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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Heart's Kingdom, by Maria Thompson
+Daviess, Illustrated by W. B. King
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Heart's Kingdom
+
+
+Author: Maria Thompson Daviess
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2006  [eBook #18756]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART'S KINGDOM***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Kathryn Lybarger, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 18756-h.htm or 18756-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18756/18756-h/18756-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18756/18756-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART'S KINGDOM
+
+by
+
+MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
+
+Author of The Melting of Molly, etc.
+
+Illustrated by W. B. King
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "_It's a mighty big turkle," he faltered, and snuggled
+closer._]
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+Copyright, 1917
+by
+The Reilly & Britton Co.
+Made in U.S.A.
+Published September 12, 1917
+Second Printing October 1, 1917
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+       I The World and the Flesh           9
+
+      II The Harpeth Jaguar               27
+
+     III The Gauntlet                     41
+
+      IV To Turkey Gulch                  61
+
+       V Having It Out                    92
+
+      VI Deep Digging                    109
+
+     VII The Tristan Love Song           132
+
+    VIII Breasting the Gale              146
+
+      IX Into Brambles                   161
+
+       X Water and Oil                   181
+
+      XI A Bit of Raw Life               195
+
+     XII The Tenacious Turtle            211
+
+    XIII The Short-Circuit               227
+
+     XIV Abide With Me                   241
+
+      XV A Clandestine Adventure         258
+
+     XVI The Jewel in the Matrix         283
+
+    XVII The Pageant                     297
+
+   XVIII Light--Into Darkness            312
+
+     XIX The Spark and the Blaze         327
+
+      XX The Covert of Wings             344
+
+
+
+
+The Heart's Kingdom
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE WORLD AND THE FLESH
+
+
+"A beautiful woman is intended to create a heaven on earth and she has
+no business wasting herself making imaginary excursions into any future
+paradise. The present is her time for action; and again, Charlotte, I
+ask you to name the day upon which you intend to marry me," said Nickols
+Powers, as he stood lounging in the broad window of Aunt Clara's music
+room and gazing down into the subdued traffic of upper Madison Avenue.
+
+"I wish you had never taken me across that ferry and into that room
+crowded with redolent humanity to hear an absurd little man string
+together vivid, gross words about religion, words that made me tingle
+all over," I answered as I threw my coat on a chair, lifted my hat from
+my head and sat down on the seat before the dark old piano. "I think
+religion is the most awful thing in the world and I am as afraid of it
+as I am of--of death. I'm going home to my father."
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid of it. Religion is the most potent form of
+intoxication known to the human race. That's why I took you over to hear
+the little baseball player. I wanted you to get a sip. But don't let it
+go to your head." And Nickols mocked me with soft tenderness in his
+smile.
+
+"Well, it frightened me, and I don't like it. I'm going home to my
+father and forget it," I reiterated with a kind of numbness upon me, the
+like of which I had never before experienced.
+
+"I'll protect you from any religious danger just as effectively as Judge
+Powers. I'm younger--slightly--than he, but I know just as many of the
+wiles of the world and the flesh as he does and maybe a few more,"
+Nickols assured me, with a flash in his dark eyes that was both wicked
+and humorous, as well as very delightful.
+
+"And the devil, too! But you don't understand. I must go home to my
+father," I answered still again.
+
+"You don't understand yourself," returned Nickols. "There are strange
+hieroglyphics imprinted on every woman's heart and a man can read only
+an unconnected word here and there when he can get his flashlight thrown
+into the depths--if he dares adventure into her life at all. I feel that
+I take my own life in my hands when I allow you to talk to me as I am
+allowing you to-night."
+
+"How do you know that those hieroglyphics might not mean the salvation
+of the world if she could spell them out herself, or some great and good
+person took a steady lamp and went down into her heart and--"
+
+"It takes a very wicked man to read a woman; good men are blinded by
+them and stumble," Nickols assured me as he came over, stood beside me
+and ran his long, slender, artist's fingers up and down the keys of the
+piano, which evoked a strange, diabolical sort of harmony from them. "I
+understand about it all, so please come tell me you'll marry me." This
+time his arms almost encircled me, but I slipped between them as he
+laughed at me with his adorable pagan charm.
+
+"No, Nickols, that would be an easy--and--and delightful way out, but I
+am really frightened down in some queer part of my anatomy that lies
+between my breast bone and my spinal column. Something is stirring in my
+heart and I'm afraid of it. I've got to get out in a wilderness and
+fight with it."
+
+"Take it out on me," offered Nickols, with a laugh that was both wistful
+and provoking.
+
+"No, I've got a home panic and I must go."
+
+"Then when do I get my answer from what is left of you after the
+battle?"
+
+"I'll let you know when to come and get it--under the roof of the
+Poplars," I answered him from the doorway.
+
+And the very next morning I went down into the Harpeth Valley, driven I
+knew not by what, nor to what. I only knew that I felt full of a living,
+smothered flame and I was sure that it was best to let it burst forth in
+my ancestral abiding place.
+
+I was born of a man who has the most evolved brain in the Harpeth
+Valley, who has been a drunkard for twenty years, and of a very
+beautiful and haughty woman whose own mother, to the day of her death,
+shouted at Methodist love feasts. Is it any wonder that when I was tried
+by fire I burned "as the cracklings of thorns under a pot?"
+
+"How _could_ you set that ridiculous little Methodist meeting house on
+the very doorstep of my garden, father?" I demanded, as I stood tall and
+furious before him in the breakfast room on the morning after my return
+home from my winter in the East with Aunt Clara. "Cousin Nickols has
+spent many months out of three years on the plans of restoration for
+that garden, and he is coming down soon to sketch and photograph it to
+use in some of his commissions. What shall I--what will _you_--say to
+him when he finds that the vista he kept open for the line of Paradise
+Ridge has been cut off by that pile of stones to house the singing of
+psalms?" And as I raged I had a feeling of being relentlessly
+pursued--by something I didn't understand.
+
+"Madam," returned father, with a dignity he always used with me when he
+encountered one of my rages, "you will find that the chapel does not in
+any way interfere with Nickols' carefully planned view. Gregory Goodloe
+spent many days of thought in seeking to place it so that it would not
+intrude itself upon your garden, and he built his parsonage completely
+out of view, though it gives him only one large southern window to his
+study and only northern ones to his bedroom."
+
+"Does the creature also sleep and eat and have his being right there
+behind my hollyhocks?" I demanded, and my rage began to merge into
+actual grief, which in turn threatened to come to the surface in hot
+tears.
+
+"Now, Charlotte, my daughter," father was beginning to say with soothing
+in his voice instead of the belligerence that from my youth up had
+always just preceded my floods of tears. Dabney, the shriveled black
+butler, who had always devotedly sympathized with my exhibitions of
+temperament, to which he had, from my infancy, given the name of
+"tantrums," set the platter of fried chicken before father's place at
+the damask and silver-spread old table by the window, through which the
+morning sun was shining genially. Then, with a smile as broad and genial
+as that of the sun, he drew out my chair from behind the ancestral
+silver coffee urn, which was puffing out clouds of fragrant steam.
+
+"Breakfast am sarved, honey chile," he crooned soothingly, "an' yo'
+Mammy done put the liver wing right ag'in yo' fork."
+
+Dabney had many times stemmed my floods with choice food and was trying
+his favorite method of pacification.
+
+I faltered and wavered at the temptation. I was hungry.
+
+"Just wait until you see Goodloe and talk it over with him," father
+said, as he seized the advantage of my wavering and seated himself
+opposite me as Dabney pushed in my chair and whisked the cover off the
+silver sugar bowl and presented one of his old willow-ware cups for
+father's two lumps and a dash of cream. "I asked him to--"
+
+"See him? You don't expect me to discuss Nickols' and my garden with an
+ignorant bucolic Methodist minister, who probably doesn't know a
+honeysuckle from a jimson weed, do you?" I asked with actual rage rising
+again above the tears as I literally dashed the cream into his cup and
+deluged the boiling coffee down upon it so that a scalding splatter
+peppered my hand. "I never want to see or hear or speak to or about
+him. I'll build a trellis as high as his church, run evergreen
+honeysuckle on it and go my way in an opposite direction from his.
+I'll--" Just here I observed consternation spread over Dabney's black
+face, then communicate itself to father's distressed countenance as he
+glanced out the window. Quickly he pushed his morning julep behind the
+jar of roses in the center of the table, while Dabney flung a napkin
+over the silver pitcher with frost on its sides and mint nodding over
+its brim.
+
+And then, as I was about to pour my own coffee and launch forth on
+another tirade on the subject of my neighbor, I heard a rich tenor voice
+singing just outside the window in the garden beside the steps that led
+down from the long windows in the dining room to the old flagstone walk.
+Nickols and I had searched through volumes of dusty antique prints to
+see just how we wanted that walk to lead out to the sunken garden beyond
+the tall old poplars. I also saw the handle of a rake or hoe in action
+across the window landscape and heard unmistakable sounds of vigorous
+gardening.
+
+I rose to my feet with battle in my eyes and then stopped perfectly
+still and listened--unwillingly but compelled.
+
+    "Drink to me only with thine eyes
+    And I will pledge with mine,"
+
+were the words that floated in at the window on the fragrant morning
+sunbeams, in a voice of the most penetrating tenderness I had ever felt
+break against my heartstrings.
+
+"I--I--he sometimes demolishes a--a few weeds," father faltered, while
+Dabney ducked his cotton-wool old head and slipped out of the door.
+
+"You allow him to work in my--garden--and--" I faltered, just recovering
+from the impact of the words of my favorite song of songs hurled at me
+by the unseen enemy, when I was interrupted by his appearance in the
+open door and we stood facing each other.
+
+I am a woman who has very decided tastes about the biological man. I
+know just how I want the creatures to look, and I haven't much interest
+in one that isn't at least of the type of my preferred kind. Because I
+am very tall and broad and deep-bosomed and vivid and high colored, and
+have strong white teeth that crunch up about as much food in the
+twenty-four hours as most field hands consume, and altogether I am very
+much like one of the most vigorous of Sorolla's paintings, that is the
+probable pathological reason I have always preferred an evolved Whistler
+masculine nocturne that retreats to the limits of my comprehension and
+then beckons me to follow. All other men I have grouped beyond the
+border of my feminine nature and sought to waste no thought upon them.
+It was a shock to come, suddenly, in my own breakfast room, face to face
+with a type of man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly
+large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored
+lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond
+Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved
+majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of
+worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly
+strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an
+exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf which, it was a shock to see,
+matched glints from eyes back under his heavy gold brows with what
+appeared to be extreme sophistication. After the shock of the tie the
+loose gray London worsted coat and trousers made only a passing
+impression; and from my involuntary summary of the whole surprising man,
+which had taken less than an instant, my dazed brain came back and was
+held and concentrated by the beauty of the smile that flooded out over
+me in welcome after my father's hurried introduction.
+
+"The Reverend Mr. Gregory Goodloe--my daughter Charlotte," father
+announced, as he rose and waved in my direction a hand that was cordial
+to the point of bravado.
+
+"I'm so glad you came in time to see your crocuses and anemones, Miss
+Powers," the Jaguar said as he took my hand in his. "Dabney has let me
+help him hand-weed them and they are a glory, aren't they?" While he
+spoke he still held my hand and I was still too dazed to regain
+possession of it. Father saved the situation.
+
+"Sit down, sit down, Parson, and let Charlotte give you a cup of coffee
+while it is on the simmer," he urged with hasty hospitality as if intent
+upon effectively bottling me up, at least for the immediate present.
+"She was just pouring my cup. Will you say grace before I take my first
+sip?" was the high explosive he further proceeded to hurl in my face.
+
+And as he spoke I sank dumbly into my chair and helplessly bowed my head
+to a ceremony so obsolete in the world from which I had come that I felt
+as if I was slipping back into the days of the pioneer, when the customs
+of life were still primitive and dictated by emotion rather than mental
+science.
+
+And there, with father's concealed mint julep right against his
+interlaced fingers, the mountain lion bowed his crested head and
+involved me in prayer for the first time since chapel-service in my
+college days.
+
+"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof ... for which we give
+thanks, thy children, with Lord Jesus, Amen!"
+
+"Amen," mumbled father as if from the depths of embarrassment, and
+against my will, as it were, a queer sort of a croon of an echo came
+from my own throat.
+
+Also that was the first time I had ever heard words of prayer under the
+roof of the Poplars. It embarrassed me and I hated it and the cause of
+it. The spell which had possessed me since the entrance of the Reverend
+Goodloe, vanished, and the rage that had been in me at the discovery of
+the intrusion of his chapel and himself upon my life when I had come
+home to be free to be wicked, boiled up within me and then sugared down
+to a rich--and dangerous--syrup. While I poured his coffee I again took
+stock of him, this time coldly and with deadly intent. The reasons for
+his entry into my hitherto satisfactory family life, even at breakfast
+time, I did not know, any more than I knew the reason for the chapel on
+the other side of the hollyhocks, but I felt that I feared both and
+intended to get rid of them. If the enemy had been what one could
+reasonably expect a young Methodist preacher to be, I would have routed
+him and his meekness within the hour and had the chapel moved to a lot
+on a side street in town within the week. However, when a hunter comes
+suddenly upon a Harpeth jaguar he is glad to use his best repeater and
+he is careful how he shoots, though if he is very skillful he may tease
+the lion aloft with a few nipping shots. I felt suddenly very strong for
+the fight that I knew was on, though the lion didn't possess that
+knowledge as yet. Deliberately I fired a preliminary bullet that seemed
+to graze father, though it left the Parson unharmed.
+
+"Will you have your mint julep before I pour your coffee, Mr. Goodloe?"
+I asked, with seemingly careless friendliness. "Dabney, put fresh ice in
+father's glass and fill mine and Mr. Goodloe's."
+
+"I was feeling a little under the weather this morning," said father
+hastily, as he set his glass from behind the rose jar upon Dabney's
+waiter and motioned it all away from him, thus denying the morning
+friend of his lifetime. I had never drunk a julep before breakfast in my
+life, only tasted around the frosty edges of father's, but I held my
+ground, and held out my glass to Dabney, who falteringly, almost in
+terror, took the frosted silver pitcher from the sideboard and poured me
+an unusually large draft of the family beverage.
+
+"Will you have yours now, Mr. Goodloe?" I asked again with still more of
+the sugared solicitation.
+
+"No, I believe I prefer the coffee, but don't pour it until you have
+drunk your julep; you know frost is a thing that soon passes," was the
+cheerful answer, though a suspicion of an amethyst glint made me know
+that the Jaguar had at least heard the zip of the bullet.
+
+I loathed that mixture of ice and sugar and mint and whiskey but I had
+to drink it, and it heated me up inside both physically and mentally,
+and took away all the queer dogging fear. And because of it I don't
+remember what else happened at that breakfast except that I wanted to
+clutch and cling to the warm, strong hand that I again found mine in at
+the time of parting. But I didn't; at least, I don't think I did. After
+it was taken away from me I went very slowly up to my room and again
+went to bed, Mammy caressingly officiating and rejoicing that I was
+going to "nap the steam cars outen my bones."
+
+I fell asleep with the continued strains of "Drink to me only" in my
+ears, and wondering if I ought to put it down as insult added to injury,
+and I awoke several hours later to find Letitia Cockrell, one of the
+dear friends whom many generations had bestowed upon me, sitting on the
+foot of my bed consuming the last of the box of marrons with which
+Nickols had provisioned my journey down from New York. I was glad I had
+tucked the note that came in the box under my pillow the night before. I
+trust Letitia and she is entirely sophisticated, but she has never had a
+lover who lives in Greenwich Village, New York, America.
+
+"Is this the open season for two-day hangovers, in New York?" she
+demanded as she sniffed me suspiciously at the same time she dimpled and
+smiled at me.
+
+"No, this is not a metropolitan hangover. It was acquired at breakfast,
+Letitia," I answered her as I sat up and stretched out my bare arms to
+give her a good shake and a hug. "'You may break, you may shatter the
+glass if you will, but the scent of the julep will hang 'round you
+still,'" I misquoted as I drew my knees up into my embrace and took the
+last remaining marron.
+
+"Why, Mammy said Mr. Goodloe had breakfast with you. Did you sneak it
+from the judge's pitcher?" demanded Letitia, as she likewise drew her
+knees up into her arms and settled herself against one of the posts of
+my bed for the many hours' résumé of our individual existences in which
+we always indulged upon being reunited after separation.
+
+"I did not," I answered. "I drank it before his eyes, and then I don't
+remember what happened and I don't care."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Just that. I never have been drunk because I never could drink enough.
+I've always felt that there isn't enough liquid in the world to faze me,
+and I don't like it anyway, but Dabney was so impressed by His Worship
+that he poured it double for me before I had had breakfast. I hope I
+staggered or swore but I don't think I did. The Reverend Goodloe can
+tell you better than I. Ask him."
+
+"Gregory Goodloe? Oh, Charlotte!"
+
+"That's the point I was coming to, Letitia: Just who is this Reverend
+Goodloe that I shouldn't drink a quart of mint julep before him if I
+want to? I had well over a pint of champagne with a Mr. Justice two
+nights before I left New York and I stopped then out of courtesy to one
+of the generals whom we expect to defend us from the Kaiser. Who is your
+Gregory Goodloe? Tell we all about him, unexpurgated and unafraid."
+
+"Didn't you know about him--and the chapel before you came?" Letitia
+queried cautiously, as if fearing the explosion she felt was sure to
+result.
+
+"I did not," I answered. "I met him and his chapel and the mint julep
+all in the same five minutes, and is it any wonder I went down? Go on.
+Tell me the worst or the best. I'm ready." And as I spoke I settled my
+pillows comfortably, getting a little thrill from the crumpled letter
+underneath the bottom one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE HARPETH JAGUAR
+
+
+"It is beautifully romantic, but I don't know what we are going to do
+about it," answered Letitia with genuine trouble, puckering her brow
+under one of her smooth waves of seal-brown hair. Letitia is one of the
+wonderful variety of women who patch out life, piece by piece, in a
+beautiful symmetrical pattern and who do not have imagination enough to
+admire anything about a riotous crazy quilt. She is in love with Clifton
+Gray, has been since she wound her brown braids about her head, and is
+piecing strips of him into her life-fabric by the very sanest
+love--courtship--marriage design.
+
+"We just can't go on as we have been doing lately," she continued. "We
+all decided that you would know what to do about him, and would do it
+when you came home. We suspected Judge Powers hadn't written you all the
+facts when you didn't come and the building went on up. You will be
+able to do something about him, won't you?"
+
+"I think it is likely," I answered, with the brittle sugar in my voice
+that Letitia only half knows the flavor of. "But don't try to sketch
+things, Letitia. Begin at the beginning and go straight to the end; I'll
+pick up the pieces."
+
+"Well, of course you remember the Bishop Goodloe romance, don't you?"
+asked Letitia, hopeful that she could get a small start ahead on her
+chronicle.
+
+"I don't remember anything about any bishop, ever. I forget things about
+that kind of people. What did, or didn't he do?"
+
+"Charlotte!" remonstrated Letitia. "He was the last of the Goodloes who
+built that old Goodloe home on exactly the place where the first Goodloe
+set the stakes of the first stockade put up in the Harpeth Valley, right
+here in Goodloets. It burned down the night he married that Miss Gregory
+in New York, before we were born. Don't you remember we used to play in
+the ruins, just over here beyond the garden where the chapel stands now?
+Your father bought the property. Part of your garden is old Madam
+Goodloe's garden and that's why it was so wonderful for Judge Powers to
+give the lot and let Mr. Goodloe build the chapel there. We all felt
+that, though some of us were scared when we thought about what you might
+do when you came home. Still, after we saw that wonderful little stone
+chapel that Mr. Goodloe had one of the greatest architects in New York
+design, after he had sent him packages of sketches of your garden and
+the Poplars, so it would only make it all the more beautiful, we felt
+better. You don't really mind about it, do you, dear?" Letitia's voice
+was beseechingly enthusiastic, though keyed down with a note of anxiety.
+
+"Go on!" I commanded, packing down the rage in the dark corners of my
+inmost heart.
+
+"Nobody ever knew why Bishop Goodloe never came back after he married
+while on a mission from the Southern Methodist Conference to the
+Northern Methodist Conference. He severed his relations with his own
+Conference, and he never preached again though he was one of the most
+wonderful and eloquent preachers the South has ever known. He was the
+youngest bishop the church had ever ordained. Nobody ever knew what
+happened, and all we know now is that this perfectly beautiful man, who
+is the bishop's son, came down to the General Conference in Nashville,
+was examined and ordained, and the presiding bishop sent him out here to
+Goodloets last November. We don't know anything about him except that he
+has been fighting in the trenches in France for a year and has had a
+bullet cut out of his left lung. Everybody adores him, and we all sit
+spellbound listening to him preach, I think mostly on account of his
+voice, because none of us ever seems to remember what he is preaching
+about. He's been having services in the ballroom at the Country Club but
+he is going to dedicate the chapel soon and we are all relieved. It has
+been fun to go out to church at the Club twice every Sunday and to
+prayer meeting on Wednesday night all winter, and we've danced in the
+long parlor at home and in the double parlors at Jessie Litton's so as
+not to disarrange the pews, I mean the chairs, in the ballroom, but now
+that the spring has come we--we need the Club. I'm glad you will be here
+for the dedication, and you will help us kind of--kind of--"
+
+"Taper off from your religious spree?" I asked with a laugh that Letitia
+echoed shamefacedly.
+
+"That's an awful way to put it--but--"
+
+"True?"
+
+"We've all tried hard, but--but it is such a--a bore. It doesn't seem
+fair to enjoy Gregory Goodloe so much at dinners and parties and not
+show our respect and--and admiration by being good church members.
+Jessie joined his study workers and she took a class of the awful little
+children from down in the Settlement beyond the Phosphate Mills, who all
+smelled terribly. She worked hard with them twice a week for a month,
+and then Mother Spurlock, who is the front pillar of his congregation,
+found that she had taught all the dirty little things to sew with their
+left hands. She came in one morning and found them all stitching away
+industriously backwards, just because Jessie is left-handed herself.
+Mother Elsie laughed until she lost her breath and Mr. Goodloe had to
+help unloosen her belt for her. The meeting broke up with ice cream on
+Jessie for everybody. We all belong to home mission societies and sewing
+circles and--"
+
+"You want me to get you out of your purgatory and let you backslide
+to--"
+
+"Don't say it!" exclaimed Letitia with a laugh. "But we just want not to
+hurt his feelings and--"
+
+"We won't," I said grimly. "Now let's talk about the ball out at the
+Club we are going to give Nickols when he comes down the first of May."
+
+"That's just what I mean. I knew you'd understand and I am so relieved
+that you are not angry about the chapel and things. We can leave it all
+to you and we'll have the times of our lives. Billy Harvey says his
+ankles are getting stiff, it's been so long since he has fox-trotted. Do
+call Mammy or Sallie and let's look at your clothes." With which Letitia
+descended from her spiritual heights into the realm of the material and
+plunged with both Mammy and Sallie into a riot of clothes.
+
+For an hour or two I lay back in my pillows and watched the two black
+women and the white one indulge in primitive decorative orgies, and from
+their delight my eyes would glance out and fix themselves wistfully on
+the dim line of Paradise Ridge which was cut by the square steeple of
+weathered stone just where Old Harpeth humps itself up above the rest of
+the Ridge; and something sore and angry and trapped hurt under my
+breast.
+
+"The earth is the Lord's--" chanted itself in my mind to the tune of
+"Drink to me only," and my hand curled around the letter under my pillow
+as if for comfort and--defense.
+
+"It is just as you told me that night at the piano, Nickols dear:
+'Religion is the most potent form of intoxication known to the human
+race,' and apparently all my friends have been getting the drink habit
+badly. I'll rescue the poor dears and have an interesting time doing
+it," I said to myself after Letitia had departed with my most choice
+millinery creation fastened down upon her sleek braids because she found
+she could not live without it.
+
+And then a strange thing happened, as I lay prone between the
+lavender-scented sheets spread on the four-poster bed of my foremothers,
+ready to drift off into another "bone resting" nap. The flood of tears
+that had risen from my heart when I had sat that night a week ago and
+listened to that remarkable little baseball evangelist, the tide of
+which had been rolled back when Nickols had bent his beautiful dark head
+against mine in Aunt Clara's music room and whispered above the roar of
+New York, "religion is the most potent form of intoxication" to me,
+again welled from my heart and this time flooded my lashes and my cheek
+and my pillow. What was strangest of all, they seemed to wash away all
+the tears of anger and fear that I had been pressing back into my depths
+from breakfast time, and left me weak and again ready for sleep. And
+like a comforted little child, I slept.
+
+It was sunset when I awoke, and I felt as strong as two women and ready
+for action, the call for which was upon me by the time Sallie had put me
+into her favorite creation, selected from the ones she had hung in
+closets and wardrobe.
+
+"Mister Billy Harvey and Mister Hampton Dibrell is down on the front
+porch ready to gallivant you, honey-bunch, and I seen Miss Letitia and
+her Mister Cliff Gray coming in one direction and Miss Jessie in
+another, so I reckon Sallie had better hurry with that New York twilight
+she's fixing on you," Mammy announced as she stood in my doorway and
+beamed upon me. "An' I expects the parson will be stepping over
+likewise fer a few words, seeing you was so sweet and showed sich pretty
+manners to him this morning," she added with reverent delight.
+
+"Sweet? Showed such pretty manners?" I gasped, as Sallie fastened the
+last hook and eye and stood beside Mammy to admire me.
+
+"'Twas no more than you oughter done to the preacher, and I was proud of
+my raising of you when you helt on to him and begged him to stay to
+dinner. I was sho' disappointed that he had to leave us. I'm a Colored
+Methodist, I am, and if I do say it, I knows how to shake a young pullet
+in the skillet fer a preacher's taste, black or white. Now go on down
+and stop that buzzing fer you on the front porch. Sallie, come and carry
+out the tea and cakes to the guests," with which command to both of us
+Mammy rolled her two hundred and fifty pounds down the hall with great
+majesty, while Sallie meekly followed in her wake.
+
+"Sweet! Showed such pretty manners!" I quoted to myself as I slowly
+descended the steps and went out on the wide porch to find my friends
+assembled under the budding rose vine that wreathed the tall white
+pillars of the Poplars.
+
+The parson was not there.
+
+"Rescued!" exclaimed Billy as he grasped one of my hands and hung on
+with a very good imitation of a drowning man seizing a lifeline. They
+all laughed and Hampton Dibrell held my other hand as ardently, though
+not in quite such light vein. I had to rescue it to accept Clifton
+Gray's nosegay of huge violets from his greenhouse, and I embraced
+Jessie with the nosegay pressed to her pink cheeks.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, I could fox-trot with you a week and not hesitate,"
+exclaimed Billy, still clinging to me.
+
+"Let's begin to-night," I assented warmly. Billy is contagious and to
+dance with him is a high art.
+
+"Let's motor out to the Club in Hamp's car and mine, have a chicken
+supper and dance until sun-up," suggested Billy.
+
+"We can stop by and get Mark Morgan and Nell, and I believe Harriet
+Henderson will come along, if everybody asks her--all the men, I mean,"
+Letitia added with enthusiasm to match Billy's. Harriet Henderson is the
+latest emerged widow in Goodloets and consequently is most interesting
+to the masculine world at present.
+
+"Let's start now, so as to give the chicken plenty of time to get into
+the frying pan and over the fire," said Hampton, who is always the
+practical member to bring up the details of any situation.
+
+"I'm just from the tennis courts and I'll have to stop to dress, I'm
+afraid," said Letitia meekly, as if she felt sure of a storm of
+remonstrance.
+
+"People don't dress to dance these days, Letitia," said Billy, with the
+greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in
+speaking to Letitia's rather literal directness and in which he delights
+greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if you
+roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders, take off your
+collar and tuck in the flaps, it will be enough to satisfy our cravings
+for fashionable and suitable attire. We really want fried chicken rather
+than chicken--"
+
+"That will do, Billy," Letitia answered him with gentle firmness.
+
+"That was just what I remarked, Letitia dear. That will do, for we want
+chicken dressed with cream gravy and don't care about any swathed in
+chiffon. And furthermore--"
+
+"Do hush, Billy; look who's coming," Jessie interrupted him, and there
+before my eyes I saw my entire group of friends begin to preen
+themselves into new beings. Letitia smoothed down her skirts a fraction
+of an inch, rolled down her sleeves another fraction and pushed back
+into her braids a brown lock that was rioting across her brow. Jessie
+shook out her muslin ruffles, reefed a fold of net higher across her
+neck, and pinned it in place with a jeweled pin, while Hampton's and
+Billy's and Cliff's expressions and poses of countenance and bodies
+suddenly fell into lines of decorum.
+
+"Great Smokes! We all forgot it was prayer meeting to-night, and it'll
+be no trotting the fox for ours," Billy groaned, while he rose to his
+feet with a smile of angelic sweetness. "Hello, Parson! We were just
+beginning to think about you," was his greeting to the Sacred Jaguar who
+had come through the garden and around the house. I felt sure that he
+had heard Billy's plaint of disappointment about the dance, for there
+was a quick glint of the amethysts as he halted and stood on the walk
+below us and smiled up at us.
+
+"I welcomed Miss Powers for breakfast, and now I find I want to come
+over and do it again for tea," he said, and as I was perfectly cool,
+sober and in my right mind at the moment he spoke, I had to concede that
+his voice was the most wonderful I had ever heard, and something in me
+made me resent it as well as the curious veneer that had spread over my
+friends at his entry upon the scene. There they stood and sat, six
+perfectly rational, fairly moral, representative free and equal
+citizens, cowed by the representative of something that they neither
+understood nor cared about, and it made me furious. They all wanted to
+go to the Club to dance, to do the natural, usual, perfectly harmless
+thing, and they were being constrained. If they had wanted to go to the
+prayer meeting as they wanted to dance, they would have been natural and
+joyful and eager about it.
+
+"I resent, even _I_ resent people's being bored with the God they think
+exists, and I think it is disrespectful to go into His presence like
+that," I said to myself, and then I suddenly determined to begin my
+rescue work for the religiously involved, and now I felt was the
+appointed time. Also I felt the excitement that comes from turning and
+facing the foe which has pursued.
+
+"I'm glad you came over, Mr. Goodloe," I said with nice, cool
+friendliness in my voice. "Billy was just planning a glorious fox-trot
+for this evening and then suddenly remembered with dismay that you were
+to have your--entertainment at the Club to-night. Couldn't we--we make
+some sort of compromise? Or at least couldn't you cut your--prayers
+short so he can get in an hour or two of his favorite pleasure
+after--after duty well done?" As I spoke I had come to the edge of the
+steps and thus stood alone above him, looking down on him with a kind of
+cool aloofness as if he belonged to another world, while I heard all of
+his recent converts grouped back of me give little gasps of dismay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GAUNTLET
+
+
+Was that young Methodist minister crushed by my plainly intended
+gauntlet flung down to him? He was not.
+
+"I'm glad I came over in time to put Billy out of his misery," he
+answered, smiling up at me with a quick comprehension that was enraging.
+"I'm going to have informal services in the chapel to-night to try out
+the acoustics before the contractor turns over the building. I am not
+satisfied about the sounding board he has put in, and the only way is to
+try it with at least part of the seats occupied. We'll sing a bit and
+plan the dedication; not have a formal service. So then, Billy, you can
+have your fox-trotting and a good time to all of you, bless you, my
+children." As he spoke he smiled at the entire group with the most
+delightful interest and pleasure. He was dressed in a straight black
+coat with a plain silk vest cut around a white collar that buttoned in
+the back, and his dull gold mane was brushed down sleek and close to his
+beautiful head. Not a flash of expression in his strong face showed that
+he felt any resentment or dismay at thus having some of his most
+prominent church members backslide from his prayer meeting into a
+fox-trot, and yet I knew--knew that he fully appreciated the situation
+and laid the blame of it where the blame was due.
+
+"Of course we will come to the services first--that is, if you--if you
+don't object," Letitia said with her usual directness and lack of any
+kind of finesse, thus bringing the situation to a decided head.
+
+"Why not come over for the songs and then not stay for the conference?"
+was the genial answer that positively astonished me, and as he spoke he
+came up the steps and stood beside me. "Dabney and I found the first
+Star of Bethlehem when we were weeding this afternoon. I brought it to
+you carefully, and can I have a cup of that tea he has been trying to
+make you serve for the last five minutes?" With these words the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe turned me around and sent me to the tea tray that Dabney
+and Sallie had put on a table under the rose vine; but not before he had
+taken up my hand, put the star flower in it and curled my fingers over
+it. "I'll pass the muffins, Billy, and you take the cakes for Miss
+Powers, and be more careful than you were last Sunday with my collection
+plate for the poor." Billy feigned confusion, accepted the plate and was
+just about to begin a defense, when a diversion occurred to stop him.
+
+"There comes Mark and Mrs. Mark," he exclaimed, "but they have got an
+offspring apiece in their embrace and several trailers. Somebody ought
+to remonstrate with Nell Morgan or have the firmness to apply the
+superfluous blind kitten treatment every spring. Three children are
+patriotic, but five are populistic and ought to be frowned upon," and
+Billy grumbled all the while the Morgans were flocking up the front
+walk. When they came to the steps the Jaguar descended and held out his
+clerically befrocked arms so that the gurgler from Mark's shoulder and
+the giggler from Nell's arms both fell into his embrace at one time.
+"You young marplots, you!" he said as the gurgler printed a wet kiss on
+his left ear and regarded him with rapture while the small cooer,
+proclaimed as feminine by neck and sleeve ribbons, cuddled against his
+shoulder with soft confidence. "They're going to take you both down to
+the river and drown you," he confided with a soft note in his voice that
+was an answer to the coo.
+
+"I wish you would," said Mark, as, with a laugh, he shook my hand
+extended from the group around me, composed of Nell and the other three
+kiddies, all crowded together in one passionate greeting. "Nurse and
+Julia and the house and garden man have all gone to a wedding, so we
+have fed 'em and are now starting out for a razoo, and we don't care
+whether it lasts until midnight or not. Young Charlotte, you hug one
+side of your Aunt Charlotte and let Jimmy get his innings on the other
+side. Here, break away, all of you!" and while everybody laughed, Mark
+disentangled the greetings, and seated the separated juvenile members in
+a row on the steps beside the parson and the two babes. Nell he left in
+the hollow of my arm.
+
+"Oh, it is so good to have you at home, Charlotte," she said, with
+another hug. "We miss you terribly. We depend on you for everything.
+Things don't go right without you. I had a terrible time with--that is,
+you haven't seen baby yet. Give her to me, Mr. Goodloe," and as she
+spoke Nell leaned over to get the cooer out of the Jaguar's arms for my
+inspection.
+
+"You'll get neither Babe nor Suckling," was his answer as he cuddled the
+two closer and hunched his shoulders in Nell's direction. "Don't you
+know enough to let well enough alone? If they have got to go out to the
+Club and fox-trot until midnight they ought to have repose now."
+
+"We promised to be good at church, but we didn't promise anything about
+the Country Club, and if we go there we are going to be as bad as
+anybody out there is," announced small Charlotte with determined
+composure. "Dabney says that fox-trotting is a devil's dance and we want
+to see you all do it with him."
+
+"Help!" exclaimed Billy, while Mr. Goodloe put his arm around Charlotte
+and drew her to him with a kind of fierce tenderness.
+
+"Isn't she awful?" exclaimed Nell. "We meant to ask you if we could take
+them with us out to the Club to prayer meeting. Some of the Settlement
+women bring their babies and I know mine will be as good. Charlotte and
+Sue and Jimmy promised, and the sound of your voice bewitches the babies
+as it does all of us."
+
+As Nell finished speaking and bent to pat the head of the Suckling on
+his shoulder, the Reverend Mr. Goodloe looked straight into my eyes and
+laughed, perfect comprehension of me and my revolt in his direct
+amethyst glances which shot into my depths.
+
+"They are all going over to listen to Mr. Goodloe sing hymns at his
+chapel, Nell, and then all of you are coming by here for me to go out to
+the Club to dance a few hours," was my answer to the shot as I calmly
+refused the invitation into the fold that had been given me with the
+rest of the backsliding flock.
+
+"We can't go--the babies would never in the world--" Nell was beginning
+to exclaim.
+
+"Drat 'em!" exclaimed Billy, looking down aggrievedly at the small crew
+of marplots. "A pair of perfectly good chaperons are hard to get, and to
+think of that bunch of little miseries getting in the way of a good old
+fox--"
+
+"They'll all go to sleep during the services and I'll keep them on my
+bed in the parsonage until the fun is over, and agree to deliver them on
+claim," Mr. Goodloe interrupted Billy to say with quiet decision.
+
+"Now that is what I call some church relation, nursery and parsonage
+combined," said Billy with the deepest gratitude. "The rest of you hurry
+over those muffins, even if you haven't had any of Mammy's for six
+months, and, since the chicken fry is off, go home to get suppers and
+ready for psalm-singing and foxing. Parson, you are some sport, and I'll
+hold both of those puppies while you drink your tea from the hands of
+fair Charlotte."
+
+"Thank you, I don't believe I want any tea after all, and I think I'll
+take these 'puppies' on home with me through the garden, for they are
+both dying to the world." As he spoke the parson rose to his feet and
+stood with the two drowsing babies in his arms, looking down at me as I
+stood with his cup of tea in my hand. And as he looked I felt my whole
+rebellious heart and mind laid bare and I knew that he knew that I was
+ready to fight him to the last ditch in the battle for possession of the
+souls of my friends. I would fight for their independence of thought
+and sincerity of life, and he would fight to lead them off into a far
+country in quest of what I considered a tradition, a shibboleth, "a
+potent agent for intoxication" of the reason by which man must progress.
+I also knew that I faced a foe versed in the warfare between religion
+and modern scientific decisions about it and that he would be one worthy
+of my metal. His refusal of my cup of tea, for which he had announced
+that he came, was his gauntlet and I accepted it as I turned with the
+queer sugared rage in my heart and set the cup on the table.
+
+And as I had planned, and the Jaguar directed, the evening came to pass.
+While I slipped into some dancing fluff, the strains of the most
+wonderful hymn that the Christian religion possesses floated across my
+garden and into my window and again beat against my heart. The parson
+was singing with the rest of them, but his voice seemed to lift theirs
+and bear them aloft on the strong, wide wings that went soaring away
+into the night, even up to the bright stars that gleamed beyond the tips
+of the old graybeard poplars. A queer tight breath gripped my heart for
+a second as his plea, "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," beat
+against it, then I laughed it away.
+
+"It _is_ 'a potent agent for intoxication' when brewed by the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe, and here's where I run, both physically and mentally," I
+said to myself as I ran down the steps and out to the two cars that
+stood honking impatiently by the gate.
+
+I don't think I ever enjoyed a dance more, and I am sure that my
+pleasure was partly due to the wild spirits of the religiously released
+who were having the first joy fling for six months.
+
+"I'll not get enough until I wilt upon the floor and have to be carried
+out," said Billy, as he held me closer and slid two steps to the right
+and then back to get me out of the way of Hampton and Harriet Henderson,
+who were dancing with regardless joy.
+
+"Will you feel that way about church next Sunday?" I asked him, but my
+demand made no apparent dent, for he danced on without answering.
+
+At an hour after that of midnight the revelers came home and left me at
+my gate, by request, to walk alone in the brilliant spring moonlight
+through my garden to the wide door back of the white pillars. After they
+had seen me safely started, they glided away and I stood on the steps
+and watched Nell and Mark reclaim their family from a tall dark figure
+that carried out two loads to the parental arms. Then the hush that
+comes upon the world in the midnight hours fell over the Poplars and I
+stood leaning against one of the tall pillars and reveled in it.
+
+Goodloets is one of the tradition-grayed old towns that are rooted deep
+in the Harpeth Valley since the days of the Colonies, and in it can be
+found perhaps the purest Americanism on the American continent. The
+Poplars, under whose broad roof I made the seventh generation nested and
+fledged, spreads out its wings and gables upon a low hill which is the
+first swell of the Harpeth hills, and the rest of the old town stretches
+out on the hillside before it down to the valley, in which runs the
+Harpeth River, curving around the town and flowing out of the valley to
+the Mississippi. Behind the Poplars roll the fields and meadows of the
+Home Farm, which has given food and sustenance to the Poplars' brood
+since the days of the redskins, when it was cleared by the first Powers
+and his servants, with muskets ready to fire into the surrounding
+forests. To the left of the Poplars and beyond the chapel lies the
+Settlement, in which those lacking in worldly goods have lived for
+generations in a kind of semi-poverty, which is about the only poverty
+known in the Harpeth Valley. Lately, the Settlement has taken unto
+itself a measure of prosperity, because of the great tannery and harness
+works in its midst on the banks of the river, which is bringing in gold
+from Russia and France. Everybody has made money in the last few years,
+and the fashionable wing of Goodloets to the left of the Poplars shows
+improvements and restorations that are both costly and sometimes
+amazing. However, fortunately the inhabitants of the old village are
+conservative, and very little of the delicious moss of tradition has
+been scratched off; it has only been clipped into prosperous decorum,
+and antiquity still flings its glamour over the town.
+
+"I feel as much rooted as one of the old poplars," I said to myself as
+some whim made me go down the steps and out into the garden, along the
+walks with their budding borders of narcissus and peonies, down through
+Nickols' sunken garden to the two oldest of all the poplars that now
+seemed to be standing sentinel to prevent any raid from me on the little
+stone meeting house over the lilac hedge. "You dear old graybeard," I
+said to the one on my left, as I looked up and saw a faint feathering of
+silver on its branches. And as I spoke I took the old trunk into my
+embrace and laid my cheek against the rough bark.
+
+And then something happened. Afterwards I was glad that I was leaning
+against the strength of the old graybeard poplar and hidden behind it.
+
+Suddenly from out the shadows beyond the lilac hedge, through whose bare
+branches any movement in the yard of the chapel showed plainly, a woman
+came stumbling along towards the gate and beside her walked the parson
+with his arm supporting hers. She was sobbing the hard, dry sobs that
+any woman knows are those of despair, and which call any other woman who
+hears them. My first impulse was to run to the hedge and speak to her;
+then I stopped, for I was arrested by what the parson was saying to her.
+
+"What does it matter, Martha? You have your Master's forgiveness and His
+permission to go and sin no more, even though those sins be as
+scarlet." And as he spoke his voice was that of quiet authority as if he
+felt fully his apostolic right to unloose sins upon this earth.
+
+"He'll come back now that _she_ has, and he'll come to me again. I can't
+fight him. I'll slip back into hell. Just give me the money to go out
+into the city and I'll not bother anybody any more. I'll take the child
+and I'll die for all anybody in Goodloets ever knows. Lend me the money;
+I'll send it back!" The girl's voice was hard and defiant and she turned
+and faced the minister as if at bay. "Give me that money, if all that
+praying and singing and preaching that you've done is true. I want to go
+in the morning before he follows her here and puts me in hell again. God
+won't clean me twice."
+
+"You shall go," came the calm answer in the apostle's beautiful voice,
+"but I will have to have a few days to provide a place of safety for you
+in the city, where the child can be cared for while you get suitable
+work."
+
+"I won't wait. He'll follow her and he'll look down on me and the child
+and damn me again. I won't wait. I'm weak and I dasn't. Give me that
+money to-night!" And the demand was passionate and savage.
+
+"Then I'll meet you at the morning train with it and rush you to a place
+of safety if there is no other way. You must go back home now, and it
+will be best not to tell anyone where you are going until you no longer
+fear your weakness, for they might betray your hiding place. Strength
+will be given you, Martha, if you only ask."
+
+"I'll pray, Parson, I'll pray, now that you are going to give me my
+chance to get strong enough to be good. I'll work and I'll pray, but
+hide me until I do get strong." And the hard, dry sobs melted as the
+girl put her head down upon the gate a moment and then went out through
+it.
+
+"God bless you, child, and keep you ever in thought of Him," were the
+words that she carried away with her as she hurried down the street
+toward the Settlement.
+
+Then for a second some awful fear came across my heart that I did not
+understand. I now know that it was a premonition of what was to wring my
+own heart and I cowered against the old tree in agony. Gregory Goodloe
+was not more than six feet away from me on the other side of the
+budding, fragrant hedge, and in the moonlight I could see the beautiful
+strength of his golden head and strong placid face, on which lines of
+pain were drawn, and I had to restrain myself from crying out to him in
+my own pain. I wanted to go quickly and cling to his strength. Then I
+stopped and listened.
+
+He had raised his face to the stars and was praying.
+
+"O Father," he asked, as if speaking to someone with whom he walked in
+the cool of the midnight, "help the weak on whom the strong prey."
+
+Then he went into the dark door of the little chapel and left me out in
+the cold midnight alone. The fear was gone, and comforted I went back
+through my budding garden and arrived at the front door just as old Mr.
+Pate, the telegraph operator at the little station down the street,
+turned in at the gate.
+
+"Miss Charlotte," he puffed, as he fairly flung the telegram at me,
+"this come fer you at ten o'clock and I risked it and run up here with
+it after I heard them ottermobiles go by. I'm courting Mrs. Jennie Hicks
+myself and I understands about courtings." And before I could speak he
+had run on back down the street.
+
+As I stood and looked at the yellow envelope fear again gripped my
+heart, and without opening it I walked into the house, locking the great
+door behind me with trembling fingers, and went toward a light I saw
+shining from the trellised back porch and which I did not understand. I
+have never in my life been the least bit afraid of anything, except
+something within my own body, from the hideous pain of my green-apple
+days to the pain I had felt as I talked beside the piano with Nickols in
+New York, a thousand miles away; but something made me pause just for a
+second in the pantry doorway before I stepped into the light upon the
+porch. I shall never forget the scene that was enacted before my
+wondering eyes in the dim light of a candle burning upon a table near
+the refrigerator.
+
+Father stood with a bowl of ice in his hand and his fingers were just
+closing around a squat, black bottle that I knew contained the rarest
+and choicest whiskey ever run from a distillery. His iron-gray hair was
+rampant, his dressing gown fell away from his throat and showed the
+knotting of the great cords that ran down into his shoulders, and his
+dark eyes glittered under their heavy, black brows, while his mouth was
+twisted and white. Then, as I looked, something happened. A stealthy
+padding of feet came around the house from the garden and up the back
+steps, under the budding rose vine that was climbing through the trellis
+as if to clutch at the light, and a huge figure loomed up from out the
+shadow.
+
+It was the powerful Harpeth Jaguar out hunting, and his weapon was a
+hoe, while under his arm he carried a roll that looked like a
+contribution to a rag man of bedding and old clothes.
+
+"I tell you, Mr. Powers, there is frost in the air and I have collected
+everything in the parsonage that would cover those late anemones. I saw
+your light and I thought you might add to the collection. Now what would
+we do if they should be wilted by the frost just as they are ready to
+burst bud? Our honor is involved with Graveson, who brought the seeds
+all the way from Guernsey through the trenches of France and trusted
+them to me for propagation. Why, they represent a man's life work, and
+that life may be put out by a bullet any moment! We'll have to rescue
+them." As he spoke, the great jeweled eyes shone with excitement under
+the dull gold brows and he seemed not to see at all the incriminating
+ice and bottle.
+
+"Could you get into Mrs. Dabney's linen closet? We've got to have
+something." He shivered in a little wind that blew under the rose vine
+with a frosty gust. I was just observing that he was attired in his
+pajama jacket and gray flannel trousers, and that his bare heels and
+ankles declared themselves above and at the back of his slippers, when
+my eyes were drawn to my father's face and rested there. My heart stood
+still while I watched it change. All the pain and appetite, straining as
+a beast strains at a leash, faded from his face. The deathly pallor
+vanished and the color of human blood returned. The glitter in his deep
+old eyes changed in a second from that of ferocity to that of anxious
+excitement.
+
+"I do not know where the household linen is kept and I hesitate to
+disturb Dabney, as he retired with an aching tooth; but I observed a box
+of my daughter's apparel beside a trunk in the back hall which Dabney
+had not carried up on account of its weight and which he was requiring
+his wife to unpack piece by piece. I'll raid it for enough to save our
+treasures and accept whatever is my just chastisement in the morning,"
+he said in a voice of guilty stealth.
+
+And there I stood in the shadow of the pantry and saw my father take two
+armfuls of my costly linen and lace out into the garden. Nothing was
+spared me, for from the window I could see him and the marauding Jaguar
+weight their perfumed whiteness down with sticks and stones and clods of
+earth. I suffered, but silently.
+
+"Good night, sir. God's blessing," I heard the rich voice calling as the
+half-bare feet padded away as swiftly as they had come through the
+garden, leaving father standing under the rose vine watching him go. And
+I watched father--and for some reason my breath seemed suspended in my
+lungs.
+
+For a very long minute he stood looking at the ice bowl and the bottle;
+then with a queer wry smile he walked over and put them both in the
+refrigerator, though the bottle's place was in the sideboard, and closed
+the door carefully. Then he paused again and said under his breath,
+"_You_, Judge Nickols Morris Powers!" He smiled at himself with
+humorous pity and tiptoed past me into the front hall and up the
+stairway to his rooms above.
+
+I seemed to feel strange padding footsteps down in my depths and I also
+tiptoed up to my room after I had heard his door shut.
+
+After I had switched on my light (for under the roof of the Poplars
+electricity had come to aid the candles of hallowed tradition, and was
+called by Mammy, in deep suspicion, "ha'nt light") I discovered clutched
+in my cold fingers the yellow envelope the romantic Mr. Pate had brought
+to me in the midnight. It read:
+
+     "Am coming down on Friday. Am afraid to trust the world and the
+     flesh and think the third member of the carnal firm ought to be
+     on the job.      N."
+
+"Now I am frightened really," I confided to myself as I slipped between
+the scented sheets and drew a corner of the rose-colored blanket over my
+head. "I don't know what to do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TO TURKEY GULCH
+
+
+The next morning I was very late in descending to my breakfast, but
+arrived in time to witness Mammy's arraignment of my father, which was
+conducted in perfect respect, but with great severity.
+
+"I know, Jedge, that menfolks don't know lace that costs a million
+dollars a yard from a blind woman's tatting, and that's what makes me
+say what I does, that it sure am dangersome fer 'em to go on a rampage
+in womenfolks' trunks. I ain't never goin' to git the stains from them
+clods of earth outen my lambs' clothes, even if the minister did help
+you put 'em on 'em."
+
+"But, Melissa, those anemones were more valuable than any lace ever
+manufactured, and I am sure that Charlotte will absolve me when she
+hears of the exigencies of the case," father pleaded over the top of
+his morning paper. Mammy was pretending to dust his study, as a blind to
+the lecture she was administering.
+
+"Yes, sir, I knows all that; but that lace was a heap more valuable than
+that toothache in that wuthless Dabney's jaw, which he could er wropped
+up, and hunted out all the old sheets for you instid of that petticoat
+with them real lace ruffles," was Mammy's firm rejoinder, while she
+passed a feather duster over the table and rolled her eyes at Dabney.
