the beginning of the twentieth century has witnessed many startling inventions, reforms, evolutions, and revolutions, but mankind generally is not aware that the most remarkable result of many combined new forces is a woman whose intellect can go on functioning at the same time that her heart is aching with either requited or unrequited love. just ten days after i had been jilted, instead of lying in a darkened room in hysterics, i went into a light corner of the barn, sat down on an upturned seed-bucket, took my farm-book on my knee, wet my pencil between my lips, and began to figure up the account between evan adam baldwin and myself. first, i sat still for a long second and tried to set a price on myself the hour before i had first encountered him out on the riverfield ribbon on the day i had made my entry into rural life. and think as hard as i could i couldn't think up a single thing i had done worth while to my race; so i had to write a great cipher against myself. then in another column i set down the word "assets," and after it i wrote, "the golden bird and family, eight hundred dollars." then i thought intently back into the past and into the haircloth trunk and wrote, "clothes, one hundred and fifty dollars."
then i sat for another long time and looked out the door to the paradise ridge across the harpeth valley, after which i smoothed the page, dated it, and again began to take stock of myself and the business. i listed the original investment of mr. g. bird and the ladies leghorn, one of which was at that moment picking wheat from my pocket, on through their fifty progeny, for which i had established a price of twenty dollars per head, through the two lambkins i had bought from rufus for ten dollars, mother cow and the calf, the hundred and fifty pearls in the incubators, half of which i had sold to owen and bess and ten of which i had sold to a real chicken dealer who knew mr. g. bird's pedigree and had come all the way from georgia to buy them. the whole inventory, including the wheat i had paid matthew for and the improvements i had made on the barn, or rather adam had made, also including the prospects in the garden, amounted to eighteen hundred dollars. then i thought still longer and finally after my own name wrote one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of "education." the total was nineteen hundred and fifty dollars, thus making a profit on my investments of about eight hundred dollars. after this calculation i sat and chewed the pencil a long time, then turned a fresh page, wrote, "evan adam baldwin," on the one side, "profit" in the middle, and a large cipher opposite.
then i closed the book forever with such decision that the leghorn lady and mrs. ewe, who was helping her explore me, both jumped, and i rose to my feet.
"i got eight hundred and fifty dollars out of the deal, and evan adam baldwin only got a few mediocre and amateur kisses, which he shared with me, for all his hard labor in plowing and tilling and restoring elmnest and me to the point of being of value in the scheme of things. i got the best of that deal and why should i sulk?" i said to myself in a firm and even tone of voice. i didn't.
if i had worked like a couple of women when speeded up by a weird chant on my heartstrings, which i now recognized was just a part of the system used in my reorganization, i worked like five when my heart became perfectly dead and silent. i got out of my bed the very minute that the first gleam of consciousness came into my mind, before i could have a second to think about anything unprofitable, plunged into the old brass-bound cedar tub of cold water, which i had carried up from the spring in a bucket that matched it the night before, got into my corduroys and smock, and was out in the barn and at work before it would seem possible for a woman to more than open her eyes of understanding upon the world. all day long i weeded and hoed and harvested and fed and cleaned and marketed that farm until i fell dead between the posts of the old bed at night.
i didn't pray. i knew god would understand.
and through it all there was matthew! the first week or two he remonstrated with me; then when he saw that i was possessed by the demon of work he just rolled up his sleeves, collected polly and bud, and helped. he promoted his best clerk in the office to a junior partnership, refused several important cases, bought the hundred-acre forest which joins elmnest, which aunt mary had had in her family for generations, and which had been considered as waste land after the cedars had been cut off, and began to restore it. he never bothered me once in a sentimental way, and when he brought the plans of his house over on the knoll opposite elmnest, polly helped me enthuse and criticize them, and he went away seemingly content. his and polly's rhode island reds were rivaling my leghorns in productiveness, and all of riverfield seemed to have gone chicken mad. mr. spain traded a prize hog for a cock, and twelve black minorca hens, and mr. buford brought the bride two settings of gray "rocks" to start a college education for the bundle.
