START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AT THE AGE OF EVE*** E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 40316-h.htm or 40316-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40316/40316-h/40316-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40316/40316-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/atageofeve00shariala Transcriber's note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). AT THE AGE OF EVE [Illustration: "I--I wondered who you were, too"] AT THE AGE OF EVE by KATE TRIMBLE SHARBER Author of The Annals of Ann With Illustrations by Paul Meylan Indianapolis The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers Copyright 1911 The Bobbs-Merrill Company Press of Braunworth & Co. Bookbinders and Printers Brooklyn, N. Y. TO ANN'S GOD-PARENTS LILLIAN BYRN HARRISON AND JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I ANN 1 II THE NEW NEIGHBORS 16 III THE BOOKWORM TURNS 35 IV A NEW GAME 49 V PRINCE CHARMING 67 VI NEVA'S BEAU BRUMMEL 97 VII ALFRED 123 VIII ALFRED COLLECTS A DEBT 136 IX A SHOPPING EXPEDITION 157 X ANN RECEIVES A CALLER 179 XI A DRAWN BATTLE 205 XII SHADOWS 225 XIII THANKSGIVING DAY 243 XIV SOPHIE'S STORY 262 XV THE DOUGLAS IN HIS HALL 287 XVI THE IDES OF MARCH 313 XVII MAY DAY 347 AT THE AGE OF EVE AT THE AGE OF EVE CHAPTER I ANN In beginning this record I find that it is no easy matter to feel at home with a clean, blank journal. The possibilities of these spotless pages seem to oppress me, and I am weighted down with the idea that my opening sentences ought to sound brilliant and promising. With this thought I have started three or four entries on scraps of paper lying here about my desk, but I find that not one of them is the kind of thing which would make you bend over close and knit your brows, thinking you had picked up Plato by mistake. No matter what lofty sentiments I have in my mind you can always hear the swish of petticoats through my paragraphs and I regret this, for all my life I have longed to write something that would sound like George Eliot. In the world of books she is my idol--my lady idol, I mean, for of course the dearest idols of all are the poets, and they are always men. "George Eliot is my lady idol and my man one, too," some one said to me once when I mentioned my preference, and this exactly expresses it. When you read what she has written you never stop to think whether it was written by a man or by a woman. Even in these days the women who write anything worth reading do it so cleverly that you never for a moment suspect they clean out their fountain-pen with a hair-pin. How _do_ they manage it, I wonder, when one adjective too many would brand them as a female? Yet if the sex does not show in the writing, the writing always shows in the sex. If the most masculine man on earth takes a notion to become a writer his friends all begin strange mutterings behind his back, and before long some one has whispered "Sissy." Ah, and if a woman by any chance decides to use her pen a while, so her tongue can rest, her associates are quick to pronounce that she has grown so _masculine_ since she started this writing business! Verily the pen is mightier than the sword if it can influence sex in a manner that would turn a court physician green with envy. I should be willing to cut off my hair and call myself George, Henry or even Sam, if I thought it would help me to be a great writer, for, in my soul, I have always longed to write something so great and unfeminine that it would not harm a Trappist monk. Still, the setting forth of these wishes of mine does not help me to get started comfortably on this new record. Do you notice that I call it a _record_, and not a diary? This is because I expect to write in it only occasionally--skim the cream of events, as it were, instead of boring you with the details of the daily milking. If it were January first, now, I could think up any number of inspiring New Year sentiments to get started off with; sermons based on the three R's to be met with most often at this season--Regrets, Resolves and Reforms. Sometimes there is a fourth R which follows quickly on the heels of these--Returns, to the old habits. Here it is, though, midsummer; and I am sure it would seem to any one looking on that I have no visible means of support for any kind of journal, tucked away as I am in this little town where a girl has not inspiration enough to keep her shirt-waist pulled down in the back. So, with this remark about my shirt-waist, I put aside my longing to write something like George Eliot and make a frank acknowledgment of my skirts. Right glad I ought to be that I have them, too, for I believe that if data were plentiful on the subject we should find that the "mantle of charity" was originally a skirt. "Just like a fool woman," people say leniently, and are willing to let it pass. I am a girl, then, as you will readily gather from the foregoing, simply by putting one and one together--the shirt-waist and the skirt. I live near a little country town, and am vastly dissatisfied with the cramped stage and meager audience, else why should I be keeping a journal? A journal is not nearly so much a book in which you tell what you do as one in which you tell what you would like to do. Pray do not imagine from the above that I am longing for a crowded, noisy stage, with lights glittering over tinsel. No, I am not that kind of girl. I like a play of few actors, but where the things happening make _the veins of the neck_ stand out! In admitting that I do not love