
mistletoe hanging in the trees all about.
"You can get ozone three hundred and sixty-five days in the year,
egg-nog but one!" he hollered again, but I saw him set his glass down
and start to swing Waterloo up on his shoulder. No matter how long
they have been married you can always find Rufe wanting to be where
Cousin Eunice is, and vice versa.
Long ago anybody reading in my diary would have seen that mother is
the kind of woman who loves to mother anything that needs it, from a
little chicken with the gapes to a college professor out in a storm
without his rubbers; and the latest notion she has taken up is to see
that Miss Martha Claxton, one of the teachers in a girls' school that
has been opened up near here, shall not get homesick during the
week-ends. We all like her, Mammy Lou even saving the top of the
churning every Friday to make cottage cheese for her; and Cousin
Eunice said she knew she was a kindred spirit as soon as she said she
could eat a bottle of olives at one sitting and _loved_ Baby Stuart's
picture. So we invited her to go walking with us this morning and
Cousin Eunice told her all about her courting in the ravine.
_I_ also knew about her _peculiarity_, which Cousin Eunice didn't; but
I didn't like to mention it, for Miss Claxton had smashed her
eye-glasses all to pieces yesterday and was wearing an embroidered
waist and a string of coral, so instead of looking intellectual, as
she usually does, she looked just like other girls. But the men of our
family all laugh at her behind her back and call her "The Knocker,"
because she carries a hammer with her on all her rambles instead of a
poetry book, and knocks the very jiblets out of little rocks to see if
they've got any fossils on their insides. In other words, she is a
geologist. A person ought not to blame her though until she has had
time to explain to them that her father was professor of it and had a
chair in a college when she was born. So he taught her all about rocky
subjects when she was little, and she's crazy about it. Still, I would
rather be with a person that is crazy about geology than one that
isn't crazy at all. I hate _medium_ people. But, as I have said, we
are all very fond of her, although she has never done anything since
I've known her that would be worth writing about in this book, not
having any lover; so it has been lying on the shelf all covered with
dust ever since Jean left. Sometimes I think I'll never find another
Jean!
To get back to my subject, though, this morning _was_ lovely--cool
enough to keep your hair in curl (if you were a grown lady) and warm
enough to make your cheeks pink. Cousin Eunice said she _couldn't_ go
back into the house while the sunshine was so golden, so we leaned our
elbows on the fence and Miss Claxton examined a handful of pebbles she
had picked up on our walk. Pretty soon Rufe came out with Waterloo on
his shoulder and in his hands a horse that can walk on wheels and a
mule that can wag his head, ears, legs and tail and say, "queek,
queek," all at the same time.
"Oh, Rufe, isn't it lovely?" Cousin Eunice said, looking away toward
the hills and sighing that half-sad sigh that rises in you when you
see something beautiful and can't eat it nor drink it nor _squeeze_
it.
"Isn't what lovely, your complexion?" he answered, just to tease her,
for Rufe loves the outdoors as much as any of us, and if Waterloo
takes after his mother and father both, he will never sleep in
anything more civilized than a wigwam.
"Don't joke," she said. "It's too beautiful--and too fleeting! Just
think, in another week we'll be back, dwelling with the rest of the
fools amid the tall buildings!"
"It is everything you say," he answered soberly, looking in the
direction she pointed, and he seemed to have that happy, hurting
feeling that comes to you when you look at Lord Byron's picture, or
smell lilies-of-the-valley.
"Don't you feel light on a morning like this?" Cousin Eunice said
again, still looking at the hills. "Couldn't you do anything?"
"Anything!" he echoed. "Even push my paper to the hundred thousand
mark--or carry a message to Garcia."
"Especially the message to Garcia! Now _couldn't_ you?" she said with
a bright smile. "I could do that myself, without even mussing up my
white linen blouse!"
Miss Claxton looked up at them with a puzzled look, and Rufe and
Cousin Eunice unhitched hands.