"do you know what the whole kit and biling is so busy about?" said aunt mary as she surveyed with pride a new hen-house that bud had just finished, in which i saw the trap nests over which she had disputed with the commissioner of agriculture. "they were just woke up by that speech of adam's, and they are getting ready to show him what riverfield can do when he gets back. when did you say you expect him, honeybunch?"
"i don't," i answered quietly.
"why, i thought silas said you did," she answered absent-mindedly. "now, you can have bud, but not for keeps, because as i borned him i think i am entitled to work him." we all laughed as bud and i betook ourselves and a large farm-basket full of late cabbage plants across to elmnest.
"miss ann, please ma'am, make mother let me go to town to-night with mr. matthew and stay with miss bess. all her linen chest has come, and i want to see it," polly corn-tassel waylaid us and pleaded. i went back and laid the case before her mother.
"well, i suppose it won't hurt her if all this marriage and giving in marriage don't get into her head. i aim to keep and work her at least two years longer to pay my trouble with her teething back," agreed aunt mary. "when did you say the wedding was going to be?"
"june tenth," i answered.
"i heard that mr. owen murray talking to mr. spain about his wooded piece of land over by the big spring the other night. looks like you are a pot of honey, sure enough, child, that draws all your friends to settle around you."
"no, it's the back-to-the-land vogue, and this is the most beautiful part of the harpeth valley," i answered as i again began to depart with bud and the cabbage plants.
"adam told me one night that he was going to prove that the garden of eden was located right here. it was when your locusts were in full bloom and i asked him if he had run down eve anywhere. are you sure you don't know when he'll come back to see us all?" aunt mary's blue eyes danced with merriment.
"no," i answered, and went hastily back to bud and left her muttering to herself, "well, silas did say—"
all afternoon i stolidly planted the gray-green young cabbage sprouts behind bud's hoe and refused even to think about bess's wedding-chest. but at sunset i saw i must go into town to her dinner for the announcement of her wedding, and wear one of my dresses that i had sold and then borrowed back from her—or have a serious crisis in our friendship. i hadn't strength for that, and i had hoped that the fun of it all would make noise enough to wake some kind of echo in my very silent interior, but it didn't, though there was a positive uproar when owen brought the whole bird collateral family, who now have wings and tails and pin feathers, into the dining-room and put them in the rose bed in the middle of the table so as to hear his oratorical effort as expectant bridegroom.
"why is it, matt, that you have heart enough to drive me like mad out here in the dark and not make me say a word?" i asked him as he brought me home in the after-midnight hush.
"you've trained my heart into silence, ann," he answered gently.
"no!" i exclaimed, for i couldn't bear the thought of matthew's big heart being silent too. just then polly, who had gone to sleep on the back seat, fell off and had to be rescued. we put her out at home in a wilted condition from pure good times, and then matthew took me on up to elmnest. an old moon was making the world look as if mostly composed of black shadows, and matthew walked at my side out to the barn to see if all was quiet and well.
"why, what's the matter?" i exclaimed as i ran to the side of the shed in which mrs. ewe and the lambs resided. "strike your cigar-lighter quick, matt."
as matthew shed a tiny light from a silver tube upon the situation, i sank to my knees with a cry. there upon the grass lay one of my lambkins, and red blood was oozing from its woolly white throat. as i lifted it on my arm, its little body gave a shudder and then lay so still that i knew it was dead. mother ewe stood near in the shadow and gave a plaintive bleat as she came to my side.
"oh," i sobbed as i looked up at matthew, "it's dead. what did it?"
"a dog," answered matthew, as he knelt beside me and laid the tiny dead lamb back on the ground.
"not peckerwood pup!" i exclaimed.
"no, she's too young; some stray," answered matthew as he look savagely around into the shadows.
"it's the littlest one, and she licked my hand the last thing before i left. i can't bear it all, matthew—this is too much for me," i said, and i sobbed into my hands as i sank down into a heap against the side of the bereaved sheep mother, who was still uttering her plaintive moans of question.
i say now and i shall always maintain that the most wonderful tenderness in the world is that with which a man who had known a woman all his life, who has grown with her growth, has shared her laughter and her tears, and knows her to her last feminine foible or strength, takes her into his arms. matthew crouched down upon the grass beside me and gathered me against his breast, away from the dreadful monster-inhabited shadows, and made me feel that a new day could dawn upon the world. i think from the way i huddled to his strength that he knew that i had given up the fight and that his hour was at hand.