the village near which I live I know I run the risk of being considered ill-natured. It would be sweeter of me to make it out a cheery little Cranford of a place, where the tea-kettle steams cozily and drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. These things do happen, after a modern, American fashion; and the people who own the tea-kettles and the folds are the same as other people all over the world. I have no quarrel with them. Still, I am forced to admit that time hangs so heavy on my hands I wash my hair every other day. Have you ever noticed how often a woman, who has nothing better to do, will wash her hair? Here, then, is a brief description of the village, with malice toward none, although at times it may sound malicious: The surrounding country is so beautiful that if you are coming into the town on the train you are ill-prepared for the hideous little railway station, which is the first shock you receive. The floor of this "depot" is dirtier than anything else on earth could be, save the post-office floor, and there is a rusty little stove in the middle of the room close to the box of sand, around which tobacco juice is being eternally spit, spat, or whatever is the correct form of that unlovely verb. Close to the station are the livery stables, but we shall pass by as quickly as possible; and farther up the street is the Racket Store. Sometimes this place has a very handsome clerk from the city; it is then a busy market. Across the street from the hotel is the millinery establishment, and, if you are on good terms with the milliner, she invites you to come and sit at her front window some mornings just after the eleven-o'clock train has come, so you can get a good view of the interesting drummers. Most of the local attractions in the way of young men are sturdy farmers, who, like June-bugs, appear for only a few months every summer. The others, dry goods clerks, bookkeepers and professional whittlers, usually line up on the back benches at church on Sunday evenings and cause mild panics in the breasts of the unescorted girls present, whose hearts palpitate painfully during the benediction. But here I have set forth the doings of Sunday evening before mentioning the events of the afternoon, which, while not exciting, are in a way more characteristic than those of any other time. If the day is fine the country roads blossom forth at irregular intervals with young couples out driving or walking, close to Nature's heart, yet caring far less for her beauties than for the sight of each other, which, after all, _is_ nature. If there is any one in the town sick enough for his neighbors to be really concerned about him, on Sunday afternoon the sick one's house is swarming with a crowd sufficient to furnish forth a funeral. This is not _called_ "profaning the Sabbath," but it ought to be. On rainy days, or even on fine ones, the inhabitants who are too old to be a-lovering usually sit around and go to sleep in their chairs, with their mouths wide open. Besides being ungraceful, this is an invitation to tonsilitis. Dear me! I have misspelled that word again, for Doctor Osler says there are two l's in it, and I am sure there are--in the kind I had last Christmas! Somewhere in the early fall, about the time for green tomatoes to be made up into pickle, there is the excitement of seeing the new public school teachers file into town, and if you happen to be buying a hat at the millinery store any time within the next few weeks you can hear a complete description of each teacher. One paints her face until it's mottled, you are told; another has blond hair and brunette eyebrows, so she must have been on the stage; a third evidently has seen "better days," for she wears a diamond ring on her little finger! There is only _one_ more astonishing thing than the way the women of the village talk about these teachers, and that is the way the men marry them! Again I find that I have anticipated and reached the autumn before I have finished with the summer, in the very hottest part of which, usually August, comes an "evangelist" to hold a protracted meeting. The sound of words always meant so much to me when I was a child, and when I first heard that word, evangelist, I pictured a great, radiant figure, with spreading white wings growing out from a somber suit of black clothes, and holding to his lips a long, graceful trumpet. Naturally, this was some time ago, when I was quite young, and wanted to be good, so that when I died I could go to heaven, where my chief delight was going to be tending a garden full of silver bells and cockle-shells and pretty maids all in a row. Oh, those silver bells! In point of beauty they had no rivals in my childish imagination, except Cinderella's glass slippers and Aaron's golden calf! A lovely heaven it was going to be, of light pastel shades, and a great way off from God! You see I was brought up in such an orthodox atmosphere that I imagined God was like the principal of a school I once attended, always looking out for offenders with a rod up his sleeve. It was a distinct disappointment to me when I found that an evangelist is like any ordinary preacher, except that he perspires more. Sometimes he is sensational and preaches about lace yokes and dancing; and on Sunday afternoon holds a meeting for men only, where he tells them what a terribly bad man _he_ used to be! Again he is "burdened" with the souls of the whole congregation and preaches hell and damnation in a voice that sounds like pitchforks clanging against iron chains. Now, city