"Miss Claxton," Rufe began with a half-teasing twinkle in his eyes (I
had heard father telling him a while ago about Miss Claxton being a
knocker), "this little affair about the message to Garcia happened a
bit this side of the Eocene age, so maybe you haven't bothered your
head about it. I might explain that----"
"Nobody asked you to, sir," she said, with such a rainbow of a smile
at him that I was surprised. If she could smile like that at a married
man what would she do at a single one? "I know a lot more things than
I look to--with my glasses on! That carrying the message to Garcia was
a brave thing to do, even aside from the risks. It is heroic to do the
thing at hand. I'm trying to learn that lesson myself. I'm being a
schoolmarm and wearing glasses to look like one, instead of following
my natural bent in the scientific field," she wound up, still smiling.
"What's your ambition?" Cousin Eunice said, looking at her
wonderingly.
"Knowing what's to be known about Primitive Man," Miss Claxton
answered. "He's the only man I ever cared a copper cent about!"
"Mine's writing a book that will make me famous overnight, I don't
want to wait to awake some morning and find myself so," Cousin Eunice
said, stooping over to set Waterloo's horse up on his wheels, for he
would come unfixed every time Waterloo would yank him over a gravel;
and all the time we were talking he kept up a chorus of "Fick horte!
Fick horte!"
Rufe said his ambition was never to see an editor's paste-pot again,
and he was turning to me to ask what mine is when the conversation was
interrupted. I was glad that it was, for I should hate to tell them
just what mine is. Somehow it is mostly about Sir Reginald de
Beverley, and I'm old enough now to know that he may not be an English
lord after all and dress in a coat of mail. He may be just a plain
young doctor or lawyer, and we'll have to live in a cottage (only
excuse me from a flat, I wouldn't live in a flat with Lord Byron) and
maybe we'll just have chicken on Sunday. But as long as he has brown
eyes and broad shoulders and lovely teeth I shall manage to do with
crackers and peanut butter through the week. A woman will do
_anything_ for the man she loves.
But I didn't have to tell them all this, for just then we heard the
gate click and saw our friend, Mr. Gayle, coming up the walk.
"There comes old Zephyr," Rufe said with a laugh. "It was the biggest
lie on earth to name him Gayle. Even Breeze would have been an
exaggeration."
"He's awfully smart," I told Rufe, for I hate to have my friends
laughed at. "I know you and Julius joke about him on account of his
gentle ways and broad-brimmed hats! Father says it's better to have
something _under_ your hat than to have so much style in its looks!"
"Well, he has something under his hat," Cousin Eunice said, "and hat
enough to cover twice as much. But I think those old-timey things are
becoming to him!"
"What is the subject about which he knows so much?" Miss Claxton
asked, following him with her eyes until Dilsey let him in at the
front door.
"Heaven," Rufe answered her, "and hell. He writes deep psychological
stuff for the magazines and they pay him ten cents a word for it. He
must spend his dimes building model tenements, for he certainly
doesn't buy new hats with them."
"What does he say about Heaven and the other place?" Miss Claxton
asked, much to our surprise, for we had thought she didn't care about
anything but earth.
"He says they're both in your own heart. The Heaven side comes up
when you've done a decent job at your work--and loved your office boy
as your own nephew!"
"And----" Miss Claxton kept on.
"And the hell part comes into the limelight when you've done anything
mean, such as----"
"Spanking your Waterloo when the telephone bell makes you
nervous--_not_ when he's bad," Cousin Eunice said, gathering Waterloo
up in her arms and loving him. "Him's a precious angel, and mudder's a
nasty lady to him lots of times."
"Aunt Mary is sending him out here to find us," Rufe said, as we saw
Mr. Gayle coming out of the dining-room door. "I hope she's filled him
so full of egg-nog that we can have some fun out of him!"