"do you want me now, ann?" he asked me; gently as he pressed his cheek against my hair.
"if you want me, take me and help me find that dog to-morrow," i answered as i again reached out my hand and put it for the last time on the pathetic little woolly head. i couldn't hold back the sob.
"go in the house to bed, dear, for you are completely worn out. i'll bury the lamb and look for any traces that may help us to find the savage," said matthew as he drew me to my feet and with quiet authority led me to the back door and opened it for me. for a second i let him take me again into his strong arms, but i wilted there and i simply could not raise my lips to his. the first time i remember kissing matthew berry was at his own tenth birthday party, and he had dropped a handkerchief behind me that i had failed to see as all of the budding flower and chivalry of hayesville stood in a ring in his mother's drawing-room.
"dear old matt," i murmured to myself as i again fell dead between the posts of the ancestral bed.
the next morning i awoke to a new world—or rather i turned straight about and went back into my own proper scheme of existence. at the crack of dawn i wakened and set my muscles for the spring from my pillows, then i stretched my arms, yawned, snuggled my cheek into those same pillows, and deliberately went to sleep, covering up my head with the old embroidered counter-pane to shut out from my ears a clarion crow from beyond my windows. when i next became conscious old rufus' woolly head was peering anxiously into my room door, and i judged from the length of the shadows that the sun cast from the windows that it must be after ten o'clock.
"am you sick?" he inquired with belligerent solicitude.
"no, rufus, and i'm going back to sleep. call me in time to have dinner with father and uncle cradd," i answered as i again burrowed into the pillows.
"i give that there rooster and family a bucket of feed," said rufus begrudgingly, and he stood as if waiting to be praised for thus burying the hatchet that he had been mentally brandishing over the neck of the enemy.
i made no response, but stretched my tired limbs out between the silky old sheets and again lost consciousness.
the next time i became intelligent it was when polly's soft arm was slid under my neck and her red lips applied to my cheek.
"miss ann, are you ill?" she questioned frantically. "mr. matthew and i have been here for hours and have fed and attended to everything. he made me come up because he was afraid you might be dead."
"i am, polly, and now watch me come back to life," i said as i sat up and blinked at the sun coming in through the western window, thus proclaiming the time as full afternoon.
"we found mr. g. bird and all of the other—" polly was beginning to say when i cut her short.
"polly, dear, please go tell matthew to ride down to the bank and telephone bess that i'm coming in to stay a week with her and to invite belle and owen and the rest to dinner. by the time he gets back i'll be ready to go." as i spoke i threw the sheet from me and started to arise, take up my life, and walk.
"but who'll attend to the chickens and—" polly fairly gasped.
"i don't know and i don't care, and if you want to go in to dinner with us, polly, you had better hurry on, for you'll have to beg your mother hard," i said, and at the suggestion polly fairly flew.
i don't exactly know what polly told matthew about me, but his face was a study as i descended elegantly clad and ready to go to town with him.
"good, dear!" he said as i raised my lips to his and gave him a second edition of that ring-around-rosy kiss. "i knew you would wear yourself out. i have telephoned owen to motor out that young belgian that baldwin got down to run my farm, and he'll take charge of everything while you rest."
"i don't care whether he comes or not," i said as i walked towards the library door to say good-by to my parent twins, who hardly noticed me at all on account of a knotty disagreement in some old greek text they were digging over.
"well, you needn't worry about—" matthew was continuing to say, with the deepest uncertainty in his face and voice.
"i won't," i answered. "did bess say she could get enough people together to dance to-night?"
"we'll all go out to the country club and have a great fling," said matthew, with the soothing tone of voice that one would use to a friend temporarily mentally deranged. "hope mother corn-tassel lets polly go."
"there she is waiting at the gate for us with her frills in a bundle. swoop her up, matt, and fly for fear she is getting off without aunt mary's seeing her. aunt mary is so bent on keeping polly's milking hand in."