preachers seldom do anything like this. In the city pulpits, of recent years, hell is like smallpox; it is still _there_, but in a much milder form. During the revivals there are always one or more abusive sermons directed at the other churches of the town, and, of course, the Episcopalians are ever in a class with "the Turk and the comet." Catholics are unmentionable. This usually causes much "hard feeling" among the good wives of the town, at an inconvenient time, too, for the season for swapping sweet peach pickle recipes is close at hand. The only people who can maintain a placid spirit during these revivals are those who stay away, and I usually try this plan, unless the evangelist happens to be young and good-looking. Young and good-looking, ay, there's the rub! Herein is my lack of material for an interesting journal, so long as I stay here at home. Notwithstanding these barriers, Cousin Eunice, who was the instigator of my childhood's diary, has again suggested that I keep a book here by me to "tell off" to occasionally when I feel the need of a mental clearing-house. She says a journal has two points of advantage over the bosom friend a girl of my age usually has; one is, that you can shut it up when you want to go to sleep at night, and the other is that you can burn it when you grow ashamed of the secrets it contains, neither of which you can do to your bosom friend, no matter how badly you may wish to. The diary which I kept for several years while I was at the gawky age was intended to be secreted between two pieces of board in the attic and discovered by my grandchildren amid tumultuous applause, years hence. But I am far too grown-up for these grandchildren now. The knowledge of my years is ever with me, a sort of binding torment, like an armhole that is too tight, so I shall have to leave the little dears behind, with the fairies and the freckles that I have long since outgrown. They, or the thought of them, used to make me feel that I was on actual speaking terms with my other diary, but perhaps after a while, I may feel on the same terms with you, even without their presence. In the first place, as a reason for this book's being, I have always liked the notion of keeping a written account of my thoughts and feelings, especially of my feelings, for they are usually all jumbled up in my mind, like ribbons on a remnant counter, but after I have set them down in black and white where I can stand off and look at them they are no more complicated than sardines in a box. Another reason is that in the diaries, correspondence and love-letters of interesting people (great people, I mean) which I have read, I have found there is a sort of interest which is lacking in their stiff-standing-collar and high-heeled-shoes productions. In this class I have read Amiel and Sam Pepys, and the love-letters of Sophie Dorothea, poor dear! How her portrait must have lied! No woman with that much fat on her neck could really love! I adore Amiel and am fond of Pepys, although I wish he had left out about a ton of that venison pasty which his "she-cozen" was usually preparing for his entertainment. It always gets in your line of vision, somehow, whenever you are craning your neck to catch a glimpse of that naughty but nice Charlie Stuart! Then there was a girl in _Pendennis_ who kept a book of heart-outpourings and called it "Mes Larmes." And my Lord Byron's dear friend, Lady Blessington, called hers "My Night Book." Well, mine is not going to be a night book, for that is not my favorite time for mental surveying. I am still a regular lizard in my love for the sunshine, and, if the prospect sounds alluring, I'll promise that much of this book shall be written in the clear light of day. A good part of my other diary was written up in the old pear tree by the orchard gate, but now I am grown up, so, of course-- "Mes Larmes" would be even worse for a title than the one I have just mentioned. Some tears will, of course, be mixed in to make the rainbows of happiness shine through, but I fancy that mine will be principally a record of work and play. Work that is play and play that is work, mother says, as I sit on the shady porch in the mornings working flowers on my shirt-waist front, and spend the afternoons playing tennis in the hot sun. Work and play, then, for the present; later, maybe, smiles and sighs; while a long, long way in the future, perhaps on the last few pages, there _may_ be--shall I say it? No, I am not well enough acquainted with you yet. Although I have kept back this one little thought from you in the above, I promise that in the narration of all things which have actually happened this journal is going to be unexpurgated! First, I love truth; and I think that a whole truth is nearly always better than a half. For instance, d----n in print always looked worse to me than damn. Then, in the diaries and love-letters I have mentioned above, I have often found that at the very places where matters were getting _so_ interesting you straighten up somewhat and begin to breathe very softly, the narrative breaks suddenly into a row of beastly little dots--and you are left to imagine what you will! Maybe the truth would not have been half so bad as your imaginings--maybe it would have been much worse. It all depends upon the condition of your circulation! For my part, I like a book to tell the whole truth about what it starts out to tell; yet this does not mean that every detail is to be described, even to setting forth whether the heroine wears hose-supporters or round garters. Now, in