At the Age of Eve Part 5

"So it's _you_," I repeated without moving my eyes from the picture, "and that must be why I felt such a curious interest in this political business."

The stuffy heat of the tight little room, the piles of dusty old papers, the politics and rumors of politics were all forgotten in a twinkling as my memory bounded back and even took in the details of the landscape that dull day last November when I saw him first. Alfred Morgan had asked me to drive with him out one of the pikes where he had a call to make. I was at Cousin Eunice's and he had called me by telephone to ask me to go; Cousin Eunice and Ann Lisbeth were wrestling over an intricate s.h.i.+rt-waist pattern, but they both stopped long enough to insist that it was too cold for me to go so far out just for the fun of going. But I insisted equally as firmly upon going, so Ann Lisbeth made me wear her motor bonnet and long fur coat, which were very becoming.

Our route lay out one of the pikes which I like most, a beautiful driveway, with a lovely little Jewish cemetery about three miles out.

I found that it _was_ cold, and when we reached the cemetery I asked Alfred to put me out so that I could walk around a bit and try to get warm--while he made his call just a short distance farther up the road. He could honk-honk for me if I had wandered out of sight by the time he came back. We frequently did that way.

Then it was that I first saw Richard Chalmers, coming out of the little red lodge house at the gates of the cemetery. He was dressed in gray, with a long gray overcoat and a soft gray hat; and his fairness made no break in the dull monochrome of the surroundings. The brilliant-hued lodge, with the Oriental dome, made the only warm spot of color in my line of vision, but he was looking at me, too, and I am sure he saw other spots of color, for my face flushed somewhat as I recognized him as being the first man I had ever seen in my life whom I cared about looking at.

He must be tall, for the coat he wore that day was quite long, but I do not remember taking in any details except his face. This was natural, for it appeared to me then as being a very good face to look at, even aside from the peculiar charm which afterward made me remember it so. Cameo-like in its distinctness, with steel-gray eyes, it reminded me of the face I used to tell Jean about years ago when we each had an Ideal. "Cold-blooded and lean as Dante," my description had been in those bygone days, and Richard Chalmers' face strangely fitted it, though by no means so cold nor so lean as I had formerly thought necessary for perfect charm. It was only lean enough to be intellectual-looking, and, if the keen gray eyes were cold, they were also strong. His hair was short and of a very light-brown color; I remembered this distinctly, for he had taken off his hat as he bade good-by to whoever was inside the lodge, and he had stood a moment bareheaded as he saw me, and looked at me with a degree of well-bred surprise. There was nothing unusual in this, for, in driving out the country roads with Alfred and Doctor Gordon, I have often observed that when two well-dressed people pa.s.s each other they usually look.

Each one is likely wondering what the other is doing so far from the madding crowd.

I was wondering what he was doing, Anglo-Saxon that he so evidently was, coming from a Hebrew cemetery; then he untied the hitch-rein of a horse that was restlessly twitching its head at a post near by, jumped into the light buggy and drove off. Alfred and I pa.s.sed him a little later on, for he had been driving slowly, evidently to the distaste of the horse. The creature was just the kind of animal you would expect a man of his appearance to drive--slim and satiny and fast. Alfred slowed up as we were pa.s.sing, for the horse had drawn quickly to one side of the road and was trembling with fright. The man in the buggy held a tight rein and spoke a soothing word to her, then turned and regarded us again. My heart bounded as our eyes met, and I wondered why he had driven back to town so slowly.

The marked look of intellect which his face bore gave it an appearance of asceticism, which his handsome clothes and general make-up belied.

He looked almost as unworldly as a monk--a monk fas.h.i.+onably dressed and driving a race-horse!

We pa.s.sed each other again the very next week, in the lobby of the city hall this time, where I had gone with Ann Lisbeth to pay the water-tax. He was talking with two men, and, as he recognized me, he drew both of these men slightly to one side that Ann Lisbeth and I might make our way to the elevator without being crowded. This time I had pa.s.sed so close to him that I could see the tiny lines around his eyes, left there by the warring elements of his character, I imagined afterward, when I was trying to recall every feature with its own expression and thereby piece out, to my own satisfaction, a nature for my impressive Unknown.

