The Golden Bird | Page 2

to-morrow, and let me
move you and Father Craddock over into that infernal, empty old barn I
keep open as a hotel for nigger servants. Marry me instead--"
"Instead of the hen?" I interrupted him with a laugh. "I can't, Matt, you
dear thing. I honestly can't. I've got to go back to the land from which
my race sprang and make it blossom into a beautiful existence for those
two dear old boys. When Uncle Cradd heard of the smash from that
horrible phosphate deal he was at the door the next morning at sun-up,
driving the two gray mules to one wagon himself, with old Rufus
driving the gray horses hitched to that queer tumble-down, old family
coach, though he hadn't spoken to father since he married mother
twenty-eight years ago.
"'Ready to move you all home, bag and baggage, William,' he said, as
he took father into his huge old arms clad in the rusty broadcloth of his
best suit, which I think is the garment he purchased for father's very
worldly, town wedding with my mother, which he came from
Riverfield to attend for purposes of disinheriting the bridegroom and
me, though I was several years in the future at that date. 'Elmnest is as
much yours as mine, as I told you when you sprigged off to marry in
town. Get your dimity together, Nancy! Your grandmother Craddock's
haircloth trunk is strapped on behind her carriage there, and Rufus will

drive you home. These mules are too skittish for him to handle. Fine
pair, eh, William?' And right there in the early dawn, almost in front of
the garage that contained his touring Chauvinnais and my gray roadster,
father stood in his velvet dressing-gown and admired the two
moth-eaten old animals. Now, I honestly ask you, Matthew, could a
woman of heart refuse at least to attempt to see those two great old
boys through the rest of their lives in peace and comfort together?
Elmnest is roof and land and that is about all, for Uncle Cradd never
would let father give him a cent on account of his feud with mother,
even after she had been dead for years. Father would have gone home
with him that morning, but I made him stay to turn things over to Judge
Rutherford. Aren't they great, those two old pioneers?"
"They are the best sports ever, Ann, and I say let's fix up Elmnest for
them to live in when they won't stay with us, and for a summer home
for us to go and take--take the children for rural training. Now what do
you say--wedding to-morrow?" And the light in dear old Matthew's
eyes was very lovely indeed as the music grew less blatant and the
waiter turned down the lights near the little alcove that the wide walnut
paneling made beside the steps that go up to the balcony. I have always
said that the Clovermead Country Club has the loveliest house
anywhere in the South.
"No, Matthew, I care too much about you to let you marry a woman in
search of a roof and food," I answered him, with all of the affection I
seemed to possess at that time in my eyes. "You deserve better than that
from me."
"Now, see here, Ann Craddock, did I or did I not ask you to marry me
at your fourteenth birthday party, which was just ten years ago, and did
you or did you not tell me just to wait until you got grown? Have you
or have you not reached the years of discretion and decision? I am
ready to marry, I am!" And as he made this announcement of his
matrimonially inclined condition of mind, Matthew took my hand in
his and laid his cheek against it.
"My heart isn't grown up yet, Matt," I said softly, with all the
tenderness I, as I before remarked, at that time possessed. "Don't wait

for me. Marry Belle Proctor or somebody and--and bring the--babies
out to Elmnest for--"
The explosion that then followed landed me in Owen Murray's arms on
the floor of the ball-room, and landed Matthew in his big racing-car,
which I could hear go roaring down the road beyond the golf-links.
There is a certain kind of woman whose brain develops with amazing
normality and strength, but whose heart remains very soft-fibered and
uncertain, with tendencies to lapse into second childhood. I am that
garden variety, and it took the exercising of many heart interests to
toughen my cardiac organ.
As I traveled out the long turnpike that wound itself through the
Harpeth Valley to the very old and tradition-mossed town of Riverfield,
in the high, huge-wheeled, swinging old coach of my
Great-grandmother Craddock, sitting pensively alone while father
occupied the front