case this journal _should_ be secreted in the attic and found years hence by a mixed audience which is inclined to take offense at my mention of garters, I shall say simply, "Evil to him who evil thinketh." So I am going to have you for my confidential friend and adviser. I say adviser advisedly, for I know of nothing which preaches a better sermon sometimes than for a person to look over certain back pages of his diary; especially _her_ diary. When I am wicked enough to make your leaves curl up in horror, all you can do is to listen to my story and not look at me as if you thought I needed the prayers of the congregation. People who pray don't talk about it anyway! And, if by chance, my right hand should do something handsome that it is fairly itching to tell about we can recite it all to you, knowing that you will never let it come to the ears of my left hand. Good I may occasionally be; wicked I shall certainly be, for are not we all born in iniquity? But I hope that in after years when I read over these pages I shall not discover that it takes a sextant, a compass and an alarm clock to find out where my heart is! CHAPTER II THE NEW NEIGHBORS "You mus' be mighty clean, or mighty dirty, _one_," Mammy Lou called out to me this morning as she looked up from the kitchen door and espied me at the bath-room window with my robe wrapped around me toga-fashion. "Oh, excuse _me_," she continued with exaggerated politeness after a moment in which I did not speak. "Of course you ain't to be spoke to when you're breathin' like a heathen!" I finished the prescribed number of breaths laid down in the rules for Yogi breathing, which I am trying just now because I am so tired of breathing the same old way, then looked down at mammy. "A girl who can take a cold bath every morning and bait a fish-hook can take care of herself in this life!" I answered. "You ought to be proud of my courage." "'Tain't no Christian notion for no girl to be wantin' to take care of herself," she began to argue, but rather than get into a debate and be routed, as she sometimes is, she suddenly assumed an air of excitement and cried: "Listen! Wasn't that the thing hollerin'?" "The thing" here referred to is the new inter-urban line which now runs past our house, much to the chagrin of Mammy Lou, who calls it the "interruption line," because it is "always drappin' somebody off here right in the midst o' dinner time, when there ain't nothin' lef' but backs and wings." This very disconcerting thing has happened so many times that mother found she would have to carry a full line of emergency tins in her pantry, all bearing on their labels the comforting assurance that they could be served hot in three minutes. These were ever small consolation to Mammy Lou, however, and she always serves them with as much humiliation as if the "Yankee beans" and "het-over peas" were the proverbial dinner of herbs. This morning, though, the lid was shut fast on the tinned diet department and there was as much beautiful fried chicken sizzling drowsily on the back of the stove as northern people always give us Southerners credit for having. The best white and gold china was on the table, and a tall vase of Paul Neron roses on the mantelpiece, hiding father's bottle of rheumatism cure. At mammy's suggestion that she heard the "thing" hollering I had thrown on my clothes without waiting to wipe all the water out of my ears, and had run down-stairs to see if mother needed me to pin her collar down in the back, for I knew she would be wanting to look her best this morning. We were all a little excited (things so seldom happen here) and I noticed that father was using his most rheumatic hand and arm every few minutes to take his watch out of his pocket; yet he forgot to frown. The Claybornes were coming, Waterloo, Rufe and Cousin Eunice. We were feeling particularly anxious about the outcome of their visit, for mother and I had conspired together that a few political talks with Rufe _had_ to cure father of his rheumatism. So we were watching every movement on his part with eager interest. You must not imagine that we are unsympathetic with father when he actually has an attack. We rub him and put hot things to his shoulder, and I have actually gone so far as to let him explain the _primary plan_ to me in words of one syllable that a child could understand, just to get his mind diverted. Like most high-spirited men, when father does get down into the depths he tries to burrow clear on through to China. I wonder why this is? Possibly it is on the same principle that effervescent drugs are kept in blue bottles. I do not blame him, certainly, for rheumatism is enough to get on anybody's nerves. The poor man has to try as many different positions to get any ease sometimes as a worn-out alarm clock that will run only on a certain side. So the summer has been a hard one for us all, father waxing so melancholy here lately that if he has a gum-boil he gives us directions for his cremation. It was during one of these outbursts of pessimism that father took it into his head to disfigure the landscape across the road from our house with a row of smart cottages, which were to rent for so much a month that they would prove a get-rich-quick scheme and so save us from the humiliation of being cared for by the Masons in our old age, which was another one of the notions in the train of rheumatic gloom. Fortunately the first cottage cost so much more than it was worth that the project for the rest was abandoned; and, after it was duly insured, mother and I were