At the Age of Eve Part 8

I made several violent white marks upon the old rock wall with the bit of stone in my hand before I attempted to answer this, the most intimate question ever put to me by a man in my life. Except for Alfred I had never known any other man well, and had certainly never cared about sitting with one upon an old stone wall while the glorious summer afternoon slipped by. All I knew of even incipient love-making I had read in books, so that I could not tell whether his question meant much or little. I had told him earlier in the afternoon that I was booked for a long visit in the city this fall, whereon he had congratulated himself on his friendly footing with the Claybornes. It was possible he meant--

"Could you?" he repeated softly.

I stopped making marks and threw away the bits of stone. I had opened my lips to reply, although I do not know what I had intended saying, when there was an Indian yell close behind us.

"Whoopee! Here he is again!" came an exultant voice, and, glancing around, we beheld a freshly bathed and dressed Waterloo, digging his white linen knees and elbows into the soft black earth, as he raised a radiant face and announced his second discovery of the "little tarrypin." Grapefruit followed him at a respectful distance, while Lares and Penates lingered shyly in the background when they espied us.

"And here's _Ann_," Waterloo explained, in great triumph, waving his hand in my direction. "We can make her tote 'im back to the house for us. She ain't skeered of 'em!"

"Quick! Tell me!" Richard Chalmers insisted, and his seriousness made me flippant.

"Age has nothing to do with it! It is entirely a matter of temperament!"

He laughed, quite like a boy, as he sprang down from the wall and extended both hands to help me. I grasped only one of his hands, and that very lightly, as I stepped to the ground.

We joined the little band of hunters and thus formed a funny procession home. Mr. Chalmers and I were in the lead, his right hand gingerly clutching a most disinterested-looking mud-turtle, while, with the left, he attempted to help me over the rough places in the road. Waterloo was close at our heels, while the three little negroes, struggling with their giggles, tagged along behind.

The task of "toting" a mud-turtle fitted so ill with his immaculate clothes and intense dignity that I laughed every time I looked up at him. And he laughed. Perhaps we should have done this, even if nothing funny had happened, for the late afternoon was so beautiful, and everything seemed so happy. The birds were all making a cheerful fuss over going to bed, and the tinklings that lulled the distant folds seemed to me, for the first time in my life, joyous.

"I shall think of this scene the day you are inaugurated," I said, still laughing, after the mud-turtle had been deposited in an empty lard bucket and borne away by Waterloo and his retainers. We had found ourselves alone for a moment in the shaded, deserted library.

"You'll be there?" he asked, turning toward me as I stood on the hearth rug and leaned my elbow against the white marble mantelpiece.

As he had carefully wiped from his finger-tips the imaginary dust from the mud-turtle I had been studying his profile in the mirror. It was the most perfect face I had ever seen--unless--

My eyes quickly traveled to the little oval portrait of Lord Byron, the old-time idol of my beauty-loving soul. I used to kiss his picture good night when I was twelve years old!

I glanced back again to the living presence of beauty equally as perfect. His gray eyes were upon me.

"You'll be there--if I am ever inaugurated?" he asked again.

"Of course. But you'll never see _me_."

Outside there was a glorious sunset, red and yellow and orange. It was like a sea of blood and a sea of gold, with a wonderful blending of the two. The radiance was trying to steal in at the shaded window, and I started across the room to open the blinds to its flood of glory.

He put out his hand and stopped me.

"If you were there," he said slowly in his deep, rich voice--which is, in itself, attraction enough for any _one_ man--"if you were there, I should be far more conscious of _that_ than of the inauguration."

And the quick look which followed these words made a feeling of having been born again run in little zigzag streaks of joy to my finger-tips.

CHAPTER VI

NEVA'S BEAU BRUMMEL

Many days have pa.s.sed since Neva and her mother made their dramatic return from Bayville.

These days have seemed long to me, but short to Neva, for protracted meeting has been in progress--and she has had a beau swarm. The swell young clerk at the Racket Store, who says "_pa.s.se_," most Frenchily, and manicures his nails; a fat drummer who sells lard and sings ba.s.s; a "wild" young man who drives a fast horse, which the villagers all discuss above their breath, and who also does some other things which they take care to discuss--but in whispers; all these have been Neva's, besides Hiram Ellis, a young farmer whom she cares for most, but makes the most fun of behind his back.

I know that she cares for him, else she would never have counterfeited a swoon one hot night in church when the service held on an unconscionable time and she feared that Hiram would become impatient and start on his five-mile drive to his farm, without waiting to escort her home, as was his custom when she happened to be unaccompanied by any of the "town fellows."