He had on a Sunday-looking suit of black clothes and a soft black tie
in honor of the day, and was really nice-looking as he came up toward
us. And Miss Claxton threw away the last one of her pebbles, no matter
what they had on their insides, and commenced wiping her hands
vigorously with her handkerchief.
"Thank goodness!" I thought as I watched her. "I shall go straight
up-stairs and wipe the dust off my diary with my petticoat!"
I reckon Rufe and Cousin Eunice both thought that Mr. Gayle and Miss
Claxton had met before, for they didn't offer to introduce them, but I
knew they hadn't, so I was the one that had to do it. I had forgotten
how _The Ladies' Own Journal_ said it ought to be done, and I was
kinder scared anyway; and when I get scared I always make an idiot of
myself. So I just grabbed her right hand and his right hand and put
them together and said, "Mr. Gayle, do shake hands with Miss Claxton!"
Well, they shook hands, but the others all laughed at me. Cousin
Eunice said she was sorry she didn't know they hadn't met before, or
she would have introduced them. But Mr. Gayle smiled at me to keep me
from feeling bad.
"Never mind," he said, "I'm sure Ann's introduction is as good as
anybody's. What she lacks in form she more than makes up for in
sincerity."
I thought it was nice of him to say that, but I was so embarrassed
that I got away from them as soon as I could. I went out to the
kitchen to see if Mammy Lou was ready to stuff the turkey. Lares and
Penates were on the floor playing with two little automobiles that
Julius had brought them. Mammy Lou was fixing to cut up the liver in
the gravy.
"Please don't," I began to beg her, "I'll go halves with Lares and
Penates if you'll give it to me!"
"You don't deserve nothin'," she said, trying to look at me and not
laugh. "I seen you out thar by the side gate, aggin' 'em on! Reckon
you're in your glory, now that you've got a pair of 'em to spy on and
write it all out in that pesky little book!"
"Oh, they ain't a pair!" I told her, slicing up the liver into three
equal halves.
"They soon will be if they listen to you!"
"Never in this world! She says she never has cared for anybody but a
person she calls 'Primitive Man!'"
"Dar now! I bet he fooled her!" she said with great pleasure, for next
to a funeral she likes a fooling, and she is always excited when she
forgets and says "Dar now." "If he has," she kept on, "she'd better do
the nex' best thing and marry Mr. Gayle. He's got as good raisin' as
ary man I ever seen, although he's a little pore. But they's _some_
things I don't like about fat husban's--they can't scratch they own
back!"
I was glad to keep her mind on marrying, for I thought I'd get a
chance at the gizzard too, but she watched it like she watches her
trunk-key when her son-in-law's around. I told her to go to the window
and see what they were doing now, and she did it, poor old soul! When
she came back the gizzard was gone, but she was so tickled that she
didn't notice it.
"They've done paired off and gone down by the big tree to knock
mistletoe out'n the top," she told me, her face shining with grease
and happiness. "I knowed 'twould be a match! Needn't nuvver tell no
nigger of my experience that folks is too smart to fall in love!
Ever'body's got a little _grain_ o' sense, no matter how deep it's
covered with book-learnin'."
"Oh, they don't have to be smart at all," I told her, talking very
fast to divert her mind from the gravy. "Father says if the back of a
girl's neck is pretty she can get married if she hasn't sense enough
to count the coppers in the contribution box."
"An' he tol' the truth," she said, stopping still with her hands on
her hips like she was fixing for a long sermon. "An' furthermore, if
she's rich she don't need to have neither. But marryin' for riches is
like puttin' up preserves--it looks to be a heap bigger pile
beforehan' than afterwards. An' many a man marries a rich girl
expectin' a automobile when he don't git nothin' but a baby buggy!"
Mr. Gayle has been coming over so early every morning since that first
morning that he met Miss Claxton, and staying so late that I haven't
had much time to write. I've been too busy watching. I've often heard
Doctor Gordon say that diseases have a "period of incubation," but I
believe that love is one disease that doesn't incubate. It just comes,
like light does when you switch on the electricity. This morning Mr.