secretly burning candles to our patron saint for its incineration when it was rented to a family named Sullivan. This Sullivan family consists of a father who drinks, just a little, enough to keep him jolly all the time; a mother who is of such a despondent nature that you wish she would drink; a daughter who wears crimson silk gowns and jeweled combs to the post-office when she goes for her mail every morning, yet withal has more beaus than any other girl in the village, as is attested by the candy boxes piled piano-high in her parlor; and a maiden aunt, Miss Delia Badger, who dyes her hair. Now, this term, "maiden aunt," is usually employed to denote a condition of hopelessness, but you will understand from the dyed hair that, in this case, the condition is far from being hopeless--else why the dye? The pristine blackness of Miss Delia's crown of glory was beginning to wear off, and in the stress of moving had not been replaced as soon as it should have been, so, on the day that I made her acquaintance, her hair displayed an iridescent sheen, shading from light tan to deep purple. This made me so angry with father for having built the cottage that I ran past him without a word of sympathy when I reached home, although he was sitting on the front porch reading the paper and making horrible faces every time he had to move his arm. The next day, which was the second after their moving, when I turned in at our gate after my morning tramp, I found that the Sullivans were presenting a much more homelike view from the front of their house, elaborate curtains showing at the parlor windows, and at the front door a white panel of lace, a most lifelike affair, representing Andrew Jackson mounted upon his fiery steed and lifting his high white hat to an imaginary, though evidently enthusiastic, throng. "_Now_, I reckon you're satisfied," I exclaimed to father as I came into the house and found him cleaning his gun, one end of it resting on the piano, and a pile of greasy rags perilously close to my limp-backed copy of Gray's _Elegy_. He quickly moved the gun and rags, but seeing that this offense was not the cause of my wrath, he meekly inquired: "What?" Mother came in at this juncture and I explained to them my indignation over the Andrew Jackson. "Jumping Jerusalem!" father said, thus admitting his horrified surprise, but after a moment he parried. "It may be Napoleon, or Frederick the Great." "What difference would that make?" I demanded. "A warrior has no place on a door-panel. Besides, it's 'Old Hickory.' I'd know that high white hat anywhere! Wasn't I born and _raised_ in the shadow of it?" "Dear me! But maybe you are mistaken," mother interposed gently. "It is quite a distance across the road--it may be a peculiar pattern of Batten--" Before she had finished I darted up the steps and scrambled around in the bureau drawer for my opera-glasses. "Take these out to the porch and _look_," I begged, as I came down again and found the two still facing each other with a quizzical smile. She carried out my suggestion and presently came back, still smiling. "It's Andrew," she reported, reaching out for my opera-bag and slipping the glasses into it; "it's Andrew beyond a doubt; but, dearie, it _can't_ outlast two washings." This assurance comforted me somewhat every time I had to look at the military door-panel, but on cleaning days when the parlor curtains at the cottage were tucked up and I discerned the large, colored portrait of Mr. Roosevelt which smiled sunnily down from the space above the mantelpiece there was no such consoling reflection. About this time it was that I grew to know Neva, the daughter of the house. Her family called her "Nevar," most nasally, after the manner of "ordinary" people in the South; but I soon found qualities in her that made me forgive the silk gowns and jeweled combs, aye, even the Andrew Jackson. In the first place I discovered that she entertained a most profound admiration for me, especially for my pronunciation and finger-nails. Of these she at once set about a frank imitation which later extended to things more impersonal. Once, after I had shown her my books and she had breathed a long, ecstatic sigh over the pictures in the library I found that the hero of San Juan was falling into disfavor as a parlor ornament. Neva had been especially impressed with a small oval portrait of my childhood's hero, Lord Byron, which mother had found once in a curio-shop in New Orleans and brought home to me. "Who is he?" she asked, her eyes fixed admiringly on the matchless face. I explained to her. "Is he dead?" she inquired softly. "Alas, yes!" "But it certainly is swell to have his picture here," she volunteered. "I reckon it's because he's dead that it is more quiet and elegant, somehow, than a president's picture. Now Mr. Roosevelt looks so horrid and _lively_!" From this I gathered that the ex-president would sooner or later be deposed, but I was surprised to find that it had happened much sooner than I had expected, for the next time I visited the Sullivan home I found Mr. Roosevelt's jolly face gone; and in its stead the gentle features of William McKinley looked down on the candy-boxes and pink-flowered cuspidors. That he was dead was evidenced by the black border running mournfully around the print; and Neva called my attention to the fact as soon as I came into the room. "You see he looks quieter than Roosevelt because he's dead," she elucidated, "although he isn't a poet! Papa said he'd buy me a poet the next time he went up to the city--and oh, a green leather copy of Gray's 'Prodigy!'