"that young belgian says he's a good milker, and you needn't worry about—"
"i won't," i again answered matthew, and there was snap enough in my eyes and voice to make him whistle under his breath as he literally swooped up polly, and they both had the good sense to begin to talk about town affairs and leave unmentioned all rural matters.
half-way into town matthew swapped me for his belgian in owen's car, and polly and i went on in with owen and bess, while matthew returned out the riverfield ribbon to install the rescuer of elmnest.
"oh, ann, this is delicious," said bess as she came back with me to cuddle me and ask questions. "but what are—"
"bess," i said, looking her straight in the face with determination, "i am going to marry matt two days before you marry owen, though he doesn't know it yet, and if you talk about elmnest to me i'll go and stay with belle this week."
"how perfectly lovely, and how tired you are, poor dear!" bess congratulated and exclaimed all in the same breath, then imparted both my announcement and my injunction to owen on the front seat. i didn't look at polly while owen was laughing and exclaiming, but when i did she looked queer and quiet; however, i didn't let that at all affect the nice crisp crust that had hardened on me overnight. and i must say that if corn-tassel wasn't happy that evening surrounded by the edition of masculine society that matt had so carefully expurgated for her, she ought to have been.
by that time i had told matthew about his approaching marriage, accepted his bear-hug of joy, delivered before bess and polly and owen and belle, and i had been congratulated and received back into the bosom of my friends with great joy and hilarity.
"now i can take care of you forever and ever, ann," whispered matthew in his good-night, with his lips against my ear. and there in his strong, sustaining arms, even though limp with fatigue, i knew i never did, could, or would, love anybody like i loved him. i don't really suppose i did hear polly sob on her pillow beside mine, where she had insisted on reposing. she must have been all right, for she was gone out into the rural district with matthew before i was awake the next morning.
after annette had served mine and bess's chocolate in bess's bedroom we settled down to the real seriousness of trousseau talk, which lasted for many long hours.
"now if i sell you back all the things of yours i haven't worn for two hundred and fifty dollars that will leave you over three hundred in the bank to get a few wash frocks and hats and things to last you until you are enough married to matthew to use his money freely," said bess after about an hour of discussion and admiration of her own half-finished trousseau.
"yes; i should say those things would be worth about two hundred and fifty dollars now that they are third-hand," i answered bess's excited eyes, giving her a look of well-crusted affection, for there are not many women in the world, with unlimited command of the material that bess has, who would not have offered me a spiritual hurt by trying to give me back my thousand dollars' worth of old clothes which she had not needed in the first place when she bought them.
"now, that's all settled, and we'll begin to stretch that three hundred dollars to its limit. we won't care if things do tear, just so they look smart until you and matthew get to new york. matthew won't be the first bridegroom to go into raptures over a thirty-nine-cent bargain silk made up by a sixty-dollar dressmaker. i'm giving owen a few deceptions in that line myself. that gray and purple tissue splits if you look at it, and i got it all for three dollars. felicia made it up mostly with glue, i think, and i will be a dream in it—a dream that dissolves easily. let's go shopping." as she thus led me into the maze of dishonest trousseau-buying, bess began to ring for annette.
of course most women in the world will refuse to admit that shopping can arouse them from any kind of deadness that the sex is heir to, but a few frank ones, like myself, for instance, will say such to be the case. for three weeks i gave myself up to a perfect debauch of clothes, and ended off each day's spree by dancing myself into a state of exhaustion. everybody in hayesville wanted to give bess and me parties, and most of them did, that is, as many as we could get in at the rate of three a day between dressmakers and milliners and other clothing engagements. owen got perfectly furious and exhausted, but matthew kept in an angelic frame of mind through it all. i think the long days with polly out in the open helped him a lot, though at times i detected a worried expression on the faces of them both, and i felt sure that they were dying to tell me that it had been a case of the razor from rufus' shoe between him and the belgian or that the oil was of the grade that explodes incubators, but i gave them no encouragement and only inquired casually from time to time if the parental twins were alive. polly even tried me out with a bunch of roses, which i knew came from the old musk clump in the corner of the garden which i had seen rebudded, but i thanked her coldly and immediately gave them to belle's mother. i saw matthew comforting her in the distance, and his face was tenderly anxious about me all the rest of the evening.