+
+"Let's let them both off this time, Mammy. Dabney can take the trunks
+where they belong and lock them up," I said, as I went toward the dining
+room, while she followed to minister upon my tardiness.
+
+"Them was all your finest lingerings," she said as she plied me with
+breakfast. "And they was all lost on menfolks. They hasn't even one lady
+rode by while I had 'em on the line in the sunshine," she grumbled as
+she finally retired to the kitchen.
+
+After finishing my coffee I sauntered to the front of the house, led by
+a chorus of hearty laughter in a fluty tenor voice, accompanied by a
+bass growl, in which I was sure that father was recounting the scrape in
+which his and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's anemone adventure had got them.
+I assured myself that I was annoyed by this repeated early morning
+invasion of ministerial calls and intended to retire to my room until it
+was over, but without knowing why, I found myself in the library and
+greeting the enemy.
+
+"Please forgive us. The case was one of dire necessity," the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe pleaded, as he rose and took my hand in his, and held it in
+such a way that I was forced to look in his face and smile, whether I
+wished it or not.
+
+"From ambush I saw you take them, and I was powerless to prevent," I
+answered with a smile at father.
+
+"I came over to ask you if you wouldn't like to go away out into the
+Harpeth Hills on a mission with me this wonderful morning. I don't know
+exactly whether I am called to officiate at a birth or a death or that
+intermediate festivity, a wedding. This is the summons from an old
+friend of mine:" As he spoke he held out to me a greasy paper on which
+were a few words scrawled with a pencil.
+
+     "Parson we need you in the morning bad. Please come with Bill
+     as brings this. Bring a bible and liniment and oblige your true
+     friend Jed Bangs and wife."
+
+"Isn't your friend Bill able to elucidate?" I asked, as I passed the
+paper on to father.
+
+"Bill seems to be dumb without being deaf and has no histrionic talent
+to act out the necessity, so I'm going with him. The Bangs family live
+up on old Harpeth at Turkey Gulch, and Jed has shot partridges with me
+all winter. Please, you and the Judge, come with me. I can get the car
+over Paradise Ridge if I turn it into a wildcat. The morning is
+delicious, and I feel that I'll need you both." Never in the world have
+I heard a man's voice with such compelling notes in it that range from a
+soft coax to a quiet command.
+
+I had not the slightest idea of going with him and I was about to refuse
+with as much sugary hauteur as I dared use to him, when I looked into
+father's face and accepted. I had never been on a picnic with my father
+in my life and I could not understand the pleading in his eyes for my
+acceptance of this invitation to an adventure in his company, but then,
+several times since I had come home, I had seen a father I had never
+known before, and he fascinated me.
+
+"The mountain laurel is in bloom and the rhododendron, and you are a
+very gracious lady," the Reverend Mr. Goodloe assured me with a deep bow
+over my hand, which he kissed in a very delightful foreign fashion which
+made Mammy, who had come to the door to hear my decision, roll her eyes
+in astonishment which, however, held no hint of criticism, for with her
+the spiritual king could do no wrong.
+
+"I got a snack fixed up jest's soon as that Dabney tol' me about the
+junket," she announced. "And I'll put a little wine jelly and flannels
+in if it am a baby and a bunch of white jessimings in case it am a
+death."
+
+"Suppose it is a wedding?" I asked her.
+
+"I don't take no notice of weddings. It was a wedding that got me into
+all the trouble of that Dabney and his wuthless son, Jefferson, what
+ain't like me in no way." With which fling at Dabney--who was hovering
+at the door--she rolled herself back to her kitchen.
+
+"What have you been doing to her now, you rascal?" father demanded of
+Dabney, who was handing him his hat and holding out his light overcoat
+to put him into it.
+
+"I jist stepped into the kitchen while her light rolls fer supper was
+raisin' and got a ruckus fer it," was his mild answer. Dabney lived his
+connubial life mildly in the midst of the storms of his better half.
+
+"Well, don't do it again. And put that spade in Mr. Goodloe's car, for
+I'm going to bring in some honeysuckle roots and a laurel sprout or two
+to try out in the garden," father commanded, as I took my coat and hat
+from the chair where I had thrown them the afternoon before, and went
+out to the very unministerial-looking car which stood before the
+parsonage.
+
+Of course, I had accepted the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's invitation for the
+journey out into the hills in order to sit beside this very new kind of
+father I was dimly discovering myself to possess, but I do not to this
+day know how it happened that I was crushed against the arm steering the
+gray racer as we sped through Goodloets toward Old Harpeth, while the
+judge sat beaming, though silent, beside the more silent Bill--who did
+not beam, but looked out at the road ahead with the shadow in his face
+of the fatalism that so many of the mountain folk possess.
+
+We were just turning out from the edge of the town, past the last house
+with its stately white pillars, when a bunch of pink-and-white
+precipitated itself directly in front of the car--which made the first
+of the wildcat springs that its master had prophesied for it and then
+stood with its engine palpitating with what seemed like mechanical fear,
+while I buried my head on the strong arm next to me, which I could feel
+tremble for an instant as the Reverend Mr. Goodloe breathed a fervent,
+"Thank God." Father rose from his seat with a good round oath and silent
+Bill snorted like a wild animal.
+
+"Why didn't you stop when you saw me coming?" an imperious young voice
+demanded in tones of distinct anger, and Charlotte, my name daughter of
+the house of Morgan, calmly climbed up on the running board, over the
+door next to father, and settled herself in between him and the silent
+Bill. "Now you can go on," she calmly announced, in a very much
+mollified tone of voice as she shook out her ruffles into a less
+compressed state and wiped her face with her dirty hand, much to the
+detriment of the roses in her cheeks.
+
+"Where are you going, Charlotte, may I inquire?" asked the Reverend Mr.
+Goodloe in a cheerful and calm voice, though I saw that his fingers
+still trembled on the steering wheel as he held back the enraged gray
+engine. I was still speechless and I saw that father was in the same
+condition.
+
+"You said I might go 'next time' when my Auntie Harriet didn't want me
+to go with you last Tuesday on account of my stomach from the raw potato
+Jimmy dared me to eat. This is that time," she calmly answered, as she
+gave an interested look at the silent Bill and again settled the short,
+pink skirts.
+
+"Yes, I did say that," admitted Mr. Goodloe, as he turned in his seat as
+far as he could and began to argue the question. "But we shall be gone
+almost all day and I am afraid your mother wouldn't want you to be gone
+that long."
+
+"Is it true for you to say that when you know that she will be mighty
+glad for you to keep me safe with you all day?" Charlotte demanded of
+him, looking directly into his smiling, friendly face.
+
+"No, that wasn't quite honest, I'll admit," he answered her gravely with
+the guilt of conviction showing in his face just as plainly as it would
+have shown if one of his deacons had caught him evading a question of
+grave moment. "And as it is the fulfillment of a promise which you
+claim, I am going to ask Miss Powers and the judge if they will permit
+me to add you to the party, and then go and get permission from your
+mother to take you with us."
+
+"My mother told me to go and bother Auntie Charlotte an hour or two and
+that was when I met you. I ran into the car just minding my mother,"
+Charlotte answered him with calm pride at her near achievement of death
+through literal obedience.
+
+"Just drive by and we'll call to Nell. I am afraid the case must have
+been desperate, for I am seldom the victim," I said in an undertone to
+our host, who acquiesced with a laugh. "Harriet Henderson must be dead,
+for Nell usually sends the worse one to her," I added under my breath.
+
+"My Auntie Harriet is having a man cut the ache out of one of her
+teeth," Charlotte remarked, apropos of nothing, as the huge car swung
+around into the street in which the Morgans reside. "And, besides, I
+don't like her any more, because, when she said Sue had to have part of
+the doll house she bought for us to play in down at her home, and I said
+then Sue would have to take the outside because I wanted the inside, she
+locked it up for all this week."
+
+"The modern business acumen of the feministic persuasion," father
+remarked, as we all laughed at this candid revelation of an egocentric
+attitude of mind in small Charlotte.
+
+After a few whirls of the gray wheels we paused a moment at the Morgan
+gate.
+
+"Heavens, yes, and thank you," called Nell in response to our demand for
+her small daughter's company. "If I had another one clean, I'd give it
+to you."
+
+"Better go on quick, for Jimmy can wash in a piece of a minute if he
+wants to," warned Charlotte, and in a second the parson had sent the
+gray car flying out toward Old Harpeth, though I saw him glance back
+with a trace of distress in his eyes at the fading vision of a small boy
+running, howling, to the front gate of the Morgan residence.
+
+"Now mother'll whip him for crying if she does as she says she would,
+but she won't," observed the tender big sister, as she rose to her feet
+and waved a maddening farewell to the distressed urchin being left
+behind.
+
+"Is she totally depraved?" I asked of the young Charlotte's spiritual
+adviser at my side.
+
+"No; perfectly honest," he answered me with a glint in his eyes that was
+a laughing challenge.
+
+"There is something awful about honesty," I answered, without appearing
+to notice the glint.
+
+"There wouldn't be if it were a universal custom," was the answer I got
+as we whirled by a farmer's wood lot and began to climb the first
+foothill of Old Harpeth.
+
+All my life I have been going out to Old Harpeth on excursions, but
+never had I spent a day like the one I had begun with the Jaguar in his
+native fastnesses. The whole old mountain was beginning to bud and I
+could almost see it draping on a regal Persian garment of rose and green
+threaded with purple and blue woven against the old brown and gray of
+the earth color. The wine-colored trillium with its huge spotted leaves,
+the slender white dog-tooth violets, the rose-pink arbutus, the blue
+star myrtle and the crimson oak buds, were matted into a vast robe that
+was gorgeously oriental, while a perfume that was surely more delicious
+than any ever wafted from the gardens of Arabia floated past us in gusts
+through which the gray car sped without the slightest shortness of
+breath. I seemed a million miles away from the great fetid city in which
+I had been living--and fast going farther. As we wound up and up into
+the great forest which is the crown of Old Harpeth, we could look down
+through occasional vistas and see the Harpeth River curling and bending
+through pastures in which the chocolate plowed fields were laid off in
+huge checks with the green meadows, while the farmhouses and barns
+dotted the valley like the crude figures on a hand-woven chintz.
+
+There are very few men who know enough not to talk to a woman when she
+has no desire for their conversation, but the Reverend Jaguar seemed to
+be one of the variety who comprehend the value of silences, and neither
+of us spoke for at least ten miles, though, of course, it was his duty
+to make hay while the sun of my nature shone upon him and delicately to
+inquire into my spiritual condition. He didn't. He just let the wind
+blow into my empty spaces and kept his eyes and thoughts on the road
+ahead of him. Charlotte's chatter with father was blown back from me and
+I was happy in a kind of aloneness I had never felt before.
+
+"We are in Hastings County now and in a few minutes we shall be in Hicks
+Center, the county seat," were the first words that broke in on my
+self-communion as we began to speed past rough board and log cabins,
+each surrounded by a picket fence which in no way seemed to fend the
+doorsteps from razor-back pigs, chickens and a few young mules and
+calves. "It must be court day, for I don't see a single inhabitant
+sitting chewing under his own vine and fig tree."
+
+"Yes; it's the first Monday," answered father, as the gray machine
+pulled gallantly through a few hundred feet of thick, black mud and
+turned from the wilderness into the public square of the metropolis of
+Hicks Center.
+
+"Yes, court is in session and there the whole population is in the
+courthouse," said father, as we glided slowly down the village street.
+"They must be trying a murder or a horse-stealing case," and I saw his
+eyes gleam for a second under their heavy brows as the eyes of an old
+war horse must gleam when he scents powder.
+
+"Ugh," assented silent Bill, making the first remark of the journey, and
+as he spoke the syllable he rose and pointed to the courthouse, which
+stood in the midst of a mud-covered public square, completely surrounded
+by hitching-posts to which were hitched all the vehicles of locomotion
+of the last century down to the present in Hicks Center--which had not
+as yet arrived as far as the day of the motor car.
+
+"Is Jed in there, Bill?" demanded the Reverend Mr. Goodloe; and as Bill
+assented with muscular vigor, if not vocal, he drew the gray car up
+beside, an old-fashioned carryall, whose wheels were at least five feet
+high and which had hitched to its pole an old horse and a young mule.
+
+"That team makes a nice balance of--temperament," Mr. Goodloe remarked,
+as he lifted out Charlotte and then turned to swing me, in his strong
+arms, free of a mud puddle and onto the old brick pavement which was
+green with the moss of generations.
+
+Then, piloted by the silent Bill, we made our way through a quiet throng
+of men and women and children, from the awkward age of shoe-top trousers
+and skirts to that which, in many cases, was partaking from the maternal
+fount, as the women stood in groups and whispered as they looked at us
+shyly. Somehow their decorous calico skirts, which just cleared the
+ground, made me feel naked in my own of white corduroy, which was all of
+eight inches from the mud in which theirs had draggled.
+
+And as silent as they, even Charlotte's chatter subdued, we entered the
+court room and were led through a crowd up to the front seat. At least
+the rest of us were seated, but the judge, jury and prisoner and
+prosecuting attorney rose in a body and shook hands with the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe as if he were their common and best beloved son.
+
+"He's been in the Harpeth Valley less than a year, and look at that.
+We've been here all our lives and they don't know who we are,"
+whispered father, with the same pride shining in his eyes that shone
+upon the parson from the eyes of the gaunt prisoner, who rose and shook
+hands with Mr. Goodloe with the sheriff beside him, while the rough old
+judge from the bench waited his turn.
+
+"We accommodated Jed by waiting until you come before we begun his
+trial, Parson," the judge said, as he turned back to his bench, which
+was a splint-bottom chair behind a rude table, dignity being lent to the
+chair by its being the only one in the room. The rest of the population
+of the court room of Hicks Center were seated upon benches made of split
+and hewn logs.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Hilldrop," said the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, as he sat down
+beside the prisoner and began a whispered conversation with him.
+
+"The court have come to order. Shoot ahead, Jim, and tell us what Jed
+have done and how he done it," commanded the judge, as he tilted back
+his chair, took out his knife and began to whittle a stick of bright red
+cedar. Twelve good men and true, attired in butternut trousers stuffed
+into muddy boots, settled themselves in the jury box, which was a log
+bench set at right angles to the other benches, a little apart from the
+table and chair of the judge, and nine of them took out their knives and
+bits of cedar and began to follow the lead of the judge in making fine
+pink curls fall upon the floor.
+
+"May it please your honor, the prisoner is charged with the stealing of
+a young mule," said a lanky young mountain lawyer, who had put on a coat
+over his flannel shirt and brushed a little patch of tow hair just above
+his brows in deference to his position of prosecuting attorney.
+
+"State yo' case," commanded the judge, as he tried the point of his
+splinter against his thumb to test its whittled sharpness.
+
+"Hiram Turner, over at Sycamore, lent Jed a team of mules to haul his
+daughter, who married Jed, home in a wagon with her beds and truck, and
+when he come down Paradise Ridge to git the team, Jed claimed one had
+got away from him and run off in the big woods. They was a horse and
+mule trader come along the same day Jed lost the mule and when Hi and
+his boy, Bud, knocked Jed down in a fight they found fifty dollars on
+him in a wad what he won't say where he got it."
+
+With which concise statement the prosecuting attorney sat down and
+fanned his perspiring brow with his ragged felt hat.
+
+"Got anything to say, Jed?" inquired the judge in a friendly and
+leisurely fashion, after the accused had been duly sworn in by the
+sheriff. "How come a man like you to let a mule git away from him?"
+
+With the judge's friendly question there entered another actor on the
+scene, in the person of a mountain girl who had been cowering on a bench
+just behind Jed, her face hidden by a black calico split bonnet.
+
+"Please lemme tell, Jed," she pleaded in a soft whisper that only father
+and I heard, as we sat just behind her.
+
+"Naw," was the one word he gave her, but it was spoken with a soft
+little purr in his husky voice. Then he answered the judge with a kind
+of quiet dignity, which I saw that the twelve booted jurymen listened to
+with respect.
+
+"Jedge," he said, with a stern look into the judge's face, "I reckon
+you'll have to send me down to the pen. I let that mule git away from me
+and I didn't steal or sell him; that is all I got to say." And he sat
+down. I felt father start at my side and then sink back onto his bench.
+
+"Where did you git the money, Jed?" the judge demanded.
+
+"That I ain't a-telling," answered Jed determinedly. "Jest send me down
+to the pen, fer you-all know all you'll ever know."
+
+"Well, Jed," the judge was beginning to say in an argumentative tone of
+voice, when father arose and stepped in front of the bench.
+
+"May it please your honor to appoint a counsel for the defense?" he
+asked in a ringing voice that brought all the outsiders crowding into
+the door. I had never heard or seen my father in a court room and I had
+never suspected him of the resonant silver voice with which he made his
+demand.
+
+"We ain't got a lawyer in Hicks Center but Jim Handy here, and he can't
+prosecute and defend too. I always kinder looks out fer the prisoners
+myself," answered the judge.
+
+"Then may I offer myself to the prisoner to conduct his defense?" father
+demanded, and he looked over at Jed, who in turn looked at Mr. Goodloe
+before he nodded.
+
+"Then shoot ahead, stranger. Jim have told all they is about it, but
+you can have Hi and Bud Turner sworn in and git any more they have got
+to say. Them men speaks truth when they speaks." At which statement
+every good man and true nodded his head with firm conviction. A gaunt
+old mountaineer who sat over by the window cleared his throat in an
+embarrassment that marked him as the Hiram Turner alluded to.
+
+"I don't think I shall need the testimony of Mr. Turner or his son,"
+father answered quietly, as he stood tall and straight before the jury.
+"I want to put Mr. Bangs' wife on the witness stand and question her
+before the jury. Sheriff, call Mrs. Bangs."
+
+"Naw, stranger, naw," said Jed, and he rose as if to combat, but Mr.
+Goodloe laid a restraining hand on his arm, and trembling, he took his
+seat.
+
+"Don't tell nothing, honey," he whispered, as the girl rose from her
+bench, laid aside her cavernous black bonnet and advanced, took the oath
+administered by the sheriff and stood facing father.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Bangs," said father, with silvery tenderness in his voice
+which I felt sure had gained him the reputation of never having lost a
+case in which a woman was involved, "I want you to tell us all that
+happened on the day that Jed let the mule escape him. Look at me and
+tell me all about it."
+
+"Well, stranger," began the mountain girl, with a look of confidence
+coming into her face that was like a little pink wide-open arbutus, "I
+reckon you won't believe me--like Jed didn't at first, though he do
+now."
+
+"Don't tell, honey," the prisoner commanded and implored in the one
+plea. "I'd rather take the pen. They won't believe you."
+
+"It war this way," she continued, without seeming to hear the command of
+her young husband, upon whose arm the parson again laid a restraining
+hand. "Jed he had unhitched the team and tied them with their rope
+halters to the fence 'fore our cabin, when it was almost dark 'fore we
+got thar. Then while I was unpacking the wagon he got on one horse and
+rid down the side of the gulch to see whar water was at. I was jest
+takin' the things in when a man come along leading five mules and riding
+on one. He was a city stranger in fine clothes and he asked me fer a
+meal because he had lost his way from a man who had a tent and grub. My
+mammy allus cooked fer strangers, so--"
+
+"She shore do that," ejaculated Mr. Turner, proud of his noted
+hospitality.
+
+"So I made up a fire hasty in the yard and put on a coffee pot," the
+girl continued. "I had some corn pone and bacon my mammy had give me fer
+a snack and I het that up. Whilst I got the meal the stranger he went on
+unloading our wagon and then he come to a bundle of bed quilts what my
+mammy have been saving fer me from her mammy and her grandmammy. He took
+a notion to them and ast me how old they was and I told him about as old
+as any twenty-inch cedar on Old Harpeth. He asked me to trade 'em, but I
+couldn't abear to until he had riz to fifty dollars, what was the price
+of a young mule, all on account of his sister wanting quilts like them
+up in a big city. I was kinder crying quiet at letting 'em go, but I
+thought about what that mule would be to Jed who wuz so good to me, so I
+give 'em to him and he tied 'em on his saddle and went away. It war most
+a hour when Jed come and when I told him and showed him the money, he
+didn't believe me about them old quilts and he tooken the rope from
+around the neck of the mule he'd been riding and--"
+
+She paused here in her story and put her scarlet flower face in her
+hands, while Jed groaned and dropped his own face down upon his arm. The
+old judge's face took on a grim sternness, the jury stopped whittling
+and the face of every woman in the court room gazed upon the girl with
+stern unbelieving accusation.
+
+"Go on, now, honey, but they won't believe you," commanded Jed with a
+sob.
+
+"Your husband took the rope from around the neck of the mule and left
+him untied?" asked father gently.
+
+"What fer, Melissa?" asked the old judge, without gentleness or any show
+of confidence in what the shrinking woman was saying.
+
+"To beat me with. He war crazed mad and called me a name, but I don't
+hold it ag'in him," answered the young wife, with a glance at the
+cowering prisoner.
+
+"He done right," calmly announced one of the twelve good men and true,
+in the muddy boots and flannel shirt, and every mountain woman in the
+court room nodded her head in approval of the pronouncement.
+
+"Order in the court room. You all shet up and listen," commanded the
+judge, as father looked around the room and then at him with a stern
+demand for control of the situation.
+
+"Then what happened, Mrs. Bangs?" father continued to question.
+
+"I hollered and fought and skeered the mule off into the big woods where
+he can't be found to keep my husband out of the pen," she answered with
+a sob. "It took me a week to make him believe about them quilts and then
+pappy come along and fought him about the mule and found the money, as
+he claimed he sold the mule fer what was the quilt money."
+
+"That will do. Thank you, Mrs. Bangs," said father, with the same
+deference and tenderness he had used when he began to question her.
+"Does the prosecution wish to question the witness?"
+
+"They ain't no use of questioning her when she says a man give her fifty
+dollars fer five old quilts," was the answer made by the young
+prosecuting attorney, who did not rise to his feet to make this remark.
+
+"Please ask Mrs. Bangs if the quilts were woven ones of three colors,
+and then call me to the stand," I said to father quickly.
+
+He put the question to the weeping young wife and got an affirmative
+answer, after which he dismissed her and had the sheriff swear me in.
+
+"Can you throw any light upon the matter of the purchase or sale of
+these quilts, Miss Powers?" father questioned me formally.
+
+"If they were old hand-woven, herb-dyed, knitted quilts, they are worth
+fifty dollars apiece in New York to-day. I paid that for one not five
+months ago," I said, staring haughtily into the calmly doubting faces of
+the mountaineers in the jury box and on the benches.
+
+"Do you want to question the witness?" my father asked of the indolent
+young prosecutor.
+
+"Don't know who she is and don't believe she is telling the truth," was
+the laconic refusal of the prosecutor to let me influence his case.
+
+"Well, now, Jim, Parson Goodloe here brought the gal along with him and
+I reckon he can character witness for her," interposed the judge.
+"Sheriff, swear in the parson." His command was duly executed.
+
+"Mr. Goodloe, do you consider Miss Powers a woman who can be depended
+upon to speak the truth?" father asked him formally.
+
+"I do," the Reverend Mr. Goodloe answered quietly, and just for a second
+a gleam from his eyes under their dull gold brows shot across the
+distance to me, and if it hadn't all been so serious I should have
+laughed with glee at his thus having to declare himself about my
+character in public. But the next moment the situation became much more
+serious and my heart positively stopped still as I seemed to see prison
+doors close upon the young husband.
+
+"Do you want to question the witness?" father asked of the lolling young
+prosecutor.
+
+"How long have you known the lady, Parson?" he asked, with a drawl and
+one eye half closed.
+
+There was an intense silence in the court room for almost a minute. Then
+the Reverend Mr. Gregory Goodloe answered calmly:
+
+"Three days."
+
+"That might be long enough fer a parson, but it ain't fer a jury," the
+young attorney answered, and there was a quizzical kindness in the old
+judge's face as he smiled at Mr. Goodloe and shook his head.
+
+Mr. Goodloe started to speak, but father waved him back to his seat,
+turned to the judge and jury and began the most wonderful speech on the
+subject of circumstantial evidence and ethical law that I have ever
+heard. His beautiful deep voice was as clear as a bell and twenty years
+seemed to have fallen from his shoulders. I was looking at and listening
+to the man he had been before I was born. And when I could tear my eyes
+from his radiant face I watched these stolid mountaineers with whom he
+was working his will with a power they had never experienced before and
+did not understand. The men in the jury box and the men on the hewn
+benches dropped their eyes before his flaming ones as he shamed their
+censorious manhood and some of the sun-bonneted women bent their heads
+and sobbed when he arraigned them for the lack of motherhood and
+sisterhood for the poor young wife who had come over the Ridge to live
+among them.
+
+"Would you men and women rather believe a girl light of love and
+faithless, and send your neighbor to prison for two years of his young
+life when he could mean much to you and his state and his nation, than
+to give them a little human sympathy and justice. Do you prefer to pin
+your faith to the value of a worthless, vagrant mule than--"
+
+But just here, when Judge Nickols Morris Powers was winding himself up
+for one of the greatest appeals to a jury he had ever made, a mule
+stepped into the case and took away the honor of its winning. He poked
+his inquisitive nose into a back window of the court room which looked
+out upon the edge of the big woods, and gave the whole assemblage a
+hew-haw of derision.
+
+"Lordy mighty, that are Pete come back hisself with all the curkles in
+the big woods sticking to him!" exclaimed Hiram Turner, as he rose and
+went to examine his property. "He wasn't sold to no mule man, fer they
+crops the hair on their hoofs to see if they's healthy 'fore they buys.
+This here frees Jed."
+
+"And now that you gentlemen have the testimony of a mule, will you not
+believe the word of Mrs. Bangs and Miss Powers about the valuable
+quilts?" my father said, after he had commanded silence by raising his
+hand.
+
+"We shore do believe every word of it, stranger, and you won this here
+case and not that mule," a stern old sister in a gingham apron and black
+bonnet said, with a commanding glance at the jury.
+
+"Yes, stranger," answered the hoary old foreman, whom to this day I
+believe to be the meek husband of the commanding old woman in the black
+bonnet. "I have done got the mind of the jury and they all voted fer you
+and not the mule."
+
+"I hereby gives that mule to Jed Bangs and my daughter, Melissa, and
+I'll knock off a half on the price of his teammate to Jed if he gives me
+his fergiveness and hern," old Hiram rose and turned with his hand on
+the forelock of the mule hero to say to the assembled court room. "Go
+around and halter him quick, Jed, 'fore he breaks away again, the durned
+fool," he added in another voice.
+
+"Yes, prisoner, you are declared free, and hurry to ketch him, fer he's
+straining ag'inst Hiram," was the judge's sentence, delivered from the
+bench as everybody rose and began to stream out to watch the tussle
+between Jed and the wild mule. Father and the parson were among the
+first to gain the door.
+
+In the next few minutes I found that some of the shy mountain women were
+beginning to hover about me, and in another ten minutes I had laid the
+foundations of an export rug and quilt business that I have a feeling
+will thrive greatly.
+
+"Were you arrested because your mother told you not to sell the quilts?"
+was Charlotte's sympathetic question to the young Mrs. Bangs; and I saw
+the mite take a clean handkerchief from her small pink pocket and apply
+it to the tears that were coursing down Melissa's cheeks over the
+dimples which her smiling mouth was putting in their way. "Just be a
+good girl and God will forgive you," she comforted further, nestling a
+dirty pink cheek, which rubbed off, against Melissa's wet one.
+
+"And I asked if she were totally depraved, less than an hour ago," I
+apologized to my name daughter in my heart.
+
+All the way home I sat beside father, and once I laid a timid hand in
+his, through whose fingers the pride I had in him must have flowed into
+his. He flushed for a second and then was pale again.
+
+"You can't put new wine in old bottles, daughter," he said sadly, as he
+glanced down into the valley. The car was running smoothly, slowly and
+noiselessly around a sharp curve, and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe both
+heard and answered the sad axiom.
+
+"The finest wine mellows in casks and is then bottled free of dregs,
+Judge. I think the wine of life is of that vintage," he said, with one
+of his radiant smiles that I could see fairly warm father from his
+paleness.
+
+"I wonder just what he meant by 'the wine of life,'" I asked myself as I
+went to say good night to Old Harpeth after I put out my light before
+going to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HAVING IT OUT
+
+
+"Well, of course, we knew Nickols would follow you, Charlotte, but we
+did hope to have you all to ourselves for more than just a week," moaned
+Nell Morgan, as we all sat on the front porch of the Poplars in the warm
+spring sunlight several mornings after I had told them of Nickols'
+arrival on Friday, which announcement had come in the midnight telegram.
+I winced at the words "follow you," and then smiled at the absurdity of
+the little shudder.
+
+"Yes, Nickols will be absorbing, but we can all sit hard on him and
+perhaps put him in his place," responded Letitia Cockrell, as she drew a
+fine thread through a ruffle she was making to adorn some part of the
+person of one of Nell's progeny. "I do not believe in ever allowing a
+man to take more than his share of a woman's time."
+
+"Do you use grocery scales or a pint cup to measure out Cliff Gray's
+daily portion of yourself, Letitia?" asked Harriet Henderson, with a
+very sophisticated laugh in which Nell joined with a little giggle.
+Harriet was appliqueing velvet violets on a gray chiffon scarf and was
+doing it with the zest of the newly liberated. Roger Henderson had had a
+lot of money that, in default of a will, the law gave mostly to Harriet,
+but in life he had not had the joy of seeing her spend it that he might
+have had if he could have gazed back from placid death. "Do you make the
+same allowance of affection to him in the light of the moon that you do
+in the dark?" she further demanded of the serene Letitia.
+
+"Well, he doesn't have to see his share divided up into bits and handed
+out to the other men," was the serene answer to Harriet's gibe and which
+was pretty good for Letitia.
+
+"My dear child," declaimed Harriet, as she poised a purple violet on the
+end of her needle, "don't ever, ever make the mistake of letting one of
+the creatures know just what is coming to him. Isn't that right, Nell?"
+
+"Yes, and it is pretty hard to keep them in a state of uncertainty
+about you when there are four certain children between you, but I go
+over to visit my mother at Hillsboro as often as she'll have the caravan
+and plead with Billy Harvey or Hampton Dibrell to keep me out until I'm
+late for dinner every time they pick me up for a little charitable spin.
+That and other deceptions have kept Mark Morgan uncertainly happy so
+far, but if I am pushed to the wall I'll--I'll go to the Reverend Mr.
+Goodloe's study for ministerial counsel like you did last Friday
+afternoon, Harriet," was Nell's contribution to the discussion, which
+she delivered over the head of the Suckling on her breast.
+
+"Now how did you get hold of that choice bit of scandal, Nellie?" asked
+Harriet, with serene interest as she bit off a tag of purple silk thread
+from the stem of one of her violets.
+
+"Billy Harvey says that scandal is a yellow pup that dogs a parson's
+heels, to which everybody throws some kind of bone," remarked Jessie.
+Jessie always vigorously represses Billy in his own presence and then
+quotes him eternally when he is absent.
+
+"Mother Spurlock had come over from the Settlement to see him about the
+state of the treasury of the Mothers' Aid Class, and she stopped in to
+get a bundle of clothes I had for her," Nell answered Harriet's
+question. "She said she didn't mind the hour lost if the parson could
+give a 'wee bit of comfort' to your 'wrestling' soul. I didn't like to
+tell her that I thought it might be Mr. Goodloe who was wrestling--for
+life and liberty--for you and I have been friends since we could toddle,
+Harriet, but it was temptation to share my anxiety with her." And
+serenely Nellie patted the back of the drowsing Suckling.
+
+"Wrong this time, Nell," answered Harriet, as she placed still another
+violet. "I was doing the wrestling, but I went to the mat. I gave up
+twenty-five dollars and took the directorship of that Mothers' Aid.
+Never having been a mother, I pointed out to him that I was not exactly
+qualified, but he laid stress upon my energy and business acumen and I
+gave up. I mentioned you for the honor, but those marvelous eyes of his
+glowed with some sort of inner warmth and he said that you had all you
+could do and would need help from me just as the women at the Settlement
+do. I'm going to present your Susan with a frock out of that linen and
+real Valenciennes I bought in the city last week for a blouse for my own
+self, and I'm going to give the making to that little Burns woman, who
+sews so beautifully and cheaply to support her seven offspring, while
+Mr. Burns supports 'The Last Chance' saloon down at the end of the road.
+In that way I'll be aiding two of Mr. Goodloe's flock at the same time,
+and when I told him my decision he laughed and said be sure and have it
+made two inches shorter than you made Sue's frocks, because her bare
+knees ought not to be hid from the world. That was about all that
+transpired in the whole hour of spiritual conference you are spreading
+the scandal about, and you ought to be ashamed."
+
+Suddenly something in me made me determine to have it out with those
+four women and see what results I could get. I felt thirsty for
+knowledge of the wellsprings of other people's lives.
+
+"Harriet," I demanded, "just why did you join Mr. Goodloe's church?"
+
+"Let's see," answered Harriet, as she poised a violet and gave herself
+up to introspection.
+
+"Mr. Goodloe?" I asked squarely, and my honesty drew its spark from
+hers.
+
+"Mostly," she answered briefly. "And I believe in the church as an
+institution," she added, with honest justice to herself.
+
+"I think it is absolutely horrid of you to ask a question like that,
+Charlotte," said Nell, as she turned the fretting Suckling over on her
+knee and began another series of pats. "We all of us went to church and
+Sunday school when we were children."
+
+"Up to the time I left, not a single one of you ever had gone to church
+with any kind of regularity and not a one of you had ever supported its
+institutions. I've been here less than a week and each one of you has in
+some way shown me how bored you are with the relation. That's all the
+case I have against your or any church--just that the members are bored.
+Also, do any of you get any help in your daily lives, aside from the
+emotional pleasure it is to you to hear your minister sing twice a week,
+which would be as great or greater if he sang love and waltz songs from
+light opera for you?"
+
+And as I asked my question I looked quickly from one to the other of the
+four women seated with me under the roof of the Poplars and tried to
+search out what was in their hearts. I knew them and their lives with
+the cruel completeness it is given to friends to know each other in
+small towns like Goodloets and I could probe with a certain touch. And
+as they all sat silent with me, each one driven to self-question by my
+demand, I threw the flash of a searchlight into each of them. These are
+some of the things that stood out in the illumination:
+
+Harriet Henderson has always been in love with Mark Morgan, since her
+shoe-top-dress days, and she married Roger Henderson because Mark was as
+poor as she before the Phosphate Company gave him his managership. Nell
+and the babies are the nails driven in her heart every day and she loves
+them all passionately. She is only twenty-eight and life will be long
+for her. She needs help to live it. Whence will the help come?
+
+Nell married Mark when she was eighteen and has produced a result every
+year and a half since. She loves him mildly and he loves her after a
+fashion, but her endurance is wearing thin. His mother had seven
+children and he thinks that an ideal number, though she was one
+generation nearer the pioneer woman and also had a nurse trained in
+slavery who was a wizard with children. Mark wants to have a lot of joy
+of life and so far he drags poor exhausted Nell with him. It is a
+question how long she can stand the social pace and the over-production.
+What is going to help her when she breaks down? How will she hold him
+faithful while she rears and trains all the kiddies? Where will she get
+spirit to love him and work out their salvation? Also Harriet is always
+there. Something will have to help Nell. What?
+
+Billy loves Nell and doesn't know it. He loved her before she was
+married. The children make him rage superficially and burn inwardly. He
+gambles and drinks, but is honest and adorable. What is going to make a
+real man of him?
+
+Jessie Litton's mother died in a private sanitarium for the mentally
+unbalanced and she knows all about it. She loves Hampton Dibrell and
+never looks in his direction or is a moment alone with him. He is in the
+unattached state of ease where any woman can get him if she cares to
+try, and Jessie has to keep her hands behind her.
+
+Letitia is serenely happy with not a dark corner that I know of. She
+loves Cliff Gray and always will. Cliff is faithful and as good as gold,
+but he will hang around Jessie, who encourages him, because she is
+lonely and considers him safely tied up with Letitia. Mr. Cockrell is
+the best lawyer in town and Mrs. Cockrell the most devoted wife and
+mother. I can only feel that Letitia Cockrell needs a jolt and I don't
+see where it is coming from.
+
+And I? I am lonely. And I feel that the constant anxiety about father is
+more than I can bear, worse now when I realize what he has been and
+could be--and that I love him. He is the hardest drinker in Goodloets
+and yet never is drunk. He is soaked from the beginning of one day to
+another. He began to drink like that the day my mother died and I have
+always known that _I_ was helpless to help him. The weakness was in him,
+only supported by her strength so long as she was there. He was the most
+brilliant mind in the state, and was one of the supreme judges when
+mother died. Now Mr. Cockrell manages his business for him and I have
+lately come to know that I must sit by and watch him disintegrate. I
+cannot endure it now, as I have been doing. What is going to help me in
+this--shame for him? I have gone away to my mother's people to forget
+and left him to Dabney, and I've come home--to begin the suffering all
+over. I'll never leave him again. What's going to help me?
+
+And there is something deeper--a race something that fairly eats the
+heart out of my pride. On almost every page of the history of the
+Harpeth Valley the name of Powers occurs. One Powers man has been
+governor of the state, and there have been two United States congressmen
+and a senator of our house. Father is the last of the line. Because race
+instinct is the strongest in women, I am the one who suffers as I see my
+family die out. What is going to help me? A few gospel hymns in a tenor
+voice the like of which I should have to pay at least three dollars to
+hear in the Metropolitan? The scene on the porch rose in my mind, but I
+felt that I both doubted and feared such succor.
+
+And I am in still deeper depths. Nickols is the son of father's first
+cousin, and has father's full name, Nickols Morris Powers, and he is the
+last of his branch of the house. Father loves him and is proud of him
+and nothing ever enters his mind except that I will marry Nickols and
+start the family all over again. And this is the tragedy. I love Nickols
+and am entirely unsatisfied with him. He is the Whistler nocturne that
+my Sorolla nature demands, and he eternally makes me hold out my hand to
+grasp--nothing. He stands just beyond. I am unable to decide whether he
+does or does not love me. In New York he lives his life among the
+artists and fashionable people with whom his highly successful
+profession throws him, and I don't see why he cares to come back here
+where he was born and reared, in pursuit of a woman like me. I am as
+elemental as a shock of wheat back on one of father's meadows and
+Nickols is completely evolved. He laughs at race pride and resents mine.
+For six months I had been in New York living with Aunt Clara in Uncle
+Jonathan Van Eyek's old house down on Gramercy just to go into Nickols'
+life with him. I went about in the white lights of both Murray Hill and
+Greenwich Village for about one hundred and eighty-five evenings, and
+then I fled back to my garden and the poplars--and my anxiety. I thought
+I had come home to be free and I found the same old chains. And then
+had come Nickols' telegram of pursuit in the midnight after I had stood
+by in the shadow and watched a strong man pray and a weak man battle
+with himself. I was frightened, frightened at the future, and what was
+going to help me?
+
+"I don't actually understand a word of Gregory Goodloe's sermons, really
+understand them, I mean, but it helps me to see that somebody truly
+believes that there is something somewhere that will straighten out
+tangles--in life as well as thread."
+
+Harriet broke in on my still hunt into my own and other people's inner
+shrines as she snapped a bit of tangled purple silk thread, knotted it
+and began all over again on the violet.
+
+"I don't care what he preaches about--he's soothing and I need a little
+repose in my life after--Oh, what is the matter now?" And as she
+finished speaking Nell Morgan arose and went with the Suckling asquirm
+in her arms to meet the large noise that was arriving down the front
+walk.
+
+The delegation was headed by young Charlotte, whose blue eyes flamed
+across a very tip-tilted nose that bespoke mischief. Jimmy stolidly
+brought up the rear with small Sue clinging loyally to his dirty little
+paddie, which she only let go to run and bury her cornsilk topknot in
+Harriet's outspread arms, where she was engulfed into safety until only
+the most delicious dimpled pink knees protruded above dusty white socks
+and equally dusty white canvas sandals. Though within a few months of
+four, Sue had discovered Harriet, and never failed to take advantage of
+her.
+
+"What is the matter?" again demanded Nell, as the vocal chords of
+Charlotte ceased reverberating and her countenance resumed a more normal
+color and expression.
+
+"A rock flew and the minister's window got broked." Charlotte gave forth
+this announcement with a diplomacy that might have been admirable
+exerted in a juster cause.
+
+"Who had the rock?" demanded the mother sternly.
+
+"Jimmy," was the decided answer, given with a threatening glance at the
+son of the house of Morgan, who quailed in his socks and sandals and
+began an attempt to screw one of his toes under one of the flagstones of
+the walk. I knew in an instant that that rock had never left the hand of
+small James, but the clash of Nell's wits with young Charlotte is so
+constant that at times the maternal ones are dulled. The accused must
+have psychically scented my sympathy, for he lifted large, scared,
+pleading eyes to mine for a brief second and then dropped them again. I
+went to the rescue.
+
+"Sue, who broke the window?" I asked, as I extricated the four-year-old
+witness from Harriet's chiffon and violets. I doubted if young Susan had
+attained the years of prevarication as yet. I was right.
+
+"Tarlie," was the positive answer. "Boom--book--crk!" was the graphic
+description of the crash she added as she squirmed back among the
+violets and the needles and the thread.
+
+"Charlotte!" exclaimed Nell, in real despair.
+
+"Jimmy did have the rock in his pocket, and he just lent it to me to
+throw at a bird right above the window. It was a nice round one, and he
+brought it from home to see if he could kill anything. It most killed
+the minister, and the rock is a little bluggy. Isn't it, Jimmy? He's
+got it in his pocket for keeps."
+
+"Yes," answered young James, with the brevity with which he usually made
+responses to the loquacity of his sister.
+
+"Do you mean that you hit Mr. Goodloe, as well as broke the window?"
+demanded Nell in still more horror, as she came down two of the front
+steps.
+
+"He didn't mind," answered Charlotte. "He liked it, because he made us
+both learn a verse of a hymn to sing for punish, and Sue can sing it,
+too. Come on, Sue!" and before any of us could recover from our horror
+at the violence the young parson had suffered at the hands of the
+marauders, Charlotte had lined the other two up on either hand and begun
+her exhibition of the benefit arising from the throwing of the rock. It
+was a very good example of the good that may result from evil, which is
+one of the puzzling reverses of one of the Christian tenets.
+
+    "'Work, for the night is coming,
+    Work through the morning hours,
+    Work while the dew is sparkling,
+    Work 'mid springing flowers,'"
+
+trilled Charlotte in a high, buzzy young voice, while Jimmy piped in a
+few notes lower. Baby Sue's little, clear jumble of words in perfect
+tune was so bewitchingly sweet that Harriet again engulfed her, while
+the outraged mother, not so easily beguiled, sailed down the steps and
+around through the garden toward the chapel, driving the two older
+offenders before her to the scene of the crime.
+
+"Who is going to help Nell train up liars and murderers into good
+citizens?" I asked myself in my depths, as I joined with the others in
+the admiring laugh at young Charlotte's dramatic powers.
+
+"Mr. Goodloe is the most wonderful thing I ever saw with kiddies," said
+Jessie Litton, as she rose to her feet to begin leave-taking. "Yes, I
+must go, for father expects me to luncheon," she added, at my
+remonstrance.
+
+"I'm going to kidnap Sue while I can, and I may never bring her back. I
+must fly!" said Harriet, and she departed hastily to the small roadster
+she had parked beside the gate. "Come on, Letitia, and let me take you
+home," she called over her shoulder, and Letitia followed to secure the
+short spin around the corner to the old Cockrell home, which was set
+back from the street behind a tall hedge of waxy-leaved Cherokee roses.
+Thus almost in the twinkling of an eye I was left alone, which state,
+however, did not last more than a few seconds, for around the corner of
+the house from the chapel, from which direction the whole world seemed
+to be going or coming, arrived Mrs. Elsie Spurlock, beaming the welcome
+to me that had always found a ready response.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DEEP DIGGING
+
+
+And in another twinkling of eyes, both of mine and hers, I had taken her
+bundle from her, seated her in the largest rocking chair, and she had
+untied her bonnet strings, which denoted that she had come for a genuine
+visit.
+
+"Well, dearie, dearie me, the sight of you is good for tired eyes,
+Charlotte," she bumbled in her rich, deep old voice. As she spoke she
+tucked a white wisp of a curl back into place beneath the second water
+wave that protruded from under the little white widow's ruche in her
+bonnet and continued to beam at me. "I met Nellie Morgan and her
+Annarugans hurrying to pray a pardon from Mr. Goodloe for that rock
+which might have killed him, if thrown an inch to the right, instead of
+only nicking that yellow head of his, the Lord be praised!"
+
+"What was that same Lord doing when he let the rock fly from
+Charlotte's hand to within an inch of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's life,
+Mother Spurlock?" I asked her, with the old warfare over the same old
+subject rising at the very first minute of our meeting. I have wondered
+sometimes in the last few years if the wrestling with me over her faith
+was not ordained for the purpose of strengthening Mother Spurlock's
+powers of patient argument. She is the only person in the world to whom
+I speak from the depths, and the relief of her sweetened and seasoned
+wisdom is the straw at which I often clutch to save myself.
+
+"I surmise that He guided the hand of that child so that the verse of
+the hymn, and the chastisement of the rod I hope Nellie will inflict,
+might work together for her good. All of us must at times let a little
+blood for another's good--heart's blood, very often, not just that from
+our scalps or shins." And as she answered me without a moment's
+hesitation she enveloped me in loving question. "Are you always going to
+occupy the anxious seat in front of the Lord, child? Still, sit as long
+as you like and go on questioning Him. You'll find the answer."
+
+"The whole town seems to have gone into your fold and left me on the
+'anxious seat' alone," I answered, as I drew my chair nearer to her and
+took her lined, strong old hand in mine.
+
+"That Billy Harvey passes the collection plate up the aisle on Sunday
+and plays poker all Saturday night till Sunday morning down at the Last
+Chance, in a room in front of the one in which poor Pat Burns, who
+carries a hod for his money, loses his all. Mary Burns sews all day and
+half the night to feed him and the children, but she puts her pittance
+into Billy's plate every Sunday, and I know that she gets the strength
+to go on from day to day from the words that come from the same pulpit
+he sets the plate behind. That is, we call the table out at your Country
+Club a pulpit, until we get our own in the chapel from which to praise
+the Lord. So you see that there are some sheep who have a taint of goat
+hair in their wool still left--I won't say with you--out in the world.
+And speaking of that world, have you come back to say good-bye to us?"
+
+"I don't know yet, Mother Spurlock," I answered her candidly. "I ran
+away from that world, but it is coming after me on Friday."
+
+"You'll be sent into the vineyard where you are most needed, and there
+you'll serve," she said, with a far-away look coming into her eyes as
+she let her glances roam out to the dim hills of Paradise Ridge. A flood
+of love and reverence rose in my heart for her as I sat quiet and let
+her spirit roam. Mother Spurlock had been the gayest young matron in
+Goodloets, living in the great old Spurlock home with handsome,
+rollicking young George Spurlock for a husband, and three babies around
+her knees, and in one short year she had been left with only one large
+and three tiny graves out in the placid home of the dead, beyond the
+river bend. The babies had been taken by that relentless child foe,
+diphtheria, and young George, reckless with grief, had let a half-broken
+horse break his neck. The young woman, aged by her grief, had sold the
+great house to the next of kin and moved down into an old brick cottage
+that sat "beside the road" in a gnarled old apple orchard, and had
+become the "friend to man." Through the orchard and past the door of the
+Little House ran the path that led from the Settlement to the Town, and
+through her heart and hands flowed most of the love and charity that
+bound the rich and poor, brother to brother. Mother Spurlock was never
+without a bundle in which she carried labor of the poor sold for the
+gold of the rich, or gifts from the rich back to the needy. I thought of
+all the long years of service in the vineyard into which her tragedy had
+thrown her, and I bent and picked up the bundle at our feet and held it
+with reverent hands.
+
+"Just a few baby things that Nellie Morgan gave me to fix up a poor
+little Mother Only in the village," she came back from her reverie to
+say cheerfully, as she saw me with the bundle in my hand. Mother
+Spurlock always refers to the children without the sanction of the law
+for their birth as the Mother Onlies, and somehow, when she speaks it,
+the name carries a world of tenderness into the heart of the hearer.
+
+"Whose now?" I asked her gently, because in a way Mother Spurlock and I
+bore one another's burdens of spirit.
+
+"Hattie Garrett's, and it's a week old now. It is one of the saddest
+things that ever happened in the village, and we none of us understand.
+You remember, she taught the district school down in the Settlement."
+
+"As none of us understood about Martha Ensley. Is that all a mystery
+still?" I asked, and I stroked the bundle of tiny garments.
+
+"Yes, and now she's gone nobody knows where, day before yesterday.
+Jacob, her father, was rough and violent with her, but only from grief,
+and she forgave all that. I'm troubled sorely, for she is gentle, and
+not one to fight the world alone. She must have gone to the city, the
+good Lord help her!"
+
+"He will--He is," I answered quickly, then stopped because I knew I must
+not tell what I had overheard--should I say in the confessional?
+
+"Praise God! to hear you speak such words. Sometimes a body's faith gets
+out of her heart past her mind and proclaims itself before the higher
+criticism gets a chance to throttle it," the invincible old warrior
+exclaimed with a delighted twinkle in her young blue eyes at having
+caught me with religious goods on me. "He will, He will take _care_ of
+us all, not that He doesn't expect us to put in about sixteen hours of
+the day helping Him to do it for ourselves and others. That reminds me
+that I seem to be growing to this chair. Luella May Spain has got a nice
+place to work in the telegraph station with Mr. Pate, and if she's to
+look neat she needs a few white shirt waists. I _could_ get them in this
+bundle. If I get too many things from you and Harriet this morning to
+carry myself, Hampton will take me down the hill in his car when he goes
+to lunch, not that I wouldn't be frightened to death to ride with him
+except on the Lord's mission."
+
+"Do you think that fact would keep Hampton from being run down by
+Harriet when she cuts corners bias, as she insists on doing?" I asked,
+as I started in the door to procure the toilet necessaries to Luella
+May's telegraphic career, whether it devastated my supply of tennis
+clothes or not. Nothing that any woman or any member of her family in
+Goodloets wears or eats is secure from Mother Spurlock, and we have all
+submitted to the fact with the greatest docility.
+
+"I know it does; and three shirt waists will be enough if you add a neat
+black belt," was the answer that followed me through the hall. "Bless
+my life, Nickols Powers, I was glad to see you at prayer meeting last
+week, even if you and William Cockrell were just caught up out at your
+Club in your chess game," I heard her exclaim, to draw a laughing answer
+in father's most genial rumble. Then I heard him call loudly for Dabney,
+and when Sallie descended with my bundle, that contained a complete
+telegraphic outfit for Luella May which showed a decided leaning to
+tennis style, she met Dabney on the front threshold with a rough parcel
+from which I saw a shirt sleeve and a blue serge trouser leg protrude.