--like yours!" So, in trying to teach Neva the difference between presidents and poets, I have been able to enliven some of the dull days; and she is such a sweet little thing at heart that, if she never gets the difference clear, my time is not ill-spent anyway. But ah, _this_ morning the Claybornes were coming! And we were all out at the gate in a twinkling when we finally did hear the shrill whistle of the car! The first sight of Waterloo's sparkling little face rewarded me for dressing while my ears were still wet. He had on a Buster Brown suit of white linen, with red anchors embroidered in their usual places, and a brave red badge setting forth his political inclinations. Father's lame hand had already reached out for him. "Hello, Uncle Dan!" he said cordially, paying no attention to the feminine portion of the crowd. "Are you for it or 'ginst it?" "I'm 'ginst it, too," father answered, drawing from his pocket a similar badge. "That's right! Now show me the mules!" He and father led the way up the walk, followed by the rest of us, with Grapefruit, escorted by a hilarious Lares and Penates, bringing up the rear. Grapefruit, be it known, is Waterloo's nurse, or, more properly speaking, is a kind of jester to His Majesty. Her genuine name is Gertrude, but she came to him when he was at such a tender age that he corrupted it to Grapefruit, and Rufe says that if he had named her Fragrant Pomegranate Vine it would not be any too good for her. She is an ethereal little darky with wonderful powers of diversion. Cousin Eunice tells about how she found her out in the side yard playing with Waterloo one May morning long ago, and how his soul so clave unto her soul that he refused to give her up. Automobiles, red wagons, fire-engines, boxes of candy--all were suggested in vain. "I want my little Grapefruit," he tearfully insisted, over and over again, until the attractive one modestly announced that she might be engaged to stay and amuse him by the week for "seventy-five or fifty cents, or I'll stay for nothing if you'll let me play on the piano." Cousin Eunice joyfully agreed to the highest figure asked, with the use of the piano thrown in, yea and the telephone, the type-writer, in short, everything in the house except her tooth-brush. So Grapefruit stayed, and at this period of their lives is as necessary a part of the Claybornes' traveling outfit as their collapsible drinking-cup. After breakfast was over we lingered in the dining-room a while, as is our custom when we have interesting guests; and we women rested our elbows on the table and talked, while the men lit their cigars and pounded the table-cloth until the spoons jumped out of the saucers, so vehement were their expressions about "that blackguard of a governor." We women talked about Waterloo, of course. "He's at the loveliest age, right now, I think," mother said, as our three pairs of eyes wandered out in his direction to the long back porch, where Grapefruit and Lares were making him a pack-saddle, so they could "tote 'im" down to the lot. He was entirely too good to walk that first morning. "Yes, I rather dislike the thought of his growing into a great, rough, short-haired boy," Cousin Eunice assented, looking at him fondly. "That terrible age when they always smell like their puppies! But, that's quite a while off. He is still a baby." "I find that they are always more or less babies," mother said, looking toward me, "--no matter what their age may be." "Oh, this talk about ages reminds me of a book I brought for Ann to read," Cousin Eunice said, rising from the table and starting toward the front hall where their bags had been hastily dropped that we might not delay Mammy Lou's hot breakfast. "Stay here, all of you, and wait until I get it. It contains an interesting thought." "Then it's that much ahead of most new books," Rufe remarked, his attention having been attracted from his own line of talk by Cousin Eunice starting to leave the dining-room. "It isn't strictly new," she commented, returning in a few moments with the book in her hand. "It was written several years ago. It's nothing out of the ordinary in plot, and the thought which impressed some of us in the 'Scribblers' Club' was concerning the age of Eve when she was created. The heroine of the story is named Eve and is young and fair, so the hero, a gallant soldier, remarks to her one day as they are walking by the river bank at a stolen tryst, that he fancies the first mother was at his sweetheart's identical age when she was created. You see, it is quite a poetic fancy." "More poetic than true. Soldiers don't talk that way," father said drily. "How old did the book say this Eve was?" "The author was too wise to tell in plain figures," she answered, "but it was somewhere under the twenties--in the early flush of youth." "Well, Adam was the first man who ever had the chance of a wife made to order," father kept on. "Surely he had more sense than to take a seventeen-year-old girl." "No, you're wrong," Rufe disagreed. "I believe that Adam was too much of a gentleman to look a gift wife in the mouth." "I'll get the Concordance and see if there's any record of her age," mother said, bustling off toward her bedroom and returning in a moment with her well-worn book, but she was unable to find any definite facts about Eve on the morning of that first surgical operation. "What difference does it make about the actual number of years?" Rufe inquired, with an air of dismissing the subject. "The age of Eve is that picturesque period