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The Lighted Match by Charles Neville Buck
The Lighted Match by Charles Neville Buck
"When a feller an' a gal washes their hands in the same basin at the same time, it's a tol'able good sign they won't git married this year."
The oracle spoke through the bearded lips of a farmer perched on the top step of his cabin porch. The while he construed omens, a setter pup industriously gnawed at his boot-heels.
The girl was bending forward, her fingers spread in a tin basin, as the man at her elbow poured water slowly from a gourd-dipper. Heaped, in disorder against the cabin wall, lay their red hunting-coats, crops, and riding gauntlets.
The oracle tumbled the puppy down the steps and watched its return to the attack. Then with something of melancholy retrospect in his pale eyes he pursued his reflections. "Now there was Sissy Belmire an' Bud Thomas, been keeping company for two years, then washed hands in common at the Christian Endeavor picnic an'-" He broke off to shake his head in sorrowing memory.
The young man, holding his muddied digits over the water, paused to consider the matter.
Suddenly his hands went down into the basin with a splash.
"It is now the end of October," he enlightened; "next year comes in nine weeks."
The sun was dipping into a cloud-bank already purpled and gold-rimmed. Shortly it would drop behind the bristling summit-line of the hills.
The girl looked down at tell-tale streaks of red clay on the skirt of her riding habit, and shook her head. "'Twill never, never do to go back like this," she sighed. "They'll know I've come a cropper, and they fancy I'm as breakable as Sévres. There will be no end of questions."
The young man dropped to his knees and began industriously plying a brush on the damaged skirt. The farmer took his eyes from the puppy for an upward glance. His face was solicitous.
"When I saw that horse of yours fall down, it looked to me like he was trying to jam you through to China. You sure lit hard!"
"It didn't hurt me," she laughed as she thrust her arms into the sleeves of her pink coat. "You see, we thought we knew the run better than the whips, and we chose the short cut across your meadow. My horse took off too wide at that stone fence. That's why he went down, and why we turned your house into a port of repairs. You have been very kind."
The trio started down the grass-grown pathway to the gate where the hunters stood hitched. The young man dropped back a few paces to satisfy himself that she was not concealing some hurt. He knew her half-masculine contempt for acknowledging the fragility of her sex.
Reassurance came as he watched her walking ahead with the unconscious grace that belonged to her pliant litheness and expressed itself in her superb, almost boyish carriage.
When they had mounted and he had reined his bay down to the side of her roan, he sat studying her through half-closed, satisfied eyes though he already knew her as the Moslem priest knows the Koran. While they rode in silence he conned the inventory. Slim uprightness like the strength of a young poplar; eyes that played the whole color-gamut between violet and slate-gray, as does the Mediterranean under sun and cloud-bank; lips that in repose hinted at melancholy and that broke into magic with a smile. Then there was the suggestion of a thought-furrow between the brows and a chin delicately chiseled, but resolute and fascinatingly uptilted.
It was a face that triumphed over mere prettiness with hints of challenging qualities; with individuality, with possibilities of purpose, with glints of merry humor and unspoken sadness; with deep-sleeping potentiality for passion; with a hundred charming whimsicalities.
The eyes were just now fixed on the burning beauty of the sunset and the thought-furrow was delicately accentuated. She drew a long, deep breath and, letting the reins drop, stretched out both arms toward the splendor of the sky-line.
"It is so beautiful-so beautiful!" she cried, with the rapture of a child, "and it all spells Freedom. I should like to be the freest thing that has life under heaven. What is the freest thing in the world?"
She turned her face on him with the question, and her eyes widened after a way they had until they seemed to be searching far out in the fields of untalked-of things, and seeing there something that clouded them with disquietude.
"I should like to be a man," she went on, "a man and a hobo." The furrow vanished and the eyes suddenly went dancing. "That is what I should like to be-a hobo with a tomato-can and a fire beside the railroad-track."
The man said nothing, and she looked up to encounter a steady gaze from eyes somewhat puzzled.
His pupils held a note of pained seriousness, and her voice became responsively vibrant as she leaned forward with answering gravity in her own.
"What is it?" she questioned. "You are troubled."
He looked away beyond her to the pine-topped hills, which seemed to be marching with lances and ragged pennants, against the orange field of the sky. Then his glance came again to her face.