+
+"Thank you, Nickols. Since his accident, Bill Hanks has thinned out to
+just about your size. Now he can go back to his job neatly and
+respectably clad," Mother Spurlock was saying.
+
+"The citizens of Goodloets had better take the habit of wearing a double
+suit of clothing for fear of having Elsie Spurlock strip them in public
+to beyond the law," father grumbled in great pleasure, after he had
+packed her and her bundles in Hampton's car. Father always calls Mother
+Spurlock "Elsie," and once or twice I have seen a faint blush creep to
+her cheeks and a glint flash from her eyes, but he blandly goes on
+doing it. I wonder--
+
+"Father," I said, as we went slowly up the front walk together, "Nickols
+will be here on Friday; will you have Dabney get his rooms in the north
+wing ready for him? He likes that light, and he can use the long green
+room for a studio when he sketches."
+
+"That's good," answered father heartily. He likes Nickols and Nickols
+manages him beautifully, by giving him all he wants to drink whenever he
+suggests it, even introducing him to new Manhattan beverages. There is
+perpetual war between Dabney, who knows father's nervous limit, and
+Nickols, who doesn't care just as long as things and human beings that
+surround him are kept pleasant. It is all right for the rest of the
+world to have delirium tremens, just so they do it out of his sight and
+hearing.
+
+"I wonder just what Nickols will think of Goodloe," father added, with a
+slightly strained laugh. "You thought he would be enraged at Goodloe and
+me for building the chapel and weeding the garden. Perhaps he will be
+unhappy."
+
+"I don't believe your weeding would make anybody unhappy, father," I
+answered with a laugh, choosing to ignore the issue of the building of
+the chapel until Nickols was upon the scene and we could decide just
+what to do.
+
+"Been over the whole garden twice and eaten several meals in the sweat
+of my brow--that is, I took a cold shower before coming to the table, my
+daughter," father said, and he looked ashamed of himself for being proud
+of his own spurt of normality. I caught my breath, but I was wise enough
+not to show my astonishment. "Goodloe is the most insinuating person I
+ever met, and I advise you to be careful. He makes men do just as he
+wants them to, and I should say that women would eat out of his hand."
+
+"I suppose I ought to eat a bite or two from his fingers to pay for all
+the work he has got out of you and Dabney. I never saw the garden so
+beautiful or so early. Look, father, the peonies are budding, two weeks
+ahead of their usual time!"
+
+"They'd be damned ungrateful not to grow industriously, after the way
+Dab and I have sprained our old backs spading and feeding them according
+to spiritual direction that stood over us with a rake," answered
+father, with proud if profane enthusiasm. There was a faint pink glow in
+his haggard, thin cheeks, and he took from his pocket a huge knife I had
+never seen him use before and began carefully to cut away a few dead
+twigs from a budding rose vine.
+
+"Your mother always put a rose from this vine at my plate for breakfast,
+and you got yours from that pink bush over there by the sun dial," he
+said, with a softness in his voice that I had not heard since my tenth
+summer, in which my mother had died. I tingled all over, but held on to
+myself.
+
+"You go tell that old black lazybones to come here with his spade this
+minute. I told him about digging in this mulch yesterday before the
+dahlias sprouted, and he hasn't done it. I'm not going to do it for him,
+like I put the fertilizer around the lilacs, just to save him from
+Goodloe. Tell him to come right here to me, and not to let grass grow in
+his shoe tracks," and father picked up a hoe from the walk beside the
+neglected dahlias and began doing the work he had just declared against.
+I fled around to the kitchen, and something lent wings to my feet.
+
+"Oh, Dab, what does it mean that father is really taking an interest in
+the garden?" I demanded of the faithful old black friend, whom I found
+enveloped in a kitchen apron helping his wife bring the dinner to a
+serving head.
+
+"Praise God, his salvation am commenced, if it don't kill me before he
+gits it," answered Dab, as he put his hand to his back and groaned.
+
+"They has been jest one-half a demijohn of devil heart whisky ordered up
+outen that cellar in over a month, and I b'lieve this here no account
+nigger drunk a pint of that," Mammy added to his answer. "Last month it
+was two demijohns they had up, and before that it was three or four.
+That parson done it with readin' and talkin' and hoein'. Glory! I wants
+to hold my breath and shout at the same time, and I would if I could
+trust this pullet in the skillet to either you or Dabney whilst I did
+it. The Lord wouldn't listen to no shoutin' from a cook whose chicken
+was frying black while she did her praisin'," and as she spoke Mammy
+began a low humming, swaying from table to stove with a rhythm in the
+swing of her fat body that had a certain dignified beauty to it. It was
+crude emotion, and I knew it, but I felt it work in my own body as I
+let the significance of what she had told me about the lessening amount
+of whiskey father had been consuming add itself to the scene upon the
+back porch and sink fully into my consciousness. I don't know what might
+have happened to my shouting Methodist grandmother's worldly though
+emotional descendant if father's voice, sharp and clear, with a note of
+command I had forgotten it possessed, had not interrupted me.
+
+"Charlotte! Dab!" it called; and we both answered with all speed.
+
+"That Parson Goodloe have got the power to draw the teeth of seven
+devils, and you both consider the words of his mouth or he'll git the
+teeth outen yourn," Mammy called after us in ambiguous warning.
+
+And upon our arrival on the scene of action being executed upon the
+dahlias, we found the commander of the devils awaiting us, though in his
+hands was no forked instrument of dentistry, but in one he held a large
+slice of rye bread thickly spread with butter, and the other was
+disarmed by a ripe red apple. As we drew near he finished a direction to
+father and took a huge bite out of the slab of bread that left a gap as
+wide as one would expect a Harpeth jaguar to make.
+
+"Harrowing deep makes great growth in all plant life," he was saying
+past the slice of bread with agricultural prosiness to father, who had
+completely sweated down the very high and stiff collar which he always
+wore swathed in a wide tie of black after a Henry Clay cut, in a savage
+attack with the hoe upon the mulch that was smothering the dahlias in
+richness.
+
+"Does the same deep digging result hold true in biological and psychic
+life?" puffed father, and then he leaned on his hoe and looked up at the
+young man towering over him. In his eyes was the appeal of disappointed
+age calling to the ideals of flaming strength and youth in the
+deep-jeweled eyes that answered with a look of passionate tenderness as
+the parson poised the bread for another bite.
+
+"'Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,' Mr. Powers, is the direct data we
+have on that subject," he said. Then he, for the first time, observed
+the approach of Dabney and myself, of which his widening smile and the
+quick lowering of the slab of rye pone gave notice to father, who
+exploded accordingly.
+
+"You black son-of-a-gun! Why didn't you rake off these dahlias as I told
+you to yesterday? Now you get his hide, Parson!" was the greeting that
+Dabney received, while I was ignored by all concerned.
+
+"That hinge in your back rusty again, Dabney?" questioned the parson,
+with leonine mildness.
+
+"I been upsot by my young mistis coming home," answered Dabney, with a
+quick glance at me as if to indicate me as a substantial excuse for any
+crimes. I stood convicted, for I do use Dabney continually in all my
+hospitalities.
+
+"We understand, Dabney," was the answer he got from the feeding Jaguar,
+who gave me that glint of a laugh that I had learned to expect and
+to--dread. I knew what he meant to imply, and I also knew that he knew
+that I understood that he considered me a disturbing element. Then he
+again raised the half-demolished hunk of bread to his mouth, stopped and
+regarded the apple in meditative indecision. From head to heels he was
+clothed in the most exquisite white flannel and buckskin tennis
+clothes, but for all their civilized worldliness he resembled nothing so
+much as a feeding king of the forest in the poise of his wonderful head
+and equally wonderful body. I glanced quickly at his face with its
+gentle, deep, comprehending lines, in positive fear of him, and I found
+reassurance in the smile that curled his strong red mouth and glinted at
+me from his brilliant eyes under dull gold. Then, after the smile, he
+decided for the apple rather than further conversation, and was just
+going to set his white teeth in its rosy cheek when I stopped him with
+an almost involuntary exclamation.
+
+"Don't!" I pleaded. "Dinner is just ready, and you'll spoil it if you
+eat all that bread and butter and apple." Just exactly a week before, at
+almost that exact hour, the Reverend Gregory Goodloe had refused the cup
+of tea I had stood holding for him in my hand for five minutes on the
+front porch of the Poplars, and I had taken a resolve that never would
+he again receive a food invitation from me. I didn't count Mammy's
+"snack" eaten on the Harpeth adventure. I didn't understand myself and
+my sudden rush of dismay at the idea of a spoiled dinner for him, but I
+couldn't stop myself as I added:
+
+"Mammy has apple dumplings and hard sauce; please don't--I mean please
+_do_ come in to dinner with us."
+
+"Thank you, but as you see I've about dined," he answered me, as with a
+laugh he held out his fragments. "Jefferson was feeling badly and I sent
+him to bed instead of the parsonage kitchen." Mammy had told me that the
+Reverend Mr. Goodloe had taken hers and Dabney's cherished and perfectly
+worthless only son as his sole domestic dependence, and Mammy had added
+the fact that Jeff had "shot nary crap since the parson rescued him from
+the jaw of the jail."
+
+"Huh," ejaculated Dabney over the hoe he had taken from father and was
+using at his direction while father lined the border beside the bed with
+his sharp spade. I knew the contempt in his voice was for the illness of
+Jefferson, and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe and I both laughed as he took
+the last bite of the brown slab and then held out the unbitten side of
+the apple to me.
+
+"You eat your fruit with me, not in dumplings with hard sauce," he said,
+and there was a wooing note in his voice as if he pleaded for that
+friendliness from me to heal a hurt.
+
+"No, _I_ won't eat out of your hand," I answered, with a cool emphasis
+on the "I." And I looked him straight in the eyes, for I wanted him to
+know that I had thoroughly understood his refusal of my invitation
+couched so gently, but which I considered in reality haughty and
+resentful, especially as I had been his guest in his car. "We'll wait
+until you get your shower, father, and not much longer," I said to
+father, as I turned and went along the flagstones to the steps that led
+to the balcony upon which opened the long windows of the dining room. I
+was furious and I was hurt.
+
+At times I become acutely conscious that I am very imperious, but it is
+not entirely my fault. My friends have depended upon my clear head, in
+which father's brain seems to work with a kind of feminine vigor, and I
+have always felt that the superior force with which I have loved and
+cherished them made it all right. I've always stood by them and used
+myself mercilessly for their exigencies, and I suppose I have ruled them
+as mercilessly. I rarely encounter another will, and to clash into one
+as strong as mine drew the sparks of my nature. The blaze was soon over,
+but I--smouldered.
+
+During dinner I was deeply interested in father's plans for my garden,
+which brilliantly carried the plans Nickols and I had made to what I saw
+in another year would be a marvelously artistic completeness. But under
+the joy of hearing him talk as I had never really heard him since I was
+old enough to appreciate his scintillating delicious choice of words and
+phrases, I was hot and sore at the thought of my duty to render
+gratitude where gratitude was due for having him like that.
+
+"It will be perfectly wonderful, father, and Nickols had not worked it
+out to anything like that completeness. He will be wild about it, but
+won't it take a lot of money? And where did you get your inspiration?" I
+asked the question, though I hated the answer I knew it must receive.
+
+"The plans are entirely my own," answered father, with a pleased flush
+making even brighter his dulled eyes and cheeks, faintly glowing from
+the shower at which Dabney had officiated a few minutes before. I had
+not failed to notice that we had sat down and were halfway through
+dinner and father's hand had not motioned Dabney towards the decanter
+and ice and siphon on the sideboard. "I must confess that the
+inspiration came from a kind of rage when Goodloe said to me how much it
+was to be regretted that all the great gardens in the North are being
+made out of a sort of patchwork of English, French, Italian and even
+Japanese influences. You couldn't expect anything more of the
+inhabitants of the part of the country in the veins of whose people flow
+just about that mixture of blood, but in the Harpeth Valley we have been
+Americans for two and a half centuries, and I'll show 'em an American
+garden if it does unhinge both mine and Dabney's backs and make Cockrell
+swear I'm crazy when he audits my accounts once every month. No, Madam,
+your own grandmother and great-grandmother, in conjunction with
+Goodloe's maternal ancestors, conceived and laid out the beginning of
+the great American garden, and we will combine to produce it."
+
+"What about Nickols' plans?" I asked, trying hard to raise indignation
+in my heart and voice at the thought of Nickols Morris Powers' work,
+for which the people of wealth in the North were beginning fairly to
+clamor, being criticized and laid aside at the inspiration of the
+Methodist parson across the lilac hedge. And I succeeded better than I
+expected, for I saw father lose color and tremble with his own rage,
+which he always quells with drink.
+
+"That sunken garden is Italian, and I'm going to tear it out and
+put--Oh, my daughter; forgive me, but I forgot, in this queer nature
+frenzy that has come over me of late and which I do not at all
+understand, that the garden is yours, was your mother's and
+grandmother's. So far the plans have just been begun, and nothing that
+you and Nickols have done--Dabney, pour me three fingers of the 1875
+Bourbon." And in a second I saw father grow white and shaking with
+mortification at what he felt to be an unmannerly trespass upon
+another's rights. My father has been a drunkard for nearly twenty years,
+but he is still a great gentleman. Slowly he drank the whiskey, every
+drop of which seemed to go to my heart like cold lead.
+
+"But, father!" I exclaimed, determined to win him back. Dabney was
+putting the silver stopper in the decanter over by the sideboard, and I
+thought I saw a sob shake his bent old shoulders as his black hands
+trembled. "I'd like to know if I'm not as purely American as you are,
+and have I not the same right to want, demand and work for an American
+nationalism, even in a garden, as you have? I'll have you know, sir,
+that the future of the nation is in the hands of the women. We can
+produce pure Americans or let the whole country go hybrid." And as I
+spoke I let my temper rise to a point which I hoped would shock father
+and take his mind from the decanter and the ice. "I demand that you
+allow me to carry out your plans for my garden, and that you help me do
+it to the limit of the hinges in your back and Dabney's. And, Dabney,
+don't let me hear another word about that hinge until those dahlias are
+in bloom. Also get me a half dozen bottles of dynamite to blow out that
+Italian garden. I never did like it."
+
+"Yes'm," answered Dabney, meekly but comprehendingly, for he hastily
+flung a napkin over the ice and gently set the decanter back in its
+rack. "But dynamite, it comes in sticks and not in bottles. And it
+would shake the roots of them old poplars clean most down to hell."
+
+"How'll we get that sunken garden out, then, father?" I asked, and I saw
+the life and color come back to his face in a flood of humor.
+
+"We might try filling it in," he answered, and then we both laughed at
+ourselves, with Dabney joining in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE TRISTAN LOVE SONG
+
+
+After dinner father and I sat out on the porch in the soft, warm breeze
+that waved a misty spring moonlight around us, and talked garden until
+after ten o'clock. He was brilliant and delightful, but three times he
+made trips to ice bowl and decanter on the sideboard.
+
+"It will be a great relief and happiness to me if Nickols does sanction
+and set the seal of artistic approval upon our plans," he said, with
+feverish but happy eyes. "You see, Nickols will represent the
+cosmopolitan in judgment upon the normally developed insular. I remember
+once that Mr. Justice Harlan said that in an opinion on freight rates I
+had sent up to him I had represented both the cosmopolitan and the
+insular interest with astonishing equity, and I told him that I
+considered that it took at least six generations of insular mind culture
+to see any kind of national equity. The same thing holds good with a
+garden. It takes the sixth generation on a piece of land to produce a
+garden, and then it has to be laid out around a library full of the
+ideals of poet and scholar. In about three years I can, with your
+permission, present the American nation with a garden that will
+represent the best ideals of Americans; and I must go to bed if I expect
+to get up and hunt the early worm. I can never decide which is the
+harder work, the capture of that creature of tradition or the arousing
+of Dabney to perform that task. You, Dabney."
+
+"Yes, sir," came a sleepy groan from just within the door, and in a
+second the old black face was lit up with father's candle until the
+white wool above shone like a halo as it appeared from out the gloom.
+And I sat and watched the two old gentlemen, one black and one white,
+toil slowly up the steps and down the wide hall of the Poplars.
+
+"Father _must_ come back; the nation needs him," I said fiercely under
+my breath as I noticed that in Dabney's hand swung the ice bucket where
+I had been accustomed to see it swing for years, but which I had not
+seen him carry before since I came home. "And that's how _you_ help him
+fight to come back," I arraigned myself with bitter scorn. "You have no
+faith nor spiritual sources yourself, and you throw him back into
+degradation when something is helping him crawl out. What's helping him?
+No matter what it is, you are a coward to obstruct it."
+
+And for a long hour I sat thus raging at myself and questioning
+hopelessly, while the young moon rose higher and higher over the tops of
+the silvery poplars and young spring slipped about in the lights and
+shadows, invisible except for perfumed wreathings of gossamer mist.
+Above, I heard father pacing up and down his rooms, slowly, almost
+feebly. Sometimes he would hesitate; then I would hear him stop beside
+the window, where I knew the ice bowl and the decanter were placed upon
+a table which had stood beside the head of his bed so burdened since my
+early childhood. I had always dreaded his moroseness and instinctively
+felt the cause of it. I had never really loved him until just the last
+few days, and now I felt my love rise in a tide that threatened to
+overwhelm me.
+
+"Oh, I found him, and now I've thrown him away," I sobbed to myself.
+Then, as I sat listening, I heard the faltering steps come out into the
+hall above, descend the steps one by one, go through the dark dining
+room groping pitifully, and down the side steps out into the beloved
+garden. Silently I watched the tall figure with the white hair silvered
+radiantly by the moonlight go slowly down the path, past the old
+graybeard poplars, and even up to the lilac hedge that ran as a bulwark
+in front of the dark chapel door, which I could see was ajar as it
+always is.
+
+"He's going for help," I muttered to myself, and I felt the padding of
+fear pursuing me, while also something of the Methodist grandmother
+within me began a queer calling and a tightening at my throat.
+
+Then something happened that interested me so that I lost all personal
+anxiety. Father stopped beside the hedge and picked up something from
+the grass. I saw it was a long, heavy hoe. Walking over to a long bed of
+early roses he and Dabney had been fertilizing in the late afternoon, he
+bent feebly and began to dig the food into their roots. As he swung the
+long handle, each blow upon the soft earth became more decided. I crept
+down behind the old snowball bush to be nearer him; I didn't dare go to
+him in his fight, because I had in my selfish heedlessness brought it
+all on, but in a little while he was not alone, for a bent old figure
+with grizzled white wool sticking out from under a red flannel nightcap
+came quietly along the path with a hoe in his hand, fell in directly
+behind his master, and began a rhythmic blow-answering-blow contest with
+the fragrant earth and the demon within the man. For at least an hour
+the two old friends worked up and down the long bed, until I could see
+father begin to totter with weakness.
+
+"Now, come on, Mas' Nick, honey, and go to bed. I'll pour a bucket of
+cistern water over you and rub you down so as you'll sleep like a bug in
+a rug," the staunch old comrade crooned, with a mother note in his
+voice, as he took father's heavy hoe and shouldered it with his.
+
+"I think evening exercise is good for me, Dabney," answered father with
+all the dignity and command come back into his voice. "Put both those
+hoes in the tool house this time, and I'll not tell Mr. Goodloe you
+left one down by the lilac hedge."
+
+"Yes, sir, thanky, sir, fer not telling him," answered Dabney, as he
+followed his master to the tool house under the back steps, deposited
+the garden implements where he was directed, and then again followed his
+idol in through the long dining room window and was lost in the shadow.
+
+I went back to the front steps, again sank down, put my arms on my
+knees, and let my head fall upon my clasped hands. As I sat there alone,
+with the dark house yawning behind me in its emptiness, someone sat down
+beside me and laid a warm, strong hand on my interlaced and strained
+fingers for just about half a second.
+
+"Please forgive me about the apple dumplings and the hard sauce," a
+merry, very lovely voice pleaded.
+
+"I went out to Old Harpeth with you when you asked me; but I loathe
+going to church--I haven't been in one since I was strong enough to
+rebel--and I'm not going to yours," was the apology I graciously offered
+in return for that about the apple dumplings. "But I'd pay fifty
+dollars for a tenth row seat to hear you sing Tristan in the
+Metropolitan any day if I had to go hungry for a week to pay for it," I
+added, as I laughed as softly as he had pleaded. All the sorrow and
+strain of the last hours had vanished at the touch of his hand, and I
+felt like an impish, teasing child.
+
+"I'll sing some of it for you now, if you'll give fifty cents to Mother
+Spurlock for the Children's Day Picnic. And it'll be a bargain you are
+getting," was the unexpected offer I encountered.
+
+"And a freezer of vanilla ice cream to boot," I assented, generously.
+
+And then something happened to me the like of which I know never
+happened to anybody in all the world, and that could happen only the
+once to me. Gregory Goodloe drew a little closer to me and bent his
+great gold head until his face was just off my left shoulder, and in his
+powerful, rich, fascinating voice, which he muted down in a way that
+made it sound as if he were singing through a golden cloud, he sang
+Tristan's immortal love agony in a way that shut out all the rest of the
+universe and left me alone with him in a space swayed by his pleading
+until my mortal body shook in actual pain.
+
+"Don't! I can't stand it!" I gasped, as I seized his wrist in my strong
+hands and wrung it. "Stop!"
+
+The last tender note breathed itself into the air that seemed to hold it
+in a long caress until it died away, and sobs shook me as I held on
+desperately to his wrist. I felt that I _must_ be comforted. And I was!
+Again the gentle fingers were laid over mine for a still smaller
+fraction of a second, and then again the beautiful, clear voice began to
+sing to me, just to me, out of the whole world.
+
+"'Abide with me, fast falls the even tide,'" he chanted, and then waited
+while my sobs died away and I let go my drowning grasp on his wrist.
+
+"That's just what I mean. That's just why I wouldn't have any more
+respect for myself if I should go to your church than if I joined in one
+of Mammy's foot-washings down at the river and fell in a fit of shouting
+in which it took two burly coons to 'hold my spirit down,' as she
+describes those gymnastics to me. I hate you and I hate my friends for
+indulging in religion, because it is just as 'potent an agent of
+intoxication' as exists to-day, and it blinds us to the need of work
+along scientific lines for the immediate improvement of the race. What
+right have we to intoxicate reason with religion? If religion is
+anything it must be reason." I fairly hurled my words of half-baked
+skepticism at him, with the vision of father and Dabney digging in the
+garden, still in my eyes.
+
+"I felt just as you do about it a year ago to-day," he answered me
+quietly. "As you state the case of religion as emotion versus reason, it
+doesn't exist. Religion is reason plus emotion, and when you combine the
+two the eyes of your soul are open, whereas they had been closed. Nobody
+can tell you about it, but you begin really to live when you see and
+comprehend. Yes, it is going to take all the scientific reason the world
+possesses to start its salvation, but it will not get far without
+'emotion,' as you call what I _know_ is love of God, and, through that
+love, compassion for man."
+
+"The assumption that every man is blind who does not believe as you do,
+stops all argument," I said scornfully.
+
+"I didn't come to talk religion with you; I came over to get that apple
+dumpling off my conscience, as I couldn't digest it because it wasn't
+there. I preach twice, on Sunday and on Wednesday night, and I'm in my
+study behind the altar every afternoon that I'm not playing tennis. I'll
+be there any time by appointment." The worldly and protective raillery
+in that young Methodist minister's voice almost interrupted my religious
+researches, but I was in depths that were strange to me, and I was
+floundering for a line out.
+
+"I'll never be there," I flared at him, then went on with my
+floundering. "If a man is blind, how can he gain the sight that you
+arrogate to yourself?"
+
+"A great man once prayed, 'Lord, help thou my unbelief,'" was the gentle
+answer in which was that queer note of apostolic surety with which I
+heard him address the woman in the garden that night.
+
+"I can't pray--there's nothing there," I said in a very small voice that
+I could scarcely recognize as my own. "Oh, I mean that we are all
+floundering, and where can we get the lifeline? Where did you get the
+line that you think will pull you out of the vortex?"
+
+Then for a long moment he and I sat again involved in the emptiness of
+the universe that Tristan's love song had opened for us, and I knew that
+with ruthless feet I had entered his Holy of Holies and was being
+allowed to stand across the threshold.
+
+"Forgive me," I gasped.
+
+"I never felt that I could tell it before," he said, slowly, and the
+bounds of the emptiness retreated still further away as he turned so
+that he sat facing me and again bent his dull gold head closer to mine.
+In a second I knew why in my mind I had been calling him a Harpeth
+jaguar. It was just my pictorial expression for the word freedom, the
+freedom that comes from power. I knew that mentally and bodily I was
+looking upon the first free man I had ever encountered, and I was
+abashed.
+
+"Don't tell me," I said, with a gentleness in my voice I had never heard
+before, and that came from something that I felt to be strangely like
+meekness, though I had never before met that emotion in myself.
+
+"You know the romance of my father's life," the soft voice went on,
+speaking as if I had not interrupted him, "but nobody knows the tragedy.
+Love for my mother came upon him like an arrow shot out of ambush, and
+he married into a worldly, pleasure-loving, agnostic circle of people
+who all adored and flattered him until he--he became confused and
+doubting. He had transgressed the law: 'yoke not yourselves with
+unbelievers,' and he suffered. She never understood. It killed him, and
+when he had been dead nearly twenty years I found the diary he kept the
+months before he died. It was last year, just after her death. It was a
+cry to me, who at that time was a mere babe, and it--it lighted the
+flame he had almost let go out. As I read, the apostolic call came to me
+and I answered. I was starting to the front in France, and I went on. My
+year there was a series of experiences that gave me my surety. One day
+it came more clearly than ever. I had gone out into one of the trenches
+of the first line, because I am so strong that I can carry any man back
+to the stretchers across my back or in my arms. I have carried two at a
+time. There were nineteen men in the trench, and I made the twentieth.
+Suddenly a machine gun found the range and mowed them all down like
+cornstalks or wheat heads. Only I was left standing, bleeding under my
+left ribs. I raised my voice and praised God for my surety of
+immortality, and then fell. While I was practically dying in the
+hospital with a clip in my lung I got suddenly and unaccountably well
+and strong, and felt I must come back to try and help others to see what
+we must see to assure every man of his immortality. When the race
+awakens to that fact there will be no more use for machine guns. I may
+not help much, but I can only try. Perhaps I do only work through the
+emotions as yet, but I believe that my ministry will have its fruits. I
+can wait." And the humility and patience in his voice beat against my
+heart and bruised it so that I cried out.
+
+"Oh, why did you come here?" I positively moaned, as he and I both rose
+and I put out my hand as if to force him out of that aloneness in which
+we stood together.
+
+"America must lead the world in spiritual as well as material
+regeneration, and this is the only real and dispassionate America, with
+no foreign pull on its vitals. You must wake up; the cry has been heard
+to 'Come over and help.' Why do you fight the--"
+
+"I can't help fighting. I must do what I conscientiously believe--" I
+was saying with my hand still outstretched against him, when suddenly
+the still place around us was invaded with a crash and its invisible
+walls thrown down.
+
+"Charlotte!" came in Nickols' languid, fascinating voice that always
+draws me to the edge of his world. "And Greg Goodloe, by all that is
+good and holy--in tennis flannels!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BREASTING THE GALE
+
+
+In the radiant moonlight I saw the lithe muscles of the Jaguar grow taut
+and stiff, and I felt rather than saw his long, strong hands clench
+themselves. I was about to stretch out my arms and ward off something
+that seemed like danger to Nickols, standing down at the bottom of the
+steps, smiling up at us in the moonlight with his mocking, fascinating
+smile, when suddenly the anger seemed to flow away from the body of the
+parson and he smiled down into the upturned eyes with great gentleness
+as we started down the steps together.
+
+"I didn't interrupt the salvation of Charlotte's soul, did I?" Nickols
+asked, as he took my outstretched hand in his left hand and raised it to
+his lips as he held out his right to the Reverend Mr. Goodloe. So real
+had been that fraction of an instant when I had stood between the two
+men that I almost felt the sensation of alarm a second time as I saw
+Nickols' slender, magical, artist's fingers laid in the slim, powerful
+hand of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, but the gentle voice reassured me as
+the Harpeth Jaguar answered the intruder, or what he must have felt to
+be the intruder, for I had something of that feeling myself at the
+advent of my lover at the moment he had chosen for his arrival.
+
+"The trouble began about apple dumplings and hard sauce," I said, as
+quickly as my wits would act.
+
+"How are you, Nickols Powers, since we separated 'somewhere in France,'
+you with your sketch books and I with my hospital stretchers? I got a
+dandy lung clip; did you bring away any lead?" And the parson's voice
+was gentle and cordial and full of a laughing reminiscence.
+
+"Didn't smell powder after I left you," answered Nickols, as we all
+ascended the steps and stood in a group before the door. "I got my books
+full of sketches of bits of treasures that the war might destroy, and
+beat it back to civilization. Did the Madonna of the Red Cross you had
+in tow come across as sentimentally as was threatened?" Nickols' voice
+was as cordial as the Reverend Goodloe's, but something in me made me
+resent the question and the manner it was asked.
+
+"She was killed in a field hospital just a few weeks after we left
+her--'somewhere in France.' She got God's welcome!" was the answer that
+came to the laughing question in a quiet, reverent voice. And as he
+spoke the parson started down the steps, then turned for his farewell.
+
+"That--or sweet oblivion," said Nickols, as he came to the edge of the
+steps and looked down at the Harpeth Jaguar coolly. I again got the
+sense of danger from the tall, lithe figure that stood in the moonlight,
+radiant before us in the shadow. "We'll contest that point warmly while
+we contest the meeting house Charlotte writes me that you planted in our
+garden--of Eden."
+
+"I can contest--if I must," was the serene answer that came back at us
+from over the white silk-clad shoulder. "Good night, both of you, and I
+hope to see you both again soon. Smell the lilacs bursting bud in your
+garden--of Eden!" With which farewell he left us to our greetings.
+
+"That's some man to be lost in the ranks of the shibboleths," said
+Nickols with generous ease, as we watched the last glint of the moon on
+the yellow head disappearing around the corner. "Degrees from three old
+colleges, millions, women lovers in millions, all thrown away to sing
+psalms for a few rustics in little old Goodloets. Can you beat it? But,
+blast him, he can't take away my loving welcome with his fatal beauty,"
+and as he spoke, with a tender laugh Nickols held out his arms to me. I
+went into them and he held me close.
+
+"I couldn't stay away--with Goodloe and the meeting house in the ring
+against me," he whispered, and he tried to raise my head for the kiss I
+had been holding from him all the long winter of our engagement,
+claiming to want it only under the roof of the Poplars. I burrowed my
+face in his shoulder and held to him with such fervor that it was
+impossible for him to raise my head.
+
+"Not yet," was my muffled pleading.
+
+"Again, damn that huge blond giant for being in the way of my getting my
+own on the first-sight wave," said Nickols with a good-humored laugh, as
+he pushed me from him. "Take your time. I like ripe fruit--and kisses.
+Did you say Goodloe had come over to steal apple dumplings and you had
+caught him in the act? I never was so hungry before and one of Mrs.
+Dabney's apple dumplings with that hard sugar stuff smothered with
+cream--well, of course I could wait until breakfast, but I'd be mighty
+weak. Your night train carries no dining car."
+
+"I feel sure that there is at least a half panful in the pantry; let's
+go see," I answered with delight at the practical turn the scene had
+taken, and I led him into the dark house, turned on one or two lights
+and went with him back into the culinary department of the Poplars.
+
+And as I had predicted so we found the larder supplied. With a huge
+plate of the pastry encrusted apples, smothered with all the cream from
+one of Mammy's pans of milk, and a tall bottle from the sideboard,
+Nickols led the way out of the long windows onto the south balcony over
+which the moon, now high in the heavens, poured the radiance of a
+new-toned daylight. I followed him with some glasses and sugar and a
+bowl of cracked ice that I had found in its usual place in the corner of
+the refrigerator.
+
+"Pretty good substitute for the affectionate sweet I thought of all the
+way down from New York," said Nickols with an adorable laugh, as he
+lifted the first spoonful, dripping with cream, to his mouth. Then with
+the food almost bestowed he paused and looked out beyond the garden
+toward the chapel, which loomed up gray and shimmering in the silver
+light.
+
+"Great heavens!" he ejaculated, and for a long minute the spoon was
+poised while his eyes fairly devoured the scene spread out before him
+against the background of Paradise Ridge.
+
+"If you don't like it we can get rid of it," I said, as I poured his
+drink over the ice tinkling against the side of the glass.
+
+"Not like it!" exclaimed Nickols, as he rose with the spoonful of
+dumplings dashed back into the plate. "That is the most wonderful and
+beautiful landscape effect I have ever beheld. That is just what our
+garden needed. I suppose I would have seen it and put some sort of a
+pavilion there, but that squat and perfect old church would have been
+beyond me."
+
+"Oh, I'm glad!" I exclaimed, as he sank back on the step beside me, took
+the glass from my hand, drank deeply and this time began a determined
+attack upon the plate in his hand. And then as he ate I told him all
+about father and his plans for the garden and his own improvement and to
+what I hoped the work was leading him. But somehow I couldn't bring
+myself to describe the scene which had that night been enacted in the
+garden--I couldn't. "Oh, I am so glad you are not furious and will maybe
+be willing to encourage him, even if it does mean to encourage the
+Methodist Church and the minister thereof. You are wonderful, Nickols,"
+I finished with a squeeze of his arm that very nearly jostled the cream
+out of the spoon upon his gray tweed trousers.
+
+"I'd be a wonderful ass not to take advantage of Judge Nickols Powers'
+brain and money, plus Gregory Goodloe's brain and training and money
+combined, to get a result that will be worth a hundred thousand dollars
+to me and all the fame I can conveniently wear. Encourage 'em? Just
+watch me! Only what the judge thinks will take two years can be done in
+one season if we get experts down to do it, which we will. Trees two
+hundred years old _can_ be moved for a few thousand dollars, as well as
+plants in bloom that would require years to transplant. I know the man
+to do it: Wilkerson of White Plains. I'll telegraph him in the
+morning."
+
+"He won't interfere with--with father, will he?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Not a bit--he'll just make what the judge and Gregory plan for year
+after next, grow and bloom there in a couple of months. Wilkerson is not
+a creator, he's just nature keyed up to the _n_th power. And also I'll
+give him for a bait the Jeffries estate I was hesitating about making a
+bid for. All the big fellows are after it. Old man Jeffries has made two
+barrels of money in the last ten years in oil and he is going to build
+an estate up on the Hudson that will make the world gasp. I hadn't put
+in a bid, but this idea of the judge's and Greg's, with the whole
+village grouped about it, has given me the keynote to win the thing from
+the whole bunch of American architects. He wants the village built as
+well as the estate. That American garden idea will bowl him over. He's
+progressively and rabidly American. The bids don't close until December,
+so I'll have time to get real photographs and sketches. Me for the
+reformed judge and the parson!"
+
+"This is the most wonderful thing I ever heard and I want father pushed
+to the limit with the planning. I don't care where the parson comes in,
+just so I don't have to join the church to get the garden," I said, as I
+tinkled the ice in Nickols' empty glass, while he consumed the last bit
+of cream from the empty plate.
+
+"Oh, I'll join the church if it is needed to push the garden," said
+Nickols with a laugh, as he lit a cigarette and puffed a smoke ring out
+toward the gray little chapel. "Most people who join churches do it for
+some kind of pull, social or business, or a respectability stamp or to
+be white-washed. I'll put on a frock coat and pass the plate if it will
+help the parson evolve another phase of gardenism."
+
+"Billy gets home from his poker game at the Last Chance, down in the
+Settlement, on Sunday morning, just in time to bathe and get into his
+frock coat to perform that office," I said with a laugh that had a hint
+of recklessness tinged with contempt.
+
+"I'll see Billy through both ceremonials," said Nickols. "Has Billy come
+into the fold?"
+
+"He has! So have all the rest," I answered. "I am the only black sheep
+and they are all backsliding down on me. I am getting, and will get,
+the blame of it all as a corrupter of public morals."
+
+"Why don't you join and then do as you please with the official stamp of
+Christianity upon you?" Nickols asked, as he puffed comfortably away in
+the moonlight.
+
+One of the things that cause me the deepest hurt is to try to get
+Nickols to look down into my depths and read one, just any one, of the
+hieroglyphics there. I know each time I open my nature to him he is
+going to turn aside, and yet I will try. As his arm stole around me I
+made another one of the attempts that I always know beforehand are
+doomed to failure.
+
+"There is something in me, a quality of mind that seems to be judicial,
+which insists that as a cold scheme for existence in this universe
+nothing compares with that of life followed by eternal redemption
+through personal effort interpreted by a mediator. The bare Christian
+tenets have a nobility that it kills me to see belittled by the bored,
+half-hearted observances of most of its protestants, who in turn are not
+to be blamed for being half-hearted and bored by the dogmas and
+restrictions and littleness with which the great bare scheme has been
+enmeshed and clothed. The Methodist Church positively forbids Billy to
+play poker or drink, but it just as positively forbids him to see
+Pavlowa dance or Beerbohm Tree play Falstaff or Forbes Robertson
+incarnate Hamlet. And look at its wretched machinery--they allow a young
+man to give his life and expect inspiration from him at six hundred
+dollars a year with a wife and two dozen children, which he has been
+encouraged to bring down upon himself, dependent on that same six
+hundred dollars. The great men who are expected to direct our spiritual
+destinies don't get as much money as many ordinary grocers and certainly
+not enough to support their obligations with dignity. What is true of
+the Methodist Church is true of all the rest, in perhaps a greater
+degree. So with their smallness and their pettiness and their befogging
+stupidity I feel that they may be denying thinkers like you and me the
+use of their scheme and we'll have to find another for ourselves if we
+want immortality."
+
+"Do we want that immortality?" asked Nickols easily. "This world is a
+pretty good old place if you don't regard the 'shalt nots,' but isn't it
+long enough to live the allotted time? What do we want to do it all
+over again for, that is, provided we do all the pleasant things while we
+have the chance? I don't want to see any play twice, even a masterpiece.
+I wouldn't want to live again unless I had been a Christian in this life
+and felt that I wanted to come back and do a lot of the things I had
+just heard about and previously hadn't tried."
+
+"Certainly I wouldn't want another life that is as unsatisfied as this,"
+I murmured, more to myself than to Nickols.
+
+"Do the things that satisfy," he urged again, and I could see a deviltry
+dancing at me out of the corner of his eyes that I resented deeply
+without exactly knowing why.
+
+"Harriet Henderson can't get Mark Morgan's love or--his children, and
+Nell Morgan is unattainable for Billy. Though they have all the world's
+goods and go a pace that pleases them, they are unsatisfied. If they
+don't get the new deal that immortality promises they lose the whole
+thing," I answered straight out from the shoulder. "And what about those
+who die in infancy and--and you and me?"
+
+"If you'll just kiss me and hush preaching to me I'll be entirely
+satisfied and ready to die as soon as I have lifted that fifty thousand
+out of old Jeffries with the judge's and the Reverend Gregory's garden
+and done a few more commissions. Try kissing me and see if you don't
+feel more cheerful," Nickols answered with a laugh, as he drew me close
+to him. I sadly shut up the doors of my depths, warded off the
+kiss--why, I didn't know--and persuaded him to go up to his rooms which
+I had seen Sallie and Dabney put in order that afternoon.
+
+It was midnight when I parted with Nickols at the head of the old
+winding stairs in the fragrant darkness, lit only by the silver light of
+the night from a long window at the front of the hall. He held me close
+for a half second as he whispered:
+
+"Let me make you happy. I understand."
+
+"I don't understand, and until I do I'd make you miserable, dear," I
+whispered back as I drew myself out of his reluctant arms and went into
+my own door.
+
+Then for a long midnight hour I stood at my deep window and looked out
+over the garden, past the squat steeple silvering beyond the lilac
+hedge, to Paradise Ridge in the dim distance, and tried to read my own
+hieroglyphics. I needed help. Nickols had come after me to Goodloets in
+a spirit of gentle determination and I knew the fight would be to the
+finish. And why should I fight? Any woman ought to be proud to marry
+Nickols Morris Powers, especially a woman who had loved him since her
+heart had been developed to the knowledge of love. Very unostentatiously
+and with perfect good taste Nickols had let me see that Marie VanClive
+with her Knickerbocker ancestry and her Manhattan land-grants fortune
+was very decidedly interested in him in her cultured and perfected young
+way, and young Mrs. Houston had herself shown me the same thing on one
+of the week-end flights we had had on her yacht. And beyond all that my
+own heart told me that Nickols was desirable. His gentleness and his
+tenderness and his daring and his humor were irresistible to a woman.
+And his lazy acquiescence in life was peaceful and inviting to my own
+strenuosity. I felt as if I had always been an eagle breasting the gale
+with no place to alight, and now Nickols was calling to me from an
+eyrie on a mountain side to come and rest and be mated and comforted.
+
+"I'm tired of loneliness and I think I'll drift and be happy," I
+murmured, as I fell asleep with my back to the silver steeple against
+the dim hills.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+INTO BRAMBLES
+
+
+The next morning I awoke with the same resolve in my heart, to be happy
+if wicked, and proceeded to execute it with a great vigor. And in the
+execution of that resolve dear old Goodloets almost had some of the moss
+of its century's repose scraped off of its back.
+
+First and foremost, we all danced, day and night. We had really begun
+the giddy whirl the summer before when we had built the little clubhouse
+over in the oak grove by the river's edge, just between the Town and the
+Settlement, so that we would no longer feel the limit and limitations to
+our gliding of anybody's double parlors, and conservative Goodloets had
+been duly shocked thereat.
+
+"Ladies did not dance outside of their own and their friends' private
+homes in my day," Mrs. Cockrell had sighed, as she finished the petal
+of the rose she was embroidering upon some of Letitia's lingerie.
+
+"I'd rather they danced in their den of iniquity than to execute these
+modern gyrations in my home," had responded Harriet's mother, Mrs.
+Sproul, as she finished the hundredth round on the shawl she was
+knitting. Harriet's report of the conversation had been received with
+great hilarity that evening at dinner at the Club.
+
+But Goodloets had had a year in which to recover from the shock of the
+institution of the Country Club when I started in to enjoy myself.
+Having church services there on Sundays and Wednesdays during the winter
+had done much to remove the prejudice in the minds of the conservative.
+I suspected the Reverend Mr. Goodloe of a great deal of worldly wisdom
+when I saw how he had been able to persuade the directors, Hampton
+Dibrell and Mark and Cliff, to let him do such a weird thing. Mrs.
+Sproul and Mrs. Cockrell and their friends had first been tolled out to
+prayer meeting and then had come to witness a tennis match. Billy, in
+great glee, recounted to me the first time they had stayed to dinner
+with him and father and Mr. Cockrell. They had been enjoying the prayer
+meetings to the utmost and had come out with Mother Spurlock by mistake
+on a Tuesday night, which was the regular dinner dance night. It was
+some time before they discovered their mistake, for they were immensely
+enjoying their visit with Mother Spurlock, and when the dancing began
+Billy had seized Mother Elsie in his arms and danced her the whole
+length of the room. The music had been too much for her feet in their
+sensible shoes, and very suddenly they had unfolded their wings after
+thirty long years of rest and had fairly flown up and down and backwards
+and forwards with Billy's in a sedate version of one of the phases of
+the tango. Mrs. George Spurlock had been the best dancer in Goodloets
+when time was young.
+
+"Do you think that it was the devil that tempted you, Mother Elsie?" I
+asked her about it one day when she had a leisure moment for teasing.
+
+"Effie Burns' youngest baby was born exactly while I was dancing, and we
+will have six months' trouble with her because her band was not put on
+properly," was her answer, as she took up her parcel of five pairs of
+only slightly worn stockings that five girls in the Settlement needed
+worse than I needed darns, and departed in a great hurry. "Oh, but you
+should have seen Hattie Sproul's eyes while I danced," she called back
+over her shoulder as she went through the gate.
+
+And so in the second summer of the Club's existence there had been no
+bridle upon its gayeties--I had almost used the word license, and I
+suppose it would have been a just one under the circumstances. Billy
+called it "The Bucket of the Lost Lid," and every individual member did
+exactly as he or she chose. The sideboard out on the back porch made as
+good a bar as any in the state with old Uncle Wilks to officiate, and in
+the wing in one of the private dining rooms a huge wheel stood with its
+face to the wall during the day, but came complacently out of its corner
+when night descended. On the porch could always be found either Mrs.
+James Knight or Mrs. Buford Cunningham. They neither of them had
+children, hated home and were serenely happy sitting on the front porch
+knitting silk scarfs and gossiping with all comers, while James and
+Buford hung around the sideboard at the back. They were institutions and
+all of the unmarried boys and girls, men and women, widowed and
+widowered, came and went at will, with the liberty that the chaperonage
+of their certain presence allowed.
+
+"Suppose one of 'em should fall dead and the other have to attend her
+funeral," Nickols remarked one Saturday night at a dinner table not more
+than twelve feet away from the two couples. "The scandal that would soon
+disrupt this town for lack of their free chaperonage would be like an
+earthquake. None of you would have a shred of respectability with which
+to drape yourselves to appear in public."
+
+"They don't wear much respectability anyway in the eyes of the
+Settlement," said Billy, as he mixed the champagne cup with old Wilks
+standing admiringly by. "The floor manager ordered Luella May Spain off
+the floor at the dance they had in the lodge room over the Last Chance
+last Saturday night for appearing in one of Harriet's last year dancing
+frocks Mother Spurlock had collected for her, though they do say that
+Luella May had sewed in two inches of tucker and put in sleeves. How's
+that for an opinion passed upon the high and mighty from the meek and
+lowly?"
+
+"I'd been in mourning a year. That was my coming out gown and I felt--"
+Harriet was saying when Billy laughed and interrupted her.
+
+"And you came out, Harriet dear," he assured her, as he poured her
+champagne cup and his and signaled Wilks to serve the rest of us.
+
+On the surface all of the joy that most of Goodloets was having was real
+and brilliant and spontaneous, all the dancing and drinking and high
+playing, but under the surface there were dark currents that ran in many
+directions. Young Ted Montgomery and Billy played poker one Saturday
+night until daylight out at the Club, and Bessie Thornton and Grace
+Payne had "staid by" and were having bacon and eggs with them when the
+sun rose. Judge Payne, Grace's father, has been a widower ten years and
+Grace, with the four younger "pains," as Billy calls them, has run wild
+away from him and her grandmother, old Madam Payne, who lives in a world
+of crochet needles and silk thread with Mrs. Cockrell and Mrs. Sproul.
+One night I went with Billy in his car to take Grace home and he had to
+wait until I tiptoed to her room with my arm around her and put her to
+bed, while Harriet was doing the same thing with Bessie Thornton. Those
+girls are not much over twenty and they are only a little more
+"liberated," as they call it, than the rest of their friends. Ted
+Montgomery loves Grace, when he is himself and not at the card table,
+but what chance have they to form a union of any solidity and
+permanence? Billy's nephew, Clive Harvey, has always loved Bessie
+Thornton, but he is teller in the Goodloets bank and almost never sees
+her. He is one of the stewards in the Harpeth Jaguar's church, and the
+suffering on his slim young face hurts me like a blow every time I meet
+him. What's going to satisfy him, no matter what pace he should choose
+to go or how many things he is driven by unhappiness to indulge himself
+in?
+
+And it was true that everything done up in the town had its effect down
+in the Settlement. The lodge hall over the Last Chance was the only hall
+available for the young people in the Settlement to dance, and the bar
+of the East Chance, at which old Jacob Ensley officiated, was no better
+stocked than the lockers at the Country Club. And all of us knew that
+very frequently Billy and Nickols and the rest of our friends went down
+to dance and drink with the girls from the mills and the shops. Billy
+had told me once that Milly Burt, who stays at the cigar stand in the
+Goodloe Hotel in Goodloets, dances so much like me and is so perfumed
+with my especial sachet from France, Mother Spurlock having collected
+the chiffon blouse from me for her to wear at the entertainment of the
+Epworth League, that he came very near addressing her by my name in
+giving her the invitation to the dance.
+
+"Settlement or Town, they all add up to the sum of girl," he laughed, as
+he told me about that Saturday night frolic in the Last Chance.
+
+It was the day after Billy's account of the ball at the Last Chance, in
+which Luella May and Milly and the rest had frolicked in what ought to
+have been a perfectly harmless way, that Mother Spurlock came to spend
+the afternoon with me and in which we wrestled until I was almost on the
+mat--not quite.
+
+"Goodloets has always been the gayest town in the state, but it has now
+reached the place of the most wicked," she said, after a few preliminary
+shots had been exchanged. "Every dignity of tradition seems to have been
+dropped and everybody is dance or play or drink or speed mad. You are
+the most influential personality in the whole town and I want you to
+call a halt."
+
+"But aren't they all happy? Isn't everybody getting the most out of
+life? The men are all working to their capacity and making more money
+than they ever have before. Why shouldn't they play hard?" I answered
+her, as I seated myself in the broad window seat of my room opposite the
+wide maternal ancestral rocker she had chosen.
+
+"Are they happy?" she asked, with her keen eyes on my face.
+
+"They seem to be," I parried.
+
+"Well, as far as personal happiness is concerned I think it is not worth
+talking about. It is the good of the whole for which I am working, for
+which I am contending to-day. What you women do, who are not obliged to
+add to the work of the world that you may live in it, is not of any
+great importance; it is for the toilers in the vineyard that I plead.
+The girls and young men in this town cannot dance and drink and play all
+night and do the constructive work of the community in the daytime. If
+Luella May Spain falls asleep or nods at her typewriter and fails to get
+out the telegram to you or Nickols which Mr. Tate has shouted to her
+off the keys, do you excuse her because she has been fatiguing herself
+until midnight trying to learn some new dance that Billy Harvey has
+brought down to the Last Chance from your Country Club? You would not!
+She would be fired on your complaint."
+
+"But are we responsible for how the girls and men in the Settlement
+spend their evenings?" I demanded with a fine show of indignation, but
+with a thrill of fear in my heart. There has always been something in
+Luella May Spain's shy and admiring glances that drew me and I have
+always lingered to chat with her a few minutes if business called me
+into the station. The last time I had spoken to her, not a week before,
+she had seemed pale and listless and had answered me with indifference.
+
+"You and your class are the ones in power and what you do and what you
+think is a moral influence that reaches and permeates every soul in this
+town. You are not about your Father's business; and those less powerful
+of brain and character follow you in by-paths from the straight road.
+They are his Little Ones and you lead their feet into brambles. Oh,
+Charlotte!" And Mother Spurlock stretched out her hands to me in
+entreaty.
+
+"I'm not a leader," I denied her. "I don't see a foot ahead of me. I'm
+not worth anything. I'm just living and trying to have a good time doing
+it. You have got a leader, there over the hedge; why don't they follow
+him and not me?"