which comes to a girl after her elbows are rounded out." My bared arms happened to be resting again on the table during this discussion, and, as Rufe spoke, Cousin Eunice's eyes wandered in their direction. "Then Ann's at it," she concluded triumphantly, and they all stared at me curiously, as if the age of Eve were showing on me like pock-marks! "Ann doesn't seem nearly so old as she really is," mother began with a kind of uneasy look. "You see, she has never been to school very much, so her education--" "Now, please don't begin about my education," I begged, for it is a mooted question in my family whether or not I have any, father and I maintaining that I have all that is necessary, mother wishing that it had been more carefully directed along the conventional lines. "If I should go to school until I'm as old as Halley's comet I couldn't learn the things I don't like. And I know all the rest without going! Don't people call me up for miles around to ask who wrote _Prometheus Bound_ and how to spell 'candidacy?'" "So you're satisfied with yourself?" Rufe teased. "Far from it," I denied, "but I am certainly satisfied with the amount of schooling _in schools_ I've had. Ugh, I hate the thought of it!" "But how can you ever amount to anything without an education?" mother persisted. "Never fear," I assured her easily. "I'll amount to my destiny, no matter whether I've ever seen inside a school or not. When I was a child I always imagined I was cut out to be Somebody; and even now I occasionally have a notion that Fate is watching me through her lorgnette!" "You and Jean Everett used to have such queer ideas about yourselves--with your notions of marrying dukes and living in castles, and all that kind of thing," Cousin Eunice said, after a moment of amused thought. "Jean still has her notions," Rufe broke in. "Our city editor is out of his depth in love with her and I met her on the street the other day and tried to bespeak her pity for the poor fellow. She assured me that the man _she_ married would be so important the papers would all get out an extra every time his assassination was attempted!" "Well, she'd better decide to take Guilford then," I said warmly, for it is a source of great satisfaction to me that my old friend, Jean (still my best friend), is half-engaged to Guilford Houghton, a grave young lawyer who is already making people take notice. He is a very quiet, dignified young man, so tall and thin and straight that he reminds me of a silk umbrella carefully rolled. For a long time Jean seemed not to care much about him, but he kept paying his court as persistently as a fly in wet weather until she was finally won--half-way. He has very methodical ways, and calls to see her only on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, but she devotes so much time and care to her toilet for hours and hours preceding these visits that we call them her "days of purification." "Guilford is not so showy, maybe," she said to me one time, in explanation of her fondness for him, which she tries hard to conceal, "but he's so _dependable_. That's worth a lot to a girl who has been engaged to four or five Apollos, all of them about as reliable as drop-stitch stockings!" "For my part, I admire Jean's ambition," father spoke up, although none of us suspected that he was listening to our rambling talk. "I'd rather see a girl with an ambition like that than one with none at all--one of these little empty-headed gigglers whose age of Eve announces its arrival by all the i's in her name being changed into y's." Waterloo came in at this point and demanded again that the mules be shown him, so father and Rufe set out for the stables. "Shall we walk around and look at things, too?" I asked Cousin Eunice as we filed out on to the back porch. It is a habit with us two to steal away for a quiet little talk the first few hours we are together and take stock of each other's happenings since we met last. "No," she answered, looking at me steadily. "The orchard and vineyard are more beautiful in the afternoon. We'll walk all over the place then. Besides, I have a notion that you'll want to tell me things which will sound better in the afternoon sunshine." "Not a thing," I denied, and wondered how a discussion of poetic fancies at the breakfast table could make her so sentimental. "Then you are wasting some mighty valuable time," she replied. "Most normal girls of your age are brimful of plans and ideas." She would have said secrets, as she intended to, but Mammy Lou hove in sight just then with a big pan of butter-beans for me to shell for dinner. Rufe had stopped her at the kitchen door with the usual query, "Well, Mammy, you're not married again?" "Naw, sir," she had admitted, with a self-conscious smile, "although I did have a _boa'der_ all the spring." Waterloo protested against even this slight pause in their progress toward the stables, so with an amused smile Rufe forbore to continue the conversation, but passed on and Mammy Lou ambled in our direction just in time to hear part of Cousin Eunice's remark to me. "Law, Miss Eunice, you can't git nothin' out o' _her_," she said disgustedly, as she set the pan of beans down and began to fan herself with her apron. "She's plen'y old enough, the Lord knows, to be takin' notice, _although_ Mis' Mary don't think so. I heerd you-all talkin' 'bout certain ages at the breakfas' table, but I can tell you _she_ ain't at it. She don't look at nary one of 'em twicet; an' when the shore-nuff age of Eve has come to a girl she begins eyin' ever' man