Gayle came so early that Rufe went into the sitting-room and began to
poke fun at him, as usual.
"Hello, old man," he said, shaking hands with him. "I'm surely glad to
see that it's _you_. Thought of course when the door-bell rang so soon
after breakfast that it was an enlarged picture agent!"
"No, I'm far from being an enlarged anything," the poor man said,
wiping off the perspiration from his forehead, for he must have
walked very fast. "In fact, I'm feeling rather 'ensmalled,' as our
friend, Ann, might say. I have never before so realized my utter
unworthiness!"
"Bosh," Rufe said, slapping him on the shoulder in a friendly way.
"Why, man, you're on to your job as well as anybody I ever saw. Why,
your last article in _The Journal for the Cognoscenti_ made me give up
every idea of the old-fashioned Heaven I'd hoped for--a place where a
gas bill is never presented, and alarm clocks and society editors
enter not!"
"Mr. Clayborne would have been worth his weight in platinum as court
jester to some melancholy monarch in the middle ages," Miss Claxton
said, looking up from her crochet work which mother is teaching her
and Cousin Eunice to do, because it has come back into style, to smile
at Mr. Gayle.
"I'm not what Ann calls 'smart'!" he said in answer to her, "but I
remember enough history to know that the other name for jester is
fool. I shan't stay where people call me such names!" So he got up and
went out, which gave Cousin Eunice and Waterloo and me an excuse to go
too. So we left the lovers alone.
"Well, he's what I call a damn fool," Rufe said in a whisper as soon
as the door was closed so they couldn't hear. "Coming over here every
few minutes in the day, 'totin' a long face,' as mammy says, and
hasn't got the nerve to say boo to a goose!"
"Saying boo to a goose wouldn't help his suit any," Cousin Eunice
said; "besides, well-regulated young people don't get engaged in three
days!"
"What ill-regulated young people you and I must have been!" Rufe said,
then dodged Waterloo's ball which she threw at him, saying what a
_story_! It was nearly two weeks before they got engaged.
"I advocate getting engaged in two hours when people are as much in
love as those two we've just left. Gayle hasn't red blood enough in
him to stain a _chigoe's undershirt_!"
Hasn't anything happened worth writing about until to-day, but it has
been happening so thick ever since morning that my backbone is fairly
aching with thrills. And I'm _tired_! Oh, mercy! But I'm going to stay
awake to-night until I get it all written out even if I have to souse
my head in cold water, or rouse up Waterloo.
Right after breakfast this morning Mr. Gayle happened to see Cousin
Eunice go into the parlor by herself to crochet some extra hard
stitches, and so he went in after her and said he would like to have a
little talk with her if she didn't mind. Dilsey had left the window up
when she finished dusting, which I was very glad to see, for I was in
my old place on the porch. He told her he supposed he was the
confoundedest ass on earth, but she said oh no, she was sure he wasn't
so bad as that! Then he plunged right into the subject and said he
was madly in love and didn't know how to tell it. Would she please
help him out?
"Oh, don't mind that," she answered kindly. "All earnest lovers are
awkward. The Byronic ones are liars!"
He said he knew she would understand and help him with her valued
advice!---- But, just _what_ was he to say? And _when_ was he to say
it?
She told him she thought it would be a psychological moment to-night,
the last night of the year, and they would all be going their
different ways on the morrow. It would be very romantic to propose
then, say on the stroke of twelve, or just whenever he could get
himself keyed up to it. He said oh, she was the kindest woman in the
world. She had taken such a load off his heart! He thought it would be
a fine idea to propose just on the stroke of midnight--somehow he
imagined the clock striking would give him courage! Oh, he felt so
much better for having told somebody!
I felt that it would be a weight off my heart if I could tell somebody
too, and just then I spied Rufe holding Waterloo up to see the turkeys
down by the big chicken coop. I didn't waste a second.