+
+"Before you came Gregory Goodloe had services three times a week at your
+Country Club, at which the Settlement met the Town. You were not willing
+that even those few hours should be given over to the learning of the
+Father's will from one whose mind and soul are ready to teach, and you
+swept away his pews and his influence. And your dance tunes, to which
+even I yielded, ring in the ears of his flock to drown out the echoes of
+God's hymns. And now those who had begun to lean on him and to follow
+him are turning to persecute him. When Jacob Ensley is drunk he openly
+charges him with inveigling Martha away and hiding her. He was in a
+dangerous state one night a week ago and Billy Harvey had to lock him up
+in his own wine cellar to keep him and a few of his hangers-on from
+'going after the parson,' who was down there praying with old Jennie
+Neil as she died. He doesn't know his danger from Jacob and I think
+Billy ought to tell him. All Goodloets has admired and aped you since
+your birth, and now that you discountenance him they are again following
+you. There were only ten people at prayer meeting last night in the
+chapel, and the Wednesday before you turned him out of the Club which
+had offered him its hospitality, there were one hundred and thirty,
+Settlement and Town about evenly represented. You are responsible for
+that prayer meeting last night. You may be responsible for the result of
+one of Jacob's drunken fits. Sometime you'll have to answer for what you
+do."
+
+"No, Mother Spurlock, I'm not responsible for the failure of Gregory
+Goodloe to get to the heart of your people and hold them happy to his
+services and observances, and I'm certainly not responsible for his
+personal safety. What he offers is not enough to satisfy. His members
+prefer their Country Club and their Last Chance and their knitting and
+embroidery. What we all need from the Country Club to the Last Chance is
+something that makes us want to be constructive, race constructive, so
+that life will be desirable on through immortality, if there is such a
+thing. I can't get a glimpse of it. Can you?" and I questioned her
+beseechingly.
+
+"I can. I do! I have faith in my Father's plan to lead me through 'deep
+waters' into 'pleasant pastures,'" she answered me, as her eyes looked
+past me out at Paradise Ridge beyond the chapel.
+
+"Then give it to me," I demanded.
+
+"I can't. You must seek it yourself, and when you get it you will be
+able to pour it out into the hearts of others as living water. I serve
+by using my two talents of mercy and love, but God will some day give
+you ten and you will have to return an hundred fold. He has given the
+ten to Gregory Goodloe, and now is the night of his despair, but his
+morning will dawn. You can't dance down and drink down and gamble down
+and lust down a man like that. He can bide his time until his sheep come
+to the fold to be fed and warmed in his bosom."
+
+"What practical thing can I do to make you believe that I do not mean to
+pull down any structure that another human is building up with the hope
+it is for the good of the whole, Mother Spurlock?" I demanded of her,
+goaded to the last point of endurance.
+
+"The dedication services of the chapel will be next Sunday. Come, bring
+Nickols and your father, and let the Town and Settlement see your
+respect for Mr. Goodloe and for his church," she demanded, as she rose
+to go, with patient defeat but a lingering hope in her voice and manner.
+
+"Endorse something that means nothing to me?" I asked with pained
+patience. "You say the people follow me; shall I lead them to drink from
+a spring that I consider dry, that is dry and has no water for my
+thirst? No, Mother Spurlock, if the people among whom I have been born
+trust me I will only lead them by going into paths I know and in which I
+walk for my own good or pleasure."
+
+"To the Last Chance?"
+
+"At least they get joy there that makes toil easier or offsets the
+grind," I answered her.
+
+"Is that your final--" she was asking me with her deep, wise old eyes
+searching me, when she was interrupted by the banging open of my door
+and the inburst of young Charlotte, young James as ever at her heels,
+with Sue clinging to his hand. To-day, however, Charlotte had added one
+to her cohorts, for she led by the hand a very dirty specimen of the
+masculine gender, somewhat larger than herself and with a flaming red
+head.
+
+"This is Mikey Burns, Aunt Charlotte, and he's a nice little boy that's
+dirty and hungry because his mother has got seven like him. Won't you
+wash him and feed him so we can play with him? The preacher cleaned up
+four for us to play with yesterday and they are still clean enough. If
+you clean Mikey I can have a baseball nine, with Sue to get the balls
+that we don't hit. She gets balls nicely and Mikey throws lots
+straighter than I can. Jimmy can hit 'em, too, with a wide stick."
+
+"I tan git 'em," declaimed small Sue with great pride.
+
+"I can pitch 'em," also declared Mikey, with evident desire to back up
+his patroness. "But not as good as her," and his admiration amounted to
+adoration, as he raised his young eyes to Charlotte.
+
+"You see, Oh, you see, even to the second generation they follow,"
+laughed Mother Spurlock, as she escaped through the door and left me
+with my practical demonstration of class leadership.
+
+"Wash him, Auntie Charlotte, wash him," Charlotte continued to insist.
+"I made Jimmy steal some of his things for him while nurse was
+downstairs. Here they are," and young James, the thief and
+aforementioned murderer, gave up his stolen goods. "And Mr. Nickols says
+that all the Settlement children will go to school with us in the nice
+schoolhouse he and Judge Powers and Minister are going to build in front
+of Mother Spurlock's orchard. That is a law and then we'll have good
+times, all of us. There is not many children in the Town and they are
+all too dressed up, but it is a million down in the Settlement and we
+are going to have two baseball nines and two armies to battle with. I
+asked Mr. Nickols to have a place to wash the Settlements and he said he
+had thought of that and is going to have five shower baths. If you'll
+just wash Mikey for me I'll help you. I can attend to Jimmy's ears for
+nurse real good, can't I, Jimmy?"
+
+"Yes," responded Jimmy with brotherly pride.
+
+"No," remonstrated Mikey with abject fear, for the sake of his ears or
+propriety I was not sure.
+
+I got past the question by motioning him into my bathroom and sending
+Charlotte and Sue to bring Dabney. Dabney is Charlotte's slave and was
+soon under way to execute her commands upon Mikey while I beguiled her
+from the superintendence thereof down into the garden with me, where
+from my window I could see Nickols and father in deep conclave over some
+drawings. Father had discarded his Henry Clay costume and looked young
+and alive in some of Nickols' flannels and linen. They looked up with
+interest as I came down the flagstone walk with Charlotte trotting on my
+one side and wee Sue clinging on the other.
+
+"I'm glad you have come, daughter," said father, as he held up one of
+the large blue prints before me. "Now you can help Nickols and me locate
+the exact spot for the public school building. See, here is the public
+square of Goodloets, with the courthouse in the middle."
+
+"That courthouse is as good as any minor _hotels de ville_ in any of the
+small towns in France," said Nickols, as he came and stood beside me,
+looking over my shoulder at the map. "The Farmers' Bank and one or two
+of the very old brick stores are good, too," he added.
+
+"Now, this is Main Street that leads past us down into the Settlement.
+Here is the Poplars, here the chapel, and this is Elsie Spurlock's
+house. Nickols and the parson are inclined to place the schoolhouse
+right opposite, but I am afraid it is too near the Settlement and too
+far from the Town. Do you suppose the Town children will be able to walk
+so far?"
+
+"Do you really--really plan to have the Town and the Settlement go to
+school together?" I gasped.
+
+"Well, Goodloe thinks that the ideal public school system is only to be
+executed in a democratic--" father was saying, when Nickols interrupted
+him.
+
+"What does it matter where the two and a half kids from the decadent old
+families that are dying out go to school? Their sterile parents can
+motor 'em down to education!" he exclaimed. "Right here is the logical
+place for the school with the meadow behind it to give a bit of
+distance, the oak grove back of that, the Country Club beyond, with the
+river beginning to curve it in. It solidifies and unifies the landscape
+of the whole town and puts all the community centers where they belong.
+The Town and Settlement straggled a bit before, but the chapel and the
+school will unite them! Braid says the schoolhouse can be built of
+weathered stone and concrete and finished by September fifth, in time to
+start school. Wilkerson can begin immediately putting out his hedges and
+the Reverend Gregory is down there now finishing laying out the
+playground with his ball park."
+
+"That's it--that's the baseball nine Dabney is washing Mikey for!"
+exclaimed Charlotte, catching up with the conversation. "And when we all
+go to school with the Settlements and they are clean some, and Mildred
+Payne and Grace Sproul and some of the others get dirty a little, nobody
+will know the difference and we can play ball and scouts and everything
+Minister teaches us. That school makes enough children to do things. We
+haven't got enough for anything, but the Settlements have, and it is
+mighty good of them to come up and let us play with them."
+
+"Keep up with the times, Charlotte; don't be a back number. Miss
+Olymphia Lassiter's school may have held you and Nell, but it will never
+hold young Charlotte," Nickols jeered, as father began to roll up the
+map and speak to a young man that the great Wilkerson of White Plains
+had sent down to juggle with the flora and fauna of the Harpeth Valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+WATER AND OIL
+
+
+I turned from Nickols' raillery and surveyed the great American garden.
+The weeks had flown from May to late July and father's plans were
+beginning to be materialized. Where the sunken garden had been filled in
+a wide stone well house, the like of which can be found at many of the
+farmhouses in the Harpeth Valley, had been built and a chain wheel and
+bucket drew up the water from the deep cistern, which was supplied with
+underground pipes from the south wing of the Poplars.
+
+"There is no water as soft as open-top cistern water, aerated by a chain
+and bucket," father had informed me, and he and Dabney consumed buckets
+of it, while Mammy refused anything else for cooking purposes and
+insisted on a nightly bath of it for my face. A white clematis in full
+bloom clambered over the eaves of the low stone house and a blush rose
+nodded at its door, beside which was placed a rough bench made of square
+stones and two large slabs, equally moss-covered and worn.
+
+"It is growing to be perfectly wonderful, Nickols," I said, as if I had
+seen it for the first time, while my eyes followed the sweep of the
+flagstone walk from the well house beneath the old graybeard poplars out
+past stretches of velvety lawn, with groups of shrubs and trees casting
+deep shadows even to the kitchen garden, whose long rows of vegetables,
+bordered with old-fashioned blooming herbs and savories, led the
+observer out into the meadows to the Home Farm and beyond to the dim
+line of Paradise Ridge. "It is different and distinctive and--and
+American," I added.
+
+"After this garden and the school are finished and a few of the
+unfortunate restorations taken away from some of the old houses, like
+the porch at Mrs. Sproul's and that bathroom addition of Morgan's, I am
+going to bring Jeffries down in his private car and it will be difficult
+to keep him from offering to buy Goodloets and have it all shipped up
+the Hudson. Really, Charlotte, we have seen a vision of the future
+materialize here and we ought to stand with hats off."
+
+"Whose vision?" I asked, as I stood and let the truth of his statement
+sink in.
+
+"The parson's spiritual vision perhaps filtering through your father's
+mentality, which has welded past, present and future. At least, that is
+the way I see it with the material eye, which is all I have to view it
+with--if we can call the recognition of beauty and completeness
+material."
+
+"Now Mikey is nice and clean and we can go to Minister to play, thank
+you, Aunt Charlotte," at this point young Charlotte broke in to say,
+thus flinging us a line to haul us out of depths that were slightly over
+our heads. "Isn't he lovely?" And she gazed upon her new-found comrade
+with open admiration and self-congratulation.
+
+And small Mikey was indeed a bonny kiddie attired in the very stylish
+trousers and blouse of small James and shining with Dabney's valeting.
+His nicely plastered red mop to some extent mitigated the effect of the
+bare and scratched feet and his rollicking blue eyes over a nose as
+tip-tilted as Charlotte's own bespoke his delight.
+
+"Anyway, me mother made the togs fer Jim," he asserted with great
+independence, as he rammed his hands into the diminutive pockets in the
+trousers.
+
+"Yes, she did, and Auntie Harriet paid her for a present to Jimmy. She
+sews for us and not for Mikey and her other children, because her
+husband drinks up his money and our husband don't. Come on, let's go
+help Minister!" was the shot that Charlotte fired, as she departed down
+the garden path with her cohorts.
+
+"What about that for democracy?" demanded Nickols, as he and father and
+I all laughed together.
+
+That night at a dinner party Nell was giving I sat next to the Harpeth
+Jaguar and talked to him for the first time in many weeks. I had been
+avoiding him and I didn't mind admitting it to myself. There was
+something disturbing and puzzling in his serene eyes and free, strong,
+beautiful body that gave me a queer haunting pain back of my breast.
+Into my scheme of doing those things in life that give pleasure and not
+doing those things that give pain he somehow would not fit. He had
+become as much a part of the social fabric of Goodloets as was I, and
+he came to our dinner parties, motored with us in his long, gray car and
+was as happy with us seemingly as he was with that same gray car full of
+small fry from the Settlement or going about the business of the chapel.
+The car had always reminded me of his evening clothes, which were
+straight and simple in line with the black silk vest cut up around the
+collar buttoned in the back, but which were so fine in texture and
+perfect in cut and fit that they seemed to be some kind of super clothes
+that ought to be called by a name of their own, just as the people in
+the Settlement had decided to call the car the "Chariot" as soon as they
+had stopped resenting a parson's having it, from finding out how easy
+were its cushions and how swift its ministrations in time of need.
+
+"Parson's Chariot, quick!" had moaned poor old Mrs. Kelly, when she had
+slipped on Mrs. Burns' wet doorstep and dislocated her hip. Little Katie
+Moore had been driven home as swiftly as if on wings after old Dr.
+Harding had been overtaken, ten miles out on Providence Road, and had
+used the back seat for an operating table while he put her small
+splintered ankle in place between splints improvised by a long knife
+from the car's kit.
+
+And from a distance I had wondered at the Reverend Gregory Goodloe,
+wondered at his freedom from all resentment because of his ministerial
+and spiritual failures and at his loving serenity and enjoyment of us
+all. He partook of the joy in almost all of our adventures in pleasure,
+and when we did things that in the nature of the case would seem to
+merit his disapproval, he never administered it; he simply was not with
+us, but was serenely about his business at the other end of the town
+from the Country Club or the Last Chance, at whichever resort the
+entertainment that did not interest him was in progress. He seemed
+especially to enjoy coming to our dinner parties and he was such a
+delight with his keen-bladed wit, his flow of joyous laughter and high
+spirits and the music that bubbled up without accompaniment or denial
+whenever we asked for it, that not a woman in town would invite the rest
+to dine until she was sure of securing him first.
+
+[Illustration: "_I been upsot by my young mistis comin' home._"]
+
+"He's so economical," said Nell Morgan, as I helped her arrange her
+guests for Mark's birthday dinner. While she talked I paused to consider
+where to put Harriet Henderson and then dropped her card beside Mark's
+with a little ache in my heart as I tucked Cliff Gray in by Jessie
+Litton and left the place next Nell vacant for Billy. "People never
+empty their champagne glasses when Mr. Goodloe gets to talking, and you
+can put the extra bottles back in the cellar for next time. Do you
+suppose he does it on purpose?"
+
+"Nobody could be as completely happy as he was at Jessie's Friday night
+_on purpose_," I answered, as I laid the last card and went with Nell to
+greet her first guests.
+
+After the soup I turned toward the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, whose card I
+had placed next my own, and found him looking at me with a particular
+softness in his eyes under the dull gold.
+
+"Charlotte's and Mikey's nine won twenty-eight to eighteen against Tommy
+Braidy and Maudie Burns. Thank you for getting the pitcher into his
+togs," he said, as he squared his shoulders slightly against the rest of
+the world, the rest of the diners in particular, and bent toward me in
+just that deferential angle that a man uses when he wants to signal to
+the others that for a limited time he desires sole possession of the
+woman dining next to him.
+
+"Your mixing of water and oil in the educational scheme is interesting
+me greatly," I answered him with a laugh. "Do you really think it will
+succeed?"
+
+"Any kind of kingdom can be built in the heart of a child, an oligarchy,
+a democracy or a republic," he answered quickly. "Your name-daughter is
+a born socialist."
+
+"She and James are murderers and liars and thieves and are wholly
+engaging. Sue is fast learning from them the habits of their underworld
+and is asleep upstairs now with Harriet's silver and jade chain, which
+she brought home with her without the knowledge of the owner this
+afternoon. What are you going to do about them? I take it you intend to
+build a kingdom in and of their hearts."
+
+"Weed 'em, like Dabney and I did your dahlia bank ten times at least
+this spring. You didn't help with the dahlias, but maybe you will with
+the young Tenderloiners." His eyes entreated mine with a soft radiance
+that almost made me dizzy.
+
+"I wouldn't know weeds from flowers, 'Minister,'" I answered with
+prompt denial of his plea, but with a soft use of the children's name
+for him.
+
+"I don't always know. Let's study botany--together," he again hazarded
+daringly, and from the tenderness that suddenly curved his strong mouth
+I knew my soft answer had hit its mark. "Are you coming to the
+dedication of the chapel a week from Sunday?" He asked me the question
+directly and with all his softness gone and a commanding note in his
+voice and direct look. His jeweled eyes were so deep back under their
+dull gold brows that between the bars of black lashes they looked like
+stars shining down through a radiant night. They threw their rays
+directly down into my heart and I could see that their owner was reading
+the hieroglyphics of my uncertainties and that I could not hide them
+from him.
+
+"I am not," I answered him with the frankness that his gaze compelled.
+
+"I'll not dedicate it until you help me do it and--" he was saying
+quietly and positively, when Billy broke in over the excluding shoulder.
+Billy really adores Gregory Goodloe, but he enjoys going to the limit of
+his ministerial endurance. Over that limit he has never stepped and he
+never will; none of them ever will, for there is that in the Harpeth
+Jaguar which commands the very essence of respect for himself as well as
+his cloth.
+
+"Say, Parson, what's that about the dedication of the chapel?" he asked,
+as he twirled his champagne glass to break a few bubbles. "Charlotte and
+Nickols are going to give Harriet and me that tennis dressing down
+Sunday week if you don't need us to dedicate with."
+
+"No, I won't need you," answered the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, in an easy
+agreeable voice, but that had in it the note that he always uses to make
+Billy halt. "I'm not going to dedicate it yet."
+
+"Why?" came in a perfect chorus.
+
+"I've been working night and day on that altar cloth because I depended
+on you to know the date of the dedication of your own church. I have
+danced only once this week," said Letitia Cockrell, with her usual bland
+directness.
+
+"The communion service from Gorham's has been packed away unopened in my
+office a week," Hampton added in an aggrieved voice. "They hurried it
+for us and it has to be sent back, piece at a time, to be marked."
+
+"The baptismal font is perfectly beautiful and I want the Suckling
+sprinkled from it first. If you don't hurry she will get old enough to
+misbehave herself. I know I promised, but I have decided that I can
+never have the others baptized now, they are too bad," said Nell, as she
+paused and listened for some sort of explosion from above as she did
+every minute or two.
+
+"I'll rope Charlotte and drag her to the altar for you, and Mark can sit
+on her feet while the parson sprinkles," offered Billy, and they all
+laughed at the picture that he conjured, which seemed to be in keeping
+with many scenes we had witnessed in the life of small Charlotte.
+
+"That won't be necessary. She will stand before me with folded hands
+when her time comes," answered Mr. Goodloe, after he had laughed as
+heartily as anybody else at Billy's threat. "The greatest difficulty
+will be in persuading her to allow me to conduct my own services."
+
+"But what did you put off the dedication date for?" demanded Letitia,
+with the hurry over the altar cloth still rankling.
+
+"I put off the dedication of the chapel until all of the people for whom
+I cared deeply, whose cooperation with me is positively necessary,
+should be ready to come and help me in the services. When that time
+comes I will have the dedication. It may be a year and it may be
+a--day," the parson answered with cool directness.
+
+"If you mean Charlotte, the offer I made for young Charlotte holds
+good," said Billy with positive glee. "If you want her I'll rope her and
+drag her in and the rest of you can bid for who holds her down while
+being branded."
+
+"And my answer to your generous offer, Billy Harvey, is--" Mr. Goodloe
+paused and looked at me, and Jessie giggled with nervousness--"the same
+that I made to your offer about the constraining of young Charlotte."
+
+"Still it would be great sport to see both the Charlottes--" Billy was
+saying, when a servant brought a note on his tray and handed it to Mr.
+Goodloe, who glanced at it and then hurriedly opened and read it.
+
+"I am sorry, Mrs. Morgan, but will you let me answer this summons?" he
+asked, and there was the regret in his rich voice of a great boy at
+being snatched from a feast. "I am so hungry," he added with a laugh.
+
+"Come back later. I'll save some of everything for you," said Nell
+pleadingly.
+
+"I will if I can," he answered. There was an excited smoulder in the
+stars under the dull gold that made me restless and my eyes sought and
+claimed his for a second in which a quick flash of the jeweled
+tenderness of comprehension was flashed into my depths.
+
+"Good-bye, everybody," he said, and in a second was out of the dining
+room and we could hear him running down the steps.
+
+"Oh, dear, if he just wasn't a preacher," sighed Harriet. "I suppose
+somebody in the Settlement is dead or borned or drunk, and he has to go
+and see about it. I wish--"
+
+"Great Jehovah!" exclaimed Billy, as he suddenly jumped to his feet.
+"Ensley is fighting drunk and has the gang around the Last Chance.
+Parson's life isn't worth a tinker's damn if he runs foul of them with
+all that talk about Martha Ensley and Jacob's threat. She came back last
+night and Goodloe threatened to have Jacob arrested for beating her.
+Come on, Nickols, and let's follow him. We'll be enough. The rest of you
+go on eating, drinking and merrying because old Mark was born. We'll
+come right back just as soon as we see that all is serene on the Potomac
+of the Last Chance." And with a last hasty gulp at his wine glass Billy
+followed Nickols out of the room. Nickols was both white and livid and
+the expression of his face frightened me, for I knew that Billy would
+minimize any kind of danger in the presence of a woman while Nickols
+would not take that trouble.
+
+It was with a queer breathlessness that we all sat before our wine
+glasses in the midst of the perfume from the rich food and dying flowers
+and waited--for what we didn't know.
+
+Then it came!
+
+A shot rang out clear and clean in the darkness and was quickly followed
+by three barking echoes from a repeater.
+
+And there seated in my chair in the brilliantly lighted room, blocks
+away from the scene, I felt a bullet thud against dull gold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A BIT OF RAW LIFE
+
+
+I don't know by what means of personal transportation my body was
+carried down the street to the public square and to the pavement in
+front of the courthouse, but I found myself standing there over a woman
+who had raised Gregory Goodloe's head on her arm and was drawing deep,
+hard sobs as she held a handkerchief to stanch a flow of blood that
+showed crimson in the flash from Nickols' electric cigar lighter.
+
+"'When men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of
+evil against you falsely for my sake--'" I quoted to myself softly as I
+stood and looked down on the prostrate figure of the big lithe Harpeth
+Jaguar while Billy struggled with a man a little way off in the darkness
+and Nickols shut off the light and went to his aid. I didn't know
+exactly where the words that rose so suddenly from my heart to my lips
+had come from, and I only vaguely understood them, but I seemed to be
+saying them without my own volition.
+
+"Yes, my God, yes, that's what they've done to him," sobbed Martha as
+she looked up, peering at me through the darkness. "Pa is drunk, Miss
+Charlotte; and the rest egged him on. This is the only friend I've got
+and they've killed him."
+
+"Not by a good deal, Martha," came in a hearty grand opera voice just as
+I dropped on my knee, and in time to stop me from taking that bleeding
+gold head on my own breast and--"Jacob's bullet just clipped me but its
+impact was as good as his fist would have been, which I wish he had
+used." And as he spoke the wounded parson sprang lithely to his feet and
+left us two women kneeling before him. In an instant a thought of Mary
+and the Magdalen flashed through my brain as he bent to raise me to my
+feet, while Martha crouched away from us in the dark.
+
+"Charlotte?" he questioned softly, as if not willing to believe the
+witness of his hands and eyes, muffled by the starry darkness.
+
+"Young Charlotte stones you and Jacob shoots you, and I--" I both
+sobbed and laughed as I clung to his hand just as I heard Billy and
+Nickols throw the cursing, panting man to the ground not ten feet away.
+
+"Now then, Parson, we've got Jacob down and out. Nickols has got his
+foot on his neck and I've got his pistol. What do you want done with
+him?" Billy interrupted me pantingly to demand.
+
+"Let him up," answered Mr. Goodloe, as he gently extricated himself from
+my clinging hand and went over to the scene of the conflict. "Had
+enough, Jacob?" he asked just as gently as he had unhanded himself from
+me.
+
+"I'll have had enough when I put you where you can't entice my girl
+again," answered Jacob as he rose slowly to his feet. As he spoke Billy
+went and stood beside the parson and Nickols stepped behind them into
+the shadow in which Martha crouched.
+
+"You know that is not true, Jacob. I helped Martha to go away to a place
+of safety to earn her living and keep her honesty. Isn't that so,
+Martha?" the rich voice softly asked the woman crouching in the dark.
+
+"I told him that but he wouldn't believe me and the others don't," she
+answered with a sob that was almost a shudder of fear.
+
+"What did she come back fer then?" demanded Jacob. "Answer me that. And
+didn't she go straight to your preaching and praying joint like all the
+other women, fine and sluts, do?" The liquor was still burning in
+Jacob's head but at those words he got a response from the impact of
+Billy's fist that again laid him low.
+
+"Oh, I dasn't say nothing. I dasn't," moaned Martha, as she clutched at
+my skirts just as Nell and Hampton began to arrive on the scene of
+action, followed by Harriet and Mark and the others. They were all
+panting and wild with anxiety. They had taken the wrong turning at the
+end of the square and had gone around the block, thus giving the little
+tragedy time to enact itself before a mercifully small audience.
+
+"Go away quickly, Martha, in the shadow," I bent and whispered to the
+trembling woman, and I didn't know where the sympathy in my voice came
+from as I stood between her and the rest while she slipped behind an old
+horse block before the court house gate and off in the darkness towards
+the Settlement before they had noticed her presence.
+
+"Anybody hurt? What's the matter?" gasped Mark as he seized hold of the
+Reverend Mr. Goodloe's arm.
+
+"Nothing serious," answered the parson in a voice that calmed the others
+like oil on choppy water. "Jacob Ensley is out on a drunk and Billy had
+to knock him down to quiet him. All of you go back to dinner quickly,
+for I don't see why Sergeant Rogers should get Jacob this time. Billy
+will help me get him home and I'll remonstrate with him when he is
+sober. I'd rather do it at the Last Chance than at the jail. Jacob is a
+leading citizen and I don't want a jail smirch on him. I intend to use
+him later. Now all of you go. Go!" His voice was as gently positive as
+if he had been speaking to a lot of children and nobody seemed even to
+think of rebelling but we all began to fade away into the starlight as
+rapidly as we had assembled and more quietly.
+
+"Thank you, and bless you," he said to me, as I went past him in the
+darkness, and for just a second I suspected that his hand was laid on my
+black braids but I was not sure. I knew the gratitude was for my
+getting Martha off the scene of action so quietly and swiftly.
+
+"A bit of raw life for you, Charlotte," Nickols remarked as he went with
+me through the fragrant night back to Mark's and Nell's feast. "The
+eternal girl, two-men melee."
+
+"In this case it was girl--three men, the third skunking it," I answered
+in words as coarse and as forcible as the scene I had just witnessed.
+"I'd like to get my bare hands around the throat of the man who is
+hiding behind Martha and that little child."
+
+"That remark from you, my dear Charlotte, just goes to show that when
+women get even the smell of bloodshed they become fiercer than the
+male," said Nickols with a cool laugh that further infuriated me.
+
+"Yes, I do feel like a female jaguar," I answered hotly and then
+collapsed inside at the use of that name for myself in conjunction with
+my secret title for the Reverend Mr. Goodloe.
+
+"It would be better if you felt yourself in the character of a ferret if
+you intend to go out on a still hunt for all unacknowledged paternity,
+even in dear, simple, little old Goodloets," Nickols further jeered as
+we came up the steps of the Morgan house from where the others were just
+going into the dining room to resume their eating and drinking and being
+merry.
+
+"I'll find that one man," I answered as I swept into the dining room,
+seated myself in my place and drained my glass of flat wine.
+
+"Heaven help him!" laughed Nickols wickedly, and he raised Mr. Goodloe's
+full glass as he slipped into his place beside me.
+
+For a week after the shooting fray my soul sulked darkly in its tent and
+meditated while I went on my usual gay rounds of self-enjoyment. The
+garden was being brought to a most glorious mid-August triumph and the
+inhabitants for miles around were coming to see it. All of father's old
+friends, from whom he had shrunk in the last years, hung around him in
+the old way. He sat with them under the old graybeard poplars around
+which had been planted a plantation of slim young larches by the wizard
+of White Plains. From discussions about gardening and Americanisms all
+the old Solons of the local bar, and even of the towns around, gradually
+led their fallen leader back into his place and were battling with him
+over politics and jurisprudence as they had in past days. The day I went
+into his library to ask father about employing another likely black
+garden boy that Dabney had discovered, and found him, Judge Monfort from
+over at Hillcrest in the third district, Mr. Cockrell and Mr. Sproul
+around his table deep in huge volumes from the shelves, buried in a
+cloud of tobacco smoke and argument in which Latin words flew back and
+forth, I went up to my room and stood helpless before my window looking
+out towards Paradise Ridge.
+
+"I want to thank somebody and there is nobody to thank," I whispered,
+with a great emptiness within me. That was the bitterest cry of need my
+heart had ever given forth, and I went swiftly down to Nickols in the
+garden and told him what I had seen and heard.
+
+"It really is a remarkable come-back, sweetheart," he said, with the
+most exquisite sympathy in his voice and face. "Mark Morgan told me just
+an hour ago that they want to have him appointed back to his old place
+on the bench and Mr. Cockrell answered the President's inquiry for a man
+from this section for the Commerce Commission with the judge's name.
+It'll be great to see the old boy on one of the seats of the mighty
+again, thanks to the sweat of his brow and mind in this village
+manifestation of American nationalism which has grown out of our little
+old garden plan."
+
+"What can a man or woman do to render gratitude if there seems to be
+nobody to take it, Nickols?" I asked him, not expecting, as usual, that
+he would understand me. For once he did.
+
+"The philosophies all teach 'hand it on' in that case," he answered me.
+
+"I'll hand it on to Martha Ensley and help her and her child to their
+place under the sun," I said slowly, thus by having a reason and an
+obligation back of it, ratifying the vow I had already taken.
+
+"That is an impossibility," answered Nickols with easy coolness. "The
+one 'come-back' that is impossible is the woman in that kind of a
+situation."
+
+"I'll never admit such an injustice as that," I said, and I had a queer
+premonition that I would be held to that declaration.
+
+The very next morning after my declaration of purpose to "hand on" my
+father's "come-back" I went down into the Settlement to hunt for Martha
+Ensley, not that I was really suffering about her, but because I felt a
+kind of obligation to begin at once a thing that it appealed to my sense
+of justice to accomplish.
+
+Sometimes in mid-August there comes down a night over the hot, lush,
+maturing Harpeth Valley which is like a benediction that sprinkles cool
+dew on a thirsting heart. And now the morning was cool and brilliant,
+with the sun evaporating the heavy dew in soft clouds of perfume from
+the grain fields, the meadows and the upturned soil out where the
+farmers were breaking ground after the first harvests. I felt strong and
+calm and full of an electric energy, which I found I needed before I had
+more than started my quest.
+
+I put on my tennis clothes, snowy from collar to shoe tips, like the
+trappings of the White Knight, and started to walk down into the
+Settlement to find Martha. I intended to stop at Mother Spurlock's
+"Little House Beside the Road," and some vague idea was in my mind of
+having her dispatch a messenger to summons Martha to the interview I was
+about to bestow upon her. That is not the way it all happened and I was
+hot and dusty and sweat-drenched before I had been on my quest more than
+a few hours.
+
+Mother Elsie was not at home. The door to the Little House was wide
+open, as it always is when cold or rain does not close it, and huge old
+Tabby with one eye purred on the doorstep in the sun. A bird was nesting
+in the wisteria vine above the door and her soft whirring bespoke an
+interesting domestic event as near at hand. It did not in the least
+disturb Tab, and I wondered at the harmony between traditional enemies
+that I met on Mother Spurlock's very doorstep. I went in and drew myself
+a drink of fresh cool water from the cistern at the back door, looked in
+a tin box over the kitchen table and took three crisp tea cakes
+therefrom. I picked up a half knitted sock from beside the huge split
+rocker in the shade of the gnarled old apple tree, which was a rooftree
+in every sense of the word, for it crowded close against the door and
+hovered in the whole tiny house. Just before I left I put all the loose
+change I had in my white linen skirt pocket in an old lacquered tea
+canister which had a slit in it cut with a can opener, and that stood
+on the shelf of the old rock chimney in the low living room. I had
+never heard that canister mentioned by Mother Spurlock and I don't know
+how I knew that out of it came the emergency funds for many a crisis in
+the Settlement. Then last I picked a blush rose from the monthly bloomer
+trailing up and over the window and laid it on the empty, worn old Bible
+on the wide arm of the rocker beside a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
+Then I hesitated. I had been so sure of finding Mother Spurlock at home
+and having her hunt up Martha for me that I found it difficult to adjust
+myself to my first complexity of plans. And while I hesitated a resolve
+came into my mind with the completeness of a spoken direction.
+
+"She lives at the Last Chance and I'll go right down there and find
+her," I said to myself, as I started along the peony-bordered path to
+the front gate of the Little House, over which a huge late snowball was
+drooping, loaded down with snowy balls that would hold their own until
+almost the time for frost. At my own decision I had a delicious little
+feeling of fear, which was at least justifiable when I thought of that
+huge drunken figure wrestling with Billy in the darkness and whom I
+knew to be the proprietor of the resort into which I had determined to
+penetrate. Also, from my early youth I had heard Jacob Ensley and the
+Last Chance spoken of in tones of dread disapproval. Before I should
+become really frightened I hurried down the hill, past the squalid and
+tumble-down mill cottages which I had never really seen before, where it
+seemed to me millions of children swarmed in and around and about, and
+at last arrived at the infamous social center of the Settlement.
+
+And my astonishment was profound to find that the Last Chance sign hung
+over a very prosperous grocery with boxes and barrels of provender out
+on the pavement under an awning and with huge, newly-painted screen
+doors guarding the wide entrance, at which I hesitated.
+
+"Come right in, lady, come right in," called a cheerful, booming man's
+voice, and the door was swung open by a large man in a white apron, with
+blue eyes that crinkled at the corners, a wide smile and white hair.
+"What can we do for you to-day? We've a nice lot of late dewberries just
+in from over on Paradise Ridge."
+
+"I'm--I'm looking for the--the Last Chance Saloon," I faltered, because
+I was too astonished to utter anything but the truth to the delightful
+and tenderly solicitous man standing before me in his huge, clean white
+apron over his blue shirt that matched his eyes.
+
+"Well, lady," the nice Irish voice faltered a trifle, about as mine had,
+though plainly with controlled astonishment tinged with amusement,
+"could I get you anything to--to cool you off and bring it out here in
+the grocery? It is cooler than it is back at the bar. I said to myself
+jest last week, so I did, I said to myself, 'Jacob, you ought to get a
+sody-water fountain for the ladies what has the same right to thirst as
+a man.' And I will, too, if my bad luck just leaves me. How about a nice
+cool bottle of beer sitting comfortable here before the counter?"
+
+"Are you--_you_--Jacob--I mean--Mr. Jacob Ensley?" I further gasped.
+This daylight materialization of the grewsome beast of the night was too
+much for me.
+
+"Jacob Ensley at your service, Miss," he answered with easy dignity.
+"Now, will it be the bottle of beer I shall bring you? Or there's a new
+drink I might mix fer you that a young gentleman friend of mine from
+New York has taught me, and with a good Irish name of Thomas
+Collins--the drink, not the young gentleman." Nickols had been living on
+Tom Collins for the last month and I instantly knew that I recognized
+the young friend from New York. Also my wits were at a branching of the
+road and I didn't know just what to do or say as Jacob waited with easy
+courtesy for my decision. And again I was too much perturbed for
+invention and had to speak out the truth.
+
+"I'm Charlotte Powers, Mr. Ensley, and I came down to see your daughter,
+Martha," I said, looking directly into his clear friendly eyes which I
+saw instantly darken with a storm as the smile left his nice mouth and
+it hardened into a straight line.
+
+"I'm sorry, Miss Powers, but my Martha ain't at home right now to you,
+and I don't know when she will be. Is that all I can do for you? These
+berries now, from over at Paradise Ridge?" And with the ease of a man of
+the great upper world Jacob Ensley of the lower walks of life put me out
+of the door of his private life into the ranks of the meddler and shut
+it in my face. I acknowledged to myself that my rebuff was justifiable
+and I was about to make an exit from the scene as gracefully as possible
+with a box of the really delicious berries under my arm when a cry of
+terror in a child's voice came from somewhere at the back of the grocery
+and together the grocer and I ran to see what the matter could be. And
+at the heels of the proprietor I then penetrated the blind of the
+grocery and entered the Last Chance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE TENACIOUS TURTLE
+
+
+"It's Martha's Stray," the big man gasped in a kind of impatient alarm.
+"I just left him here a minute ago to go front." Together he and I
+started around the long room with its bar on the one side backed up by a
+mirror whose gilt frame was swathed in mosquito netting and on either
+side of which were shelves bearing pyramids of bottles. On the bar at
+one end were piled oranges and at the other lemons and limes whose
+sophistication seemed out of place somehow in the Settlement in the
+Harpeth Valley. All the trappings that I judge would go with the
+dispensing of liquor were present, but our eyes could discover no small
+child and we stood together and waited anxiously.
+
+"He's got me toe, me toe, and won't let go. He's chewing it off!" at
+last came a lusty yell from just outside a back door that led out into a
+side yard from behind the bar, and with one accord the proprietor of
+the Last Chance and I ran to the scene of the devouring. And as we ran I
+heard a door slam in the rooms back of the bar and we met Martha face to
+face on the scene of action. I shall never forget the picture that
+confronted me there in that little back yard upon which the bar of the
+Last Chance opened, and I somehow never want to.
+
+On a little grass plot a small boy danced and yelled and firmly to one
+of the capering feet was hung a large mud turtle which was flapped this
+way and that by the strenuous young leg, but which held on with
+apparently every intention of letting only the traditional thunder
+loosen its grasp on the pink prize.
+
+"Stand still, you Stray, and let me get at the varmint," commanded Jacob
+impatiently.
+
+"Let mother get the beast, sonny," Martha pleaded as she knelt on the
+grass and caught the dancing boy by his arm and brought his dervish
+gyrations to a halt.
+
+I stood unconscious of intrusion and absorbed with interest and watched
+the operations begun on the tenacious turtle and the writhing toe.
+Neither of the three principals in the action noticed me at all as
+Martha held the boy and Jacob bent and took hold of the turtle in his
+hard brown spotted shell. And as the operations for his liberation were
+begun the small boy became both still and quiet and I was able to get a
+good view of him as he leaned against his mother's shoulder and held out
+the foot to Jacob.
+
+As I looked at him something queer stirred in me with a sharp pain and
+then was quiet. He was the most delicious bit of five-year-old humanity
+I had ever beheld and I doubt if any childless woman could have seen
+such a child cuddle to another woman's breast and shoulder and not have
+had something of the same thrill of pain. His whiteness and pinkness and
+sturdy chubbiness were like many another infant's charms but his jet
+black top-knot that ascended on one side and cascaded over his ear on
+the other in a hauntingly familiar way, his violet eyes under their long
+lashes and his clear-cut, firm, commanding mouth, that curled into the
+bud of a rose as he sobbed and then unfolded into lines of beauty and
+strength as he hushed at his mother's comforting, were not like any
+other young human that I had ever beheld.
+
+"It hurts. It hurts!" he sobbed.
+
+"Hush, _you_ mustn't cry!" commanded Martha, and there was a little
+bitter emphasis on the "you" that cut me, I didn't exactly know why.
+
+And immediately the curled mouth was set in a firm line and the long
+lashes winked back tears.
+
+"The beast will not leave go at all," was Jacob's verdict as after a
+careful twisting and turning of the ugly turtle he rose to his feet.
+"And they do say to kill it lets a venom into the place it is holt of. I
+dunno what to do." And in his uncertainty Jacob's eyes sought my face
+while at the same instant Martha lifted her wistful eyes to mine. It was
+the instinctive turning of the masses to the domination of my class in
+the time of need of leadership.
+
+"You git it, lady," suddenly demanded the kiddie, and in his voice and
+glance there was none of the deferring to a superior force that I felt
+in the others but a decided command of that force. And as he spoke he
+stretched out an imperious hand that caught and clung to mine. "Git down
+and git it," he again commanded.
+
+"Have you any ammonia, Martha?" I asked, my wits responding gallantly to
+the sudden demand upon their biological knowledge.
+
+"I've some in the chist behind the bar. Times I uses it strong on heavy
+drunks," responded Jacob and he went quickly into the bar and returned
+with the bottle. "It's customers in the grocery and customers at the bar
+that I'm keeping waiting fooling along with the brat and the varmint,"
+he grumbled.
+
+"I can manage the turtle and you can go and attend to the customers," I
+answered, thus assuming calmly the command of the craft of the Last
+Chance. Jacob immediately took me at my word and disappeared into the
+bar.
+
+"Let's take him and lay him on the bed so we can muffle the turtle in a
+towel while we use the ammonia," I said to Martha.
+
+"Yes," answered Martha, "that will be best. Let mother carry you,
+sonny!" and Martha bent as if to lift him in her arms.
+
+"I kin hop," the young sufferer announced. "I'm too big to carry, I am,"
+he added with proud consideration in his glance at Martha's frailness.
+
+"I'll carry you and mother can carry the turtle," I answered, and to
+prevent further delay I lifted him in my strong arms while Martha took
+the turtle in her hands, protected by the gingham apron that she wore.
+The black head wilted against my breast and the serious young violet
+eyes were raised to mine in frightened confidence.
+
+"It's a mighty big turkle," he faltered and snuggled closer.
+
+"We'll get him," I reassured, as I laid him on a bed in a room that
+opened, as did the bar, out on the tiny yard.
+
+And as I had promised we performed upon that stubborn turtle. With a
+convulsion, as the ammonia fumes entered his nostrils, if he had such
+things, he let go of the toe, shuddered and withdrew into his shell, to
+die, I supposed, though I afterwards learned that he crawled off in the
+night, much to the kiddie's grief.
+
+"That's a bad smell, poor old turkle," was all the thanks I got as the
+sufferer climbed down from the bed and proceeded to seize his late enemy
+in intrepid and sympathetic hands. His mother rescued both him and the
+turtle by placing the latter in a bucket on a table at the window and
+giving the rescued another bucket to get me a drink of water from the
+well in the yard.
+
+"Northeast, bottom corner," he promised me with hospitality shining from
+his entire face as he experimentally hopped out into the yard, then
+forgot me and the water entirely in making the acquaintance of a very
+dirty little dog that was barking at him through the fence.
+
+"Oh, he's lovely, Martha," I said, speaking from pure impulse in a way
+that could not fail to carry conviction and melt the heart of any woman
+who possessed a treasure like that.
+
+"I know he is, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered with gentle bitterness,
+"and that makes it all the worse for him."
+
+"It doesn't; it can't be worse for anybody to be born as beautiful and
+strong as that boy is," I answered her and felt somehow I had fallen
+head foremost into my mission. "I came down here to see you, Martha, and
+now that I have seen him--I--it's--it's a shame, all of it," I ended by
+faltering with a total lack of the eloquence that I felt.
+
+"Yes, it's just that--a shame," Martha admitted to me with a great
+hopelessness in her black eyes. "And nothing can make it better."
+
+"Something can be done!" I answered hotly. "You are young, Martha, and
+he's a baby. You can get out of it all and you can get him out and begin
+all over. I--I'll help you." And as I spoke I took her hand in mine.
+Mine was brown and hard from tennis and Martha's from toil, but they met
+and clung.
+
+"I--I tried that, Miss Charlotte. I had to come back," answered Martha,
+and a bitter passion suddenly lit her pale face. "I'm too young to be
+let go--yet."
+
+"What do you mean, Martha?" I asked, and suddenly I felt that some kind
+of chasm had yawned at my feet that I had never suspected to exist
+before.
+
+"Don't ask me, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered as the passion died out
+of her face and voice and the sorrow fell over her like a shadow.
+
+"Do you remember that afternoon at Mother Spurlock's when we were ten,
+and you climbed the tree and got the apples, while I picked them up for
+her to make apple turn-overs for us?" I asked her suddenly as I held on
+to her hand when she tried to draw it from me. "I cried for a week to
+go and see you, Martha, and it was all wrong that I wasn't allowed. My
+mother would have let me come if she had been alive, but Mammy was an
+ignorant negro and didn't understand."
+
+"I cried for you, too," answered Martha, as the saddest smile I had ever
+seen came across the darkness of her face. "And when you was a young
+lady I crept up to the south window of the Poplars and saw you in your
+dress for the big coming-out party. You were like an angel from Heaven
+and I loved you. I wanted to be like you. All us girls did. They have
+always envied you and watched you, but I loved you. I did! I did,
+but--what chanct has a girl like me got against a man who's like--like
+you are? But I did love you; I did!"
+
+"It doesn't seem right to--to either of us to have kept us apart," I
+faltered, as Martha suddenly slipped to the floor at my feet and put her
+head in her hands.
+
+"Don't be kind to me--I can't stand that. You mustn't, you mustn't! You
+wouldn't if you knew," she sobbed.
+
+"I _am_ going to be--that is, I _am_ going to help you, Martha, and you
+have got to show me how," I answered her as a kind of determination
+that was stronger than any like emotion I had ever had came over me.
+"Tell me what to do, Martha, for you and--and for the kiddie," I
+commanded her with my usual imperiousness.
+
+"Miss Charlotte," said Martha, as she suddenly rose to her knees, looked
+up into my face and bared her shoulder with one motion of her hand,
+"that black bruise is from the licks father gave me when I wouldn't tell
+him why it was I came back after I went away and why it was I went. He
+beat me three times to make me tell whose that boy is--when he wasn't a
+month old. He knew that Mr. Goodloe helped me to go away three months
+ago and--and begin again, and he don't really believe that the parson
+enticed me back. The gang just put that in his head when he was
+drinking. He does think that Mr. Goodloe knows about it all and I'm
+afraid--afraid that some time when he's drunk he'll try to make him tell
+and--and--there'll be murder, maybe double murder. I can't tell you
+anything. I'm a fly caught in a web and I'm being drawn down to hell. I
+thought there was a way out; the parson prayed with me and I saw it. I
+saw myself right and honest again, but--but at a word I--I came back.
+Even the good of the child couldn't hold me when the--the calling came.
+Please go and leave me, and forget about me and--and don't come down
+here again."
+
+"No, Martha, I must help you," I answered, decidedly. I had never been
+able to bear any kind of frustration and this made me doubly determined.
+
+"It's too late, Miss Charlotte, but, Oh, it ain't too late for some of
+the others. Luella May and Sadie Todd and the rest. Miss Charlotte, make
+the Town men let 'em alone, and stop the Saturday night games and dances
+down here. You can do it. Pa would kill me for saying it, for it is then
+he makes his money, but it isn't fair, it isn't fair. You Town women do
+the same things, but you are protected and looked after. When Grace
+Payne gets drunk at your Country Club you take her home yourself and see
+no harm comes to her, and the men she's with protect her from
+themselves, but it's not the same with Luella May Spain and--and me."
+
+"How did you know about Grace, Martha?" I faltered with terror in my
+heart. I felt a kind of class nakedness that made me burn with positive
+physical shame.
+
+"They all watch and talk about what you do, Miss Charlotte, you
+especially, because you are more beautiful and more--more strong than
+the rest. They all said you'd smash our going to the church meetings
+with the Town folks at the Country Club when you got home. But I always
+stand up that you are right and you are. The Town on the hill and the
+Settlement in the valley are better--better apart. That's why I'm
+begging you to go and leave me to fight it out or go under. Please go!"
+
+"Oh, but, Martha, I didn't--I don't--" I was beginning to falter a
+denial to what had suddenly struck me as a truth when we were
+interrupted by the advent of Martha's child, the Stray, as I afterwards
+found was the only name he possessed, one cruelly indicative of his
+relation to the social structure of the world into which he had
+involuntarily been born.
+
+"Bottom of the well, northeast corner," he said, as he set a bucket of
+water at my feet with a jolt that dashed a small wave over my white
+buckskins, and he held out a dipper full to me with a little twirling
+motion that sent another wave on my skirt and which had an unmistakably
+professional knack to it. I have seen old Wilks set down beer steins and
+cocktail glasses with exactly that twirl ever since he has officiated at
+the lockers and sideboard at the Club, and I now know that his motions
+had the latest Last Chance style to them. Thus, by gossamer links and
+steel cable, the Town and the Settlement seemed to be held together.
+
+"Excuse me for spilling the water on you," added the young scion of the
+bartender with grave courtesy, as he held a very dirty little paddie
+under the drip of the dipper and elevated the drink for me in such a way
+that I had to steady the small hand that held the handle with mine as I
+drank.
+
+"Oh, son, how careless!" Martha was just exclaiming when a call in
+Jacob's sharp voice interrupted her.
+
+"Martha, grocery!" it commanded her and I was not sure whether he was
+ignorant of the fact that I was still her caller or was interrupting her
+on purpose. I think Martha shared the same uncertainty; she blushed and
+looked both ashamed and frightened.
+
+"I'll go now, Martha, out this door that leads onto the street," I
+hastened to say to relieve her of the dilemma. "But I'm coming back to
+you," I added with determination, as I made ready to slip out the side
+door of the Last Chance in regular underworld style.
+
+"Please don't, Miss Charlotte," she called, as she was passing through
+the other door into the world from which I was escaping. The sad
+significance of our two exits struck me so forcibly that I was two
+blocks away before I really became conscious of things around me, and
+then I was brought back to the squalid street of the Settlement and its
+surroundings by feeling a damp little hand slipped into mine as I strode
+along.
+
+"Please take me with you, Miss Lady," the Stray pleaded, as he ran along
+beside me, trying to keep up with my long steps. "I've got me a dog now
+to keep off turkles from me and you." And the slinking brindle bunch of
+ears and tail and very little else, at our heels, regarded me with the
+same brave entreaty. He and the Stray, indeed, presented a picture of
+chivalrous attention as they stood regarding me.
+
+"But what will your mother say?" I asked of my small human attendant
+with conscientious contention against my desire to take them both with
+me on out of the dirt and heat and flies and other swarming young humans
+up into the coolness and shade and--loneliness--of my own life.
+
+"She groceries all day and has to forget me," he answered calmly. "You
+can bring me back to bed when she is through." And to this plea was
+added a pathetic wag of the brindle tail.
+
+"Well, I'll take you up as far as Mother Spurlock's and give you both a
+tea cake," I capitulated as I started again up the street of the
+Settlement towards the haven of the Town.
+
+And as my escort and I progressed through the Settlement I could see the
+most violent signs of interest being manifested in all of us. Dirty,
+sweaty women, with their sleeves rolled up, came to the doors to look at
+us, and as I greeted them one and all with a nod they smiled back with
+pleased astonishment. I had never been down in the Settlement before,
+but most of them spoke to me by name and one toothless old woman hastily
+broke off a bloom from a struggling geranium, came to her rickety gate
+and offered it to me with an admiring smile.