"He may do bad things sometimes," I finally concluded triumphantly, "but he never enjoys doing them, because he has a conscience that will not let him."

Once again I saw him, some time afterward, at the entrance of a theater one crowded night when the most popular actress on the American stage was playing. An emotional little actress she is, whose feelings seem to be stationed largely in her finger-tips, for she uses them as if she were talking to deaf mutes with them. I criticized the play, p.r.o.nounced the leading man a "plumber," made remarks about the extravagant finger-play and otherwise spoiled my pleasure to such an extent that I realized for the first time what a hold upon my imagination the face of this Unknown had taken. He had pa.s.sed quite close, but he had not seen me!

After this I had thought about him very often, and, while he was not exactly only a "type" to me, as I had been careful to explain to Cousin Eunice, still, as the weeks slipped by and I had not seen him again, his face became a kind of pleasant picture that I might draw out sometimes and look at. A miniature, it must have been, for I carried it with me everywhere I went; and it always seemed to bring with it a sudden radiance, like a burst of suns.h.i.+ne at the close of a dreary day.

A burst of suns.h.i.+ne at the close of a dreary day! The words were lingering pleasantly in my memory when I was called back to earth by the united voices of my family.

"Ann!" mother called. "_Ann!_"

"I've looked all over the place for her," I heard Cousin Eunice say, and the sound of hurrying feet toward the dining-room gave me a suggestion that it was time to eat again.

I ducked through the pantry door and made my way up-stairs without being seen by any one. I bathed my face in cold water, which helped a little, then I came on back down-stairs and faced them. They all looked up at me. It was awful!

"Where you been at?" Mammy Lou inquired in a low but penetrating voice as I pa.s.sed her at the dining-room door; and the question was repeated in other degrees of sound and grammatical precision. They were all looking at my damp forehead.

"I tried to find you an hour ago," Cousin Eunice said, "I wanted to tell you the news."

"And I wanted you to polish the silver on the sideboard," mother said in an injured voice.

"Ann, we looked evvywhere fer you," Waterloo chimed in, with his mouth so full that Cousin Eunice's attention was attracted to it and she made him unload the portions of nourishment that were visible externally. "Me and Grapefruit found a little _tarrypin_. Aunt Mary said you wasn't scared of 'em!"

"Well, I'm glad it was nothing more important than a 'tarrypin' that needed my ministrations," I began, thankful for a topic so entirely earthly, but there was a hue and cry.

"Important!" Cousin Eunice exclaimed. "There are three mighty politicians coming here to dinner to-night!"

"And the silver needs polis.h.i.+ng," mother supplemented.

"Rufe was talking with them over the telephone this morning," father explained. "They are in Bayville at a temperance rally and will have to come here to-night to catch a car back to the city. Mother and I thought it would be a shame to let them go to the hotel for dinner--they're such friends of Rufe's."

"Now, you needn't lay it on Rufe," mother said, smiling at him. "You know that if an Englishman dearly loves a lord, an American dearly loves a lion. It's _you_ who want to hear them roar."

"Richard Chalmers is the only lion, so don't look so startled, Ann,"

Rufe said, as he began pa.s.sing me things to eat; but I was not hungry.

"The other two likely eat with their knives," Cousin Eunice added soothingly, as she still used her endeavors toward having Waterloo feed himself like an anthropoid being.

"Oh, Ann doesn't worry over company," mother said, as she glanced at me again. "She's been asleep. That's what makes her look--startled."

CHAPTER V

PRINCE CHARMING

I had not been asleep, but I had been in a dream; a dream from which I had awakened to a state of greater unreality.

After the meal was over and the family had all left the dining-room I was still in a dream as I rolled my sleeves up high and began giving hasty dabs with the metal polish to the ancient silver on the sideboard. How delightful it is to have heirloom silver! I failed even to grow cross over the long, hot search for flannel cloths and the gritty feeling which this distasteful task always leaves around my finger-tips.

Still in a dream, I stood at the back kitchen door and watched Dilsey decapitate the plumpest fowls the poultry yard boasted. I saw Lares and Penates flying up and down the cellar steps, and to the garden, orchard and vineyard--all at the same time. Later on in the afternoon I was still dazed when I saw the ominous black signs of a thunder-storm coming up darkly from the southwest; and I heard father out in the hall using strong language at the telephone when he learned that the liveryman had sent Bob Hall, the town idiot, to Bayville to bring the lions back.