"They call me the Shadow," he said slowly. "You know whose shadow that means. These weeks have made us comrades, and I am jealous because you are the sum of two girls, and I know only one of them. I am jealous of the other girl at home in Europe. I am jealous that I don't know why you, who are seemingly subject only to your own fancy, should crave the freedom of the hobo by the railroad track."
She bent forward to adjust a twisted martingale, and for a moment her face was averted. In her hidden eyes at that moment, there was deep suffering, but when she straightened up she was smiling.
"There is nothing that you shall not know. But not yet-not yet! After all, perhaps it's only that in another incarnation I was a vagrant bee and I'm homesick for its irresponsibility."
"At all events"-he spoke with an access of boyish enthusiasm-"I 'thank whatever gods may be' that I have known you as I have. I'm glad that we have not just been idly rich together. Why, Cara, do you remember the day we lost our way in the far woods, and I foraged corn, and you scrambled stolen eggs? We were forest folk that day; primitive as in the years when things were young and the best families kept house in caves."
The girl nodded. "I approve of my shadow," she affirmed.
The smile of enthusiasm died on his face and something like a scowl came there.
"The chief trouble," he said, "is that altogether too decent brute, Pagratide. I don't like double shadows; they usually stand for confused lights."
"Are you jealous of Pagratide?" she laughed. "He pretends to have a similar sentiment for you."
"Well," he conceded, laughing in spite of himself, "it does seem that when a European girl deigns to play a while with her American cousins, Europe might stay on its own side of the pond. This Pagratide is a commuter over the Northern Ocean track. He harasses the Atlantic with his goings and comings."
"The Atlantic?" she echoed mockingly.
"Possibly I was too modest," he amended. "I mean me and the Atlantic-particularly me."
From around the curve of the road sounded a tempered shout. The girl laughed.
"You seem to have summoned him out of space," she suggested.
The man growled. "The local from Europe appears to have arrived." He gathered in his reins with an almost vicious jerk which brought the bay's head up with a snort of remonstrance.
A horseman appeared at the turn of the road. Waving his hat, he put spurs to his mount and came forward at a gallop. The newcomer rode with military uprightness, softened by the informal ease of the polo-player. Even at the distance, which his horse was lessening under the insistent pressure of his heels, one could note a boyish charm in the frankness of his smile and an eagerness in his eyes.
"I have been searching for you for centuries at least," he shouted, with a pleasantly foreign accent, which was rather a nicety than a fault of enunciation, "but the quest is amply rewarded!"
He wheeled his horse to the left with a precision that again bespoke the cavalryman, and bending over the girl's gauntleted hand, kissed her fingers in a manner that added to something of ceremonious flourish much more of individual homage. Her smile of greeting was cordial, but a degree short of enthusiasm.
"I thought-" she hesitated. "I thought you were on the other side."
The newcomer's laugh showed a glistening line of the whitest teeth under a closely-cropped dark mustache.
"I have run away," he declared. "My honored father is, of course, furious, but Europe was desolate-and so-" He shrugged his shoulders. Then, noting Benton's half-amused, half-annoyed smile, he bowed and saluted. "Ah, Benton," he said. "How are you? I see that your eyes resent foreign invasion."
Benton raised his brows in simulated astonishment. "Are you still foreign?" he inquired. "I thought perhaps you had taken out your first citizenship papers."
"But you?" Pagratide turned to the girl with something of entreaty. "Will you not give me your welcome?"
In the distance loomed the tile roofs and tall chimneys of "Idle Times." Between stretched a level sweep of road.
"You didn't ask permission," she replied, with a touch of disquiet in her pupils. "When a woman is asked to extend a welcome, she must be given time to prepare it. I ran away from Europe, you know, and after all you are a part of Europe."
She shook out her reins, bending forward over the roan's neck, and with a clatter of gravel under their twelve hoofs, the horses burst forward in a sudden neck and neck dash, toward the patch of red roofs set in a mosaic of Autumn woods.