+
+"Bless my soul, Miss Charlotte, be you a-kidnappin' Martha's Stray?" she
+asked, as I accepted it with enthusiasm.
+
+"He and the dog are kidnapping me as far as Mother Spurlock's, and then
+they'll let me go and come back," I answered, with a laugh, as we
+started on. Not once had the strong little fingers let go of my hand as
+we stood and talked and they only held the closer as we started climbing
+the long, hot dusty hill to the Little House by the Side of the Road.
+But in the long climb not once did the sturdy little legs lag or the
+small arm drag on my strength. The clasp was one of equality and
+affectionate attraction, not of dependence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE SHORT-CIRCUIT
+
+
+And at last we arrived at the old snowball guarding the open gate of the
+Little House and we went under its low boughs and up the walk. But we
+did not march to an undisputed and stealthy raid on the tea cake box
+above the kitchen table. The Little House was no longer the deserted
+scene I had left it, but was teeming with human and juvenile activities
+which streamed out to meet us at the door.
+
+"You can't come in here, Auntie Charlotte," was the command that greeted
+me at the very doorstep as young Charlotte faced me with short skirts
+outspread determinedly, while behind her Mikey of the red head, Jimmy,
+Sue, Maudie, the sister of Mikey, and other known and unknown juveniles,
+presented a solid support of defiance. "We are doing some Lord's work
+and we don't need you, but we'll let the nice little boy and the lovely
+dog come in. We do need them. Come in, little boy!" and as she spoke
+Charlotte held out a welcoming hand to the Stray, who faltered and
+looked up into my face to see if he might accept the invitation which
+evidently swayed him by its commanding tone.
+
+"Couldn't I come in for just a second?" I asked with all due meekness.
+
+"Not for even a second," answered Charlotte sternly. "You'd interrupt
+Minister. You go away and leave the boy."
+
+"Then how'll I get him back to his mother?" I pleaded, but as I spoke I
+allowed the little fingers to slip from mine and I pushed the waif
+towards Charlotte with the greatest confidence, which evidently
+communicated itself to both him and the dog, for they left me
+simultaneously and went towards the enemy's camp.
+
+"Shoo, it's only little Stray Ensley. I'll take him home when I go," the
+redoubtable Mikey assured me with a wide smile at the kiddie, which was
+answered with a rapture of hero worship.
+
+"What's his name?" demanded Charlotte as if seeking a passport.
+
+"Just Stray," answered Mikey in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "He
+ain't got no father, dead or alive."
+
+"Then Stray is just short for stranger, because everybody else has
+fathers, dead, alive or drunk," said Charlotte, in the same
+matter-of-fact tone that Mikey had used, and he in no way seemed to feel
+her remark personally derogatory to his paternal parent.
+
+"Well, let's take him to Minister to be learned his verses of the song
+and dance. Come on, for we are keeping him and the Lord waiting," said
+Charlotte as she marshaled them all into the Little House and calmly
+shut the door in my face and left me standing alone in the middle of the
+walk. Even the yellow pup had squeezed into the door before it was shut
+and only I was left in the outer darkness away from the grand opera
+voice that I could hear booming with a juvenile chorus out at the back
+of the cottage where I knew the rehearsal was being held under the twin
+of the old apple tree from which the front roof tree over my head was
+eternally separated by the Little House. With actual sadness and a queer
+feeling of shut-outness I did the only thing left to me and sauntered
+slowly on up the hill under the tall old elm trees that the Town had
+planted a century ago to keep the heat from the heads of the like of me
+while the toilers down in the Settlement had no such proof of ancestral
+care.
+
+"They are producing in the sweat of their brows while I--saunter," I
+said to myself, as I stretched out my bare arm from which the white silk
+sleeve had been rolled away after the prevailing mode of the sport for
+which it was designed, and flexed and regarded the bunch of muscles that
+knotted themselves on my smooth, tanned forearm.
+
+"It _could_ swing a wash tub as well as the best racquet this side of
+the Meadowbrook Club," I added aloud with a queer kind of primitive
+shame mixed with my physical pride in myself.
+
+"Or juggle a heavy baby and a kitchen stove into a square meal?" added a
+laughing voice as the Jaguar padded up beside my shoulder on his tennis
+shoes before I had heard him at all, so deep was my absorption in my own
+judgment and absolution of myself.
+
+"Still I was put out just a few minutes ago by a woman half my size," I
+laughed in return as the long strides shortened into harmony with mine.
+
+"I heard about it and ran after you to ask you to come back or, if you
+refused, to let me go with you wherever you are going. I left Mother
+Spurlock in charge of the newly installed Epworth Leaguers. Charlotte
+disapproved of my coming and said so," and we both laughed in delight
+over my strenuous name-daughter.
+
+"Are you asking me _quo vadis?_" I demanded, with a look at him out of a
+corner of my eye that got in return a glint of the jewels under dull
+gold that always infuriated as well as interested me.
+
+"'Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge--'"
+the parson suddenly chanted under his breath, using the old Gregorian
+measure for the few words of the oldest song of impersonal love extant.
+"Thank you for bringing Martha's boy up to the Little House. Jacob has
+refused both Mother Spurlock and me to let him come."
+
+"I didn't bring him. He and the pup brought me and then he was stolen
+from me into the fold, as it were," I answered as I paused at the front
+gate of the Poplars, which had a white clematis drifting over its tall
+stone pillars and clutching at the straight iron bars as if trying to
+keep me out of even my own fold. "Will you come in with me?" I asked
+with a laugh, as I flung the old gate wide in spite of the tendril
+fingers.
+
+The parson laughed, whistled a strain of his "whither thou goest" chant
+to me and followed me across the lawn to the foot of the poplars. On the
+bench surrounding their trunks I found my basket with the fine seam I
+was sewing for the Suckling in it and I dropped upon the thick mat of
+grass on the very edge of the shadow from the silver branches above and
+began to hunt for my thimble, leaving the Jaguar standing over me.
+
+"Stop looking down on me and come tell me what particular religious
+incantations were going on from which Charlotte so violently barred me,"
+I laughed up at him, as I threw a flat grass cushion a little way from
+my skirts, upon which he immediately sank and seemed to curl up at my
+feet.
+
+"I had the whole bunch rehearsing the children's part in the dedication
+services of our chapel. Do you know that small Sue can really sing? The
+rest stagger well but Susan sings. It is delicious. It is going to be
+hard on you women folks to hear her chant her responses to me on that
+great day." And as he spoke he looked beyond me over to his beautiful
+shimmering gray chapel and there was not a glint in his eyes that showed
+me he was trying to sound out my intentions about attendance on that
+ceremony.
+
+"Please, Mr. Goodloe, don't be serious in saying as you did last night
+that you are not going to dedicate your chapel until I--I help you," in
+all gentleness I said.
+
+"I can't do it until you come," he answered me with just as great
+gentleness and he turned his head away from me, but not before I saw a
+glow in his eyes that made me suddenly strong and calm and curiously
+humble.
+
+"I--I could go as your guest," I faltered, offering a compromise which I
+felt sure would not be accepted.
+
+"I can't, I just can't dedicate the chapel until you echo my ceremony in
+your heart," he answered me with his eyes still turned away from me and
+looking with the greatest sadness out on Paradise Ridge.
+
+"Why?" I asked with a simple directness that the situation demanded and
+with no trace of the coquetry the question might have held.
+
+"Shall I tell you all of the reason with no reservations?" the parson
+asked, as he swung around on his mat and faced me, with his eyes looking
+straight into mine.
+
+"All," I answered.
+
+"In every community there is one soul which holds the real leadership of
+the souls of those surrounding them. God seems to appoint captains of
+the regiments of His people to lead them along the way, Christ the
+captain of all the hosts. Spiritually you are more evolved than any
+other person in this town and with you doubting I cannot get the others
+to see. You are so gorgeous and so brilliant that you blind them all.
+They have always followed your lead--up or down. There are a few like
+Mother Spurlock who have gained their Christ knowledge through
+suffering, but they are not of the calibre to help others to gain
+theirs. With your hand in mine I can make this whole community see and
+know; separated from you, you going one way and I another, I can do
+nothing. You simply short-circuit my force and I am helpless without
+you." He spoke very simply and directly down into my heart.
+
+"That is not true; no one person is responsible for any spiritual
+decision that another makes," I answered hotly with an awful sense of
+having had a burden placed on my shoulders that they could not carry.
+
+"The old 'brother's keeper' question will never be settled in any but
+the right way," he answered me straight from the shoulder. "You are
+responsible for the attitude of this whole town towards the cause I
+represent and they'll have to wait for your eyes to be opened and for
+you to make them see."
+
+"You minimize yourself," I answered quickly, for in some curious way it
+hurt me to see that great strong man sit at my feet baffled by a force
+that he declared to be in me but which I did not acknowledge or
+understand.
+
+"They were listening to me--from a distance, as it were--and I might
+have made them hear if you had not come home and thrown them back into
+the old pleasant groove of non-action and non-belief. In a week you had
+swept away all I had builded in six months." He spoke with simple
+conviction and not a trace of the bitterness that might have been in the
+arraignment.
+
+"Everybody in this town adores you," were the words that gushed out of
+my heart for his comforting before I could stop them. "That is one
+reason I have acted as I have. I do not, I cannot believe that the
+religion which is great enough to bring the redemption of the whole race
+into a desirable immortality can be composed of nine-tenths emotion,
+with which all of them were following your beautiful voice and beautiful
+eyes and beautiful church and beautiful words. If I am to be saved it
+will be by something sterner than that; it will be something that makes
+me sweat drops of blood from my mind, take up a hard cross of duty and
+work, work to make the fibre of my soul strong enough to enjoy the
+robust kind of immortality that alone seems worth while to me. Your Son
+of Man walked from town to town in the hot sun and taught the people,
+healed the multitude and yet had not where to lay his head to rest. His
+church has lost His vigor. Your whole scheme hasn't enough action in it.
+Your organization is too easy and too full of surface observances. It is
+conducted with slipshod business methods and there is no force in it to
+help me. If I join any church ever it will have to be a new one that can
+compare with modern business in its efficiency. Your scheme of
+redemption to immortality through an efficient mediation is perfectly
+sound, but you don't back it up."
+
+"The Church of Christ has stood, endured and done business for almost
+two thousand years," he answered quietly. "It is in some ways all you
+say of it, but it has at least proved its vitality. Why seek to found a
+new organization with a new head and a new scheme of immortality if you
+recognize this scheme as good? The place to reorganize a business is
+from the inside, not the outside. These people _must_ get their vision
+_now_. Will you come and help me?" As he spoke he looked again down into
+the depths from which I had been trying to translate some of the
+hieroglyphics to him and he held out his long powerful hand to me in an
+entreaty that shook my very foundations.
+
+"You make me want to do as you ask me, but I do not see what it is we
+should strive for, what it is from which we should be saved. There are
+tears in my eyes but do you want my emotions without my reason?" And I
+asked my question with a quiver almost of timidity.
+
+"No, both!" he answered me, as he dropped his hand and arm from their
+attitude of entreaty, shook his head sadly and again turned from me and
+looked out on the dim distance of Old Harpeth. Suddenly I had the
+feeling of having a great door shut in my face, and a terror of being
+left all alone in the world came over me. Without knowing what I did I
+stretched out my hand and caught at his arm and moved closer to him,
+suddenly cold in the sunshine.
+
+"I'm frightened," I whispered, as I bowed my head on my hand, clutching
+his arm.
+
+"Poor little wandering, hunting lamb," he crooned to me as he laid a
+tender hand on my bowed head. "Keep watch over her, Lord Jesus," he
+prayed under his breath and then as suddenly as I had felt the fear I
+found again my courage.
+
+"That cry was woman to man, not child to priest. It is only honest to
+tell you so," I said, as I suddenly raised my head and threw another
+gauntlet that I knew would bring on another battle. "I hate myself for
+it."
+
+"I wanted to win you for God and have you come to me then as a gift
+from Him, but it may have to be the other way round," was the answer he
+struck out at me with, and as he spoke he clasped my hand in his with a
+force that seemed to create the great silent, untenanted space around us
+as it had that night he had sung the Tristan music to me in the
+moonlight. "I'm going to save you and--and _have_ you."
+
+"No, no!" I cried, as I tried to draw my hand away, found it held beyond
+my effort and then suddenly released.
+
+"I knew the first minute I looked into your eyes, but I'll wait," he
+said softly into the silence around us.
+
+"No, no, don't even think such a thing," I exclaimed, and I wanted to
+rise to my feet and break the spell of that space around us, but I could
+only cower closer to him on the grass beneath the rustling silver
+leaves. "I'm going to marry Nickols in a few months and then I'm going
+out of this world of yours and you can lead them all to--to safety."
+
+"No, it's in God's hands. He'll keep you and give you to me when the
+time comes. It all may mean suffering to us both, probably does, but I
+accept the cup--in His good time," and as he spoke he looked again into
+my eyes with a lonely sadness that I could not endure.
+
+"I want to get away from you," I gasped and I felt that I must get out
+of the aloneness with him.
+
+"We are in God's hands," he said again, as his warm hands found and held
+mine. "We must wait on Him with--" Then suddenly the world closed in on
+us again and we were on our feet--apart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ABIDE WITH ME
+
+
+"Auntie Charlotte, you stole Minister away from us in a no-fair way,"
+stormed Charlotte as she came around the young larches and wild swamp
+root that had formed the world apart for the dangerous Jaguar and me.
+"Mother Spurlock can't sing to any good and Sue is so little we gets the
+key away from her. Let him come right back!" As she made this peremptory
+demand for the release of my prisoner, my name-daughter stood her ground
+with her cohorts, who had been scrambling around and over and through
+the shrubbery, massed behind her. There were Mikey of the red head,
+small James, the musical wee Susan, Maudie Burns and Jennie Todd,
+besides several more of the Burns family, a few Sprouls and Paynes and a
+very ragged young Jones, and they all looked at me with hostile and
+accusing eyes as Charlotte hurled a final invective at me. "You are
+wicked and the devil will burn you up," she threatened.
+
+"He won't neither, at all. Hush up!" came a defense and a command in a
+very imperious young voice, and the Stray followed the voice from around
+the large trunk of the oldest graybeard. He had arrived late on the
+scene of action because his impedimenta had been the wriggling puppy of
+brindle hue, which he immediately released as he came over and stood
+between the Reverend Mr. Goodloe and me, with my hand in his own small
+paddie and defiance and defense to the limit in his high-held young head
+with its black crest and snapping violet eyes. At last I felt Charlotte
+had met her match and I trembled for the result.
+
+"She never stoled nothing," he further declared, looking Charlotte full
+in the eye.
+
+"I meant she tooken him away, Stranger," parleyed Charlotte with extreme
+mildness for her and giving to the Stray the name that she had decided
+upon by translating the cognomen of his state into that of another
+almost equally forlorn. "My father told my Auntie Harriet that Aunt
+Charlotte would git Minister yet and I'll call the devil to stop her if
+she tries to get him away."
+
+"I'll bust that devil's head with a rock and a bad smell," answered the
+Stray as he held tighter to my hand and hurled back his threat that held
+a remembrance of the conquering of the tenacious turtle.
+
+"Auntie Harriet answered father that Auntie Charlotte and the devil
+could do most anything that--" small James was contributing to the
+general assault when with a wave of a calming hand Mr. Goodloe took the
+field.
+
+"That will do, youngsters," he commanded with extreme mildness it seemed
+to me, considering the appalling situation. "I thought you had had about
+enough practice for to-day and Charlotte could have taught the little
+boy--er--"
+
+"Stranger," prompted Charlotte.
+
+"You could have taught him up to the point you knew so I could have a
+nice rest here under the lovely trees. Are you being kind to me in not
+helping me a little bit? You know what you promised me." And the beloved
+"Minister's" voice was just as grave and just as serious as if he had
+been reproving one of his deacons.
+
+"Is talking to Auntie Charlotte and holding her hand the Lord's work?"
+demanded Charlotte, looking him straight in the face.
+
+"Yes," answered Mr. Goodloe, gravely, looking her as straight in the eye
+as she had looked him.
+
+"Then come on, Stranger, and learn the march without any tune but Sue,"
+she said as she stretched out her hand to the Stray, who ignored it and
+clung to me with his serious eyes raised to mine.
+
+"I'll go with you now over in the chapel and play for you on the organ
+and then we can all teach him," said the parson, and he picked wee
+Susan, the music box, up in his arms and buried his lips in the curls on
+the back of her fragrant little neck.
+
+"Are you all done with Auntie Charlotte?" asked young Charlotte, with
+the extreme of consideration for him, not for my feelings.
+
+"Yes, for the present," he answered, and he held out his free hand to
+the Stray, who was still clinging to me.
+
+"Go with him, sonny, and Mikey will take you home," I said to my small
+champion, using the tender name that I had heard Martha give him. As I
+spoke I laid his hand in that of Mr. Goodloe and I didn't raise my eyes
+to his but turned from them and left him standing in the midst of his
+flock of lambs under the silver leaves and out in the bright light,
+while I went into the cool dark hall and on up to my own room which was
+also cool and dark.
+
+"I am lost and blind and I don't know what to do," I murmured as I flung
+myself down on my window seat and looked through the narrow opening of
+the shutters out to the everlasting hills across the valley. "I know I
+am ineffective and perfectly worthless as I am but I will not, I will
+not be swayed by--"
+
+"Charlotte," called father's voice with its commanding note which had
+apparently come into it now to stay.
+
+"Yes," I answered, and went down immediately, glad of the interruption
+to my self-communion and arraignment.
+
+I found father and Nickols and Mark Morgan and Billy Harvey and Mr.
+Cockrell down in father's study and I could see from their faces that
+something unusual had happened.
+
+"City Council voted the appropriation to meet Cockrell's and my donation
+for the schoolhouse, contracts have been signed and dirt is to be
+broken to-morrow by Henry Todd and thirty workmen Nickols has ordered
+down from the city," father announced, with jubilation in his voice. "We
+thought Goodloe was here in the garden with you."
+
+"He was, but he has taken the children with him over to his chapel," I
+answered, and for some reason I blushed, for I saw Mark Morgan's eyes
+laughing at me and I also saw a glint I didn't like in Nickols' eyes.
+
+"School to be opened on September twelfth and then let the kids fight it
+out," said Billy. "I bet on Charlotte to beat out the whole Settlement
+the first day if allowed full swing."
+
+"If Goodloe didn't stand behind this mixing of--of social oil
+and--water, I'd be scared to death," said Mark.
+
+"Mike Burns and Henry Todd and Spain had better be afraid of a loss of
+progeny," jeered Billy. "I bet Charlotte and James and the scions of the
+Sprouls and Paynes can lead the Settlement scions into by-paths of
+iniquity of which they never dreamed."
+
+"I wish you had ten, blast you, for being so sensible as to have none,"
+Mark answered him, and I felt rather than saw the bolt of pain that shot
+through Billy's heart. It's because Nell and her children are not his
+that Billy is bad, and what is going to help him?
+
+"Well, let's go over to the parsonage and tell Goodloe all about it,"
+father suggested, and the other men followed him out into the garden
+path that led through the Eden of my foremothers straight into that
+little Methodist chapel. Only Nickols remained with me upon the wide
+high vine-shadowed porch.
+
+"I'll marry you the first of October, Nickols, and then we can go to
+France as you want to," I said to him without any preamble, and as I
+spoke I drew close to him as if for protection from something I didn't
+understand.
+
+"Fleeing from the wrath to come?" questioned Nickols with a tender jeer
+as he took me in his arms and his lips sought the kiss I had been
+keeping from him. Again I refused it and he laughed as he pushed me from
+him and there was still more of the jeer in the laugh though the passion
+in his eyes was devouring and glad.
+
+"Suppose we go north, right after Mr. Jeffries has finished his visit.
+Let's have the ideal village wedding. We'll have out the school children
+if any are left from the mix-up, and Goodloe can make us man and wife
+out here under the trees in our own garden. Then we'll go away from the
+whole show, the Christian religion included, and live happy ever after."
+And as he spoke Nickols again drew me to him and sought the kiss I still
+could not give him.
+
+"Nickols, Mother Spurlock and poor little Mrs. Burns and--and Mr.
+Goodloe have something very real that we haven't," I faltered and,
+utterly weary, I laid my head down against his strong shoulder.
+
+"That's what they say, but they can't prove it. They can't pass it on,
+so it mustn't really be anything. They are not tightwads, so they
+wouldn't hold back on us with their salvation, would they? Well, then,
+they haven't anything. It's all just a substitute for love, dear. Mother
+Spurlock fell back on it when she lost her husband. The little Burns
+woman wouldn't have it any more than Nell has if Mike Burns was like
+Mark Morgan. And Goodloe would lose it in a week if--if he could get you
+in his arms." As Nickols spoke, his arms about me trembled and strained
+me to him.
+
+"No!" I exclaimed as if I had heard blasphemy uttered.
+
+"It _is_, dear, it is just suppressed sex. The scientists agree on that
+and all the religions are just that, from the most primitive to the most
+evolved. Some are more frank about it than others. The Igorrotes when
+they have their religious dancing at the mating season are more open
+than the Methodists about their being one and the same thing, but it all
+sums up alike. You can't get away from those facts."
+
+"Then I want to be dead," I said as I drew myself from his arm and stood
+on the edge of the porch.
+
+"Or you want to love," muttered Nickols under his breath as he watched
+me sullenly for a second. "Then it's October, is it?" he asked with one
+of his infectious, delicious laughs that have always broken across my
+serious moods and made them froth.
+
+"Yes," I answered steadily.
+
+"Then we'll tell Nell and Harriet and Jessie and Mrs. Sproul all about
+it, as I see them coming, on gossip bent I feel sure," he said as he
+went halfway down the walk to meet the girls before I could restrain
+him.
+
+I shall always have with me the picture that Nickols made as he stood
+tall and handsome and smiling against the background of the wonderful
+garden he had helped to create, with the women smiling and clinging to
+him as he looked up at me with a great laughing light in his face. In
+some ways he was the handsomest man I had ever seen and his distinctions
+sat upon him as easily as the college honors of a boy. A wave of race
+pride and love swept up in my heart as I looked at him and I felt that
+in him must be the refuge that I sought. His sophistries always sank
+deep into me.
+
+"Charlotte, my dear," said Mrs. Sproul, as I led her to a seat beneath
+the vines in a shady corner, "I wish I was sure that your mother knew of
+this safe happiness of yours. She adored Nickols and nothing could have
+given her a greater joy. And, my dear, for you to have held him against
+the world, as it were, is a triumph, I assure you. Always remember that
+men of his kind are--are desirable. I'll have a long talk with you
+before you go away with him." And I didn't know why, but the smile with
+which Mrs. Sproul whispered and patted my hand made me burn all over
+with protest.
+
+"I wouldn't have you for a husband unless we were both convicted
+together to a chain gang for at least five years after the ceremony,
+Nickols Powers," said Harriet, with a laugh for which Nickols raised her
+hand to his lips as he responded.
+
+"You like husbands in safety deposit vaults, don't you, Harriet?" At
+which sally they all laughed as they seated themselves around Mrs.
+Sproul and me.
+
+"Why will women want husbands to be as stationary as--as hitching posts,
+Mrs. Sproul?" demanded Nickols as he leaned against one of the tall
+pillars and lighted a cigarette for himself after having lighted one for
+her and Jessie. Jessie Litton had always smoked, in secret until the
+last year or two, and Mrs. Sproul had frankly taken up the habit as a
+comfort for old age, she insisted. I suspect that she had had it for a
+long time in advance of the fashion. It was a really delicious sight to
+see the old world grace with which she accomplished it.
+
+"Women have the nestling habit and that is why they want to believe men
+to be sturdy oaks in whose branches they can safely anchor a family as
+well as twine around in their affectionate gourd fashion," answered Mrs.
+Sproul, as she daintily puffed a smoke ring at Nickols.
+
+"A lot of times the gourd vine grows so strong that she doesn't realize
+she is supporting her family by her own strength long after the oak has
+faded away in her coils and sprouted up from an acorn in some other
+locality," said Jessie, as she, too, puffed a ring of smoke in Nickols'
+direction.
+
+"Is this agriculture, biology or religion we are discussing?" demanded
+Harriet with a laugh as we all rose and went to the edge of the porch to
+meet Billy and Mark and father, who had with them the beloved
+"Minister."
+
+"Congratulations and condolences, Mr. Powers," said Mrs. Sproul as she
+laid her hand in father's.
+
+"On what score, my dear madam," he demanded.
+
+"You know I asked for Charlotte on my fifteenth and her tenth birthday,
+Judge," Nickols said, with his ready grace in any situation, and he came
+and stood beside father and took his hand in his with the gentle
+affection a girl might have shown the older man. "You said 'yes' then
+and it has taken all these years to make her echo the word," and as he
+finished speaking he held out his arm and drew me close to father and
+himself.
+
+"Hurrah!" exclaimed Mark, but I saw him exchange a glance of amusement
+with Harriet, and Nell gave him a warning little squeeze of the arm.
+
+"Bless you both," said father, as he gave us both a hug.
+
+All this I saw and noted before I raised my eyes to meet the jeweled
+eyes under dull gold that I knew were gazing straight at me as Gregory
+Goodloe stood in the background against the dark vine while the
+rejoicings over the announcement of my betrothal were enacted. Somehow I
+felt I could not make myself face their gaze, which yet I knew I must. I
+met a flash that burned down into the very darkest spots in my nature
+and illuminated them all. There was not a trace of male anger or demand
+in the gaze but a cold valuation of me and the entire situation that
+burned me as ice burns raw flesh, then over all of us there suddenly
+poured from the same source a tenderness that was as radiant as the
+summer sun.
+
+"Yes, God bless us all!" he exclaimed, as he held out his hands to all
+of us, one of which Nickols took, with a swift challenging glance that
+in the radiance softened to confidence, and the other father took and
+fairly clung to in his happiness. I was glad, glad that I didn't have to
+endure the touch of his hand on mine after that glance, but not for one
+instant did my heart accuse his radiance of being dramatics. I rather
+felt that it came from a warmth within him by which everybody else in
+the world might be comforted but for which I would forever be cold.
+
+"I _want_ to be worth her, old man," Nickols said to him with a
+curiously pleading note in his voice, and he, too, seemed to me to be
+clinging to some of the strength that was not for me.
+
+"Then God help you," was the answer given with the very essence of
+gentleness, but with a level glance into Nickols' eyes that was
+profoundly sad.
+
+"And now let's hear the wedding plans," demanded Harriet. "This marrying
+and giving in marriage is the best way I know of to make time pass, and
+let's make Charlotte give us full measure. I'm matron of honor, of
+course, and I suggest only twelve bridesmaids. I intend to be preceded
+to the altar by Sue in an embroidered silk muslin I will provide, with a
+bonnet of tulle in which nestles a pink rose to match the ones in her
+basket. There will also be a display of pink knees that will be
+ravishing and--"
+
+"Just let me remind you, Harriet, that this is Charlotte's wedding and
+not that of my daughter, Susan, and her often-mentioned knees," said
+Mark with a laugh that they all echoed.
+
+"I am going to marry Susan's pink knees when they are ripe," remarked
+Billy and his suppression lasted long enough for me to attain command
+enough of myself to manage the plans of my own wedding.
+
+Later when they had all gone by way of the chapel to help Mr. Goodloe
+decide on some designs for a memorial window to his father he was having
+made by a great artist he and Nickols had selected, I went in to make my
+announcement to Mammy and Dabney.
+
+"Well, ram in the cork to the demijohn, honey, and it'll be all right,"
+was Dabney's semi-cordial consent, but Mammy went on industriously
+beating her biscuits for supper the one hundred and twenty licks
+prescribed by her reputation as a cook and her conscientious guarding of
+that same reputation.
+
+"What do you say, Mammy?" I insisted on her giving her opinion.
+
+"Of course, if you want to eat plain biscuits instead of the showbread
+from before the mercy seat--one hundred and two, one hundred and
+three--" was the answer given between the licks upon the white dough,
+and I fled before I should get a clearer manifestation of the
+disappointment I felt raging in her faithful old heart.
+
+That night a young crescent moon was hung over the very crown of Old
+Harpeth as I threw the shutters of my window wide to the night breezes
+after I had put out my light and was ready for bed. I stood in its soft
+light and looked across to the dark mass of the chapel opposite and saw
+that a dim light was still burning from the window by the organ loft.
+And as I stood and looked, the empty place that I had felt in the very
+center of my heart grew colder and more bleak until suddenly across the
+garden on perfumed waves of sound came the Tristan love song and filled
+my emptiness with a pain that was both hot and cold. I stood and let the
+flood dash over me as long as I could and then with a sob I sank on the
+floor and rested my head on the window seat and began to weep as only
+women such as I know how to weep. Then into my sorrow very quietly there
+again stole another strain after the Tristan song had sobbed away into
+the night and suddenly my own weeping was stilled and again something
+within me was healed by the great tender voice singing out in the
+darkness beyond the hedge:
+
+    "Abide with me; fast falls the eventide--
+           ... ... ... ...
+    Help of the helpless, O abide with me!"
+
+"I don't know what to do, I don't know," I cried, and sobbed myself to
+sleep on my pillow after I had watched the light across the garden go
+out and after all in the little parsonage beyond the hedge was dark and
+quiet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A CLANDESTINE ADVENTURE
+
+
+It seems a strange, almost savage thing that the few months before a
+woman's marriage are always filled so full of the doing of thousands and
+tens of thousands of small things that she has no time to think of the
+hugeness of the responsibilities she is assuming. Perhaps if she were
+given time to realize them she would never assume them. Once or twice in
+the long two, nearly three months that I had given myself to get ready
+to marry Nickols, I paused and found myself thinking of the weighty
+things of life, but I soon was able to shake off the thought of the
+future. The time I felt it press most heavily was one morning that
+Jessie Litton and I sat quietly sewing on some sort of fluff she and
+Harriet had planned for my adornment, and very suddenly Jessie laid down
+her ruffle and looked at me as she said:
+
+"Charlotte, I would be frightened, positively frightened, at the
+prospect of marrying Nickols Powers."
+
+"I am; but why would you be?" I asked her directly.
+
+"I read that long résumé of his work in the Review last night and for
+the first time I really realized what an important person he is to the
+development of American art. He really is a huge national machine and
+you'll be one of the important cogs on which the whole thing runs.
+You'll be ground and ground by his life and you'll have to make good or
+be responsible for some sort of a crash."
+
+"No," I answered, slowly drawing my thread through the sheer cloth. "No,
+Nickols will live his own way regardless of the cogs on which it grinds.
+I shall have an enormous task in keeping up with the social side of his
+life, but Nickols is not the kind of a man who takes a woman into his
+work."
+
+As I made my answer I was stabbed by the memory of the words that
+Gregory Goodloe had said to me on that day in the garden: "Separated
+from you, you going one way and I another, I can do nothing. You
+short-circuit my force--I am helpless without you." And _he_ had been
+inviting me into the work for which he had been ordained into the holy
+Church of Christ. I felt myself groping blindly into the futility of my
+own life, and I was sick at heart.
+
+"And if that is so, I would be still more frightened," Jessie said,
+gazing at me with dismayed and honest affection.
+
+"Don't let's talk about it," I answered her and took up my sewing. At
+that moment and from that moment I cast myself into the whole whirl of
+activities in Goodloets and gave myself no more time or strength for
+self-communion. I was fleeing, and from what I dared not know.
+
+And it was a busy month that stretched from August through September.
+Nickols said it would be his last fling at the old town and he proposed
+to leave his mark on its mossy sides. And he did.
+
+In the first place money was pouring into little old Goodloets from
+three huge sources. The little one-horse tannery down by the river
+beyond the Settlement doubled, tripled and then quadrupled its capacity
+and next to it the little old saddle and harness factory in which Mr.
+Cockrell and old Mr. Sproul had been making saddles and harness since
+the days of the Confederacy, did the same and sent out consignment after
+consignment of saddles and bridles which were paid for in huge checks of
+Russian origin which almost paralyzed the Goodloets Bank and Trust
+Company and which worked pale Clive Harvey into the night until he
+managed to get young Henry Thornton in to assist him. His salary was
+raised three times until it was large enough to harbor Bessie and any
+number of small editions of them both, only she preferred to drink and
+dance and joy-ride with Hugh Payne, who could not have supported such a
+flowering by his own effort to have saved his own life and soul.
+
+And then to burden poor Clive still further, Hampton Dibrell and Mr.
+Thornton hastily built huge pens over by the railroad and in these
+assembled hundreds and thousands of mules to be shipped through to
+France, which brought in return a steady stream of French francs to be
+translated into American dollars. Still further, Billy and Mark and
+Cliff, with Nickols' assistance, and the telegraph system, speculated in
+War Brides down on Wall Street until their individual bank accounts
+began to mount to giddy sums. Father and Mr. Sproul and more of the
+other men did likewise and Buford Cunningham got some spectacular
+returns from copper in Canada that Billy said would make Mrs. Buford
+Cunningham try to buy the Country Club outright for a summer home. And
+while there was prosperity in the Town the Settlement also had its
+share. Wages rose higher and higher and many of the women went to work
+at the machines in the saddle factory, leaving the care of the children
+to the old dames, which resulted in an added pandemonium in the
+Settlement streets.
+
+"I don't know what is the matter. Goodloets is money mad," wailed Mother
+Spurlock, as she sank with weariness into the rocker on my porch one hot
+August afternoon. "The girls and the women are all at work and two
+babies have died this week from pure lack of mother's care, I might say
+mother's milk. Ed Jones' wife weaned her six-months'-old baby so she
+could go in the factory, and left it on condensed milk with old Mrs.
+Jones, who fed it incessantly and not at all cleanly. Now it is not
+expected to live. And they dance at the Last Chance until one o'clock
+almost every night. Is the world mad?"
+
+"No, just prosperous, Mother Elsie," I answered her as I gave her a
+large fan and Dabney brought her a tall glass of very cold tea. "Little
+old Goodloets is having the same boom that the rest of America is
+getting from feeding and furnishing the rest of the warring world."
+
+"Nickols Powers told me just last night that over two hundred thousand
+dollars would be spent on the improvements to this town in the next two
+months, counting the new schoolhouse, the restoration of the courthouse,
+the paving of the public square and the enlargement of the electric
+light plant. That doesn't count the money everybody is putting on their
+own private homes. That camp of workmen down by the river that Nickols
+has had sent down from the city has a hundred men in it now, and that is
+one thing that demoralizes the Settlement. Jacob Ensley has had that
+dance hall enlarged twice and he has employed George Spain to stand
+behind the bar. It is breaking Mrs. Spain's heart, but she is helpless,
+for George is being paid three dollars a day for being just where he
+wants to be. I don't know what to do. I firmly believe the town is mad,
+with only Gregory Goodloe to stand between it and God's wrath."
+
+"What is he doing to stem the joy tide?" I asked with a laugh, for it
+did seem in a way funny to see one of the leading citizens of old
+Goodloets so distressed over its improvement and modernization through
+its enormous prosperity.
+
+"He was down in the workmen's camp last night having a song service and
+seventy-five of them stayed there singing until midnight. Jacob had to
+put out his lights at eleven o'clock because there were not enough to
+pay to keep open. The chapel was full Sunday night and Jacob closed the
+Last Chance at six o'clock for the first time in its existence. The men
+passed it on to him to do it and he came and sat in a back pew himself.
+They all call Mr. Goodloe 'Parson,' and he walks in and around and about
+this town night and day shedding a kind of peace and good will even into
+the darkest corners. He lends a hand here and there with the work, eats
+out of the men's dinner pails when that Jefferson is too lazy to cook
+for him, or takes a bite off some stove down in the Settlement out of
+some old woman's pork and cabbage pot with just as much grace and
+heartiness as he eats at Nell Morgan's or Harriet Henderson's most
+elaborate dinners. And outside of his pulpit he never preaches; he just
+lives. This is what I heard Jacob say to him just yesterday:
+
+"'Sure, and I wint up to set in one of your pews to see if your action
+in your own job was as good as it is in the many you lend a hand to week
+about.'
+
+"'Well?' asked Mr. Goodloe, as he picked up, one of those rosy apples
+from the box Jacob keeps out on the sidewalk to blind the Last Chance.
+
+"'I knows when to run and not be caught,' Jacob answered, as he put
+another apple in the parson's pocket and went back into the grocery
+door."
+
+"Do you ever see Martha?" I asked with a kind of impatience. I had been
+three times down to the Last Chance and each time Jacob's excuses for
+Martha had been positive though courteous, and I had come away baffled,
+with the green groceries I had purchased as a blind to my visit. I had
+written to her and had had no response. At that I had stopped, with a
+self-sufficient feeling of a duty well done, but through it all I also
+felt that she was on the other side of a prison wall crying to me.
+
+"Never," answered Mother Spurlock, with real pain in her voice. "She
+stays in that back room and cooks for Jacob, and the child stays with
+her and has only the small yard back of the bar in which to play. Jacob
+only let him come up to sing with Mr. Goodloe and the children a few
+times and now he is kept as near in prison as his mother. Jacob's
+attitude grows more morose about her and the child every day. I don't
+understand it. I never will. Martha was the loveliest girl that ever
+bloomed in the Settlement, and now she has been plucked and thrown into
+the dust. And the child is too young to share her prison fate. He must
+be got out and away."
+
+"He will," I answered, with a calm confidence. I didn't tell Mother
+Spurlock, and I didn't know exactly why I didn't, but I was deeply
+involved in a clandestine affair with the Stray which was fast becoming
+one of the adventures of my life. It had begun in a positively weird
+manner and was continuing along the same lines. One morning several
+weeks after my first acquaintance and turtle adventure with him I had
+waked up at dawn and gone to look out of the window just as the morning
+star was fading over Old Harpeth. In the dim light I had spied a small
+figure down in the garden, hopping along by a row of early young rose
+bushes, with a can in one hand and a long stick in the other. Hastily
+getting into a few clothes I crept down through the silent house and out
+in the garden to find the Stray busily engaged in knocking large slugs
+off into a can.
+
+"I feed 'em to mother's bird in the cage, 'cause he can't get out to get
+'em," he explained. "They all sleep hard 'cause they work so late and I
+crawl out the window and go back while they don't wake up. I like your
+yard better than I do mine." The statement was made simply, without envy
+of apology.
+
+And from that morning a queer kind of dawn life went on between the
+small boy and me. Morning after morning he threw a pebble to waken me
+and I hurried down to our tryst, which extended through the hour that
+lies between the crack of day and the first glint of the awakening sun.
+At first I had carried sweetmeats to our tryst, which were accepted
+with moderate pleasure, but one morning I had taken a huge volume of
+Rackham's Mother Goose which Nickols had brought me, and from then on
+our hour had been one of spiritual communion. I found the young mind
+insatiate and I had to ransack the library for stories and poems and
+pictures suitable to his years, though he rapidly developed a very
+advanced taste. The morning I read him the Shakespearian lines woven
+around the little Princes in the Tower, having suitably connected up the
+story for him with words of my own, we forgot the time and he overstayed
+his limit, for Dabney was opening the house when he fled. For five
+mornings he did not come and I could find no way to get news of him. I
+asked Mikey and got a maddening response.
+
+"They shut up Stray in the back yard because he's a shame to old Jake,"
+was his answer to my question. "Jake would shoot anybody that climbed
+that fence."
+
+"I bet I could get over and the bad man not see if I could get out in
+the dark," Charlotte declared as she stood listening to my questioning.
+"And I am going after Stranger that way, too, if ever they leave the
+front door to my house unlocked. It is wicked to shut up a little boy,
+and the devil would help me get him out." Charlotte's purpose was high
+if she did slightly mix her theology.
+
+That night a wonderful thing happened in my moonlit room. I was dead
+asleep when I felt a soft hand stroking my face, and then my hair, and I
+awoke to find the Stray standing by my bed.
+
+"They tied me in bed when they found out I had runned away in the
+mornings to see you, but I gnawed the rope that he put, because I wanted
+to tell you that I can go to the big school when it opens because
+Minister told him that he would be put in jail if I didn't. It is a law.
+I heard him last night, and mother cried a long time, for what, I don't
+know. Was she glad or sorry? Do you know?"
+
+"No, darling, I don't know, and I wish I did," I answered him as I put
+my arms around him while he snuggled his black-crested head down beside
+mine on the pillow.
+
+"My mother is sick, she cries so much," he said with a manly struggle
+that drowned the sob in his throat. "I don't know what to do. Do you
+know?"
+
+"I'll find out," I said with a sudden fierceness as I strained him
+against my shoulder for an instant and then sat up in bed as if I must
+do something at once.
+
+"I must run right back and tie myself before he wakes up and whips me,"
+the Stray said, and it sickened me to see him wrap the gnawed rope
+around his little arm.
+
+"No!" I exclaimed, and held out my arms to him.
+
+"I must, but I don't mind whippings if I can read books in school and
+you make mother not cry," and before I could stop him he ran out of the
+dim room and I could hear his cautious bare feet patter down the long
+stairway and hall.
+
+That moonlight tryst was the last of the adventure, but I did not worry,
+for I knew that the school would be opened formally in ten days, and I
+had laid my plans for Stray in an interested friendship with the very
+competent young woman who had already come down from the state normal
+college to teach the amalgamated young ideas of Goodloets to shoot.
+Also, I had vague plans that hurt me, of getting Jessie or Harriet to
+continue the trysts for me after the wedding, whose details they were
+all pushing to completion by a mid-September day.
+
+And added to the strenuosity of the laying of my plans for at least a
+year's absence, I had to help father make his arrangements for a six
+months' stay in Washington, for he had accepted the President's
+appointment on the Commerce Commission, and night and day he was at his
+library desk. The silver-topped decanter still stood on the sideboard in
+the dining room, and the silver ice bowl was formally filled before
+every meal by Dabney. The mint glass was kept fresh and fragrant but
+apparently father had forgotten entirely about all three. He ate twice
+as much as I had ever seen him consume and the worn lines in his face
+were slowly filling out into a delicious joviality. Mr. Hicks, the
+little tailor who had always clothed him, had little by little made over
+the outer man with new garments as the old ones grew restrictive, and
+Mother Spurlock had carried his entire discarded wardrobe, garment at a
+time, down to the Settlement for the clothing of some of her most needy
+friends.
+
+But the most reborn person I had ever seen was Dabney. The little black
+man had lived so long under the shadow of father's moroseness that when
+the pressure was lifted from his bent black shoulders he rebounded to an
+amazing extent. His reaction took the form of gala attire in which
+Nickols encouraged him to the extent of silk hosiery of the most
+delicate shades from his own wardrobe, with ties to match, not to
+mention his own last year's Panama hat, pressed over into the extreme of
+the prevailing style for youthful masculine head adornment. Also Nickols
+bestowed upon him a very up-to-date Palm Beach suit, purchased at the
+Hicks shop, and on his first appearance in the kitchen for his wife's
+inspection I was present.
+
+"Go take them clothes off, nigger, and put 'em along of my black silk
+shroud in the bottom drawer of the chist," she commanded, as she put her
+hands on her sixty-inch waist and stood before him with arms akimbo.
+"Folks is got no business to dress in life so fine that they shames they
+burying clothes."
+
+"Shoo fly, I'm jest going to Washington, not to Heaven, in this here
+rig. When I git into Heaven it'll be 'cause I'm hiding behind that
+black silk skirt of your shroud, honey, if I'm as naked as borned," was
+the admiring, wily and also wholly sincere answer to Mammy's fling at
+the gorgeous raiment.
+
+And while the Poplars teemed with wedding plans Nickols kept the whole
+village steamed up to be in readiness for the visit of Mr. Jeffries,
+which was dated for just a week before the wedding, and the village
+festival at the opening of the new school was to be the most important
+ceremonial of the whole visit. Father was to give him a dinner at which
+all of the Solons of the Harpeth Valley were to be present, and a ball
+at the Country Club was being planned by Billy with all enthusiasm. But
+the center of the buzz was down at Mother Spurlock's Little House, where
+Mr. Goodloe daily, and it seemed almost hourly, drilled the children for
+the ceremonial of the opening of their house of learning across the way
+from the Little House by the Road. Only echoes of the orgies reached the
+outside, and gossip ran high in the Settlement as well as the Town at
+the fragments that the delighted scions brought home, of curious folk
+dances mixed with fragments of weird tunes.
+
+"Sure, a minister of the gospel to teach me Mikey to stand on one leg
+and spin around on the other with his hands over his head is a quare
+thing, but the Riverend Goodloe is no ordinary man," said Mrs. Burns to
+Mother Spurlock, who answered:
+
+"You can trust him, Mrs. Burns, even with Mikey's legs."
+
+And during all the long weeks of activity not once did I have a word
+alone with the Harpeth Jaguar. We met constantly at dinner at the tables
+of our friends and he came and went at the Poplars with the same freedom
+that Nickols enjoyed. He was long hours in the library with father, and
+somehow I felt that he was strengthening the structure that he had
+builded on the ruined foundation and something passionate rose in my
+heart and filled it with pain every time I heard his ringing laugh come
+from the library table, accompanied by father's booming chuckle. Also,
+he worked early and late in the garden with Nickols and the young man
+from White Plains, and I saw that Nickols' artistic ideas flowed at top
+speed when Gregory Goodloe was standing by.
+
+It was the same thing over at the new schoolhouse. Mr. Todd and the men
+worked miracles with their stone and mortar and wood and iron when he
+was standing by or lending a hand. The school was built partly of stone
+like the chapel and partly of old purple-pink brick like Mother
+Spurlock's Little House, and it was beamed with heavy timbers. It was
+roofed with heavy colonial clapboards which made it look as if it had
+already stood a century before the floors were laid or the very modern
+desks installed. It was built to house increasing generations, though
+only about fifty children would open its portals of education.
+
+"It speaks of education de luxe, doesn't it?" Billy asked as Nell and
+Harriet and I stood with him and Nickols and the parson watching Mr.
+Todd directing the men in screwing down the desks just a few days before
+the opening.
+
+"There is scarcely a village in England to compare with old Goodloets
+now, and nothing at all like it," said Nickols, as he looked first up
+the hill to the Town and down the hill to the Settlement. "I know that
+it is the first spot in America to express what the full grown nation is
+going to be. When we add beauty to the materially perfected mode of
+existence we are enjoying, life will be too short in the living. That
+schoolhouse ought to produce some results in art cultures in the infant
+mind of Goodloets."
+
+"Yes, America is learning that the foundation of its national existence,
+trait upon trait, must be laid in the lives of the children," said Mr.
+Goodloe, slowly, and he smiled as across from the Little House came wee
+Susan's exquisite treble in a waltz song which was backed up by Mother
+Spurlock's bumble and Charlotte's none too accurate accompaniment. And
+we all smiled with him.
+
+Always it seemed to me I was with him and a part of a number of people
+who felt the radiance of his loveliness, and not once had I for a second
+come into personal touch with him. I had, like the rest, got my smiles
+and friendliness from the dark eyes under dull gold, but the door to the
+land in which I had been with Tristan when he sang his death song had
+vanished and there were no traces of its portals. The only sign that was
+between him and me was his continued evasion of setting a date for the
+dedication of the chapel. He always answered inquiries by saying that
+the opening of the school must come first and when the dedication was
+mentioned he never looked in my direction. My soul seemed to be standing
+still and listening for something that never came.
+
+And then Mr. Jeffries arrived on the scene of action.
+
+That night of Billy's ball for the magnate, who was having the time of
+his gray-headed life under Billy's and Nickols' enthusiastic direction,
+the strange alien thing that had been developed in my depths, part
+unrest and part rebellion, since I had first looked into the eyes of the
+young Methodist parson, who had intruded himself and his chapel into my
+existence, got its death blow. In my presence Nickols made his formal
+request of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe to officiate at our marriage.
+
+"Of course, Greg, old fellow, you are going to marry us next Tuesday,
+aren't you?" asked Nickols, as we stood on the steps of the Poplars
+after dinner, chatting with him as he was leaving to go over to the
+chapel while we went out to the dance. "I suppose there is some sort of
+formal way to make the request, but I don't know it."
+
+"If there is I don't know it, either," was the kindly answer, which
+both Nickols and I took for assent.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Nickols, as he turned away towards father and Mr.
+Cockrell and Mr. Jeffries, who had come out on the porch with their
+cigars, and left him and me standing alone in the starlight.
+
+"God guard you!" he said to me without taking the hand I held out to him
+in the darkness with a kind of desperation that seemed that of a
+drowning woman. "Good-bye!" and he was gone out into the night, leaving
+me, I knew, forever outside of his life.
+
+"Wait, Oh wait!" I pleaded, but he was gone and I didn't even know if he
+heard the cry out into the velvet darkness.
+
+That night was the most brilliant night that Goodloets had ever known.
+The Town was full of guests who had motored over from all the towns
+around in the Harpeth Valley. The Governor had come down from the
+capital in his huge touring car to congratulate father on his
+appointment and to meet Mr. Jeffries. His adjutant-general and several
+of his aids were with him in their showy State Guard uniforms and all of
+the girls were rosy with excitement at the presence of so many rows of
+brass buttons. Mr. Jeffries opened the ball, and to the delight and
+amusement of us all, he succeeded in leading out with him Mrs. Sproul,
+who turned the opening dance into a stately old Virginia reel, which so
+delighted the tango dancers with its novelty that the dance was repeated
+several times during the evening by enthusiastic requests.
+
+And while the Town reveled in celebration of the new Goodloets, down in
+the Settlement like rejoicings were being held at the dance hall of the
+Last Chance. In fact, the whole small city was in the throes of a great
+rejoicing. Why shouldn't all Goodloets revel when it was enjoying a
+prosperity beyond anybody's dreams of two years before? Everybody had
+been generous to the old town with the money that had come so easily
+from other suffering people's necessities, and security and good
+fellowship and prosperity reigned supreme. In each heart there was the
+feeling that now the old town and their personal lives were founded on
+solid rocks of peace and plenty and it was the time to eat, drink and be
+merry.
+
+At supper the Governor's first toast, after that to the town itself,
+was to father and his distinctions. Then Mr. Jeffries toasted Nickols
+and me. He called Nickols the "American Wizard of Habitations," and,
+amid cheering and clapping hands, announced his intention to have
+Nickols build the American town on the Hudson. He called me the "Heart
+of the Achievement," and father's pride as he looked down the long table
+at Nickols and me was very wonderful and beautiful; and as great a pride
+rose in my heart as I saw him lift his glass of water to pledge me,
+leaving the bubbles breaking in his champagne.
+
+It was very near dawn when we all motored home and it was upon the verge
+of the crack of day by the time Dabney and Nickols had got the Governor
+and Mr. Jeffries and the other guests settled under the wide roof of the
+Poplars, which had never hovered a more distinguished or brilliant house
+party.
+
+For a few quiet minutes after they had all gone to their rooms Nickols
+and I stood alone on the front porch in the cool darkness with its hint
+of the dawn, while old Dabney shut up the back part of the house.