she meets to see if he's got a missin' rib that'll match with hern!" CHAPTER III THE BOOKWORM TURNS "'Tis ill work trying to ride Pegasus on a side-saddle," Cousin Eunice said this morning as she hurriedly threw aside her pencil and paper and ran to tell Dilsey about not putting any starch in the legs of Waterloo's rompers. "He's not a lady's horse anyhow," she continued as she came back and sat down on the grass again, "especially after a man, a baby and a gas stove have come into the lady's life." "Gas stove?" I questioned, looking up from my book, a heavy old French book, it was, for mother's remark about my neglected education had made me feel a little uneasy after all. Cousin Eunice is not the kind of woman to fill her letters full of household matters, hence my surprised question. "A good cook, with me, is only a memory," she said with a sadly reminiscent air. "I have a girl whose name is Pearl, but alas it is a lie! Even the day I learned that my book had found a publisher I had to get up out of my trance and peel potatoes for luncheon." "Surely not!" "Yes. I peeled them, but they were never cooked, for when Rufe came home and heard the news he hustled us all off to town and we had luncheon in Beauregard's privatest dining-room. We ordered all the things that disagree with us most--by way of reckless indulgence." "How did you feel when you heard that news?" I asked with interest, for the book manuscript which Cousin Eunice had been working on since the days of her single blessedness had grown to be like a member of the family with us all, especially of late years, after a certain critic had pronounced it good. It suddenly grew so valuable after that that she kept it in a little brown leather bag all the time and would never leave the house without telling somebody where that bag was (in case of fire) and making them promise to play Casabianca to those precious sheets until they should be rescued. "Just dazed!" she answered simply. "Pretty much as I felt when I found that Rufe was going to be mine--only a great deal less so, you know." "I wonder if you are ever going to be really great?" I pursued, for since I have grown so old I share all her hopes and fears, just as if we were sisters. "With a trip around the world as a starter, and a quiet little castle on the Italian coast as a next step. Then you can sign checks for a thousand dollars and get your pictures taken for nothing." "Well, not at the rate I'm going now," she replied with a rueful smile toward her book and pencil lying inert on the grass; yet she made no effort to resume her work. Evidently the starch in Waterloo's rompers had driven away romance. "But everything has its compensation," she continued after a moment. "If I never get my great trip around the world with a ten-days' stop-over in Japan I can never write a book about that long-suffering country, so I shall still have something to be thankful for." "The public is the one to be thankful," I added. "That's true, too," she agreed. "It may have cause to be thankful if this second book of mine is never finished, but nevertheless you don't know what a fever of impatience I'm in to see it all smoothly laid out between two pieces of paste-board and ready for the express label to be put on." "Yes, I believe I do know, though certainly not about a _book_. I am sure I know what fever of impatience means." But she was so absorbed in her own troubles that she did not notice this indirect acknowledgment of mine. "I had imagined that I could get my mind into a state of at least comparative tranquillity down here," she kept on. We were out in our favorite lair, a screened-off grassy spot in the side yard, where a double row of althea bushes furnishes a sense of security against intrusion, yet we were close enough to Waterloo to hear him every time he bumped his head or skinned his knee. "This place is almost unearthly in its quiet beauty," she said after a moment, looking up through the green vista toward the house. The passion flowers were clambering up on the garden fence and running riot over the yellowing cornstalks. Back of the kitchen the well-house lay asleep in the sun, the star-like blossoms of white clematis which covered the roof of the old building were still untouched by that feathery change which forecasts their coming blight. "It _is_ beautiful--and it certainly is quiet," I coincided with her emphatically. "Sometimes at home when the telephone bell and the door-bell and the club meetings and the butcher boys and the laundry men have all made a throbbing pain come in my head I steal away up-stairs to my little den where I lock the door and lie down to try to ease that nervous pain. Then I close my eyes and try to project my astral body down here into all this still, summer loveliness. I come up the gravel walk and on to the front porch--oh, those cedar porches! And I go through the shady hall to the back gallery where I find myself face to face with a great cold watermelon that has just been cut." "And the library is full of roses, and there is a tray of fragrant peaches that Dilsey gathered early in the morning." "Ah! I see that you feel its beauty just as much as if it were not an every-day affair to you," she said, looking at me with another one of those searching glances which she has treated me to several times lately. "No wonder you have grown to look like the place." "To look like it!" I encouraged her to go on, for a compliment is more
{'title': 'At the Age of Eve by Kate Trimble Sharber', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}