"Oh, Rufe, you'll be surprised!" I said, all out of breath, and he
turned around and looked thrilled. "Mr. Gayle is _red-bloodier_ than
you think!" Then I told him all about it. "Now aren't you sorry you
called him a d---- fool?" I wasn't really minding about the cuss word,
for Rufe isn't the kind of a man that says things when he's mad. He's
as apt to say 'damn' when he's eating ice-cream as at any other time.
Rufe was delighted to hear that it was going to happen while they were
still here to see it; and we went right back to the house and planned
to sit up with Cousin Eunice and see them after they came out of the
parlor on the glad New Year. Julius and Marcella were coming over to
sit up with us anyhow to watch it in, so it wouldn't be hard to do.
Well, mother put enough fruit cake and what goes with it out on the
dining-table to keep us busy as long as we could eat, but along toward
ten o'clock we got _so_ sleepy (being just married people and me) that
Julius said let's run the clock up two hours. Marcella said no, that
would cause too much striking at the same time, but she said if
_something_ didn't happen to hurry them up and put us out of our
misery we would all be under the table in another five minutes. We
were all so sleepy that everything we said sounded silly, so when a
bright idea struck me it took some time to get it into their heads.
"Rufe's typewriter!" I said, jumping up and down in my joy, so it
waked them up some just to look at me. "The bell on it can go exactly
like a clock if you slide the top thing backwards and forwards right
fast. I've done it a million times to amuse Waterloo!"
They said they knew I'd make a mess of it if I tried such a thing, but
I told them if they took that view of what a person could do they
never would be encouraged to try to do things. I knew I _could_ do it!
Marcella said then for Rufe to place the typewriter close up to the
parlor door, and they would all go out on the front porch to keep the
lovers from hearing them laugh. So out they all filed.
Well, it was an exciting moment of my life when I was sliding that
thing backwards and forwards and thinking all sorts of heroic
thoughts, but I gritted my teeth and didn't look up until I had got
the twelve strokes struck. Then I went out on the front porch right
easy and sat down by the others. Julius tucked his big coat around me
and we all sat there a little while, laughing and shivering and
shaking until I felt that I'd never had such a good time in my life!
Then somebody whispered let's go in--and _then_ the unexpected
happened.
We heard a sound in the parlor close back of us and the _first_ thing
we knew there was Mr. Gayle raising the window that opens on to the
porch, and he and Miss Claxton came over and looked out into the
night. They couldn't see us if we sat still, close up against the
wall; and it seemed that none of us could budge to save our lives!
It was a lovely moonlight night, clear and cold, that always reminds
me of the night Washington Irving reached Bracebridge Hall (I just
love it), and so he put his arm around her, Mr. Gayle I mean, not
Washington Irving, and his voice was so clear and firm and happy that
we all knew he had been accepted.
"Bid good morrow to the New Year, my love," he said and kissed her on
the lips a long, _long_ time. "There has been created for me this
night not only a new year, but a new _Heaven_ and----"
"And a new _earth_," she finished up softly, and they closed the
window down.
"I hope she won't take her little hammer and knock on her new earth to
see if it has petrified wiggle tails in it," Rufe said, after we had
filed back into the house and moved the typewriter away from the
door. But his voice was solemn when he said it, and we all felt like
_puppy dogs_ for being out there. And nobody said another word about
staying up to see how they looked when they came out of the parlor.
The next day everybody made like they were very much surprised at the
way it had turned out except Mammy Lou. She looked as happy when Miss
Claxton told us the news as if she had got herself engaged again.
"You were right after all, mammy," Cousin Eunice told her. "In spite
of all Miss Claxton's scientific knowledge she has preferred a _man_
to a career!"
"An' shows her good sense, too," mammy answered, her old brown face
running over with smiles, like molasses in the sunshine. "A man's a
man, I can tell you; and a career's _a mighty pore thing to warm your
feet against_ on a cold night!"