+
+"The school festival will be over to-morrow, sweetheart, and the next
+day they will all be gone. The photographers are all through with the
+photographing and to-morrow night all the extra workmen go back to the
+city. There'll be three whole quiet days for you to get ready to give me
+that kiss, which I won't take when you are as tired as you are now,"
+said Nickols, as he put a limp arm around me and leaned against the tall
+door post.
+
+"To-morrow the old makes way for the new. Goodloets is dead! Long live
+Goodloets!" I answered, as I in turn leaned against Nickols' jaded arm
+for only a second before we preceded Dabney up the stairs to our rooms.
+
+In my room I went immediately to the window and opened wide the heavy
+shutters. I found myself looking down on Goodloets, which lay below the
+darkness of the Poplars like a long glowworm, brilliant with the lights
+from the homes of the revelers who were going to bed with a sense of
+perfect security. Still farther down the hill the lights from the
+Settlement glowed with scarcely less brilliancy and I felt sure that the
+Last Chance was still harboring a last fling of joy.
+
+Suddenly over my spirit came a deep wave of depression that amounted to
+a great fear and then as I stood trembling in the darkness, a broad ray
+of morning light shot up over Paradise Ridge and spread rapidly into a
+crimson glow that was reflected against a black cloud hanging low over
+the head of Old Harpeth. A flash of lightning darted from the cloud and
+spread its gold fire through the crimson of the coming day, and then the
+sullen-pointed cloud sank rapidly below Paradise Ridge, over which it
+had risen, as if reconnoitering. Positively shuddering, I knelt against
+the window seat and watched the day come with a hitherto unknown terror.
+Then as I watched the dawn begin to drive away the sullen clouds a rich
+voice began to sing out beyond the old poplars as a window of the gray
+chapel was thrown open:
+
+    "Arise, my soul, arise,
+    Shake off thy guilty fears;
+          ... ... ... ...
+    Before the throne my Surety stands
+    My name is written on His hands."
+
+The calmness that came into my frightened heart was like the peace of a
+deep sleep, and with its strength I faced the day that was to be that of
+my humiliation and which was to be the crest of the wave of the high
+tide of Goodloets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE JEWEL IN THE MATRIX
+
+
+When I awoke from a few hours of deep and exhausted sleep I found my
+room fast filling with the strenuosities of the day. In fact, I opened
+them upon Harriet Henderson, up, dressed and briskly doing. She had a
+large pasteboard box with her and the minute I brushed repose from my
+eyes she opened it and held up for my inspection a very short tulle
+garment besprinkled with tiny silk rosebuds, along with a bonnet and
+other wee but distinctly feminine paraphernalia to match. A basket
+adorned with a huge bow of tulle came from another box and I was forced
+to voice my admiration with the greatest vigor.
+
+"How I'll ever keep from eating Sue up before she gets to the altar, I
+can't see," said Harriet, as she held the wee frock for a second against
+her breast. It hurts me to the quick of my own breast to see Harriet's
+eyes when she broods over Sue. I don't see how she is going to live
+life always as hungry as she is now.
+
+"I suppose I might just as well wear my tennis things, because the
+guests will be already as completely enraptured as is humanly possible
+before my entry upon the scene of action of my own wedding," I said, as
+I sat up and took the small bonnet in my own hand. "It is too bad that
+Jessie and Letitia should worry themselves over my own wedding frock, if
+Susan is--" I was just saying when Nell arrived beside my bed with the
+Suckling in the very act of obtaining her early luncheon from the
+maternal fount. The nurse has always had to follow Nell about with her
+successive hungry offspring.
+
+"Girls, I really don't know what to do, but young Charlotte has given
+every single presentable garment that Jimmy possessed to different
+unclothed children in the Settlement, who were needed in the pageant,
+and Mark and Billy are laughing at her, while Jimmy is howling. I just
+ran in to see Harriet a minute and ask her if she--"
+
+"Yes, Jimmie's wedding garments came home from Mrs. Burns' yesterday and
+I'll lend them to you just to spite those men, who are simply ruining
+Charlotte by the day," said Harriet, as Nell handed her the replete
+Suckling wrong end foremost and picked up the small tulle bonnet with a
+gurgle of maternal rapture that was in some ways as young as the happy
+gurgle that the Suckling gave as she settled into Harriet's dependable
+arms for her morning nap. Harriet cradled her against her own round,
+firm breast and for a second brooded then joined in Nell's rapture over
+the garments for the bedizening of wee Susan.
+
+"If Harriet didn't dress and discipline my children I feel sure they
+would be found naked in a reform school," Nell said, with a happy and
+careless gratitude. There are some women to whom life is incidental and
+maternity the most casual adventure of all. The happy-go-lucky variety
+are apt to produce just such children as Charlotte or young James or
+Susan, and it is well if into their young lives there comes the hungry
+woman with a brooding mission.
+
+"Young Charlotte will probably be the first woman governor of the state
+and--" Harriet was saying with a laugh when Letitia and Jessie arrived
+precipitately. Letitia had a parcel which contained a lingerie garment
+of mine, whose lace and embroidery and ribbon combined would have
+enraptured most women, and Jessie carried in her hand a package of
+belated wedding cards. They were followed closely by Mammy, who was in
+turn followed by the meek Sally. Mammy's address was delivered to me
+first.
+
+"Git up quick, honey; the men folks has begun on the second round of
+waffles and they'll be calling for you. The day is on its shanks and
+a-going," she admonished, while Sallie turned on my bath.
+
+"They are having breakfast out in the garden and the day is perfect. Do
+you want blue or pink ribbons in this Valenciennes set, Charlotte?" said
+Letitia, as she seated herself on the foot of my bed and drew out a
+ribbon bag whose contents were of many colors.
+
+"A fashionable wedding is a white lie; you invite all the people you
+especially want to stay away," sighed Jessie, as she seated herself at
+my desk and lighted a cigarette, at which Mammy rolled her black eyes
+and departed with her nose in the air.
+
+And while they all chatted over the sealing of my fate I arose and had
+my toilet made in my dressing room, in full hearing of the discussions
+about the best groupings of bridesmaids and the horror at the count of
+the cases of wine Billy had ordered from the city for the dinner to the
+groomsmen the night before the wedding.
+
+"I adore Mark seven-tenths full, but I don't like to endure the end of
+the jag next morning," laughed Nell, as she began to put ribbons into
+the bodkins for Letitia. I saw Harriet give her a long look from under
+her half-lowered eyelashes as she hugged the Suckling closer to her
+breast. Billy had told Harriet and me casually a few nights before that
+"old Mark's drinking to a double-decker liver and a sidestep in his
+heart."
+
+"Oh, gentlemen always drink in moderation. I never worry over Cliff,"
+said Letitia complacently, as she tied a decorative shoulder knot.
+
+"You expect to give him a daily dose of three drops on a lump of sugar,
+Letitia?" asked Harriet, as she exchanged glances with Jessie. One
+evening last week Jessie and Harriet had motored Cliff in from the Club
+just in time to save him from going over the riffles and Letitia had
+been dancing with him without noticing his staggers.
+
+"There, that is the very last stitch to be taken on your trousseau,
+Charlotte," said Letitia, as she laid down the filmy garment she had
+been adorning with blue bowknots. "Press it, Sallie, and lay it with the
+rest of the set in the second tray of the medium-sized trunk. You can
+lock it and give me the key."
+
+"I just can't stand it, Charlotte," said Jessie to me in a low voice, as
+I came from the hands of the skillful Sallie and stood beside the window
+next to the desk. "You are all I have got and only you--you understand.
+I can't give you up. I'm frightened."
+
+"Hush--so am I," I answered her, as my hand gripped her shoulder under
+her heavy linen frock until I felt it must bruise it. Then I turned to
+the others, collected them and descended to finish breakfast with the
+Poplars' guests.
+
+Never a more radiantly beautiful morning had spread its loveliness over
+the Harpeth Valley than the one I found out in the garden that
+twenty-seventh day of September, the gala day in the history of
+Goodloets. Huge white clouds drifted back and forth in a deep blue sky
+and they were rosy at times with the sunlight, but from some of the
+largest little tongues of lightning darted, while others were lit by
+what seemed to be an internal glow of fire. Cool winds, perfumed with
+the harvests and the ripening orchards and the vineyards out in the
+valley, rustled in the treetops and flaunted in the vines. The ardent
+sun seemed to be drawing from the bosom of the earth a hot mist which
+lay over the town like a filmy bridal veil, only stirred gently by the
+vagrant veering gusts of wind. Nature seemed to be holding herself in
+leash and only breathing upon the earth gently, as if to stir some
+latent lushness into autumnal activity.
+
+"A perfect Harpeth day for Mr. Jeffries," said the Governor, as he came
+from his seat at the table to greet the girls and me. The rest of the
+masculine breakfasters followed and I could see from the devastation of
+the table that they had all breakfasted well and to repletion. I also
+detected the worthless Jefferson, whom Mr. Goodloe had evidently loaned
+to his parents for the occasion, lift father's full glass of julep and
+drain it with one gulp, grab the half glass that Nickols had left, gulp
+it and begin on the finger or so in Billy's tumbler before Dabney could
+forcibly but quietly restrain him. In fact, I felt there would have
+been a riot among my servitors if Mr. Goodloe had not stepped aside and
+spoken a low word to Jefferson, which sent him busily at the table with
+his tray.
+
+And from that moment Nickols' triumphant procession of inspection of
+Goodloets began. Mr. Jeffries stood in the middle of the reincarnated
+old garden, looked for a long time at the Poplars, which was like a
+green encrusted gem with its old purple red brick under the vines,
+glanced again and again at the chapel with its weathered stone that
+stood beyond the silver-leafed graybeards, then let his eye wander down
+the broad elm-bordered main street past the courthouse and past the
+Settlement to the river bending around it all.
+
+"Money couldn't build anything like it, Powers," he said to Nickols at
+his side. "Time and gentle living have formed it as a jewel is made in a
+matrix. I was born in a mining camp, but I want you to start something
+like it all for my great grandchildren to live in. How many generations
+will it take?"
+
+"Give me five years, Mr. Jeffries," laughed Nickols in answer. "Greg
+Goodloe's great great grandfather and mine fought off the Indians from
+a stockade which stood where his chapel does now, but a year of modern
+life about represents a generation of pioneer endeavor."
+
+"Not too fast, youngster, not too fast," said Mr. Jeffries, and I saw
+him exchange a grave glance with father. "What we Americans must have is
+stabilizers now that we have annihilated time. Without the discovery of
+something of that sort we will hurl along to destruction. What say you,
+Mr. Goodloe?"
+
+"We have the same 'covert of wings' that David used when things spun too
+fast for him," answered Mr. Goodloe with the jeweled radiance that
+always came from his face when he spoke of his faith even casually.
+"Only 'where there is no vision the people perish,' and a people who
+invent flying machines and hold international law to account have
+vision. We don't know how much we've got, but it'll save us."
+
+"After the material glass through which we see darkly is completely
+smashed for us," said father, with a curious sternness coming into his
+face that made me wonder. "But we must take Mr. Jeffries for a nearer
+inspection of our metropolis, be with Mrs. Sproul in time for luncheon
+and then help Mr. Goodloe open the institute of learning for young
+Goodloets."
+
+In the motor cars parked before the tall gate of the Poplars all of the
+guests embarked for their review of the beauties of Goodloets. Nickols
+remained behind them while the half sober but skillful Jefferson
+wrestled with a slight tire trouble of his slim blue racer. For a few
+minutes we were alone in the center of the wonderful garden, which had
+never seemed so lovely as upon the day in which it had fulfilled its own
+and Nickols' destiny.
+
+"To-day has brought just what I have longed for, have worked for and
+waited for, the commission for the spending of millions of dollars to
+make a little corner of the earth beautiful. Not a bad religion, that,"
+said Nickols, as he told me that Jeffries had spoken a few words of
+decided business to him as he had packed him into Mr. Cockrell's car
+with father and Mr. Goodloe. "We'll take a honeymoon wander on the other
+side, as far from the machine guns as possible, and then I'll come home
+to begin my masterpiece." And as Nickols spoke his wonderful eyes
+glowed as he looked out at Paradise Ridge as if he were gazing into a
+radiant future--perhaps he saw a city not made with hands and did
+not--recognize it. "I see it all," he said, and put his arm around me
+while we started down the front walk as Jefferson pressed the horn to
+signal the readiness of the tire.
+
+"I'm too busy to go with you, but I'll meet you at Mrs. Sproul's," a
+sudden impulse made me say, for I had intended until that instant to
+accompany him.
+
+"A man can't eat his bride and have a trousseau, too," he laughed, as he
+drove off rapidly, leaving me standing by the old gate watching him.
+Then I turned and slowly walked out into the garden and down to the old
+graybeards. And seated on one of the grass mats I found the reason I had
+unconsciously been drawn back. Martha was waiting for me there.
+
+"Why, Martha," I exclaimed, startled without understanding just why. "I
+might have gone and not known you were waiting. Why didn't you come and
+tell me you were here?"
+
+"I couldn't--I found I couldn't," she answered me, looking up into my
+face with her strange, sad eyes. "I--I suppose I just came to peep in
+on you like I did to the coming-out party." She laughed softly, with a
+note of self-scorn in her voice.
+
+"Is anything the matter with--with Sonny?" I asked quickly, again
+unconsciously using the name for the Stray that her tenderness had given
+him. Her white face and desperate manner frightened me.
+
+"No, he's dressed in one of Jimmy Morgan's old suits and he is going to
+be taken from me this afternoon forever," she answered with the note of
+bitterness deepening.
+
+"But you want him to go to school, don't you, Martha?" I asked
+patiently, as I sat down on a mat beside her. I spoke to her as one
+speaks to the limited intelligence of a child and I was slightly
+impatient at her distress.
+
+"He asked me yesterday why everybody called him Stray and if it did mean
+Stranger like Charlotte said, and if he would always be called that or
+have an everyday name like Jimmy. Soon he'll know and then I'll lose him
+as I'm losing everything else."
+
+"Why won't you let me help you to--to begin over again?" I asked her,
+this time with less patience. "Why have you--you locked yourself away
+from me?"
+
+"I can't--I won't ever tell you. I must go back, now I've seen you
+in--in your happiness. But I don't hate you--I never have." And as she
+spoke Martha rose and began to walk rapidly away from me.
+
+"Oh, please don't go, Martha," I said. "In just three days I'll be going
+away for a long time, you know, and I want to help you in some way
+before I go. You ought to let me, and it worries me that you don't, now
+of all times," and as I put my selfish plea for ease to my conscience,
+something that was hot and rebellious made me want to stop the woman who
+was hurrying away from me.
+
+"I won't, I won't make you unhappy--but I must go. I must! I'll--I'll be
+happy--and good now--if _you'll_ only be happy. Good-bye!" And as she
+called back at me over her shoulder, Martha ran from me down through the
+hedge and into the door of the chapel, which always, night and day, rain
+and storm, stood slightly ajar. A queer pain smote me to see that she
+had run from me into the only place in all the broad, smiling Harpeth
+Valley where I could not--or would not, follow her. And the sanctuary
+that she sought was for every man, woman or child who wanted it--only I
+could not and would not seek it.
+
+"'The covert of wings,'" I whispered to myself, as I went down the
+street to Mrs. Sproul's as rapidly as possible to be rid of my own
+company. As I repeated the words that the parson had used to Mr.
+Jeffries I noticed one great white cloud with a dark center flash fire
+into another, to a great crashing and rumbling. "I wonder if it is
+really going to storm," I speculated gloomily, as I turned into the
+Sproul gate, but the brilliant sunshine seemed to fling me a dazzling
+denial from every petal of the white clematis that wreathed itself
+across the front porch, under which Mrs. Sproul, arrayed in all the
+midday magnificence of good form, sat and waited for her guests. Mrs.
+Cockrell sat beside her and they were delighted to see me and demanded
+happiness from me which it was hard for me to give from the depths that
+had been stirred by my strange interview with Martha, to which I felt I
+ought to have a key, but could not find it anywhere.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE PAGEANT
+
+
+"We were just saying, Charlotte dear, that this absurd school affair has
+completely overshadowed your wedding day," said Mrs. Cockrell, as she
+rocked back and forth in tune with her Irish point rose she was
+constructing. "It seems to me a wedding ought to come before a school
+festivity."
+
+"Social law requires that marriage take precedence of schooling," said
+Mrs. Sproul, as her mischievous old eyes snapped at Mrs. Cockrell's
+placid conventionality. "The correct order is for women to take husbands
+and then school children should be the inevitable outcome. They are not,
+however, in this day and generation, which is about to be the last, I'm
+thinking."
+
+"There will be thirty-nine kiddies from the Settlement and eleven from
+the Town to feast on reason and flow soul together in the new school," I
+laughed, as I sat down between them. "Also I'm thinking that a lot more
+will be forthcoming from the Settlement by next week. Young Charlotte
+and Mother Spurlock clothed as far as they could, but they will keep at
+it, I feel sure. I feel guilty at the idea of taking three trunks of
+clothes away from the watchful eye of Mother Elsie, only I'm leaving the
+accumulation of years for her distribution."
+
+"The passport to Elsie Spurlock's heart is a condition composed of rags,
+hunger and unhappiness. She has no sympathy or time for a sanitary and
+contented friend," said Mrs. Sproul with a decided tartness that was
+only a reflex of the deep affection she bore the mistress of the Little
+House, which had existed since childhood and would endure.
+
+"I hear some of the cars coming," announced Mrs. Cockrell, as she began
+to crochet furiously at the last petal of a rose. "Is my cap straight? I
+do so want to finish this row and can't go in to look."
+
+"You'll put out St. Peter's eye with a crochet needle while he's
+unlocking the pearly gates for you, Lettie Cockrell," said Mrs. Sproul,
+as she rose and stood with ceremony at the head of the steps to meet
+the Governor and Mr. Jeffries and father as they came up her front walk.
+
+Mrs. Sproul always has the most delightful old world sort of midday
+dinners and it was two o'clock before we all arose from her long table,
+at one end of which had been demolished a spiced ham and from the other
+end had disappeared two fat summer turkeys. A saddle of lamb had been
+passed in between and we had wound up with sweet potato custards, apple
+float and ice cream.
+
+"I understand now," said Mr. Jeffries, as his keen old eyes twinkled
+down the table at Nickols. "This food should produce geniuses. The South
+feeds for it."
+
+"Yes, we eat, drink, are merry and do it all over again to-morrow," said
+Mark, as he walked beside Mrs. Sproul from the devastated dining room.
+"And we must all hurry if we are to see your young ideas begin to shoot.
+This day isn't really hot, but just thinks it is. Look at those clouds
+boiling up back of Old Harpeth as if wanting to storm, but afraid to
+begin it. There's not a breath of air stirring. Wish it _would_ shower,
+for I believe the colors of Goodloe's pageant would run and I'd like to
+see the true hue of this melee of his come out in the wash. It would do
+Charlotte good to fade a bit. She has been hectic since daylight and the
+rest of my juvenile family with her. Jimmy is S and Z in the alphabet
+and Sue has got a huge A sewed on her back. Goodloe intends that
+education shall be nailed to 'em."
+
+And at his admonition to hurry and the alluring description of the
+entertainment to come, we all betook ourselves on foot toward the
+schoolhouse down the street a few blocks, halfway between the Town and
+the Settlement.
+
+And as we went all the rest of the Town hurried out of wide, high,
+vine-covered doors, down broad, flower-lined walks, and joined us from
+under bowers of blooming roses, honeysuckle and clematis. We actually
+approached the schoolhouse in the form of quite a large procession, and
+as we wound our way down the hill we met a like procession winding
+itself up the hill from the Settlement, a procession arrayed in its best
+bib, tucker and boiled shirt, just as we were adorned in silk, lace,
+fine muslin and linen.
+
+"It looks like two armies approaching each other--Greek is going to meet
+Greek," said Billy.
+
+"Rather Greek meets Vandal, and there stands Goodloe to do the
+interpreting," Nickols jeered in answer.
+
+And as we all flocked into the wide gate of the school yard I was again
+struck with the great beauty of the tall, broad, lithe, free man who
+stood in the middle of the walk just inside, welcoming Town and
+Settlement alike. And while he greeted us, his enthusiastic flock of
+older children seated the groups of guests on the long rough benches
+which were placed facing the door of the schoolhouse, leaving a wide
+space at the foot of the steps, which was roped off with golden chains
+of black-eyed daisies and which was evidently to be used as a stage for
+the pageant.
+
+"Just look how Goodloe is failing to mix his oil and water," Nickols
+whispered to me, as we observed all of the Settlement groups gravely
+gravitate to the left side of the walk while all the Town in chattering
+parties took seats on the right. "That's right, Burns, take off my last
+summer coat," he added, still in a whisper to me as the Burns parent
+struggled out of the unendurable gift garment and thus gave a signal
+that whipped off every coat on the left side of the walk in the
+twinkling of an eye, to the evident distress of the tightly girted and
+uncomfortable but more formal feminine members of the Settlement
+contingent. Conjugal strife was about to make its appearance when Mother
+Spurlock, who was seated beside poor little Hettie Garrett, holding the
+Mother Only in her arms with never a glance for Mrs. Sproul, who had
+beckoned her to a seat next to her own beruffled silk skirts, passed the
+word around that such comfort was to be accorded the masculine guests.
+Even with such sanction, however, Luella May Spain looked pained at her
+father's gay new red suspenders, and I could see that Mr. Todd's striped
+shirt was hurting the feelings of Sadie Todd dreadfully, and she and
+Luella May returned Billy's gallant salute with the greatest
+embarrassment. And in all the buzz I found myself looking anxiously for
+Martha Ensley's pale face and dark eyes, but failed to find them.
+
+"This is one place she ought not to have to peep into; here she has the
+rights of her citizenship and her motherhood," I said to myself.
+
+But if the Town and the Settlement sat in the seats of the audience,
+divided by the walk as were the walls of waters by the dry path along
+which Moses led his chosen people out of the darkness of Egypt, such a
+division was not noticeable among the performers of the pageant who were
+supposed to be in hiding with their costumes behind a tall screen of
+shrubs at one side of the schoolhouse, but who bubbled out on all sides.
+Charlotte appeared once holding small Maudie Burns in a comforting
+embrace and guided her to her mother for some sort of attention to the
+very short skirts of blue gingham which were draped with about ten yards
+of green crepe paper, while both Harriet and I gasped as we saw Mikey
+jauntily hand the Suckling, tightly wrapped in brown swaddlings, into
+the rapturous and tender embrace of Katie Moore, who had blue wings
+sewed to her small gingham shoulders.
+
+"Great Guns! They've got Sucks in it, too!" gasped Billy. "That child is
+too young to educate and Goodloe ought to be restrained from
+cradle-snatching like--"
+
+But just here Billy was interrupted and the audience all quieted down as
+Mr. Goodloe, in his white flannels and with his gold head ablaze in the
+sun, which suddenly shone out fiercely from behind a white cloud which
+was sheeting internally with electricity, mounted two of the front
+steps of the schoolhouse and held up his hand for silence.
+
+"Mr. Todd," he said with beautiful deference, "will you lead us in
+prayer?" There was a perceptible rustle of feeling on the Settlement
+side of the walk, for Mr. Todd was one of the parson's deacons, but he
+had also been the master workman in the building of the schoolhouse, and
+his neighbors were quick to respond to the tribute offered him before
+the distinguished men present. He rose, gaunt and grizzled in his shirt
+sleeves, but what he said was brief and as square-cut and to the point
+as any nail he had ever driven. I saw the Governor and father exchange
+glances and I noticed when the Governor responded to his call he was
+much less ornate of speech than usual and much more universal. They all
+spoke, from Nickols along the line to father, and after repeated urgings
+Mother Spurlock rose to the occasion, and by way of making the Town and
+Settlement at home in its new joint quarters announced that the tea
+canister with its slit would hereafter be nailed just inside the
+schoolhouse door.
+
+The laugh and delighted applause that was given her seemed to have been
+the last straw to the actors behind the shrubbery, restrained by their
+young preceptress, for the pageant broke upon us.
+
+First Mikey, with huge white cambric stork wings, hopped upon the stage
+of sward and deposited the brown-wrapped Suckling in a hollow log in the
+center, and departed flapping. After that the ceremonial developed
+itself into the education that was to flow down upon her defenseless
+head at the waving of the wand of Minerva, who was Charlotte with a
+tinsel star of wisdom resting rampantly upon her brow. And it came down
+upon the Suckling with a vengeance. A whole troop of young letters of
+the alphabet, led by small Susan with the large red A upon her fat back,
+danced around the Suckling's helplessness and finally backed up to the
+audience to spell the word "Reading." Next in hopped a flock of numerals
+led by the indefatigable Mikey, which backed up and presented themselves
+from one to ten to thus imply the hated science of "Arithmetic."
+
+The Suckling slept on amid delighted gurgles from her mother and
+Harriet. She slept through a presentation of the script letters of
+"Writing" and was still unconscious when "Geography" in crepe paper,
+with flags of all nations, grouped around her. She only awoke when, all
+by himself, sturdily, with his head in the air and fairly radiant with
+beauty and courage, the Stray marched upon the scene, rolled into a
+white roll of paper and girt about with a broad red ribbon sealed upon
+his back to represent "Diploma." Silently and intent upon his duty he
+walked straight to the Suckling in her log crib, bent over her, crooned
+to her reassuringly a second, lifted her in his white arms and backed
+off behind a tall laurel bush with her nodding in delight over his
+shoulder. The boy was so beautiful and the little scene so tender that
+the entire audience caught its breath at its--audacity. A gauntlet had
+been thrown into the faces of both the Town and Settlement and they both
+understood.
+
+They sat perfectly still with astonishment while the performers were
+being massed in the schoolhouse by the young teacher for their final
+march out to the steps for the hymn singing with the beloved "Minister,"
+which was to conclude the ceremonials.
+
+And while the audience sat awaiting the further presentations to be
+made them by their offspring, Mr. Goodloe came out the door and halfway
+down the steps. Then suddenly he stopped and looked out over the valley
+with such an expression on his face that with one accord his audience
+rose and looked with him. And as it looked a groan came that was a
+chorus melted into one voice of terror, while all of them stood helpless
+with amazement. While we had all been sitting in the curious sweltering
+heat, watching with pride a future for our children being foretold for
+them by themselves, death had reared itself behind Old Harpeth, coiled
+itself into a huge black spiral of thunder and lightning and was driving
+down the valley upon Goodloets with a velocity that defied the eyes to
+follow. For a long second every man and woman stood rooted to his
+foothold on the earth and watched the tornado strike the edge of the
+Settlement, smash down the saddlery as if it were a house of cards, and
+churn the little tannery into the river. Then as it grasped the roof of
+the Last Chance and began twisting it with a roar that grew in volume
+every instant, Gregory Goodloe suddenly raised his hand and spoke in a
+perfectly calm voice that rang out above the groan of the tortured
+shanties of the Settlement which were crashing down against each other.
+
+"Oh, God, we trust in the covert of thy wings," he prayed for a second
+and then commanded: "Fall to the earth, all of you, and let it pass over
+you!"
+
+"The children!" came a cry that was a wail of parenthood, as we all sank
+to the ground just as the terrible black monster tore the roof from the
+Little House and hurled it toward us across the street. I saw a huge
+rafter hurtle through the air and strike down Mark Morgan as he started
+toward the steps of the schoolhouse, and by not a half inch did it miss
+drunken, useless Mike Burns as it fell beside him. Then I covered my
+eyes as the cloud and the wind passed over me and I only heard it strike
+and rend and crash and tear the schoolhouse, beam from beam and stone
+from stone. An eerie wail of the voices of little children was mixed
+with the roar of the monster which crashed on up through the Town,
+laying low the homes of our pride and prosperity, leaving us with our
+faces to the ground while upon us began to pour a deluge of cold rain.
+
+"Mark! Mark!" I heard Harriet moan beside me and I saw her crawl under
+the wind toward where Mark had fallen.
+
+"My babies, Oh, my babies!" came a wail in Nell's voice, and I saw her
+try to rise, be knocked over by the wind and then begin to crawl toward
+the wrecked mass that a second before had been the schoolhouse and from
+which now could be heard the screams and cries of the children. Then as
+suddenly as it had laid us low the cruel wind left us and with one
+accord we all sprang to our feet and surged toward the children's calls
+and cries that came out to us in the semi-darkness that still enveloped
+us, though both the wind and the rain were abating.
+
+But before a huge slab that had been the top step of the schoolhouse we
+were all halted by a voice so stern and commanding that even the
+agonized mothers and fathers paused.
+
+"Stop! Not a man or a woman must come a step nearer," said the parson,
+with the authority in his voice that must always be obeyed when used by
+one human being to another. "The roof of the house has split and sunk in
+the middle and only one side beam is supporting it. If it is touched by
+so much as a hand it may lose its balance and fall on the children.
+Only one man must come forward and put his shoulder under the beam at
+the other end while I hold this. The children must come out one by one,
+so as not to shake anything on them. The beam may fall. Do you all
+understand me? One man!"
+
+"Me, Parson, me!" demanded Mr. Todd.
+
+"A broader, younger man, Todd," answered the parson, and he was casting
+his eye over the huddled people before him when a wail came clear and
+distinct from within the ruin.
+
+"Stranger is caught and bleeding! Hurry, hurry!" were the words that
+Charlotte sent forth with all the strength of her young lungs.
+
+"It's my child, Oh, it's mine!" came an answering, cry, and from behind
+some hiding place Martha Ensley flung herself across the front of the
+huddled group of the Settlement people and against the defense of
+Gregory Goodloe's strong arm which held her from the tottering doorway
+he was supporting. "Let me get him out!"
+
+"No, Martha," the parson said calmly and tenderly, as he held her back.
+
+"Then _you_ come and get him," Martha said, as she suddenly straightened
+herself and looked out among us of the Town. "He's yours--come and save
+him!" But even in her agony she was cautious in her appeal, which came
+without the demand of a name. We all held our breath for an instant,
+Settlement and Town. Who would answer her?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LIGHT--INTO DARKNESS
+
+
+"Yes, Martha," came the answer after an instant's pause, and Nickols
+Powers stepped from my side to that of Martha Ensley and took her wrung
+hands in his. For another long moment we all stood tense at the
+acknowledgment that the tragedy had forced to the surface. I stood
+beside father like a woman of ice, yet on fire with a contemptuous
+humiliation. The eyes of all my world were for an instant turned on me,
+then they were all called back to the tragedy that was tottering over
+us.
+
+"Hurry, hurry!" came another wail from within the ruins in Charlotte's
+voice. "He's bleeding!"
+
+Again Martha started to fling herself past Nickols and the parson with a
+scream of terror which was faintly echoed from within.
+
+"Somebody come to Martha," commanded Mr. Goodloe, as he held her off
+with one hand while he eased the beam on his shoulder so that Nickols
+could slip in past him to the other end.
+
+Suddenly a great, beautiful warmth melted the horror of pride and
+humiliation that had frozen my heart as Nickols had stepped from my side
+to that of Martha in acknowledgment of her claim upon him for the saving
+of the child. All fear for her or us or the babies passed from me. My
+soul had gone out into a darkness, called on some great Power that must
+be there directing such a thing as was happening to us, and calm and
+clear the answer of courage flowed into me.
+
+Then without another moment's hesitation I stepped forward and held out
+my arms to Gregory Goodloe for Martha. He put her into their strong
+embrace and I pressed her head down upon my shoulder in a great
+tenderness I had never felt before, while Nickols, with a long, hunted
+look at us both, crawled into the crumbling ruin and crouched under the
+beam as Gregory Goodloe directed him.
+
+The wind had died down, the clouds were rolling away the darkness and
+the rain had almost stopped as we all stood and waited for Gregory
+Goodloe to bring from that ruin, in the way his superior judgment
+thought best, either life or death. From within there came sobs and
+smothered little moans that were so mingled that they could not be
+identified by even the mother hearts held at bay by the faith that made
+them obey the parson's command.
+
+And then as I stood there with the mother of the child of my lover
+cowering against my breast, with the man who in a few days was to have
+been my husband, crouched under almost certain grinding death, and
+looked into what at any moment might be the grave of all the babies of
+the women I held dear, a light was flooding into my darkness and all of
+the obscure, untranslatable writings on my nature became clear and I
+received my consciousness of my Master, the Lord Jesus, with a cry that
+I sent up for His mediation for the lives of the little ones. It was my
+first prayer.
+
+"O Christ in Heaven, help save them!" I pleaded. "Quick, Gregory,
+quick!" I added another supplication in the next breath.
+
+"Sue is bleeding, too!" again came a wail in Charlotte's voice. "Mikey's
+got the baby, but he's caught."
+
+Nell had been kneeling beside Mark's prostrate form, but at Charlotte's
+call she laid his head on Harriet's breast and flung herself against my
+arm outstretched to receive and restrain her.
+
+"Now, Nickols, steady! I'll lift them past the beam," said the parson,
+as he braced himself in the door space which had been crushed into a
+narrow opening.
+
+"Charlotte, take the baby from Mikey and hand her to me first," he
+commanded. "Where are you caught, Mikey?"
+
+"Me leg," wailed Mikey and his wail was echoed by poor little Mrs.
+Burns.
+
+"Here," said the parson, as he handed the brown swaddled bundle to Nell,
+who caught it in her arms and sank shuddering to my feet.
+
+"Now, Charlotte, I want you to get all the other children who are not
+caught into line and make them walk carefully, just as you did here to
+me," said the parson in a perfectly calm voice, the one he had used to
+command his small congregation in the weeks of the drill.
+
+"They are all crying and got their heads covered up," answered Charlotte
+in despair. "They won't get up and march." Loud wails of fear and
+anguish accompanied this statement, as if to corroborate it.
+
+"Sing with me, Susan, sing the march," came the command without an
+instant's delay from the lips of the beloved Minister.
+
+    "Onward, Christian soldiers
+    Marching as to war,
+    With the cross of Jesus
+    Going on before--"
+
+came wee Sue's high, sweet voice which rose from the cavern and joined
+with the parson's in the old song that has led strong men through many a
+death watch.
+
+For a long moment we all waited and then out of the hole in the mass of
+stones and timbers and bricks, led by wee bleeding Susan, crawled a slow
+stream of bloody, bruised, sobbing infant humanity to be absorbed with
+cries of rapture into waiting arms.
+
+"Hurry, Goodloe, get the boy and Charlotte; my God, hurry, the beam is
+sinking!" came in Nickols' smothered voice.
+
+Martha started, but I held her tight against my breast.
+
+"I've got Mikey's pants loose with my teeth," came in Charlotte's voice,
+as a creaking of the timbers made a shudder run through the waiting
+crowd as every man and woman who held a restored treasure close, waited
+to see what would happen to the three left in the settling ruins.
+
+"Come out, Mikey, come out," called the Burns paternal parent.
+
+"I won't! I'm going to help Charlotte git out Stray," was the undutiful
+response of courage to the craven.
+
+"Where is he caught, Charlotte?" asked the parson, as he edged a little
+farther under the beam, which tottered and brought him to a cautious
+standstill.
+
+"His middle. Mikey's pushing and I'm pulling, but he's all bluggy. He's
+dead all but his toes that wiggle."
+
+"Hurry, Goodloe, hurry!" groaned Nickols, with what seemed a final
+inspiration of breath.
+
+"Pull him loose and come quick, Charlotte, you and Mikey. Never mind the
+blood," was the firm command and in a few seconds Charlotte and Mikey
+squeezed through the fast closing opening, bloody and torn, but with
+the limp Stray dragged between them. A great cheer went up as Martha
+turned and caught the unconscious boy in her arms, then it froze in the
+throats that had been uttering it. Slowly, but more rapidly than could
+be stayed by human hands, the whole heavy roof crushed down upon the
+rest of the ruin; and under it and the beam went Nickols Powers with
+only one deep groan. Mr. Goodloe tried to hold up the whole side of the
+roof on his own shoulders and only staggered out from the very brink of
+being involved in the crash. Martha sank to the ground and hid her head
+in my knees and sobbed while I heard a great cry break from my father's
+lips. Nickols was the last of his race and our pride was blasted when he
+fell.
+
+"Now forward, every man of you, but lift and dig carefully," commanded
+the parson, as he stood on the very edge of the ruin. "Todd, you stand
+at the corner and show them how to roll back the timbers to the right.
+Carefully, men, but quick, quick, and with the help of God!"
+
+It seemed hours that the men wrestled with the timbers and tore away
+brick and stone and steel, but it was only a few minutes before they
+pried up a section of the heavy roof and lifted Nickols from the debris
+beneath.
+
+"He's breathing," said Mr. Todd, as he laid him in the parson's great,
+strong, outstretched arms open to receive him and which bore him out
+through the crowd swiftly and laid him across the seats of Nickols' car.
+Doctor Harding had just put Mark, a limp, heavy body, into his own car,
+with Harriet to support the bleeding head, and Nell crouched beside him
+with the Suckling in her arms, and sent them on up into the devastated
+Town. Now he came and helped us settle Nickols on his cushions.
+
+"Shall I send my car and Colonel Leftwick for surgeons and nurses from
+the Capital?" asked the Governor. "How is it with Morgan?"
+
+"He is dead," answered the old doctor with the calm serenity that he had
+acquired after so many years of giving up his friends. "This case is
+another matter. There may be a chance and I'll need help. We don't yet
+know how many more are injured in the whole town. We'll need help."
+
+"Then I'll drive for it myself," answered the Governor, as he swung into
+his powerful car and started it out into the valley. "I'll make it back
+in six hours. No other man can drive this car as fast as I can."
+
+And true to his promise, he was back within the time with nurses and
+surgeons and supplies of all kinds. By that time the whole Harpeth
+Valley had heard of our tragedy and all who could find a way were
+hurrying to our rescue or comforting.
+
+The dawn of the beautiful new day found Nickols still alive, stretched
+on his bed in his own wing of the Poplars, which alone of all the homes
+in the Town had not been touched by the storm monster. The old house
+stood unharmed in all its beauty in its garden which had hardly a leaf
+or a branch broken, and hovered under its roof the last of the name of
+its builders. He lay quiet and unconscious while his life jetted itself
+away from a great hole in his lung made by a splinter from the beam he
+had held up until old Goodloet's children had been given back to its
+future. The great surgeon who had come down with the Governor, watched,
+shook his head and went at his task again and again with a dogged
+courage. For an hour he would leave him to go and help Dr. Harding with
+some of the other injured, but back he would come to his fight for
+Nickols' life.
+
+And all over the stricken town there were similar tragedies being
+enacted. Over at the Morgans Mark lay cold and still in the long parlor,
+which was almost the only part of the handsome old house left intact by
+the tornado, and Harriet sat beside him while Nell nursed maimed wee
+Susan and torn Jimmy, and restrained Charlotte from injuring her sorely
+twisted ankle.
+
+Down at the Last Chance, Jacob Ensley was stretched upon a bed in the
+bar with a sheet drawn straight and decorously over his bruised white
+head. He had been killed by a blow from a roof timber, while from right
+beside him young George Spain had been rescued unharmed. When he had
+crawled from the ruins he had held in his hand a bottle of whiskey which
+he had just uncorked for his own and Jacob's refreshment when the
+tornado tore at the East Chance, and scarcely a drop had been spilt. And
+the tornado had displayed the vagaries of its kind.
+
+Old Granny Todd had been lifted in her rocking chair and carried halfway
+over the Town and left beside the Spain cottage with her feeble life
+intact, while Mrs. Spain, upon whose shoulders the burden of mothering
+all seven of the Spains rested heavily, had had one of those valuable
+shoulders broken and was left crushed and bleeding beside the rocking
+chair in which the helpless old dame arrived for her enforced visit. The
+household goods of one family had been torn from them and thrown into
+the melee of another, and the Jamison clock was found ticking busily
+away over on the roof of the Todd's chicken house. A girl mother in a
+little cottage on the edge of the river bank was found floating against
+the shore in her wooden bedstead, drowned, while near her the little two
+days' old life had been perfectly preserved upon the pillow in the
+rocking chair where it had been sleeping when the great storm beast had
+made its raid.
+
+And all Goodloets mourned, crying for her children, and would not be
+comforted. The second day after the storm the dead were buried. Mr.
+Goodloe, with old Mr. Stokes, the Presbyterian minister, on one hand,
+and the Baptist student preacher on the other, stood in the center of
+the beautiful city of the dead, over which the storm had passed
+unheeding, and had services for the rich and the poor alike. With the
+same ceremonial were buried Mark Morgan and Jacob Ensley, and the girl
+mother, Ted Montgomery, who had been struck down by the falling sign of
+the Bank and Trust Company on Main Street, and a score of others.
+
+Then after all the tears had been shed and the sobs had ceased, all the
+flowers strewn and the reluctant feet had left the silent city, I went
+over behind the tall cedars into a corner and knelt beside Martha
+Ensley, who had flung herself down across the new-made grave that held
+all that was left of Jacob Ensley, the man who had bulwarked sin in his
+Settlement and menaced all of Goodloets for many a year. The wide-eyed
+boy crouched beside her and I took his hand in mine.
+
+"Martha," I said, as I bent beside her in the twilight. "I want you to
+come home with me, you and Sonny. Your place is there now and you must
+bring him." All day I had thought and I had prayed to be aided in doing
+what I knew was best.
+
+"Oh, no, Miss Charlotte, no," she said, and shrank from my arms.
+
+"Yes, Martha," I said, and drew her closer.
+
+"It happened the summer we were all first grown and you were in Europe.
+I couldn't fight him off. I knew he belonged to you and I loved you,
+but I couldn't fight him off," she sobbed and the Stray's little arms
+went around her neck.
+
+"I'll fight fer you--I'll fight," he said, with brave, wonderment in his
+eyes and voice.
+
+"I went away this summer and I wanted to stay. Mr. Goodloe tried to help
+me, but Nickols found where I was and made me come back. It was wrong to
+you and I knew it. I stayed shut up in my room, but he would come. And I
+sent him to his death. He was yours and I killed him for you! Please go
+away and leave me!" And again Martha cowered away from me.
+
+"Nobody need know you are in the house, Martha, but you must come with
+me," I said, and I spoke with such quiet authority that she rose and
+followed me out of the shadows into the starlit night which had come
+down over stricken Goodloets. I found Billy waiting for me in his car
+and he spoke gently to Martha and settled her and the boy on the back
+seat with never a question in his kind eyes.
+
+"God, you women!" he said to me under his breath, but I avoided his eye
+and he drove us silently to the Poplars. The long halls were quiet and
+empty in the anxious hush of the whole house which was keeping its
+life--or death watch. I led Martha to the room that opened into mine, in
+which all of the girl guests of the Poplars always slept, and made her
+take off her hat and make the boy comfortable. Then I went for Dabney
+and asked him to take food to them.
+
+"Yes'm, I will. God love my little miss," was his answer, and I knew
+that I could trust his kindness to Martha and the boy.
+
+Then I went into the library to father. I found Mr. Goodloe with him and
+father's calm under his anxious suffering gave me a thrill at the
+thought of the regained strength it implied. The parson's face was
+grave, but full of a white light from the fire burning back under the
+dull gold brows. His warm hands took my cold ones in them and pressed
+them palm to palm in the attitude of prayer and very tenderly, from his
+soul to mine, he said:
+
+"'The Lord is good, for his mercy endureth forever.'"
+
+"Forever?" I asked him, looking up with the child's faith that had been
+born in my heart shining in the confidence in my eyes.
+
+"Forever," he answered me with quiet authority.
+
+"Yes," said father solemnly, as if himself reassured after doubts. Then,
+after a second's pause: "Daughter, Nickols is conscious and is asking
+for you. Will you go to him?"
+
+I took my hands out of those which had given to mine the strength of
+prayer and went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SPARK AND THE BLAZE
+
+
+I found Nickols lying in his own dim and high bedroom, perfectly
+motionless under the white sheet, as he had been for two days, the only
+difference that now his great dark eyes burned into mine and on his
+mouth there rested a faint trace of the old mocking smile. I sat down
+close beside his pillow on a low chair which the nurse placed for me as
+she gave me a warning look and left us alone.
+
+"This is your wedding day, Charlotte, and the license is over on the
+desk to destroy," he said, with the mocking light in his eyes flaring up
+into greater strength. "I suppose you are duly grateful for the merciful
+escape accorded you."
+
+"Please don't, dear," I said, and I reached out and took his burning
+hand in mine.
+
+"You never really cared, Charlotte. You cold women make havoc in a man's
+life. I've no excuses to make, but I wish I could hear you say that you
+forgive me. I'd go out more contentedly." And the light that sprang up
+into his face showed me just what a hold I had on his loyalty and the
+thing a man calls his honor. And it came to me on the wings of a quick,
+silent prayer, prayed in a heart unlearned in the forms of petitions,
+that I must make a fight to give him the peace of his heritage of
+immortality before he entered it.
+
+"I do forgive you, Nick dear, as I hope to be forgiven by the Master for
+the wrongs I have done others--the wrong of accepting your life--in
+coldness," I answered, looking him steadily in the eye as I made my
+simple declaration of my new-found faith to him.
+
+"You?" he faltered. "Do I behold you entered into the creed?"
+
+"Listen to me, Nick, for the time is short," I said, as I held his hand
+close in mine. "We were blind--blind. When you and the children were in
+that death house I found that I must ask help. I cried out in my
+blindness and was answered, as Christ gave his promise that the eyes of
+those who ask should be opened. And you must ask so that you will have
+a vision to help--help you go to the blessed immortality that awaits
+you. Ask, Oh, Nick, ask with me. Please, Lord Jesus, help us!" And as I
+uttered my few faltering words of petition I fell on my knees beside the
+bed.
+
+"It's too late now," he answered, but a helplessness came into his
+bitterness. "I've done all the damage I could and I'm not going to
+whimper. You'll help poor Martha?" he questioned softly, and I could
+have cried out in thankfulness for the ray of tenderness that came
+across his white face.
+
+"God has given you time to right the worst wrong, Nick," I said, as a
+sudden thought came to me that gave to me a healing which I knew I must
+pour out upon his wounds. "Marry Martha and give the boy your name and
+your money to grow good and great with. Jacob is dead. They are alone in
+the world. Give them to me that way, Nick, give them to me to care for
+for you until we are all together where everything is made right."
+
+For a long moment he lay perfectly still and looked into my eyes and I
+saw a wonder grow in his that spread all over his whole face.
+
+"Some kind of a God must have created a woman like that in you. Almost
+I believe. Call Goodloe quick, and your father." And then he closed his
+eyes and I could see a deathly weakness stealing over him. I called the
+nurse and sent her for father and Gregory Goodloe, and to old Dabney who
+had come to wait by the door I whispered to bring Martha and the boy and
+keep them in the room beyond. Then I went back and knelt by the pillow
+and took the hand which was beginning to grow cold in mine.
+
+"Could it be possible?" the white lips muttered.
+
+"Say it, Nickols; say, 'Lord, help thou my unbelief,'" I begged him.
+
+"Amen," he whispered with a quick smile just as father and Gregory
+Goodloe came into the room.
+
+"Goodloe, what was the exact story about that skulker of a thief on the
+cross?" Nickols asked with a sudden strength in his voice as he opened
+his eyes and looked straight at the parson.
+
+"'The thief said unto Jesus, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into
+thy kingdom." And Jesus said unto him, "Verily I say unto thee, to-day
+shalt thou be with me in Paradise,"' are the exact words, Nickols," the
+parson answered him.
+
+"Charlotte, ask the judge if he is willing that I should wipe the slate
+clean as you propose in case there really is a door and an old Peter to
+present a purified passport to," the dying man said to me with a touch
+of his old whimsicality. "I give up, Greg; the soul that Charlotte
+possesses can't be put out into nothingness; and if she's got one I have
+too," he said, after a moment's fight for breath. "Hurry, all of you, to
+get my passport made out and bring the girl here to me. Quick, get her.
+There is very little time."
+
+"She's here, Nick," I answered, and after a few words to father and the
+parson, to which they both gave assent, I called Martha and the boy into
+the room.
+
+Straight as a bird to its nest Martha flew to the bedside and the dying
+arms found strength to lift themselves and take her and the child into
+their embrace.
+
+"Will you forgive me and let me make it as right with the world for you
+and him as I can, Martha?" he asked. "I love you, but I'd have drawn us
+all down into hell."
+
+"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed Martha, looking up at me with positive fear of
+me and of father and of our world in her wild face.
+
+"Yes, Martha," I said, as I knelt beside her and took the Stray in my
+arms, toward which he in his terror at the scene strained. "Father is a
+justice and he'll make the license over there in the desk right. You
+must, Martha, you must! It gives you and the boy to me to care for."
+
+"Yes, Martha," echoed Nickols' voice, out of which the strength was
+quickly going. "Help me wipe off as much of the slate as you can," and
+the wandering hand suddenly encountered the boy's wee paddie resting on
+the edge of the bed and clasped it close.
+
+And with the three of us crouched there beside him, father and Mr.
+Goodloe bound them legally and in the name of God, just as the last
+flicker of strength flared up in Nickols' body. Immediately I rose with
+the child in my arms and Martha took Nickols' head on her faithful
+breast while the life ebbed away.
+
+"Amen, Charlotte, amen," were his last whispered words and I understood
+that he was ratifying again my prayer for light to lead the way of his
+faltering steps.
+
+And then came a stillness in which we all stood with bowed heads while
+Martha sobbed.
+
+The death of Nickols Morris Powers was an event of national interest and
+telegrams and letters and representatives of the press poured into
+Goodloets from all parts of the country. Mr. Jeffries and the Governor
+stayed with us until it was all over, and when Mr. Jeffries left he
+pressed into father's hand a large check of five figures.
+
+"To help them build again, those who need it, in memory of him," he
+said.
+
+The Governor and his staff spent time and effort in helping to
+reorganize Goodloets, but through it all it was the powerful Harpeth
+Jaguar on whom we all leaned. He came and went day and night, tireless,
+quiet, commanding, and with that great light shining from back of his
+eyes upon us all. And in his ministrations down in the Settlement he
+took Martha with him day after day. He forced her to use up all of the
+strength that she possessed each day so that she would drop with
+exhaustion at night. To me he left most of the comforting of Nell--and
+Harriet. Like all women of buoyant and shallow nature, Nell soon began
+to rebound from her tragedy and it was hard to keep Billy within
+decorous bounds in his comforting of her. It would have been impossible
+to have done it at all with the former Billy, but the quiet, steady
+light that shone in his honest eyes whenever he helped with Nell and the
+children spoke well for a reformed and perfectly satisfactory future for
+them all.
+
+"Billy," I said to him one afternoon when he had taken all four of the
+kiddies out in his car to get wild grapes, when Harriet had counted on
+having wee Susan to herself for the afternoon, while Nell was
+interestedly busy over somber but much needed winter clothes for
+herself. "You have just got to make up your mind that Harriet is going
+to absolutely possess Sue for the future. I don't know about any
+legalities but I am going to see that Harriet gets Susan."
+
+"What you say goes, Charlotte, as it always has," he answered me, with
+honest adoring in his young eyes that had lost their reckless hunger.