From her point of vantage in the choir she could see that Hiram was restlessly moving his hands and feet about, although he was seated on the back bench and there was the church full of perspiring humanity between her and the gawky object of her secret love.

The minister continued to exhort and to perspire, as he drank gla.s.s after gla.s.s of water; and, as the time for mourners seemed to draw no nearer, Neva took that night's destiny into her own hands and fainted--a stiff, peculiar faint.

Fortunately she was sitting close by a small door which opens directly out into the cool night air, so that her carrying-out could be accomplished without any ungraceful display of uplifted feet and sagging petticoats. Neva's artistic temperament could never have endured that!

The performance created small notice outside the choir.

Hiram was around at that little back entrance in a twinkling, his good-natured, sunburnt face a picture of devoted anxiety. Neva was sitting on the steps shaking with a considerable degree of suppressed emotion, but not looking particularly ill, and insisting that her mother and Aunt Delia should go on back and hear the sermon to its end, if, indeed, it had an end. This they did, after seeing Hiram place Neva carefully in his buggy and start off home; but they failed to reach the choir in time to see the whisperings which had pa.s.sed between two of Neva's rivals who sat there, and who were not un.o.bservant of the peculiar nature of her fainting-spell.

"It wasn't like any faint _I_ ever saw before," some one openly declared to Mrs. Sullivan after the service was over, whereupon the whisperings between the rivals were renewed; and several days thereafter the townspeople were frankly discussing Neva Sullivan's "spell."

In less than a week after the incident which I have just related, because there is absolutely nothing of my _own_ happening that is worth relating, Neva ran over one day in a great flurry of excitement to consult my expert judgment as to what she should wear that night, as a young gentleman from the city had come down to see her and was coming out that evening to call.

"A young gentleman from the city! How exciting!" I congratulated her.

"But I didn't know you knew any of the Beau Brummels up there!"

"That's the curious part of it," she explained as she sat down and panted a little, for she had run across the road and up our long walk.

"I don't know him--never heard of him before. But he telephoned me from the hotel this afternoon that he had heard of me and had come down to see me on business. His name is Doctor Simmons, and he said he was very anxious to see me at once and give me some professional literature."

"Some professional _what_?" I asked, for she was talking very fast, and her enunciation at best is not like a normal school teacher's.

"Professional literature," she repeated, lingering over the words this time as if they were chocolate creams. "I told mamma maybe he is a poet. It sounded kinder like it, you know--him saying 'literature.'"

"I don't believe that poets carry around _professional_ literature," I said, trying to let her down easy, for she is a sad little visionary--and somehow I have a sympathy for visionaries. But he was a _man_, a new man, even though he might not be a poet, so Neva's solicitude concerning him was in nowise dampened.

"Well, that's what he said--'professional literature,'" she kept on flutteringly--inconstant little minx, when only a week ago she had disturbed "public wors.h.i.+p" for the sake of driving home in Hiram Ellis' buggy!--"So mamma said I better come on over and ask you how I ought to dress to see him; and _oh_, how I ought to have the parlor fixed! You go up to the city so often, of course you know all the swell ways."

"I reckon I _do_," I said confidently, for I could see the chance that my hands had been itching for ever since I took the education of Neva in charge. "First, you must empty the room of candy-boxes, for if he is a prospective suitor, you see, all those boxes would frighten him away. He would think you are entirely too popular already."

"There ain't a girl in this town got half as many," she said rather wistfully, and I saw that the loss of the boxes meant bereavement to her. "Mine comes up to the top of the piano on _both_ sides, while Stella Hampton's don't more than fill in under the bottom of the center-table!"

"But you must remember that he is a doctor," I reminded her soothingly, "and they are awfully queer about _germs_. He might get it into his head that those empty boxes were regular nests for them--and they may be, for all we know."

"All right--if you say so," the poor child said sorrowfully, and I knew that her affection for me had been put to a fiery test.

"Then the McKinley picture! It ought to come down. It is dismal, somehow--it might cast a damper over his feelings."

"All right," she agreed again, much more willingly this time. "I know that Mr. Roosevelt _does_ look more cheerful, so, if you say so--"

"But I _don't_," I almost shrieked. "We can put a tall vase of roses in the s.p.a.ce so that no picture will be needed."

"Oh, that will be lovely," she exclaimed gratefully; "and I'll wear flowers in my hair."

"I believe black velvet ribbon will be prettier--just a band, you understand--no combs or fancy pins. Your hair is too pretty to be disfigured with ornaments."