* * *
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"Ms. Crawford, it’s time for you to divorce Mr. Larsen and come home. You're the only heiress the Master's waiting for.” ~•~ For the sake of love, Amara accepted the arranged marriage with Tobias William Larsen. She did everything to gain her husband’s heart but when his old love returned, she realized that all her effort was all for naught. Tobias demanded a divorce on the night of their wedding anniversary, even at the price of threatening her. Heartbroken, she finally dropped all her illusions about him and returned home to be the heiress. The next time she met Tobias, they were no longer couples but opponents. "Mr. Larsen, should I remind you again? We've divorced." "Amara, that's the stupidest mistake I've ever made. Please come back to me."
Lyric had spent her life being hated. Bullied for her scarred face and hated by everyone-including her own mate-she was always told she was ugly. Her mate only kept her around to gain territory, and the moment he got what he wanted, he rejected her, leaving her broken and alone. Then, she met him. The first man to call her beautiful. The first man to show her what it felt like to be loved. It was only one night, but it changed everything. For Lyric, he was a saint, a savior. For him, she was the only woman that had ever made him cum in bed-a problem he had been battling for years. Lyric thought her life would finally be different, but like everyone else in her life, he lied. And when she found out who he really was, she realized he wasn't just dangerous-he was the kind of man you don't escape from. Lyric wanted to run. She wanted freedom. But she desired to navigate her way and take back her respect, to rise above the ashes. Eventually, she was forced into a dark world she didn't wish to get involved with.
Linsey was stood up by her groom to run off with another woman. Furious, she grabbed a random stranger and declared, "Let's get married!" She had acted on impulse, realizing too late that her new husband was the notorious rascal, Collin. The public laughed at her, and even her runaway ex offered to reconcile. But Linsey scoffed at him. "My husband and I are very much in love!" Everyone thought she was delusional. Then Collin was revealed to be the richest man in the world. In front of everyone, he got down on one knee and held up a stunning diamond ring. "I look forward to our forever, honey."
I received a pornographic video. "Do you like this?" The man speaking in the video is my husband, Mark, whom I haven't seen for several months. He is naked, his shirt and pants scattered on the ground, thrusting forcefully on a woman whose face I can't see, her plump and round breasts bouncing vigorously. I can clearly hear the slapping sounds in the video, mixed with lustful moans and grunts. "Yes, yes, fuck me hard, baby," the woman screams ecstatically in response. "You naughty girl!" Mark stands up and flips her over, slapping her buttocks as he speaks. "Stick your ass up!" The woman giggles, turns around, sways her buttocks, and kneels on the bed. I feel like someone has poured a bucket of ice water on my head. It's bad enough that my husband is having an affair, but what's worse is that the other woman is my own sister, Bella. ************************************************************************************************************************ "I want to get a divorce, Mark," I repeated myself in case he didn't hear me the first time-even though I knew he'd heard me clearly. He stared at me with a frown before answering coldly, "It's not up to you! I'm very busy, don't waste my time with such boring topics, or try to attract my attention!" The last thing I was going to do was argue or bicker with him. "I will have the lawyer send you the divorce agreement," was all I said, as calmly as I could muster. He didn't even say another word after that and just went through the door he'd been standing in front of, slamming it harshly behind him. My eyes lingered on the knob of the door a bit absentmindedly before I pulled the wedding ring off my finger and placed it on the table. I grabbed my suitcase, which I'd already had my things packed in and headed out of the house.
Alexander's coldness was laid bare before Florrie; he even asked her to buy morning-after pills for another woman. Enduring the pain became her routine, all because Alexander was a stand-in for Alec, her lost love. But one day, she tricked him into signing the divorce papers and said, "I never loved you." Devastation clung to him, his gaze clouded by despair. "You can't leave. I won't sign." Then Alec returned as a conglomerate heir. She searched his face for love and found none-until she turned away. He cracked, tears falling. "I'm sorry," he begged. "I love you."
To most, Verena passed for a small-town clinic doctor; in truth, she worked quiet miracles. Three years after Isaac fell hopelessly for her and kept vigil through lonely nights, a crash left him in a wheelchair and stripped his memory. To keep him alive, Verena married him, only to hear, "I will never love you." She just smiled. "That works out-I'm not in love with you, either." Entangled in doubt, he recoiled from hope, yet her patience held him fast-kneeling to meet his eyes, palm warm on his hair, steadying him-until her glowing smile rekindled feelings he believed gone forever.
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