+"And if you aren't careful you'll lead us all into Kingdom Come in blind
+bridles. Be careful not to over-fill Goodloe's fold. I don't want to
+crowd you. I'll take my turn when it comes." He was laughing as he
+spoke but there was a depth to the laughter that I understood.
+
+"Thank you, Billy, for your consideration," I answered him, as I took
+small Sue's hand and turned in at the Sproul gate.
+
+Harriet sat on the steps in the fading sunlight and the small music box
+flung herself into the outstretched arms with a force that was alarming.
+It was easy to see that Susan was most temperamental and would be a
+handful of anxieties in the years to come, anxieties that Harriet
+needed.
+
+"Of course, she doesn't belong to me and I'm a fool," Harriet muttered
+as Susan darted away to see what treasure for her lurked in the pocket
+of Mrs. Sproul's beflowered silk skirt.
+
+"I started plans to get her for you, just five minutes ago, dear," I
+said, as I sat down beside her. "I laid down the law to Billy on the
+subject."
+
+"Charlotte," answered Harriet, as she looked with brooding into my eyes,
+"do you really believe that--that we will find them again and--and--_do_
+you really believe?" And the question was so hungry and haunted and so
+like what had driven me for years that my heart ached in my breast for
+her, but I knew that I could only stand fast and pray that she be
+comforted. I couldn't make her see.
+
+"Yes, dear, I _know_--but I can't make you know. Just go on--on
+_hungering_ like you are and you'll be fed," I answered.
+
+"You've always understood, Charlotte, and if you say that the pain will
+some day be eased I'll--I'll believe it. Yes, I'll make a start by
+believing in you and there's no telling where it will land me."
+
+The confidence with which she raised her comforted eyes to mine made a
+stab of pain hit me full in the breast. Words that Gregory Goodloe had
+spoken to me out under the old graybeards were the weapon used. "With
+your hand in mine I can make this whole community see and know;
+separated from you--" In all humility I now understood what he meant.
+
+And in all the weeks in which he and I had worked together Gregory
+Goodloe had given me not one single personal word or look. The priest
+had comforted and strengthened me but the man had forever shut me out of
+his heart. My suffering was intense, and yet, and yet I knew that in my
+heart there was strength to endure the want of him with all
+cheerfulness even to the end. At last I had found the key to my own
+hieroglyphics and I could be honest with myself. I knew that I loved
+Gregory Goodloe as it is seldom given to a woman to love a man, but I
+also knew that the awakening of spirit I had found was not in any way
+connected with my woman's love for him, but had come to me from the
+years of suffering I had had while I sought it. I refused to acknowledge
+that a sex spark had in any way set off the blaze; the fire had been
+laid in my soul and it would burn on without any of his tending. But
+even in that honest surety Nickols' mocking words "religion is
+suppressed sex" haunted me. I knew it could not be true, so I put it all
+out of my mind as I left Harriet and walked down the street towards the
+Poplars.
+
+I was due in the library to help father in the packing of some of his
+papers, for I had insisted that he go on to Washington to fulfill his
+appointment. Martha and the boy would be with me and if he only left me
+Dabney I could be safe and busy for the winter. Strange to say, Mammy's
+disappointment at Dabney's loss of a sojourn in a strange clime was
+greater than his own.
+
+"I don't believe in glorifying men by needing of them to any great
+measure," she declared. "With me in the house and the preacher across
+the fence it don't make no difference how good looking you are, Miss
+Charlotte, you won't be too much for our protection. Dabney can jest go
+on with the jedge."
+
+"Of course, little miss, you don't need me, but I sorter got rheumatics
+in my homesick and I begged off from Mas' Nickols," Dabney replied with
+the wily soothing that had made his conjugal life both pleasant and
+possible.
+
+I was thinking of the argument and smiled with tenderness as I saw the
+old grizzled white head bent over a hoe down in the dahlias, which he
+was bedding. The young man from White Plains had stayed to put the
+garden to bed as far as possible, and had left with perfect confidence
+in Dabney and the likely yellow boy he had found.
+
+And now in late October the garden was in a conflagration of blossoming
+glory. The borders of the walks blazed with the red and blue and gold
+and purple of chrysanthemums and asters and zinnias and dahlias, while
+long tendrils of russet autumn vines trailed in and over and around the
+flowers and shrubs and hedges. The tang of ripening and falling seed was
+mixed in all the perfume, and gorgeous leaves were beginning to rustle
+on the green grass. It was Nickols' first harvest of beauty, and somehow
+I felt that there was no need to regret that his eyes were not mortally
+there to gather the fruits.
+
+I went from the front porch up to my room to take off my hat and see if
+Martha had come from a day with Mother Spurlock down in the Settlement.
+I found instead of Martha or the boy or Mother Elsie, Jessie Litton
+seated at my desk and looking out the window across to Paradise Ridge.
+
+"I came up to wait, Charlotte, because--because I'm in deep water and
+need a hand out. You have always helped and somehow I feel that you have
+so much more to give me now than you ever had. Clifton Gray told me last
+night that he loved me and is going to break his engagement with Letitia
+Cockrell. He had heard Letitia and Nell talk over Nell's mourning
+trousseau for the winter and he was disgusted--that, and--and I think it
+has been coming some time. He is with Mr. Goodloe a lot lately in
+getting things about the town started to going again and he is--is
+thinking. I don't know how to help him think; it's a thing I've never
+done. I am at sea myself but I know that he must not throw Letitia over.
+Will you talk to him?"
+
+"I couldn't help him if--if Mr. Goodloe can't," I faltered, simply sick
+with distress.
+
+"Cliff said not a week ago that your eyes made him feel like a light he
+saw ahead on a wooded island after he had drifted without a paddle two
+days in a canoe one time in Canada. You'll have to talk to him. Give him
+a little life kernel; I've only got shells for myself. I'm going down to
+Florida suddenly next week and when I come back I--I, well, I'll either
+go into the movies or study with Mother Spurlock to get a deaconess'
+cap." As she spoke I saw that the fight was on in Jessie's soul, and it
+would be to a finish.
+
+"God bless and keep you, dear," I held her back long enough to say as
+she picked up her sweater and left me. Hampton Dibrell has been
+constantly with Bessie Thornton since Ted Montgomery's death, and I knew
+that Jessie's time of trial had come, for her love for him had grown
+through her denial because of the taint of her mad mother. And somehow I
+felt sure of the outcome, that she would find strength to let him go. I
+didn't know why I felt so sure; but I did, and I went down to the
+library with a great peace in my heart that I knew later would be in
+hers.
+
+And I made my entry into father's den in the midst of a scene of great
+moment. I paused and listened with profound respect. Tradition was on
+trial and the result I felt would be momentous. Father sat in his huge
+chair before a small crackling fire in the wide chimney, and Martha's
+boy stood before him with a large, profusely illustrated volume of Hans
+Christian Andersen clasped passionately to his little breast. He had the
+floor.
+
+"And Charlotte said they is no fairies anywhere and I say they is," he
+declaimed, while father listened attentively. Suddenly I saw what I had
+never seen before, that father's white hair rose in a crest on one side
+and descended in a cascade on the other at exactly the same angle as the
+black locks of the young arguer before him, and as they calmly regarded
+each other I thought I had never seen such a likeness in personality as
+well as form of feature. Love flooded all over me and I wanted to hug
+them both but was restrained to silence by the gravity of the
+situation.
+
+"And why did you argue that there are fairies?" father interrogated
+calmly and judicially.
+
+"Charlotte said they ain't here 'cause she and me had never saw one, and
+I said, 'How could a book and pictures be about nothing at all?' I
+showed her this book that Lady gaved me and she said, 'Maybe, but ask
+Minister.' I said, no, I'd ask you 'cause you are older and mighter saw
+one onct. Did you?"
+
+"Well, sir, you argued from a positive, about ten pounds of positive, I
+should judge from the size of that volume, while Charlotte certainly
+argued from a negative viewpoint," said father, and his eyes twinkled as
+he gave me an almost imperceptible wink. By his answer he also avoided
+answering the question of faith put to him.
+
+"Did you see one?" came back the question in a tone that demanded an
+answer.
+
+"Here comes Minister now and you can ask him," father said in all
+cravenness as Mr. Goodloe came in the door behind me and came and stood
+at my side. He had a huge yellow plume of goldenrod which he handed me
+without looking at me directly. I buried my nose in its crispness and
+watched to see him meet the issue.
+
+The boy put the question carefully just as he had put it to father, but
+there was a quaver in his voice as he ended with his plea.
+
+"Is they no fairies, 'cause you can't see 'em?"
+
+"Do you feel them in your heart?" was the counter question that came
+gravely from the lips of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe.
+
+"Yes, here," answered the pleader as he laid his hand carefully on the
+pit of his stomach, which is nearer the seat of heartache than many a
+perturbed older person has come.
+
+"Then for you there are fairies, right there in your heart, even if
+Charlotte has lost them out of hers," was the answer, with a theology
+that staggered me and set father smiling back into his youth.
+
+"I'll go tell her and maybe give her some of mine," exclaimed the boy as
+he ran from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE COVERT OF WINGS
+
+
+"Oh, the faith of youth, the faith that reaches out to give itself,"
+sighed father as he turned to his papers.
+
+"Can faith give itself?" I asked, as I raised my eyes to the stars under
+dull gold through which Gregory Goodloe was pouring a great smile down
+into my depths.
+
+"Sometimes--just sometimes I think that perhaps it can--it does," he
+answered me slowly and took my hands in his and held them with their
+palms together prayerwise, a thing he had done several times in the
+weeks past. Then he turned and walked over to father's desk and stood
+looking down at him.
+
+"I want to dedicate the chapel on Sunday, Mr. Powers, as that is your
+last Sunday before you go to Washington," he said, and as he spoke he
+smiled first down into father's eyes raised to his and then into
+mine--impersonally. I couldn't trust myself to speak but turned and went
+up to my room to weep with a hurt that soon sent me to my knees, blind
+for the comfort that came--that I knew always would come now, no matter
+what the hurt.
+
+"He knows it has come to me, and he's thankful--but he doesn't care," I
+sobbed and then laughed at my own contradictions.
+
+Martha found me kneeling beside my window seat when she came in with
+Mother Spurlock and she shielded me until I could wipe away the tears
+and be as glad to see them both as I really was.
+
+They were full of the plans for the dedication, which it gave me another
+stab to find they had been discussing with Mr. Goodloe for several days.
+In the hard weeks that had passed I had been their confidant, adviser
+and many times their helper in the reconstructing around the tragedies
+in the Settlement, but in this matter I had not been consulted. In fact,
+Mother Spurlock showed an embarrassed hesitation as she talked of it
+that still further hurt me and made me unenthusiastic and cold to their
+plans.
+
+And why should I have been hurt that the surety in my heart had not
+declared itself to them without words? So wonderful did it seem to me
+that I thought it must be in my every word and deed and look and I was
+confounded that as yet I was considered to be an outsider and not
+entitled to plan for the ceremonial of the dedication of the material
+fold for the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's flock. And then suddenly my hurt was
+swept away by my sense of humor and I laughed to myself when I saw that
+to Mother Spurlock, who had hungered and thirsted for my conversion, I
+would have to prove it, tell it and repeat it.
+
+"Instead of the festal ceremonies in the dedication Mr. Goodloe is going
+to have the simplest dedication ritual and then immediately hold the
+memorial services for our--our dead," said Mother Spurlock, as she took
+Martha's hand in hers and stroked it. "We want everybody to be there and
+I could use a few more of those trunks full of colored new clothes,
+Charlotte. The people down in the Settlement can use and wear after a
+dye pot when you can't, bless your sweet heart," and as she made her
+ruling request, which was still strong in death, she stroked the fold of
+dull black silk over my knee which was cut from the same material as
+the straight black widow's gown which Martha wore.
+
+"Make Martha buy you some things for some of them," I said lightly and
+watched Martha as I spoke. She had never by word or deed showed that she
+felt anything but adoringly dependent on me and my bounty, and had put
+the check book I had given her from Mr. Cockrell away in my desk without
+looking at it. I could see that my words both hurt and shocked her.
+
+"No, Oh, no," she faltered and turned away toward the window.
+
+"But, Martha," I was beginning to say, when an interruption burst into
+the room. Young Charlotte stood before us and at her side the boy stood
+his ground with the huge book still in what must have been very tired
+arms. Their faces were belligerent and small James had upon his
+countenance the alarm he always shows during Charlotte's most serious
+and dangerous outbursts. Mikey was along, with his mischievous eyes
+dancing with delight at the fray.
+
+"Auntie Charlotte, I think somebody ought to whip Stranger for saying
+that Minister said he had fairies in his stomach. It is a lie."
+
+"I'll lick him fer you, Miss Charlotte," offered Mikey, with a pass at
+the boy that I knew was only an affectionate threat.
+
+"I'll knock a stuffing out of you if you touch him," answered Charlotte,
+taking Mikey's offer with her usual literal directness. "When he's
+whipped, nobody but Auntie Charlotte can do it. Are you going to do it
+now, Auntie Charlotte? We don't want the devil to get him for badness."
+And as she spoke she took the boy's hand and held it tightly as if
+willing to defend him from the flesh, the devil and the world, only
+excepting myself.
+
+"But he did say that I had them here when I put my hand on it, didn't
+he, Lady?" demanded the accused, with more courage than I would have
+felt at meeting the accusation for him. I simply couldn't face the
+explanation and I became craven.
+
+"Mr. Goodloe is down in the library. Go ask him what he did say," I
+suggested hopefully.
+
+"We looked everywhere for him and that is the place we skipped. I felt
+sure you wouldn't know anything at all about it, Auntie Charlotte, but
+Stranger said you know just as much as Minister, which is another thing
+I am going to ask him about. Come on, Stranger." And with her usual
+lightning rapidity, Charlotte began to marshal her forces out of the
+room.
+
+"Please don't!" were the words I sent faltering after her determination
+to question Mr. Goodloe about his and my relative erudition, but I felt
+that they made no impression.
+
+"Sonny thinks about you just as Charlotte does about Mr. Goodloe, and
+he'll say so to everybody," said Martha, with a sad smile after the door
+had closed with vigor enough to startle the household.
+
+"He's a fine child," said Mother Spurlock, with a great tenderness in
+her smile at Martha. "Did you ask Mrs. Todd if that big hulk of a Jones
+boy could get into the coat that Dabney got me from the judge's closet?"
+she said, continuing the subject in hand, which lasted her for another
+hour. When she went she took Martha with her to carry half the bundles
+down to the Little House, the roof of which was the first thing to be
+patched in stricken Goodloets.
+
+That night I felt the hands of the Stray on my face in the darkness and
+his soft cheek cuddle to mine.
+
+"_You_ say they _is_ fairies, Lady," he coaxed.
+
+"There are fairies and there always will be for you," I answered, as I
+drew him close and kissed the fragrant mouth so near mine. "Go back to
+mother now," I added, as I felt the sleepy huddle of his little shoulder
+against mine. He went and I promised myself that no matter how lonely I
+was to be I would always send him back to his mother and not ever forget
+that her claim was first. Tears were in my eyes as I turned my face into
+the pillow, but suddenly the refrain of the song I had once heard in the
+night, "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," sung itself in my heart
+until I again fell to sleep.
+
+The dedication day for Goodloe Chapel arrived upon Goodloets just one
+month from the day upon which the beast of storm had ravaged it, and as
+that fateful morning dawned with an extraordinary grandeur, so that
+Sunday in mid-October came up from behind Paradise Ridge with unusual
+beauty, only with the difference of calmness instead of splendor and
+peace instead of tumult. The sun was warm and benignant, with not a
+cloud in the deep blue sky to obscure its blessing. A gentle breeze blew
+in from the fields and meadows laden with rich harvest odors and every
+shrub and flower and vine which had been hiding back a few late buds let
+them burst forth in honor of the day, and in many instances they bloomed
+from a new growth thrown over the scars in the sides of the old town. In
+one short month most of the ruins had been reduced to orderly piles of
+material to be used in rebuilding, and a great many of the deepest
+gashes had been healed completely and covered with merciful vine and
+blossom. And it had also been like that with most of the scars in the
+lives of the bereaved; they ached, but they had been covered with a
+courage to go on building again until the new structure could be
+complete.
+
+I think something of this feeling was in the minds of most of the people
+as they began to assemble around Goodloe Chapel long before the time for
+its opening. And as had happened once before, the procession from the
+Town met the procession from the Settlement, only this time they were
+not divided so completely from the right to the left. A tall mill woman,
+whose husband had gone down in the crash at the saddlery, came and took
+Nell's hand in hers and laid a strong arm around her shoulders, while
+Harriet went over and took from the arms of the young father the little
+motherless mite who had been rescued from the pillow floating on the
+river. Billy shook hands with a young tanner in tight but wholly new
+clothes, to whom Luella May Spain introduced him as her imminent
+husband.
+
+In times of stress women are apt to seize and cling to the arm of
+masculine protection, and Luella May had chosen to forget the
+fascination of Billy's hesitation and two-steps and secure for herself a
+life of thorough normality. She would probably never forget those dances
+with Billy, and they would lend a kind of reminiscent glow of pleasure
+over her boiling cabbage pots, but it would be no worse than that.
+
+Mr. Todd was shaven and habitated in the neat black coat he had thrown
+off as he went at the ruin of the schoolhouse a month before, and with a
+tender smile on his lean old face he came over and stood beside Martha,
+as if to be watchful of her in the new order of her life.
+
+And it was for quite a half hour that most of the inhabitants of
+Goodloets stood around in the yard of the chapel and waited for the
+formal opening of the doors. We all knew that the chapel would not hold
+the half of us, for the small Presbyterian congregation had been
+dismissed by Mr. Farraday to come over and join us in the dedication,
+and after a short service the boy Baptist divine had brought his flock
+to do honor to the opening of the new fold. In fact, by count almost
+every citizen in Goodloets stood before the chapel doors and waited for
+them to be thrown open. And in the crowd who waited there was this
+difference from the last time we had been together: All the children
+were with us and not separated from us by walls that crash. I think that
+the second meeting of Town and Settlement would have been impossible if
+each parent had not had the confidence inspired by the small hands in
+theirs.
+
+And for still more minutes we were patient while the delicious autumn
+sun beamed upon us with Indian summer warmth and Old Harpeth looked down
+on us from out on Paradise Ridge with its crown wreathed with purple and
+gold and russet, all veiled in a tender haze.
+
+Then as the old clock on the courthouse up on the square boomed the hour
+of eleven, Dabney with ceremony opened wide the tall doors and stepped
+back into the shadow, Jefferson bowing and smiling behind him. With one
+accord the people started toward the door, and then everybody again
+stood still and seemed to be waiting for something.
+
+I knew for what they waited and I took Martha's hand in mine, with the
+boy's in hers on the other side, and slowly we walked through the path
+made for us between our friends and neighbors and in at the chapel door.
+As I passed Harriet I motioned to her and she put her arm around Nell
+and followed us, while Billy came behind them with father and the
+children. And behind them walked all of those who had been bereaved by
+the storm, and those who had been lamed and were suffering came with
+them.
+
+My entry into the chapel had been accomplished and I felt like a
+storm-torn bird who finds its sanctuary among the green leaves of a
+great tree, while with Martha and the boy I went up to the very chancel
+rail itself.
+
+Then I lifted my eyes and looked up into Gregory Goodloe's face, from
+which the white light of a great joy tinged with a great sorrow, looked
+down upon us. And as had been the case for all the long weeks stretched
+out behind me there was in his eyes no glance to me of a personal
+understanding; all the passion was that of a shepherd for his flock, and
+in its greatness I humbly acquiesced as I fell upon my knees in the
+front pew with Martha beside me, while he lifted his hands for the
+opening prayer of his service.
+
+And in his short prayer he made the dedication of the pile of stone and
+mortar which had stood before the face of the wind as sturdily as old
+Harpeth itself. His words held the simplicity of those of a great poet
+and each was a separate jewel that could be imbedded in the hearts of
+his people to last for the span of their lives. He made a grateful
+acknowledgment of the safety of the chapel and of the spared lives of
+those before him, and in a few ringing sentences he prayed that we all
+be delivered from the blindness of the prosperity which was upon us when
+the disaster had made us halt in our rush and give time for brother to
+face and call upon brother in affliction. So ringing and vivid was the
+self-accusation of heedlessness in the few sentences when he dealt with
+the condition of all of us when sorrow had come upon us, that we all
+held our breath with almost a groan of conviction, and his promise of
+our humbled and contrite hearts was ratified with a breath of relief.
+
+Then we rose from our knees and sat once more facing him while he stood
+before us and began to read the memorial services for our dead. And
+through the whole beautiful ritual he led us to the very words of
+triumph:
+
+     "Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written;
+     Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting?
+     O grave, where is thy victory?"
+
+The warmth in his beautiful voice and the light upon his face poured
+over us all with a healing that we knew would endure.
+
+After the dedication prayer and the memorial service the old
+Presbyterian minister, whom we had all known and loved since infancy,
+talked tenderly and with great sympathy to us for a few minutes and the
+stammering young Baptist divine gave us an insight into a heart of
+youthful devoutness.
+
+And then came my hour.
+
+"And now that we have given to the Lord formally this sanctuary we have
+builded for him, I want to open its spiritual doors to any of you who
+feel in your hearts the desire to unite with us in our worship of Him,"
+were the words of invitation that I suddenly felt beat themselves, in
+the rich voice of the man in the pulpit, upon my heart. "I am going to
+baptize the children, but are there any of you of 'riper years' who
+desire to unite with us to 'constantly believe God's holy word, and
+obediently keep his commandments'?" And as he spoke he came down from
+the pulpit, stood at the chancel rail and stretched out his hands to all
+of us. Without a second's delay I rose and went and knelt before him and
+bowed my head in my hands. On my right knelt the young tanner and on my
+left I felt rather than saw Clifton Gray.
+
+"The Ministration of Baptism to such as are of Riper Years" is long and
+full of holy austerity. Word for word, response for question, I followed
+the rich voice leading me, but not until it asked concerning our faith
+in the "life everlasting" did I raise my eyes to those glowing above me
+as I made answer:
+
+"All this I steadfastly believe."
+
+There was an instant's hush in the church as I made my response and in
+all humility I seemed to feel that it reverberated in some of the
+others' depths until it waked a faint echo. They had seen me face my
+humiliation and had watched how I took it and it had had its effect. It
+was as if I publicly led them to the well-spring of my courage and
+offered it to them. Luella May stole forward and crowded in between the
+young tanner and me, and I saw great tears steal out of father's closed
+eyes and roll down his cheeks, as he came and knelt just behind me, with
+two mill hands and several women.
+
+And then, after our blessing, while we rose and stood on the right and
+the left of the chancel the parson asked that the children be brought
+forward for baptism.
+
+Without waiting for anybody to come with her, Charlotte rose, took a
+hand of Sue on one side and one of Jimmy on the other, and came and
+stood looking up into the beloved Minister's eyes with such a vision in
+her young face that I caught my breath. Then Nell came and with her came
+Harriet with the Suckling asleep in her arms. The bereaved young father
+held his baby in his arms alone and Mrs. Burns went and stood beside
+him with Mikey and Maudie and the other five toddlers in front of her.
+Other children were brought forward by parents from the Town and the
+Settlement and were ranged to the right and to the left, but still I saw
+that Martha cowered in her pew holding the hand of the Stray in hers as
+he knelt beside her. Then I knew what I must do and I went quietly and
+lifted her and led her to the chancel to a place just beside where
+Harriet stood with the Suckling in her arms. I held one of the Stray's
+little hands in mine, and young Charlotte dropped Jimmy's hand and
+reached out and took the other in hers. So we stood and waited while the
+beloved voice read through the beautiful ceremony with which children
+are taken into the arms of their faith before they are yet ready to
+understand what it is some day to mean to them.
+
+"It is your duty to teach him ... to obediently keep God's holy will and
+commandments all of his life," were the closing words of the address
+with which the parson looked us full in the eye and laid the vow upon
+our souls. Then he reached out his hands, drew the Stray to him first,
+encircled him with his strong arm, laid his hands on the bowed black
+head, and looking me straight in the eye asked the question of his
+ritual:
+
+"Name this child."
+
+For an instant I glanced at Martha and then at father standing beside
+me, and as he nodded I slightly bent my head and into a deathly
+stillness all over the chapel I let the name fall clear and distinct:
+
+"Nickols Morris Powers."
+
+A beautiful ray of light flooded from one of the tall windows over both
+of us as he ratified the name with a few drops of water upon the boy's
+brow, and then turned to Harriet and repeated his question while he took
+the Suckling into his arms with the greatest tenderness. Then through
+the group he went, naming his lambs as he held them against his heart or
+within the circle of his strong arm. It was all so tender and so
+beautiful that every eye in the chapel was wet with tears and sobs
+echoed softly through his last prayer.
+
+However, at one time in the ceremonial there was danger of a laugh from
+the aggregate, overwrought nerves when Charlotte promptly named herself
+without waiting for Nell's response which came late but in time to save
+embarrassment.
+
+Then it was all over and the whole congregation trooped but into the
+sunshine. Father walked home with young Nickols on one side and
+Charlotte on the other, Martha carrying the Suckling and walking beside
+Harriet, who led Sue past the destruction of her white dress which every
+mud puddle threatened. Cliff Gray came with me slowly up the street
+after all the others had gone ahead and most of them had turned into the
+gates of their respective homes.
+
+"Is everything all right now, Cliff?" I questioned him, as we walked
+slowly under the old elms of our ancestors' planting. "It is all right
+now?" I asked again, while Cliff looked off into the distance.
+
+"I have faith that I can make it that way now, Charlotte dear," he
+answered, as I paused to turn in at my gate. We clasped hands for a
+second and then he went on down the street toward the Cockrell gate; and
+Letitia's material point of view on existence I knew would have a fair
+chance at his hands.
+
+I felt that I had never loved my friends as I did that wonderful
+Sunday, and I hoped it would not bore them if I at times let some of it
+overflow into their well ordered lives.
+
+The rest of that long, hazy, dreamy, wonder day, in the morning of which
+our hearts had been poured so full, we all of us spent with father, as
+he was to leave us the next morning. Against the remonstrance of his
+maternal parent, the worthless Jefferson had been chosen to go along in
+the place of his father Dabney. The young negro's brisk packings filled
+the house with a joy note that was delightful and Mammy admonished him
+on subjects moral every time he came near the kitchen.
+
+Late in the afternoon I left father down in the garden with young
+Nickols, to whom he was confiding the care of some very choice hollyhock
+seeds that would need gathering in the next few weeks.
+
+"Your father got them from England," the judge said gravely, as he
+showed the small paddies how to roll out the thin seed without crushing
+them.
+
+"Have I got any father but the Lady?" asked the youngster with all
+seriousness, as he beamed up in my direction. Suddenly Martha turned
+and went indoors and up to her room. I followed her and sat down beside
+the bed on which she had flung herself.
+
+"You'll have to make him understand it all; I can't," she said, after I
+had tenderly hushed her weeping. "I give him to you. I--I won't be with
+him long." As she spoke I noticed how the light shone through her pale
+fingers as she held them up to clasp mine.
+
+"We'll go away to Florida for a rest, Martha," I said, with the
+reassurance I found I had constantly to use to her. There was a great
+and beautiful tenderness in the soul of Martha, but she was completely
+lacking in any of the worldly initiative that makes lives move on. She
+seemed to be standing still.
+
+"Yes, I'll go away," she answered softly, as she unclasped her hand from
+mine, nestled her face in the pillow and shut her eyes.
+
+I left her to sleep and a year from that hour I knew that I had not
+understood the measure of her exhaustion. She faded like a flower and
+drifted on into eternity like a gossamer thread in the breeze.
+
+And it was with some of the depression that a kind of maternal brooding
+over her gave me that I went out into the garden that night after all
+the rest had gone to bed. A pale silver moon-crescent poised on the brow
+of Old Harpeth and a tingling little breeze was coming down from the
+north as if sent as a warning of the winter soon to be upon us. I went
+down to the old graybeard poplars and their leaves seemed to hiss
+together in the moonlight instead of rustling softly as they had been
+all summer. A great many of them were drifted in dry waves on the grass
+and their gold was turned to silver in the moonlight. Many of the tall
+shrubs were naked ghosts of their former selves and gnashed their bones
+drearily. I leaned against the tallest old poplar and looked out across
+the valley with a kind of stillness in my heart that seemed to be
+listening and then listening.
+
+"Oh, I'm thankful, thankful that strength has been given me to endure it
+all--life," I said to myself, almost under my breath. "And no matter
+what comes I can never lose it. I can go out into life now alone
+and--unafraid."
+
+"'And whither thou goest I too will go, and thy--'" came the Gregorian
+chant from close beside me, and I turned to find the Harpeth Jaguar
+stalking me in the night.
+
+Then for a long time we stood and looked at each other, he tearing away
+the veil from his man's heart and I laying aside that in my woman's
+breast.
+
+"Oh, I've needed you so," I finally said, with a catch in my breath as I
+put my hands in his which he put palm to palm, then raised to his lips.
+
+"You were in God's hands and I had to wait His time," he answered me.
+"And I would have waited until the stars burn dim. As near as loss came
+I never doubted. I had asked Him for you."
+
+"I didn't know I was going to join your church this morning," I
+faltered. "I never intended to join your church. I was going to be
+either a Baptist or a Presbyterian. I was afraid to mix--my faith
+with--with you."
+
+"Hasn't it been tried sufficiently to stand any test? I think so. Ah,
+dear, come to me--it's been long for me, too." His arms entreated me,
+but I held myself away with my praying hands pressed to his breast.
+
+"Are you sure that I'm not mixing you and--your faith?" I asked, looking
+him honestly in the face and giving voice to the thought that Nickols
+had put into my mind and which had tortured me all the weary months
+past.
+
+"Did any thought of me make you bring Martha Ensley to Nickols' death
+bed and take into your heart and home what the world calls dishonor?"
+
+"No," I answered with honesty to myself.
+
+"Have you once since you knew--_knew_--felt that you must turn to me for
+comfort and help in one of your dire hours?"
+
+"Not once," I answered again with honesty.
+
+"Have you not learned to turn to Him?"
+
+"I have!" I answered.
+
+"That's God's love. Then you can give me the love that belongs to me in
+your heart's kingdom, can't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid--I'm going to love you too much--I feel it coming. What'll
+you do with it? Stop me!" I said with both a sob and a laugh, as I began
+to let myself be drawn into the strong, hungry arms.
+
+"You great, big, splendid woman of God! You've got love enough in you to
+feed a multitude and you'll do it. Give me a part of my share now. It's
+mine. God sent you to me; I'm going to take you."
+
+And he did. His lips pressed mine until I gave back a betrothal kiss
+that was as complete as a great red flower. His arms held me so that
+they were a circle of pain, but all the while I kept my hands prayerwise
+between the clamor of our breasts.
+
+"Say it--'the covert of thy wings'--all that David said," I whispered.
+
+And he answered:
+
+"'I will abide in thy tabernacle forever: I will trust in the covert of
+thy wings.'"
+
+
+
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S STORIES OF ADVENTURE
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+_KAZAN_
+
+The tale of a "quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky" torn
+between the call of the human and his wild mate.
+
+_BAREE, SON OF KAZAN_
+
+The story of the son of the blind Grey Wolf and the gallant part he
+played in the lives of a man and a woman.
+
+_THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM_
+
+The story of the King of Beaver Island, a Mormon colony, and his battle
+with Captain Plum.
+
+_THE DANGER TRAIL_
+
+A tale of snow, of love, of Indian vengeance, and a mystery of the
+North.
+
+_THE HUNTED WOMAN_
+
+A tale of the "end of the line," and of a great fight in the "valley of
+gold" for a woman.
+
+_THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH_
+
+The story of Fort o' God, where the wild flavor of the wilderness is
+blended with the courtly atmosphere of France.
+
+_THE GRIZZLY KING_
+
+The story of Thor, the big grizzly who lived in a valley where man had
+never come.
+
+_ISOBEL_
+
+A love story of the Far North.
+
+_THE WOLF HUNTERS_
+
+A thrilling tale of adventure in the Canadian wilderness.
+
+_THE GOLD HUNTERS_
+
+The story of adventure in the Hudson Bay wilds.
+
+_THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE_
+
+Filled with exciting incidents in the land of strong men and women.
+
+_BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY_
+
+A thrilling story of the Far North. The great Photoplay was made from
+this book.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL LUTZ
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+_THE BEST MAN_
+
+Through a strange series of adventures a young man finds himself
+propelled up the aisle of a church and married to a strange girl.
+
+_A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS_
+
+On her way West the heroine steps off by mistake at a lonely watertank
+into a maze of thrilling events.
+
+_THE ENCHANTED BARN_
+
+Every member of the family will enjoy this spirited chronicle of a young
+girl's resourcefulness and pluck, and the secret of the "enchanted"
+barn.
+
+_THE WITNESS_
+
+The fascinating story of the enormous change an incident wrought in a
+man's life.
+
+_MARCIA SCHUYLER_
+
+A picture of ideal girlhood set in the time of full skirts and poke
+bonnets.
+
+_LO, MICHAEL!_
+
+A story of unfailing appeal to all who love and understand boys.
+
+_THE MAN OF THE DESERT_
+
+An intensely moving love story of a man of the desert and a girl of the
+East pictured against the background of the Far West.
+
+_PHOEBE DEANE_
+
+A tense and charming love story, told with a grace and a fervor with
+which only Mrs. Lutz could tell it.
+
+_DAWN OF THE MORNING_
+
+A romance of the last century with all of its old-fashioned charm. A
+companion volume to "Marcia Schuyler" and "Phoebe Deane."
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART'S KINGDOM***
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Heart's Kingdom, by Maria Thompson
+Daviess, Illustrated by W. B. King</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Heart's Kingdom</p>
+<p>Author: Maria Thompson Daviess</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 4, 2006  [eBook #18756]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART'S KINGDOM***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Kathryn Lybarger, Josephine Paolucci,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net/)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>The Heart's Kingdom</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="350" height="475" alt="&quot;It&#39;s a mighty big turkle,&quot; he faltered, and snuggled
+closer." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;It&#39;s a mighty big turkle,&quot; he faltered, and snuggled
+closer.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE HEART'S KINGDOM</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS</h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF THE MELTING OF MOLLY, <span class="smcap">Etc</span>.</h4>
+
+<h5>ILLUSTRATED BY</h5> <h4>W. B. KING</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+NEW YORK<br />
+GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP<br />
+PUBLISHERS<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+Copyright, 1917<br />
+by<br />
+The Reilly &amp; Britton Co.<br />
+<br />
+Made in U.S.A.<br />
+<br />
+Published September 12, 1917<br />
+Second Printing October 1, 1917<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>I The World and the Flesh</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>II The Harpeth Jaguar</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>III The Gauntlet</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>IV To Turkey Gulch</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>V Having It Out</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VI Deep Digging</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VII The Tristan Love Song</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VIII Breasting the Gale</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>IX Into Brambles</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>X Water and Oil</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XI A Bit of Raw Life</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XII The Tenacious Turtle</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XIII The Short-Circuit</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XIV Abide With Me</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XV A Clandestine Adventure</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XVI The Jewel in the Matrix</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_283">283</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XVII The Pageant</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XVIII Light&mdash;Into Darkness</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XIX The Spark and the Blaze</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_327">327</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>XX The Covert of Wings</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<h2>The Heart's Kingdom</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WORLD AND THE FLESH</h3>
+
+
+<p>"A beautiful woman is intended to create a heaven on earth and she has
+no business wasting herself making imaginary excursions into any future
+paradise. The present is her time for action; and again, Charlotte, I
+ask you to name the day upon which you intend to marry me," said Nickols
+Powers, as he stood lounging in the broad window of Aunt Clara's music
+room and gazing down into the subdued traffic of upper Madison Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you had never taken me across that ferry and into that room
+crowded with redolent humanity to hear an absurd little man string
+together vivid, gross words about religion, words that made me tingle
+all over," I answered as I threw my coat on a chair, lifted my hat from
+my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> head and sat down on the seat before the dark old piano. "I think
+religion is the most awful thing in the world and I am as afraid of it
+as I am of&mdash;of death. I'm going home to my father."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't be afraid of it. Religion is the most potent form of
+intoxication known to the human race. That's why I took you over to hear
+the little baseball player. I wanted you to get a sip. But don't let it
+go to your head." And Nickols mocked me with soft tenderness in his
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it frightened me, and I don't like it. I'm going home to my
+father and forget it," I reiterated with a kind of numbness upon me, the
+like of which I had never before experienced.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll protect you from any religious danger just as effectively as Judge
+Powers. I'm younger&mdash;slightly&mdash;than he, but I know just as many of the
+wiles of the world and the flesh as he does and maybe a few more,"
+Nickols assured me, with a flash in his dark eyes that was both wicked
+and humorous, as well as very delightful.</p>
+
+<p>"And the devil, too! But you don't understand. I must go home to my
+father," I answered still again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand yourself," returned Nickols. "There are strange
+hieroglyphics imprinted on every woman's heart and a man can read only
+an unconnected word here and there when he can get his flashlight thrown
+into the depths&mdash;if he dares adventure into her life at all. I feel that
+I take my own life in my hands when I allow you to talk to me as I am
+allowing you to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that those hieroglyphics might not mean the salvation
+of the world if she could spell them out herself, or some great and good
+person took a steady lamp and went down into her heart and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It takes a very wicked man to read a woman; good men are blinded by
+them and stumble," Nickols assured me as he came over, stood beside me
+and ran his long, slender, artist's fingers up and down the keys of the
+piano, which evoked a strange, diabolical sort of harmony from them. "I
+understand about it all, so please come tell me you'll marry me." This
+time his arms almost encircled me, but I slipped between them as he
+laughed at me with his adorable pagan charm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, Nickols, that would be an easy&mdash;and&mdash;and delightful way out, but I
+am really frightened down in some queer part of my anatomy that lies
+between my breast bone and my spinal column. Something is stirring in my
+heart and I'm afraid of it. I've got to get out in a wilderness and
+fight with it."</p>
+
+<p>"Take it out on me," offered Nickols, with a laugh that was both wistful
+and provoking.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I've got a home panic and I must go."</p>
+
+<p>"Then when do I get my answer from what is left of you after the
+battle?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll let you know when to come and get it&mdash;under the roof of the
+Poplars," I answered him from the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>And the very next morning I went down into the Harpeth Valley, driven I
+knew not by what, nor to what. I only knew that I felt full of a living,
+smothered flame and I was sure that it was best to let it burst forth in
+my ancestral abiding place.</p>
+
+<p>I was born of a man who has the most evolved brain in the Harpeth
+Valley, who has been a drunkard for twenty years, and of a very
+beautiful and haughty woman whose own mother, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> the day of her death,
+shouted at Methodist love feasts. Is it any wonder that when I was tried
+by fire I burned "as the cracklings of thorns under a pot?"</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>could</i> you set that ridiculous little Methodist meeting house on
+the very doorstep of my garden, father?" I demanded, as I stood tall and
+furious before him in the breakfast room on the morning after my return
+home from my winter in the East with Aunt Clara. "Cousin Nickols has
+spent many months out of three years on the plans of restoration for
+that garden, and he is coming down soon to sketch and photograph it to
+use in some of his commissions. What shall I&mdash;what will <i>you</i>&mdash;say to
+him when he finds that the vista he kept open for the line of Paradise
+Ridge has been cut off by that pile of stones to house the singing of
+psalms?" And as I raged I had a feeling of being relentlessly
+pursued&mdash;by something I didn't understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam," returned father, with a dignity he always used with me when he
+encountered one of my rages, "you will find that the chapel does not in
+any way interfere with Nickols' carefully planned view. Gregory Goodloe
+spent many days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> of thought in seeking to place it so that it would not
+intrude itself upon your garden, and he built his parsonage completely
+out of view, though it gives him only one large southern window to his
+study and only northern ones to his bedroom."</p>
+
+<p>"Does the creature also sleep and eat and have his being right there
+behind my hollyhocks?" I demanded, and my rage began to merge into
+actual grief, which in turn threatened to come to the surface in hot
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Charlotte, my daughter," father was beginning to say with soothing
+in his voice instead of the belligerence that from my youth up had
+always just preceded my floods of tears. Dabney, the shriveled black
+butler, who had always devotedly sympathized with my exhibitions of
+temperament, to which he had, from my infancy, given the name of
+"tantrums," set the platter of fried chicken before father's place at
+the damask and silver-spread old table by the window, through which the
+morning sun was shining genially. Then, with a smile as broad and genial
+as that of the sun, he drew out my chair from behind the ancestral
+silver coffee urn, which was puffing out clouds of fragrant steam.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Breakfast am sarved, honey chile," he crooned soothingly, "an' yo'
+Mammy done put the liver wing right ag'in yo' fork."</p>
+
+<p>Dabney had many times stemmed my floods with choice food and was trying
+his favorite method of pacification.</p>
+
+<p>I faltered and wavered at the temptation. I was hungry.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wait until you see Goodloe and talk it over with him," father
+said, as he seized the advantage of my wavering and seated himself
+opposite me as Dabney pushed in my chair and whisked the cover off the
+silver sugar bowl and presented one of his old willow-ware cups for
+father's two lumps and a dash of cream. "I asked him to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"See him? You don't expect me to discuss Nickols' and my garden with an
+ignorant bucolic Methodist minister, who probably doesn't know a
+honeysuckle from a jimson weed, do you?" I asked with actual rage rising
+again above the tears as I literally dashed the cream into his cup and
+deluged the boiling coffee down upon it so that a scalding splatter
+peppered my hand. "I never want to see or hear or speak to or about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+him. I'll build a trellis as high as his church, run evergreen
+honeysuckle on it and go my way in an opposite direction from his.
+I'll&mdash;" Just here I observed consternation spread over Dabney's black
+face, then communicate itself to father's distressed countenance as he
+glanced out the window. Quickly he pushed his morning julep behind the
+jar of roses in the center of the table, while Dabney flung a napkin
+over the silver pitcher with frost on its sides and mint nodding over
+its brim.</p>
+
+<p>And then, as I was about to pour my own coffee and launch forth on
+another tirade on the subject of my neighbor, I heard a rich tenor voice
+singing just outside the window in the garden beside the steps that led
+down from the long windows in the dining room to the old flagstone walk.
+Nickols and I had searched through volumes of dusty antique prints to
+see just how we wanted that walk to lead out to the sunken garden beyond
+the tall old poplars. I also saw the handle of a rake or hoe in action
+across the window landscape and heard unmistakable sounds of vigorous
+gardening.</p>
+
+<p>I rose to my feet with battle in my eyes and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> then stopped perfectly
+still and listened&mdash;unwillingly but compelled.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Drink to me only with thine eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I will pledge with mine,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>were the words that floated in at the window on the fragrant morning
+sunbeams, in a voice of the most penetrating tenderness I had ever felt
+break against my heartstrings.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;he sometimes demolishes a&mdash;a few weeds," father faltered, while
+Dabney ducked his cotton-wool old head and slipped out of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You allow him to work in my&mdash;garden&mdash;and&mdash;" I faltered, just recovering
+from the impact of the words of my favorite song of songs hurled at me
+by the unseen enemy, when I was interrupted by his appearance in the
+open door and we stood facing each other.</p>
+
+<p>I am a woman who has very decided tastes about the biological man. I
+know just how I want the creatures to look, and I haven't much interest
+in one that isn't at least of the type of my preferred kind. Because I
+am very tall and broad and deep-bosomed and vivid and high colored, and
+have strong white teeth that crunch up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> about as much food in the
+twenty-four hours as most field hands consume, and altogether I am very
+much like one of the most vigorous of Sorolla's paintings, that is the
+probable pathological reason I have always preferred an evolved Whistler
+masculine nocturne that retreats to the limits of my comprehension and
+then beckons me to follow. All other men I have grouped beyond the
+border of my feminine nature and sought to waste no thought upon them.
+It was a shock to come, suddenly, in my own breakfast room, face to face
+with a type of man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly
+large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored
+lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond
+Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved
+majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of
+worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly
+strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an
+exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf which, it was a shock to see,
+matched glints from eyes back under his heavy gold brows with what
+appeared to be extreme sophistication.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> After the shock of the tie the
+loose gray London worsted coat and trousers made only a passing
+impression; and from my involuntary summary of the whole surprising man,
+which had taken less than an instant, my dazed brain came back and was
+held and concentrated by the beauty of the smile that flooded out over
+me in welcome after my father's hurried introduction.</p>
+
+<p>"The Reverend Mr. Gregory Goodloe&mdash;my daughter Charlotte," father
+announced, as he rose and waved in my direction a hand that was cordial
+to the point of bravado.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad you came in time to see your crocuses and anemones, Miss
+Powers," the Jaguar said as he took my hand in his. "Dabney has let me
+help him hand-weed them and they are a glory, aren't they?" While he
+spoke he still held my hand and I was still too dazed to regain
+possession of it. Father saved the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, sit down, Parson, and let Charlotte give you a cup of coffee
+while it is on the simmer," he urged with hasty hospitality as if intent
+upon effectively bottling me up, at least for the immediate present.
+"She was just pouring my cup. Will you say grace before I take my first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+sip?" was the high explosive he further proceeded to hurl in my face.</p>
+
+<p>And as he spoke I sank dumbly into my chair and helplessly bowed my head
+to a ceremony so obsolete in the world from which I had come that I felt
+as if I was slipping back into the days of the pioneer, when the customs
+of life were still primitive and dictated by emotion rather than mental
+science.</p>
+
+<p>And there, with father's concealed mint julep right against his
+interlaced fingers, the mountain lion bowed his crested head and
+involved me in prayer for the first time since chapel-service in my
+college days.</p>
+
+<p>"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof ... for which we give
+thanks, thy children, with Lord Jesus, Amen!"</p>
+
+<p>"Amen," mumbled father as if from the depths of embarrassment, and
+against my will, as it were, a queer sort of a croon of an echo came
+from my own throat.</p>
+
+<p>Also that was the first time I had ever heard words of prayer under the
+roof of the Poplars. It embarrassed me and I hated it and the cause of
+it. The spell which had possessed me since<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> the entrance of the Reverend
+Goodloe, vanished, and the rage that had been in me at the discovery of
+the intrusion of his chapel and himself upon my life when I had come
+home to be free to be wicked, boiled up within me and then sugared down
+to a rich&mdash;and dangerous&mdash;syrup. While I poured his coffee I again took
+stock of him, this time coldly and with deadly intent. The reasons for
+his entry into my hitherto satisfactory family life, even at breakfast
+time, I did not know, any more than I knew the reason for the chapel on
+the other side of the hollyhocks, but I felt that I feared both and
+intended to get rid of them. If the enemy had been what one could
+reasonably expect a young Methodist preacher to be, I would have routed
+him and his meekness within the hour and had the chapel moved to a lot
+on a side street in town within the week. However, when a hunter comes
+suddenly upon a Harpeth jaguar he is glad to use his best repeater and
+he is careful how he shoots, though if he is very skillful he may tease
+the lion aloft with a few nipping shots. I felt suddenly very strong for
+the fight that I knew was on, though the lion didn't possess that
+knowledge as yet. Deliberately I fired a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> preliminary bullet that seemed
+to graze father, though it left the Parson unharmed.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you have your mint julep before I pour your coffee, Mr. Goodloe?"
+I asked, with seemingly careless friendliness. "Dabney, put fresh ice in
+father's glass and fill mine and Mr. Goodloe's."</p>
+
+<p>"I was feeling a little under the weather this morning," said father
+hastily, as he set his glass from behind the rose jar upon Dabney's
+waiter and motioned it all away from him, thus denying the morning
+friend of his lifetime. I had never drunk a julep before breakfast in my
+life, only tasted around the frosty edges of father's, but I held my
+ground, and held out my glass to Dabney, who falteringly, almost in
+terror, took the frosted silver pitcher from the sideboard and poured me
+an unusually large draft of the family beverage.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you have yours now, Mr. Goodloe?" I asked again with still more of
+the sugared solicitation.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I believe I prefer the coffee, but don't pour it until you have
+drunk your julep; you know frost is a thing that soon passes," was the
+cheerful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> answer, though a suspicion of an amethyst glint made me know
+that the Jaguar had at least heard the zip of the bullet.</p>
+
+<p>I loathed that mixture of ice and sugar and mint and whiskey but I had
+to drink it, and it heated me up inside both physically and mentally,
+and took away all the queer dogging fear. And because of it I don't
+remember what else happened at that breakfast except that I wanted to
+clutch and cling to the warm, strong hand that I again found mine in at
+the time of parting. But I didn't; at least, I don't think I did. After
+it was taken away from me I went very slowly up to my room and again
+went to bed, Mammy caressingly officiating and rejoicing that I was
+going to "nap the steam cars outen my bones."</p>
+
+<p>I fell asleep with the continued strains of "Drink to me only" in my
+ears, and wondering if I ought to put it down as insult added to injury,
+and I awoke several hours later to find Letitia Cockrell, one of the
+dear friends whom many generations had bestowed upon me, sitting on the
+foot of my bed consuming the last of the box of marrons with which
+Nickols had provisioned my journey down from New York. I was glad I had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+tucked the note that came in the box under my pillow the night before. I
+trust Letitia and she is entirely sophisticated, but she has never had a
+lover who lives in Greenwich Village, New York, America.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this the open season for two-day hangovers, in New York?" she
+demanded as she sniffed me suspiciously at the same time she dimpled and
+smiled at me.</p>
+
+<p>"No, this is not a metropolitan hangover. It was acquired at breakfast,
+Letitia," I answered her as I sat up and stretched out my bare arms to
+give her a good shake and a hug. "'You may break, you may shatter the
+glass if you will, but the scent of the julep will hang 'round you
+still,'" I misquoted as I drew my knees up into my embrace and took the
+last remaining marron.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mammy said Mr. Goodloe had breakfast with you. Did you sneak it
+from the judge's pitcher?" demanded Letitia, as she likewise drew her
+knees up into her arms and settled herself against one of the posts of
+my bed for the many hours' r&eacute;sum&eacute; of our individual existences in which
+we always indulged upon being reunited after separation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I did not," I answered. "I drank it before his eyes, and then I don't
+remember what happened and I don't care."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just that. I never have been drunk because I never could drink enough.
+I've always felt that there isn't enough liquid in the world to faze me,
+and I don't like it anyway, but Dabney was so impressed by His Worship
+that he poured it double for me before I had had breakfast. I hope I
+staggered or swore but I don't think I did. The Reverend Goodloe can
+tell you better than I. Ask him."</p>
+
+<p>"Gregory Goodloe? Oh, Charlotte!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the point I was coming to, Letitia: Just who is this Reverend
+Goodloe that I shouldn't drink a quart of mint julep before him if I
+want to? I had well over a pint of champagne with a Mr. Justice two
+nights before I left New York and I stopped then out of courtesy to one
+of the generals whom we expect to defend us from the Kaiser. Who is your
+Gregory Goodloe? Tell we all about him, unexpurgated and unafraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you know about him&mdash;and the chapel before you came?" Letitia
+queried cautiously, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> if fearing the explosion she felt was sure to
+result.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not," I answered. "I met him and his chapel and the mint julep
+all in the same five minutes, and is it any wonder I went down? Go on.