"dear, are we going to be—be married in town at a church?" matthew inquired timidly one afternoon as he drove me home from a devastated hat shop on the avenue, in which bess and i had been spending the day.
"no, matt dear, at elmnest," i answered kindly, as a bride, no matter how worn out, ought to answer a groom, though bess says that a groom ought to expect to be snapped every time he speaks for ten days before the wedding. "as long as i have got a home that contains two masculine parents i will have to be married in it. i'll go out the morning of the wedding, and you and polly fix everything and invite everybody in riverfield, but just the few people here in town you think we ought to have, not more than a dozen. have it at five o'clock." i thought then that i fixed that hour because everybody would hate it because of the heat and uncertainty as to style of clothes.
"all right, dear," answered matthew, carefully, as if handling conversational eggs.
"miss ann, where do you want us to fix the wedding—er—bell and altar?" polly ventured to ask timidly a few days later.
"the parlor, of course, polly. i hate that room, and it is as far from the barn as possible. now don't bother me any more about it," i snapped, and sent her flying to matthew in consternation. later i saw them poring over the last june-bride number of "the woman's review," and i surmised the kind of a wedding i was in for. that day i tried on a combination of tull, lace, and embroidery at felicia's that tried my soul as well as my body.
"it's no worse than any other wedding-dress i ever saw; take it off quick, madame," i snapped as crossly as i dared at the poor old lady, who had gowned me from the cradle to the—i was about to say grave.
"eh, la la, mais, you are très deficile—difficult," she murmured reproachfully.
"any more so than bess?" i demanded.
"non, perhaps non," she answered, with a french shrug.
with beautiful tact matthew fussed with his throttle, which i couldn't see stuck at all, the entire time he was driving me home, and left me with a careful embrace and also with relief in his face that i hadn't exploded over him. owen is not like that to bess; he just pours gas on her explosions and fans the resulting flame until it is put out by tears in his arms.
"let's never get married at the same time any more, ann," groaned bess as annette tried to put us both to bed that night before we fell dead on her hands.
"don't speak to me!" was my answer as nearly as i can remember.
"i'll be glad to get bess away from your influence," raged owen at me the next day when i very nearly stepped on one of the little chickens that he was having run in and out from the conservatory.
"you'll want to bring her back in a week if both your tempers don't improve," was my cutting reply as this time i lifted another of his small pets with the toe of my slipper and literally flung it across the room.
"great guns!" exploded owen, as he retreated into the conservatory and shut the door.
the next night was the sixth of june and the night of my wedding eve. all bess's bridesmaids and groomsmen were dining with her to rehearse her wedding and to have a sort of farewell bat with matthew and me.
"what about your and ann's wedding to matthew, miss polly?" i heard cale johnson ask polly as she and matthew were untangling a bolt of wide, white-satin ribbon that i had tangled. "all the show to be of rustics?"
"nobody but polly is going to stand by us," said matthew, looking cautiously around to see if i was listening. "ann doesn't believe in making much fuss over a wedding."
"i didn't know i was to be in it until miss bess took me to be fitted—oh, it is a dream of a dress, isn't it, mr. matthew?" said polly, with her enthusiasm also tempered by a glance in my direction.
"it sure is," answered matthew, with the greatest approval, as he regarded polly with parental pride.
"well, i'm glad i'm invited to see it," said cale as he glanced at polly tenderly. "i mean to be at the wedding, matt," he added politely. cale was to be best man with polly as maid of honor at bess's wedding, and he had been standing and sitting close at polly's side for more than ten days.
"let's try it all over again, everybody," called bess's wearied voice, interrupting polly's enthusiastic description of ruffles.
the wedding day was a nightmare. annette and the housemaid and bess and a girl from madame felicia's packed up three trunks full of my clothes and sent them all to the station.
"i wish i never had to see them again," i said viciously under my breath as the expressmen carried out the last trunk.
"now, dear, in these two suitcases are your wedding things and your going-away gown. your dress is in the long box and we will send them all out early in the morning in my car. matthew will drive us out as soon as we can get ready," bess had said the night before, as she sank on my bed and spread out with fatigue.