Now Bob Hall is a kind-hearted, narrow-eyed lad, whose mind has never been right because his mother drove twenty miles to a circus just before he was born, so the villagers explained; but, be that as it may, Bob has never been able to learn much beyond when to say "Whoa"

and "Git up," but the joy of his life lies in saying these, so that the liverymen of the town are glad to have him hang around the stables and help with the horses at feeding and watering-time. Because the regular driver was a little drunker than usual to-day Bob had been sent to Bayville on that delicate commission!

"He's just as likely as not to dump 'em out in a mud-hole," father said wrathfully, as he hung up the receiver when mother implored him to leave off swearing over the telephone during an electrical storm.

"He'll make some kind of mess of it--you see if he doesn't."

I shuddered as I pictured that elegant gray overcoat all disfigured with mud; then I shuddered again at being such an idiot as to imagine he would have on an overcoat in August. And I wondered how he would look without it, and decided that he would look grand, of course!

About five o'clock the storm burst in good earnest, the rain coming down in heavy sheets at first and later settling into a lively drizzle that promised to be good for all night.

With the rain came a noticeable effort on the part of father's rheumatism to attract attention to itself; and Mammy Lou began clapping her hand over her right side in an alarming manner.

Ever since an attack of gall-stones which she suffered over a year ago, and through which she was safely steered by Alfred Morgan--which, of course, placed him upon an Alfred-the-Great pinnacle in the affections of the whole family--we have all turned in and helped Mammy Lou with her work. Especially when company is coming we agitate our minds over the actual meat and bread part of the entertainment, which I abominate, for personally I am domesticated only so far as frothy desserts and embroidered napkins go; and I am now able to understand the decline of hospitality in the South.

Why, since mammy's spell I have actually learned how to "do up" my best blouses, which is a joy so long as I am working on the front, where the embroidery stands out in satisfying bas-relief, but I am ready to weep and long for father's vocabulary by the time I reach the gathers of the sleeves. I should certainly let these go unironed if mammy did not always come to the rescue with a few deft strokes of the Gothic-shaped end of the iron.

I must say, though, that she accepts our help with an exalted indifference, for, since that awful pain in her side, things temporal have been of small moment with her. She has turned to the comforts, or discomforts, of a deeply Calvinistic religion, and is so keen-scented after sin that when I darn stockings on Sunday morning I have to lock my door and pull down the window-shades.

The only symptom of remaining worldliness which I have noted since her belated conversion, besides her overwhelming desire to get me married off to Alfred (my only rival in her affections) was exhibited early this last spring, when her above-mentioned "boarder" was a new-comer in our neighborhood and father had engaged his services to "break up"

the garden.

Sam, the homesick stranger, made strong appeal to mammy's hospitality, quite aside, as we thought, from the natural susceptibility of her affections. The man was big and _yellow_, mammy's favorite color in husbands, and I scented danger one night soon after he came when I happened to see her place before him on the table in the kitchen a mighty dish of "greens" flanked on all sides with poached eggs.

He was busily plying her with questions, between mouthfuls, and when he asked her point-blank "what aged 'oman she was" she threw her head so coquettishly to one side that she splashed half a plateful of "pot liquor" on the floor, as she responded airily: "Oh, I don't rickollect exactly! I'm forty-five, or fifty-five, or sixty-five--somewhere in the _fives_!"

We held our breath for the next few weeks, expecting at any moment to hear that mammy had decided to out-Henry Henry Eighth, but her religion was too fresh and too enjoyable for her to resign it and marry the seventh time, which she realized would be a bad example for her progeny. Still, there was Sam, in dangerous propinquity, three times a day; and he was broad-shouldered and _enchantingly_ yellow!

She withstood, as long as it was in her poor, affectionate heart to withstand; then she compromised and took him as a boarder! After searching about for a means of easing her conscience for this concession she lit upon Lares and Penates as brands to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning; and she taught them such doleful facts about the uncertainty of their salvation that the last time Alfred was down here we persuaded him to threaten her with nervous prostration for Lares if she persisted in her gloomy preachments.