+Tell me the worst or the best. I'm ready." And as I spoke I settled my
+pillows comfortably, getting a little thrill from the crumpled letter
+underneath the bottom one.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HARPETH JAGUAR</h3>
+
+
+<p>"It is beautifully romantic, but I don't know what we are going to do
+about it," answered Letitia with genuine trouble, puckering her brow
+under one of her smooth waves of seal-brown hair. Letitia is one of the
+wonderful variety of women who patch out life, piece by piece, in a
+beautiful symmetrical pattern and who do not have imagination enough to
+admire anything about a riotous crazy quilt. She is in love with Clifton
+Gray, has been since she wound her brown braids about her head, and is
+piecing strips of him into her life-fabric by the very sanest
+love&mdash;courtship&mdash;marriage design.</p>
+
+<p>"We just can't go on as we have been doing lately," she continued. "We
+all decided that you would know what to do about him, and would do it
+when you came home. We suspected Judge Powers hadn't written you all the
+facts when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> you didn't come and the building went on up. You will be
+able to do something about him, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it is likely," I answered, with the brittle sugar in my voice
+that Letitia only half knows the flavor of. "But don't try to sketch
+things, Letitia. Begin at the beginning and go straight to the end; I'll
+pick up the pieces."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course you remember the Bishop Goodloe romance, don't you?"
+asked Letitia, hopeful that she could get a small start ahead on her
+chronicle.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't remember anything about any bishop, ever. I forget things about
+that kind of people. What did, or didn't he do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte!" remonstrated Letitia. "He was the last of the Goodloes who
+built that old Goodloe home on exactly the place where the first Goodloe
+set the stakes of the first stockade put up in the Harpeth Valley, right
+here in Goodloets. It burned down the night he married that Miss Gregory
+in New York, before we were born. Don't you remember we used to play in
+the ruins, just over here beyond the garden where the chapel stands now?
+Your father bought the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> property. Part of your garden is old Madam
+Goodloe's garden and that's why it was so wonderful for Judge Powers to
+give the lot and let Mr. Goodloe build the chapel there. We all felt
+that, though some of us were scared when we thought about what you might
+do when you came home. Still, after we saw that wonderful little stone
+chapel that Mr. Goodloe had one of the greatest architects in New York
+design, after he had sent him packages of sketches of your garden and
+the Poplars, so it would only make it all the more beautiful, we felt
+better. You don't really mind about it, do you, dear?" Letitia's voice
+was beseechingly enthusiastic, though keyed down with a note of anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on!" I commanded, packing down the rage in the dark corners of my
+inmost heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody ever knew why Bishop Goodloe never came back after he married
+while on a mission from the Southern Methodist Conference to the
+Northern Methodist Conference. He severed his relations with his own
+Conference, and he never preached again though he was one of the most
+wonderful and eloquent preachers the South has ever known. He was the
+youngest bishop the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> church had ever ordained. Nobody ever knew what
+happened, and all we know now is that this perfectly beautiful man, who
+is the bishop's son, came down to the General Conference in Nashville,
+was examined and ordained, and the presiding bishop sent him out here to
+Goodloets last November. We don't know anything about him except that he
+has been fighting in the trenches in France for a year and has had a
+bullet cut out of his left lung. Everybody adores him, and we all sit
+spellbound listening to him preach, I think mostly on account of his
+voice, because none of us ever seems to remember what he is preaching
+about. He's been having services in the ballroom at the Country Club but
+he is going to dedicate the chapel soon and we are all relieved. It has
+been fun to go out to church at the Club twice every Sunday and to
+prayer meeting on Wednesday night all winter, and we've danced in the
+long parlor at home and in the double parlors at Jessie Litton's so as
+not to disarrange the pews, I mean the chairs, in the ballroom, but now
+that the spring has come we&mdash;we need the Club. I'm glad you will be here
+for the dedication, and you will help us kind of&mdash;kind of&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Taper off from your religious spree?" I asked with a laugh that Letitia
+echoed shamefacedly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's an awful way to put it&mdash;but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"True?"</p>
+
+<p>"We've all tried hard, but&mdash;but it is such a&mdash;a bore. It doesn't seem
+fair to enjoy Gregory Goodloe so much at dinners and parties and not
+show our respect and&mdash;and admiration by being good church members.
+Jessie joined his study workers and she took a class of the awful little
+children from down in the Settlement beyond the Phosphate Mills, who all
+smelled terribly. She worked hard with them twice a week for a month,
+and then Mother Spurlock, who is the front pillar of his congregation,
+found that she had taught all the dirty little things to sew with their
+left hands. She came in one morning and found them all stitching away
+industriously backwards, just because Jessie is left-handed herself.
+Mother Elsie laughed until she lost her breath and Mr. Goodloe had to
+help unloosen her belt for her. The meeting broke up with ice cream on
+Jessie for everybody. We all belong to home mission societies and sewing
+circles and&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You want me to get you out of your purgatory and let you backslide
+to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say it!" exclaimed Letitia with a laugh. "But we just want not to
+hurt his feelings and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We won't," I said grimly. "Now let's talk about the ball out at the
+Club we are going to give Nickols when he comes down the first of May."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I mean. I knew you'd understand and I am so relieved
+that you are not angry about the chapel and things. We can leave it all
+to you and we'll have the times of our lives. Billy Harvey says his
+ankles are getting stiff, it's been so long since he has fox-trotted. Do
+call Mammy or Sallie and let's look at your clothes." With which Letitia
+descended from her spiritual heights into the realm of the material and
+plunged with both Mammy and Sallie into a riot of clothes.</p>
+
+<p>For an hour or two I lay back in my pillows and watched the two black
+women and the white one indulge in primitive decorative orgies, and from
+their delight my eyes would glance out and fix themselves wistfully on
+the dim line of Paradise Ridge which was cut by the square steeple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> of
+weathered stone just where Old Harpeth humps itself up above the rest of
+the Ridge; and something sore and angry and trapped hurt under my
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>"The earth is the Lord's&mdash;" chanted itself in my mind to the tune of
+"Drink to me only," and my hand curled around the letter under my pillow
+as if for comfort and&mdash;defense.</p>
+
+<p>"It is just as you told me that night at the piano, Nickols dear:
+'Religion is the most potent form of intoxication known to the human
+race,' and apparently all my friends have been getting the drink habit
+badly. I'll rescue the poor dears and have an interesting time doing
+it," I said to myself after Letitia had departed with my most choice
+millinery creation fastened down upon her sleek braids because she found
+she could not live without it.</p>
+
+<p>And then a strange thing happened, as I lay prone between the
+lavender-scented sheets spread on the four-poster bed of my foremothers,
+ready to drift off into another "bone resting" nap. The flood of tears
+that had risen from my heart when I had sat that night a week ago and
+listened to that remarkable little baseball evangelist, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> tide of
+which had been rolled back when Nickols had bent his beautiful dark head
+against mine in Aunt Clara's music room and whispered above the roar of
+New York, "religion is the most potent form of intoxication" to me,
+again welled from my heart and this time flooded my lashes and my cheek
+and my pillow. What was strangest of all, they seemed to wash away all
+the tears of anger and fear that I had been pressing back into my depths
+from breakfast time, and left me weak and again ready for sleep. And
+like a comforted little child, I slept.</p>
+
+<p>It was sunset when I awoke, and I felt as strong as two women and ready
+for action, the call for which was upon me by the time Sallie had put me
+into her favorite creation, selected from the ones she had hung in
+closets and wardrobe.</p>
+
+<p>"Mister Billy Harvey and Mister Hampton Dibrell is down on the front
+porch ready to gallivant you, honey-bunch, and I seen Miss Letitia and
+her Mister Cliff Gray coming in one direction and Miss Jessie in
+another, so I reckon Sallie had better hurry with that New York twilight
+she's fixing on you," Mammy announced as she stood in my doorway and
+beamed upon me. "An' I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> expects the parson will be stepping over
+likewise fer a few words, seeing you was so sweet and showed sich pretty
+manners to him this morning," she added with reverent delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Sweet? Showed such pretty manners?" I gasped, as Sallie fastened the
+last hook and eye and stood beside Mammy to admire me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas no more than you oughter done to the preacher, and I was proud of
+my raising of you when you helt on to him and begged him to stay to
+dinner. I was sho' disappointed that he had to leave us. I'm a Colored
+Methodist, I am, and if I do say it, I knows how to shake a young pullet
+in the skillet fer a preacher's taste, black or white. Now go on down
+and stop that buzzing fer you on the front porch. Sallie, come and carry
+out the tea and cakes to the guests," with which command to both of us
+Mammy rolled her two hundred and fifty pounds down the hall with great
+majesty, while Sallie meekly followed in her wake.</p>
+
+<p>"Sweet! Showed such pretty manners!" I quoted to myself as I slowly
+descended the steps and went out on the wide porch to find my friends
+assembled under the budding rose vine that wreathed the tall white
+pillars of the Poplars.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The parson was not there.</p>
+
+<p>"Rescued!" exclaimed Billy as he grasped one of my hands and hung on
+with a very good imitation of a drowning man seizing a lifeline. They
+all laughed and Hampton Dibrell held my other hand as ardently, though
+not in quite such light vein. I had to rescue it to accept Clifton
+Gray's nosegay of huge violets from his greenhouse, and I embraced
+Jessie with the nosegay pressed to her pink cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Charlotte, I could fox-trot with you a week and not hesitate,"
+exclaimed Billy, still clinging to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's begin to-night," I assented warmly. Billy is contagious and to
+dance with him is a high art.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's motor out to the Club in Hamp's car and mine, have a chicken
+supper and dance until sun-up," suggested Billy.</p>
+
+<p>"We can stop by and get Mark Morgan and Nell, and I believe Harriet
+Henderson will come along, if everybody asks her&mdash;all the men, I mean,"
+Letitia added with enthusiasm to match Billy's. Harriet Henderson is the
+latest emerged widow in Goodloets and consequently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> is most interesting
+to the masculine world at present.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's start now, so as to give the chicken plenty of time to get into
+the frying pan and over the fire," said Hampton, who is always the
+practical member to bring up the details of any situation.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm just from the tennis courts and I'll have to stop to dress, I'm
+afraid," said Letitia meekly, as if she felt sure of a storm of
+remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>"People don't dress to dance these days, Letitia," said Billy, with the
+greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in
+speaking to Letitia's rather literal directness and in which he delights
+greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if you
+roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders, take off your
+collar and tuck in the flaps, it will be enough to satisfy our cravings
+for fashionable and suitable attire. We really want fried chicken rather
+than chicken&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That will do, Billy," Letitia answered him with gentle firmness.</p>
+
+<p>"That was just what I remarked, Letitia dear. That will do, for we want
+chicken dressed with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> cream gravy and don't care about any swathed in
+chiffon. And furthermore&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do hush, Billy; look who's coming," Jessie interrupted him, and there
+before my eyes I saw my entire group of friends begin to preen
+themselves into new beings. Letitia smoothed down her skirts a fraction
+of an inch, rolled down her sleeves another fraction and pushed back
+into her braids a brown lock that was rioting across her brow. Jessie
+shook out her muslin ruffles, reefed a fold of net higher across her
+neck, and pinned it in place with a jeweled pin, while Hampton's and
+Billy's and Cliff's expressions and poses of countenance and bodies
+suddenly fell into lines of decorum.</p>
+
+<p>"Great Smokes! We all forgot it was prayer meeting to-night, and it'll
+be no trotting the fox for ours," Billy groaned, while he rose to his
+feet with a smile of angelic sweetness. "Hello, Parson! We were just
+beginning to think about you," was his greeting to the Sacred Jaguar who
+had come through the garden and around the house. I felt sure that he
+had heard Billy's plaint of disappointment about the dance, for there
+was a quick glint of the amethysts as he halted and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> stood on the walk
+below us and smiled up at us.</p>
+
+<p>"I welcomed Miss Powers for breakfast, and now I find I want to come
+over and do it again for tea," he said, and as I was perfectly cool,
+sober and in my right mind at the moment he spoke, I had to concede that
+his voice was the most wonderful I had ever heard, and something in me
+made me resent it as well as the curious veneer that had spread over my
+friends at his entry upon the scene. There they stood and sat, six
+perfectly rational, fairly moral, representative free and equal
+citizens, cowed by the representative of something that they neither
+understood nor cared about, and it made me furious. They all wanted to
+go to the Club to dance, to do the natural, usual, perfectly harmless
+thing, and they were being constrained. If they had wanted to go to the
+prayer meeting as they wanted to dance, they would have been natural and
+joyful and eager about it.</p>
+
+<p>"I resent, even <i>I</i> resent people's being bored with the God they think
+exists, and I think it is disrespectful to go into His presence like
+that," I said to myself, and then I suddenly determined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> to begin my
+rescue work for the religiously involved, and now I felt was the
+appointed time. Also I felt the excitement that comes from turning and
+facing the foe which has pursued.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you came over, Mr. Goodloe," I said with nice, cool
+friendliness in my voice. "Billy was just planning a glorious fox-trot
+for this evening and then suddenly remembered with dismay that you were
+to have your&mdash;entertainment at the Club to-night. Couldn't we&mdash;we make
+some sort of compromise? Or at least couldn't you cut your&mdash;prayers
+short so he can get in an hour or two of his favorite pleasure
+after&mdash;after duty well done?" As I spoke I had come to the edge of the
+steps and thus stood alone above him, looking down on him with a kind of
+cool aloofness as if he belonged to another world, while I heard all of
+his recent converts grouped back of me give little gasps of dismay.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GAUNTLET</h3>
+
+
+<p>Was that young Methodist minister crushed by my plainly intended
+gauntlet flung down to him? He was not.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad I came over in time to put Billy out of his misery," he
+answered, smiling up at me with a quick comprehension that was enraging.
+"I'm going to have informal services in the chapel to-night to try out
+the acoustics before the contractor turns over the building. I am not
+satisfied about the sounding board he has put in, and the only way is to
+try it with at least part of the seats occupied. We'll sing a bit and
+plan the dedication; not have a formal service. So then, Billy, you can
+have your fox-trotting and a good time to all of you, bless you, my
+children." As he spoke he smiled at the entire group with the most
+delightful interest and pleasure. He was dressed in a straight black
+coat with a plain silk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> vest cut around a white collar that buttoned in
+the back, and his dull gold mane was brushed down sleek and close to his
+beautiful head. Not a flash of expression in his strong face showed that
+he felt any resentment or dismay at thus having some of his most
+prominent church members backslide from his prayer meeting into a
+fox-trot, and yet I knew&mdash;knew that he fully appreciated the situation
+and laid the blame of it where the blame was due.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we will come to the services first&mdash;that is, if you&mdash;if you
+don't object," Letitia said with her usual directness and lack of any
+kind of finesse, thus bringing the situation to a decided head.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not come over for the songs and then not stay for the conference?"
+was the genial answer that positively astonished me, and as he spoke he
+came up the steps and stood beside me. "Dabney and I found the first
+Star of Bethlehem when we were weeding this afternoon. I brought it to
+you carefully, and can I have a cup of that tea he has been trying to
+make you serve for the last five minutes?" With these words the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe turned me around and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> sent me to the tea tray that Dabney
+and Sallie had put on a table under the rose vine; but not before he had
+taken up my hand, put the star flower in it and curled my fingers over
+it. "I'll pass the muffins, Billy, and you take the cakes for Miss
+Powers, and be more careful than you were last Sunday with my collection
+plate for the poor." Billy feigned confusion, accepted the plate and was
+just about to begin a defense, when a diversion occurred to stop him.</p>
+
+<p>"There comes Mark and Mrs. Mark," he exclaimed, "but they have got an
+offspring apiece in their embrace and several trailers. Somebody ought
+to remonstrate with Nell Morgan or have the firmness to apply the
+superfluous blind kitten treatment every spring. Three children are
+patriotic, but five are populistic and ought to be frowned upon," and
+Billy grumbled all the while the Morgans were flocking up the front
+walk. When they came to the steps the Jaguar descended and held out his
+clerically befrocked arms so that the gurgler from Mark's shoulder and
+the giggler from Nell's arms both fell into his embrace at one time.
+"You young marplots, you!" he said as the gurgler printed a wet kiss on
+his left ear and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> regarded him with rapture while the small cooer,
+proclaimed as feminine by neck and sleeve ribbons, cuddled against his
+shoulder with soft confidence. "They're going to take you both down to
+the river and drown you," he confided with a soft note in his voice that
+was an answer to the coo.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would," said Mark, as, with a laugh, he shook my hand
+extended from the group around me, composed of Nell and the other three
+kiddies, all crowded together in one passionate greeting. "Nurse and
+Julia and the house and garden man have all gone to a wedding, so we
+have fed 'em and are now starting out for a razoo, and we don't care
+whether it lasts until midnight or not. Young Charlotte, you hug one
+side of your Aunt Charlotte and let Jimmy get his innings on the other
+side. Here, break away, all of you!" and while everybody laughed, Mark
+disentangled the greetings, and seated the separated juvenile members in
+a row on the steps beside the parson and the two babes. Nell he left in
+the hollow of my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is so good to have you at home, Charlotte," she said, with
+another hug. "We miss you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> terribly. We depend on you for everything.
+Things don't go right without you. I had a terrible time with&mdash;that is,
+you haven't seen baby yet. Give her to me, Mr. Goodloe," and as she
+spoke Nell leaned over to get the cooer out of the Jaguar's arms for my
+inspection.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get neither Babe nor Suckling," was his answer as he cuddled the
+two closer and hunched his shoulders in Nell's direction. "Don't you
+know enough to let well enough alone? If they have got to go out to the
+Club and fox-trot until midnight they ought to have repose now."</p>
+
+<p>"We promised to be good at church, but we didn't promise anything about
+the Country Club, and if we go there we are going to be as bad as
+anybody out there is," announced small Charlotte with determined
+composure. "Dabney says that fox-trotting is a devil's dance and we want
+to see you all do it with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Help!" exclaimed Billy, while Mr. Goodloe put his arm around Charlotte
+and drew her to him with a kind of fierce tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't she awful?" exclaimed Nell. "We meant to ask you if we could take
+them with us out to the Club to prayer meeting. Some of the Settlement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+women bring their babies and I know mine will be as good. Charlotte and
+Sue and Jimmy promised, and the sound of your voice bewitches the babies
+as it does all of us."</p>
+
+<p>As Nell finished speaking and bent to pat the head of the Suckling on
+his shoulder, the Reverend Mr. Goodloe looked straight into my eyes and
+laughed, perfect comprehension of me and my revolt in his direct
+amethyst glances which shot into my depths.</p>
+
+<p>"They are all going over to listen to Mr. Goodloe sing hymns at his
+chapel, Nell, and then all of you are coming by here for me to go out to
+the Club to dance a few hours," was my answer to the shot as I calmly
+refused the invitation into the fold that had been given me with the
+rest of the backsliding flock.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go&mdash;the babies would never in the world&mdash;" Nell was beginning
+to exclaim.</p>
+
+<p>"Drat 'em!" exclaimed Billy, looking down aggrievedly at the small crew
+of marplots. "A pair of perfectly good chaperons are hard to get, and to
+think of that bunch of little miseries getting in the way of a good old
+fox&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They'll all go to sleep during the services<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> and I'll keep them on my
+bed in the parsonage until the fun is over, and agree to deliver them on
+claim," Mr. Goodloe interrupted Billy to say with quiet decision.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that is what I call some church relation, nursery and parsonage
+combined," said Billy with the deepest gratitude. "The rest of you hurry
+over those muffins, even if you haven't had any of Mammy's for six
+months, and, since the chicken fry is off, go home to get suppers and
+ready for psalm-singing and foxing. Parson, you are some sport, and I'll
+hold both of those puppies while you drink your tea from the hands of
+fair Charlotte."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, I don't believe I want any tea after all, and I think I'll
+take these 'puppies' on home with me through the garden, for they are
+both dying to the world." As he spoke the parson rose to his feet and
+stood with the two drowsing babies in his arms, looking down at me as I
+stood with his cup of tea in my hand. And as he looked I felt my whole
+rebellious heart and mind laid bare and I knew that he knew that I was
+ready to fight him to the last ditch in the battle for possession of the
+souls of my friends. I would fight for their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> independence of thought
+and sincerity of life, and he would fight to lead them off into a far
+country in quest of what I considered a tradition, a shibboleth, "a
+potent agent for intoxication" of the reason by which man must progress.
+I also knew that I faced a foe versed in the warfare between religion
+and modern scientific decisions about it and that he would be one worthy
+of my metal. His refusal of my cup of tea, for which he had announced
+that he came, was his gauntlet and I accepted it as I turned with the
+queer sugared rage in my heart and set the cup on the table.</p>
+
+<p>And as I had planned, and the Jaguar directed, the evening came to pass.
+While I slipped into some dancing fluff, the strains of the most
+wonderful hymn that the Christian religion possesses floated across my
+garden and into my window and again beat against my heart. The parson
+was singing with the rest of them, but his voice seemed to lift theirs
+and bear them aloft on the strong, wide wings that went soaring away
+into the night, even up to the bright stars that gleamed beyond the tips
+of the old graybeard poplars. A queer tight breath gripped my heart for
+a second as his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> plea, "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," beat
+against it, then I laughed it away.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> 'a potent agent for intoxication' when brewed by the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe, and here's where I run, both physically and mentally," I
+said to myself as I ran down the steps and out to the two cars that
+stood honking impatiently by the gate.</p>
+
+<p>I don't think I ever enjoyed a dance more, and I am sure that my
+pleasure was partly due to the wild spirits of the religiously released
+who were having the first joy fling for six months.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll not get enough until I wilt upon the floor and have to be carried
+out," said Billy, as he held me closer and slid two steps to the right
+and then back to get me out of the way of Hampton and Harriet Henderson,
+who were dancing with regardless joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you feel that way about church next Sunday?" I asked him, but my
+demand made no apparent dent, for he danced on without answering.</p>
+
+<p>At an hour after that of midnight the revelers came home and left me at
+my gate, by request, to walk alone in the brilliant spring moonlight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+through my garden to the wide door back of the white pillars. After they
+had seen me safely started, they glided away and I stood on the steps
+and watched Nell and Mark reclaim their family from a tall dark figure
+that carried out two loads to the parental arms. Then the hush that
+comes upon the world in the midnight hours fell over the Poplars and I
+stood leaning against one of the tall pillars and reveled in it.</p>
+
+<p>Goodloets is one of the tradition-grayed old towns that are rooted deep
+in the Harpeth Valley since the days of the Colonies, and in it can be
+found perhaps the purest Americanism on the American continent. The
+Poplars, under whose broad roof I made the seventh generation nested and
+fledged, spreads out its wings and gables upon a low hill which is the
+first swell of the Harpeth hills, and the rest of the old town stretches
+out on the hillside before it down to the valley, in which runs the
+Harpeth River, curving around the town and flowing out of the valley to
+the Mississippi. Behind the Poplars roll the fields and meadows of the
+Home Farm, which has given food and sustenance to the Poplars' brood
+since the days of the redskins, when it was cleared by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> the first Powers
+and his servants, with muskets ready to fire into the surrounding
+forests. To the left of the Poplars and beyond the chapel lies the
+Settlement, in which those lacking in worldly goods have lived for
+generations in a kind of semi-poverty, which is about the only poverty
+known in the Harpeth Valley. Lately, the Settlement has taken unto
+itself a measure of prosperity, because of the great tannery and harness
+works in its midst on the banks of the river, which is bringing in gold
+from Russia and France. Everybody has made money in the last few years,
+and the fashionable wing of Goodloets to the left of the Poplars shows
+improvements and restorations that are both costly and sometimes
+amazing. However, fortunately the inhabitants of the old village are
+conservative, and very little of the delicious moss of tradition has
+been scratched off; it has only been clipped into prosperous decorum,
+and antiquity still flings its glamour over the town.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as much rooted as one of the old poplars," I said to myself as
+some whim made me go down the steps and out into the garden, along the
+walks with their budding borders of narcissus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> and peonies, down through
+Nickols' sunken garden to the two oldest of all the poplars that now
+seemed to be standing sentinel to prevent any raid from me on the little
+stone meeting house over the lilac hedge. "You dear old graybeard," I
+said to the one on my left, as I looked up and saw a faint feathering of
+silver on its branches. And as I spoke I took the old trunk into my
+embrace and laid my cheek against the rough bark.</p>
+
+<p>And then something happened. Afterwards I was glad that I was leaning
+against the strength of the old graybeard poplar and hidden behind it.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly from out the shadows beyond the lilac hedge, through whose bare
+branches any movement in the yard of the chapel showed plainly, a woman
+came stumbling along towards the gate and beside her walked the parson
+with his arm supporting hers. She was sobbing the hard, dry sobs that
+any woman knows are those of despair, and which call any other woman who
+hears them. My first impulse was to run to the hedge and speak to her;
+then I stopped, for I was arrested by what the parson was saying to her.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter, Martha? You have your Master's forgiveness and His
+permission to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> go and sin no more, even though those sins be as
+scarlet." And as he spoke his voice was that of quiet authority as if he
+felt fully his apostolic right to unloose sins upon this earth.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll come back now that <i>she</i> has, and he'll come to me again. I can't
+fight him. I'll slip back into hell. Just give me the money to go out
+into the city and I'll not bother anybody any more. I'll take the child
+and I'll die for all anybody in Goodloets ever knows. Lend me the money;
+I'll send it back!" The girl's voice was hard and defiant and she turned
+and faced the minister as if at bay. "Give me that money, if all that
+praying and singing and preaching that you've done is true. I want to go
+in the morning before he follows her here and puts me in hell again. God
+won't clean me twice."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall go," came the calm answer in the apostle's beautiful voice,
+"but I will have to have a few days to provide a place of safety for you
+in the city, where the child can be cared for while you get suitable
+work."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't wait. He'll follow her and he'll look down on me and the child
+and damn me again. I won't wait. I'm weak and I dasn't. Give me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> that
+money to-night!" And the demand was passionate and savage.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll meet you at the morning train with it and rush you to a place
+of safety if there is no other way. You must go back home now, and it
+will be best not to tell anyone where you are going until you no longer
+fear your weakness, for they might betray your hiding place. Strength
+will be given you, Martha, if you only ask."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll pray, Parson, I'll pray, now that you are going to give me my
+chance to get strong enough to be good. I'll work and I'll pray, but
+hide me until I do get strong." And the hard, dry sobs melted as the
+girl put her head down upon the gate a moment and then went out through
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless you, child, and keep you ever in thought of Him," were the
+words that she carried away with her as she hurried down the street
+toward the Settlement.</p>
+
+<p>Then for a second some awful fear came across my heart that I did not
+understand. I now know that it was a premonition of what was to wring my
+own heart and I cowered against the old tree in agony. Gregory Goodloe
+was not more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> six feet away from me on the other side of the
+budding, fragrant hedge, and in the moonlight I could see the beautiful
+strength of his golden head and strong placid face, on which lines of
+pain were drawn, and I had to restrain myself from crying out to him in
+my own pain. I wanted to go quickly and cling to his strength. Then I
+stopped and listened.</p>
+
+<p>He had raised his face to the stars and was praying.</p>
+
+<p>"O Father," he asked, as if speaking to someone with whom he walked in
+the cool of the midnight, "help the weak on whom the strong prey."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went into the dark door of the little chapel and left me out in
+the cold midnight alone. The fear was gone, and comforted I went back
+through my budding garden and arrived at the front door just as old Mr.
+Pate, the telegraph operator at the little station down the street,
+turned in at the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Charlotte," he puffed, as he fairly flung the telegram at me,
+"this come fer you at ten o'clock and I risked it and run up here with
+it after I heard them ottermobiles go by. I'm courting Mrs. Jennie Hicks
+myself and I understands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> about courtings." And before I could speak he
+had run on back down the street.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood and looked at the yellow envelope fear again gripped my
+heart, and without opening it I walked into the house, locking the great
+door behind me with trembling fingers, and went toward a light I saw
+shining from the trellised back porch and which I did not understand. I
+have never in my life been the least bit afraid of anything, except
+something within my own body, from the hideous pain of my green-apple
+days to the pain I had felt as I talked beside the piano with Nickols in
+New York, a thousand miles away; but something made me pause just for a
+second in the pantry doorway before I stepped into the light upon the
+porch. I shall never forget the scene that was enacted before my
+wondering eyes in the dim light of a candle burning upon a table near
+the refrigerator.</p>
+
+<p>Father stood with a bowl of ice in his hand and his fingers were just
+closing around a squat, black bottle that I knew contained the rarest
+and choicest whiskey ever run from a distillery. His iron-gray hair was
+rampant, his dressing gown fell away from his throat and showed the
+knotting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> of the great cords that ran down into his shoulders, and his
+dark eyes glittered under their heavy, black brows, while his mouth was
+twisted and white. Then, as I looked, something happened. A stealthy
+padding of feet came around the house from the garden and up the back
+steps, under the budding rose vine that was climbing through the trellis
+as if to clutch at the light, and a huge figure loomed up from out the
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>It was the powerful Harpeth Jaguar out hunting, and his weapon was a
+hoe, while under his arm he carried a roll that looked like a
+contribution to a rag man of bedding and old clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, Mr. Powers, there is frost in the air and I have collected
+everything in the parsonage that would cover those late anemones. I saw
+your light and I thought you might add to the collection. Now what would
+we do if they should be wilted by the frost just as they are ready to
+burst bud? Our honor is involved with Graveson, who brought the seeds
+all the way from Guernsey through the trenches of France and trusted
+them to me for propagation. Why, they represent a man's life work, and
+that life may be put out by a bullet any moment! We'll have to rescue
+them."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> As he spoke, the great jeweled eyes shone with excitement under
+the dull gold brows and he seemed not to see at all the incriminating
+ice and bottle.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you get into Mrs. Dabney's linen closet? We've got to have
+something." He shivered in a little wind that blew under the rose vine
+with a frosty gust. I was just observing that he was attired in his
+pajama jacket and gray flannel trousers, and that his bare heels and
+ankles declared themselves above and at the back of his slippers, when
+my eyes were drawn to my father's face and rested there. My heart stood
+still while I watched it change. All the pain and appetite, straining as
+a beast strains at a leash, faded from his face. The deathly pallor
+vanished and the color of human blood returned. The glitter in his deep
+old eyes changed in a second from that of ferocity to that of anxious
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know where the household linen is kept and I hesitate to
+disturb Dabney, as he retired with an aching tooth; but I observed a box
+of my daughter's apparel beside a trunk in the back hall which Dabney
+had not carried up on account of its weight and which he was requiring
+his wife<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> to unpack piece by piece. I'll raid it for enough to save our
+treasures and accept whatever is my just chastisement in the morning,"
+he said in a voice of guilty stealth.</p>
+
+<p>And there I stood in the shadow of the pantry and saw my father take two
+armfuls of my costly linen and lace out into the garden. Nothing was
+spared me, for from the window I could see him and the marauding Jaguar
+weight their perfumed whiteness down with sticks and stones and clods of
+earth. I suffered, but silently.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, sir. God's blessing," I heard the rich voice calling as the
+half-bare feet padded away as swiftly as they had come through the
+garden, leaving father standing under the rose vine watching him go. And
+I watched father&mdash;and for some reason my breath seemed suspended in my
+lungs.</p>
+
+<p>For a very long minute he stood looking at the ice bowl and the bottle;
+then with a queer wry smile he walked over and put them both in the
+refrigerator, though the bottle's place was in the sideboard, and closed
+the door carefully. Then he paused again and said under his breath,
+"<i>You</i>, Judge Nickols Morris Powers!" He smiled at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> himself with
+humorous pity and tiptoed past me into the front hall and up the
+stairway to his rooms above.</p>
+
+<p>I seemed to feel strange padding footsteps down in my depths and I also
+tiptoed up to my room after I had heard his door shut.</p>
+
+<p>After I had switched on my light (for under the roof of the Poplars
+electricity had come to aid the candles of hallowed tradition, and was
+called by Mammy, in deep suspicion, "ha'nt light") I discovered clutched
+in my cold fingers the yellow envelope the romantic Mr. Pate had brought
+to me in the midnight. It read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Am coming down on Friday. Am afraid to trust the world and the
+flesh and think the third member of the carnal firm ought to be
+on the job.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;      N."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Now I am frightened really," I confided to myself as I slipped between
+the scented sheets and drew a corner of the rose-colored blanket over my
+head. "I don't know what to do."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>TO TURKEY GULCH</h3>
+
+
+<p>The next morning I was very late in descending to my breakfast, but
+arrived in time to witness Mammy's arraignment of my father, which was
+conducted in perfect respect, but with great severity.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Jedge, that menfolks don't know lace that costs a million
+dollars a yard from a blind woman's tatting, and that's what makes me
+say what I does, that it sure am dangersome fer 'em to go on a rampage
+in womenfolks' trunks. I ain't never goin' to git the stains from them
+clods of earth outen my lambs' clothes, even if the minister did help
+you put 'em on 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Melissa, those anemones were more valuable than any lace ever
+manufactured, and I am sure that Charlotte will absolve me when she
+hears of the exigencies of the case," father pleaded over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> the top of
+his morning paper. Mammy was pretending to dust his study, as a blind to
+the lecture she was administering.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I knows all that; but that lace was a heap more valuable than
+that toothache in that wuthless Dabney's jaw, which he could er wropped
+up, and hunted out all the old sheets for you instid of that petticoat
+with them real lace ruffles," was Mammy's firm rejoinder, while she
+passed a feather duster over the table and rolled her eyes at Dabney.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's let them both off this time, Mammy. Dabney can take the trunks
+where they belong and lock them up," I said, as I went toward the dining
+room, while she followed to minister upon my tardiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Them was all your finest lingerings," she said as she plied me with
+breakfast. "And they was all lost on menfolks. They hasn't even one lady
+rode by while I had 'em on the line in the sunshine," she grumbled as
+she finally retired to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>After finishing my coffee I sauntered to the front of the house, led by
+a chorus of hearty laughter in a fluty tenor voice, accompanied by a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+bass growl, in which I was sure that father was recounting the scrape in
+which his and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's anemone adventure had got them.
+I assured myself that I was annoyed by this repeated early morning
+invasion of ministerial calls and intended to retire to my room until it
+was over, but without knowing why, I found myself in the library and
+greeting the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"Please forgive us. The case was one of dire necessity," the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe pleaded, as he rose and took my hand in his, and held it in
+such a way that I was forced to look in his face and smile, whether I
+wished it or not.</p>
+
+<p>"From ambush I saw you take them, and I was powerless to prevent," I
+answered with a smile at father.</p>
+
+<p>"I came over to ask you if you wouldn't like to go away out into the
+Harpeth Hills on a mission with me this wonderful morning. I don't know
+exactly whether I am called to officiate at a birth or a death or that
+intermediate festivity, a wedding. This is the summons from an old
+friend of mine:" As he spoke he held out to me a greasy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> paper on which
+were a few words scrawled with a pencil.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Parson we need you in the morning bad. Please come with Bill
+as brings this. Bring a bible and liniment and oblige your true
+friend Jed Bangs and wife."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Isn't your friend Bill able to elucidate?" I asked, as I passed the
+paper on to father.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill seems to be dumb without being deaf and has no histrionic talent
+to act out the necessity, so I'm going with him. The Bangs family live
+up on old Harpeth at Turkey Gulch, and Jed has shot partridges with me
+all winter. Please, you and the Judge, come with me. I can get the car
+over Paradise Ridge if I turn it into a wildcat. The morning is
+delicious, and I feel that I'll need you both." Never in the world have
+I heard a man's voice with such compelling notes in it that range from a
+soft coax to a quiet command.</p>
+
+<p>I had not the slightest idea of going with him and I was about to refuse
+with as much sugary hauteur as I dared use to him, when I looked into
+father's face and accepted. I had never been on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> a picnic with my father
+in my life and I could not understand the pleading in his eyes for my
+acceptance of this invitation to an adventure in his company, but then,
+several times since I had come home, I had seen a father I had never
+known before, and he fascinated me.</p>
+
+<p>"The mountain laurel is in bloom and the rhododendron, and you are a
+very gracious lady," the Reverend Mr. Goodloe assured me with a deep bow
+over my hand, which he kissed in a very delightful foreign fashion which
+made Mammy, who had come to the door to hear my decision, roll her eyes
+in astonishment which, however, held no hint of criticism, for with her
+the spiritual king could do no wrong.</p>
+
+<p>"I got a snack fixed up jest's soon as that Dabney tol' me about the
+junket," she announced. "And I'll put a little wine jelly and flannels
+in if it am a baby and a bunch of white jessimings in case it am a
+death."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose it is a wedding?" I asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't take no notice of weddings. It was a wedding that got me into
+all the trouble of that Dabney and his wuthless son, Jefferson, what
+ain't like me in no way." With which fling at Dabney&mdash;who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> was hovering
+at the door&mdash;she rolled herself back to her kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you been doing to her now, you rascal?" father demanded of
+Dabney, who was handing him his hat and holding out his light overcoat
+to put him into it.</p>
+
+<p>"I jist stepped into the kitchen while her light rolls fer supper was
+raisin' and got a ruckus fer it," was his mild answer. Dabney lived his
+connubial life mildly in the midst of the storms of his better half.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't do it again. And put that spade in Mr. Goodloe's car, for
+I'm going to bring in some honeysuckle roots and a laurel sprout or two
+to try out in the garden," father commanded, as I took my coat and hat
+from the chair where I had thrown them the afternoon before, and went
+out to the very unministerial-looking car which stood before the
+parsonage.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I had accepted the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's invitation for the
+journey out into the hills in order to sit beside this very new kind of
+father I was dimly discovering myself to possess, but I do not to this
+day know how it happened that I was crushed against the arm steering the
+gray<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> racer as we sped through Goodloets toward Old Harpeth, while the
+judge sat beaming, though silent, beside the more silent Bill&mdash;who did
+not beam, but looked out at the road ahead with the shadow in his face
+of the fatalism that so many of the mountain folk possess.</p>
+
+<p>We were just turning out from the edge of the town, past the last house
+with its stately white pillars, when a bunch of pink-and-white
+precipitated itself directly in front of the car&mdash;which made the first
+of the wildcat springs that its master had prophesied for it and then
+stood with its engine palpitating with what seemed like mechanical fear,
+while I buried my head on the strong arm next to me, which I could feel
+tremble for an instant as the Reverend Mr. Goodloe breathed a fervent,
+"Thank God." Father rose from his seat with a good round oath and silent
+Bill snorted like a wild animal.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you stop when you saw me coming?" an imperious young voice
+demanded in tones of distinct anger, and Charlotte, my name daughter of
+the house of Morgan, calmly climbed up on the running board, over the
+door next to father, and settled herself in between him and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> silent
+Bill. "Now you can go on," she calmly announced, in a very much
+mollified tone of voice as she shook out her ruffles into a less
+compressed state and wiped her face with her dirty hand, much to the
+detriment of the roses in her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going, Charlotte, may I inquire?" asked the Reverend Mr.
+Goodloe in a cheerful and calm voice, though I saw that his fingers
+still trembled on the steering wheel as he held back the enraged gray
+engine. I was still speechless and I saw that father was in the same
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>"You said I might go 'next time' when my Auntie Harriet didn't want me
+to go with you last Tuesday on account of my stomach from the raw potato
+Jimmy dared me to eat. This is that time," she calmly answered, as she
+gave an interested look at the silent Bill and again settled the short,
+pink skirts.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I did say that," admitted Mr. Goodloe, as he turned in his seat as
+far as he could and began to argue the question. "But we shall be gone
+almost all day and I am afraid your mother wouldn't want you to be gone
+that long."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true for you to say that when you know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> that she will be mighty
+glad for you to keep me safe with you all day?" Charlotte demanded of
+him, looking directly into his smiling, friendly face.</p>
+
+<p>"No, that wasn't quite honest, I'll admit," he answered her gravely with
+the guilt of conviction showing in his face just as plainly as it would
+have shown if one of his deacons had caught him evading a question of
+grave moment. "And as it is the fulfillment of a promise which you
+claim, I am going to ask Miss Powers and the judge if they will permit
+me to add you to the party, and then go and get permission from your
+mother to take you with us."</p>
+
+<p>"My mother told me to go and bother Auntie Charlotte an hour or two and
+that was when I met you. I ran into the car just minding my mother,"
+Charlotte answered him with calm pride at her near achievement of death
+through literal obedience.</p>
+
+<p>"Just drive by and we'll call to Nell. I am afraid the case must have
+been desperate, for I am seldom the victim," I said in an undertone to
+our host, who acquiesced with a laugh. "Harriet Henderson must be dead,
+for Nell usually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> sends the worse one to her," I added under my breath.</p>
+
+<p>"My Auntie Harriet is having a man cut the ache out of one of her
+teeth," Charlotte remarked, apropos of nothing, as the huge car swung
+around into the street in which the Morgans reside. "And, besides, I
+don't like her any more, because, when she said Sue had to have part of
+the doll house she bought for us to play in down at her home, and I said
+then Sue would have to take the outside because I wanted the inside, she
+locked it up for all this week."</p>
+
+<p>"The modern business acumen of the feministic persuasion," father
+remarked, as we all laughed at this candid revelation of an egocentric
+attitude of mind in small Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>After a few whirls of the gray wheels we paused a moment at the Morgan
+gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens, yes, and thank you," called Nell in response to our demand for
+her small daughter's company. "If I had another one clean, I'd give it
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Better go on quick, for Jimmy can wash in a piece of a minute if he
+wants to," warned Charlotte, and in a second the parson had sent the
+gray<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> car flying out toward Old Harpeth, though I saw him glance back
+with a trace of distress in his eyes at the fading vision of a small boy
+running, howling, to the front gate of the Morgan residence.</p>
+
+<p>"Now mother'll whip him for crying if she does as she says she would,
+but she won't," observed the tender big sister, as she rose to her feet
+and waved a maddening farewell to the distressed urchin being left
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she totally depraved?" I asked of the young Charlotte's spiritual
+adviser at my side.</p>
+
+<p>"No; perfectly honest," he answered me with a glint in his eyes that was
+a laughing challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something awful about honesty," I answered, without appearing
+to notice the glint.</p>
+
+<p>"There wouldn't be if it were a universal custom," was the answer I got
+as we whirled by a farmer's wood lot and began to climb the first
+foothill of Old Harpeth.</p>
+
+<p>All my life I have been going out to Old Harpeth on excursions, but
+never had I spent a day like the one I had begun with the Jaguar in his
+native fastnesses. The whole old mountain was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> beginning to bud and I
+could almost see it draping on a regal Persian garment of rose and green
+threaded with purple and blue woven against the old brown and gray of
+the earth color. The wine-colored trillium with its huge spotted leaves,
+the slender white dog-tooth violets, the rose-pink arbutus, the blue
+star myrtle and the crimson oak buds, were matted into a vast robe that
+was gorgeously oriental, while a perfume that was surely more delicious
+than any ever wafted from the gardens of Arabia floated past us in gusts
+through which the gray car sped without the slightest shortness of
+breath. I seemed a million miles away from the great fetid city in which
+I had been living&mdash;and fast going farther. As we wound up and up into
+the great forest which is the crown of Old Harpeth, we could look down
+through occasional vistas and see the Harpeth River curling and bending
+through pastures in which the chocolate plowed fields were laid off in
+huge checks with the green meadows, while the farmhouses and barns
+dotted the valley like the crude figures on a hand-woven chintz.</p>
+
+<p>There are very few men who know enough not to talk to a woman when she
+has no desire for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> their conversation, but the Reverend Jaguar seemed to
+be one of the variety who comprehend the value of silences, and neither
+of us spoke for at least ten miles, though, of course, it was his duty
+to make hay while the sun of my nature shone upon him and delicately to
+inquire into my spiritual condition. He didn't. He just let the wind
+blow into my empty spaces and kept his eyes and thoughts on the road
+ahead of him. Charlotte's chatter with father was blown back from me and
+I was happy in a kind of aloneness I had never felt before.</p>
+
+<p>"We are in Hastings County now and in a few minutes we shall be in Hicks
+Center, the county seat," were the first words that broke in on my
+self-communion as we began to speed past rough board and log cabins,
+each surrounded by a picket fence which in no way seemed to fend the
+doorsteps from razor-back pigs, chickens and a few young mules and
+calves. "It must be court day, for I don't see a single inhabitant
+sitting chewing under his own vine and fig tree."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it's the first Monday," answered father, as the gray machine
+pulled gallantly through a few hundred feet of thick, black mud and
+turned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> from the wilderness into the public square of the metropolis of
+Hicks Center.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, court is in session and there the whole population is in the
+courthouse," said father, as we glided slowly down the village street.
+"They must be trying a murder or a horse-stealing case," and I saw his
+eyes gleam for a second under their heavy brows as the eyes of an old
+war horse must gleam when he scents powder.</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh," assented silent Bill, making the first remark of the journey, and
+as he spoke the syllable he rose and pointed to the courthouse, which
+stood in the midst of a mud-covered public square, completely surrounded
+by hitching-posts to which were hitched all the vehicles of locomotion
+of the last century down to the present in Hicks Center&mdash;which had not
+as yet arrived as far as the day of the motor car.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Jed in there, Bill?" demanded the Reverend Mr. Goodloe; and as Bill
+assented with muscular vigor, if not vocal, he drew the gray car up
+beside, an old-fashioned carryall, whose wheels were at least five feet
+high and which had hitched to its pole an old horse and a young mule.</p>
+
+<p>"That team makes a nice balance of&mdash;temperament,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> Mr. Goodloe remarked,
+as he lifted out Charlotte and then turned to swing me, in his strong
+arms, free of a mud puddle and onto the old brick pavement which was
+green with the moss of generations.</p>
+
+<p>Then, piloted by the silent Bill, we made our way through a quiet throng
+of men and women and children, from the awkward age of shoe-top trousers
+and skirts to that which, in many cases, was partaking from the maternal
+fount, as the women stood in groups and whispered as they looked at us
+shyly. Somehow their decorous calico skirts, which just cleared the
+ground, made me feel naked in my own of white corduroy, which was all of
+eight inches from the mud in which theirs had draggled.</p>
+
+<p>And as silent as they, even Charlotte's chatter subdued, we entered the
+court room and were led through a crowd up to the front seat. At least
+the rest of us were seated, but the judge, jury and prisoner and
+prosecuting attorney rose in a body and shook hands with the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe as if he were their common and best beloved son.</p>
+
+<p>"He's been in the Harpeth Valley less than a year, and look at that.
+We've been here all our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> lives and they don't know who we are,"
+whispered father, with the same pride shining in his eyes that shone
+upon the parson from the eyes of the gaunt prisoner, who rose and shook
+hands with Mr. Goodloe with the sheriff beside him, while the rough old
+judge from the bench waited his turn.</p>
+
+<p>"We accommodated Jed by waiting until you come before we begun his
+trial, Parson," the judge said, as he turned back to his bench, which
+was a splint-bottom chair behind a rude table, dignity being lent to the
+chair by its being the only one in the room. The rest of the population
+of the court room of Hicks Center were seated upon benches made of split
+and hewn logs.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Hilldrop," said the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, as he sat down
+beside the prisoner and began a whispered conversation with him.</p>
+
+<p>"The court have come to order. Shoot ahead, Jim, and tell us what Jed
+have done and how he done it," commanded the judge, as he tilted back
+his chair, took out his knife and began to whittle a stick of bright red
+cedar. Twelve good men and true, attired in butternut trousers stuffed
+into muddy boots, settled themselves in the jury box,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> which was a log
+bench set at right angles to the other benches, a little apart from the
+table and chair of the judge, and nine of them took out their knives and
+bits of cedar and began to follow the lead of the judge in making fine
+pink curls fall upon the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"May it please your honor, the prisoner is charged with the stealing of
+a young mule," said a lanky young mountain lawyer, who had put on a coat
+over his flannel shirt and brushed a little patch of tow hair just above
+his brows in deference to his position of prosecuting attorney.</p>
+
+<p>"State yo' case," commanded the judge, as he tried the point of his
+splinter against his thumb to test its whittled sharpness.</p>
+
+<p>"Hiram Turner, over at Sycamore, lent Jed a team of mules to haul his
+daughter, who married Jed, home in a wagon with her beds and truck, and
+when he come down Paradise Ridge to git the team, Jed claimed one had
+got away from him and run off in the big woods. They was a horse and
+mule trader come along the same day Jed lost the mule and when Hi and
+his boy, Bud, knocked Jed down in a fight they found fifty dollars on
+him in a wad what he won't say where he got it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With which concise statement the prosecuting attorney sat down and
+fanned his perspiring brow with his ragged felt hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Got anything to say, Jed?" inquired the judge in a friendly and
+leisurely fashion, after the accused had been duly sworn in by the
+sheriff. "How come a man like you to let a mule git away from him?"</p>
+
+<p>With the judge's friendly question there entered another actor on the
+scene, in the person of a mountain girl who had been cowering on a bench
+just behind Jed, her face hidden by a black calico split bonnet.</p>
+
+<p>"Please lemme tell, Jed," she pleaded in a soft whisper that only father
+and I heard, as we sat just behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Naw," was the one word he gave her, but it was spoken with a soft
+little purr in his husky voice. Then he answered the judge with a kind
+of quiet dignity, which I saw that the twelve booted jurymen listened to
+with respect.</p>
+
+<p>"Jedge," he said, with a stern look into the judge's face, "I reckon
+you'll have to send me down to the pen. I let that mule git away from me
+and I didn't steal or sell him; that is all I got<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> to say." And he sat
+down. I felt father start at my side and then sink back onto his bench.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you git the money, Jed?" the judge demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"That I ain't a-telling," answered Jed determinedly. "Jest send me down
+to the pen, fer you-all know all you'll ever know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Jed," the judge was beginning to say in an argumentative tone of
+voice, when father arose and stepped in front of the bench.</p>
+
+<p>"May it please your honor to appoint a counsel for the defense?" he
+asked in a ringing voice that brought all the outsiders crowding into
+the door. I had never heard or seen my father in a court room and I had
+never suspected him of the resonant silver voice with which he made his
+demand.</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't got a lawyer in Hicks Center but Jim Handy here, and he can't
+prosecute and defend too. I always kinder looks out fer the prisoners
+myself," answered the judge.</p>
+
+<p>"Then may I offer myself to the prisoner to conduct his defense?" father
+demanded, and he looked over at Jed, who in turn looked at Mr. Goodloe
+before he nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Then shoot ahead, stranger. Jim have told all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> they is about it, but
+you can have Hi and Bud Turner sworn in and git any more they have got
+to say. Them men speaks truth when they speaks." At which statement
+every good man and true nodded his head with firm conviction. A gaunt
+old mountaineer who sat over by the window cleared his throat in an
+embarrassment that marked him as the Hiram Turner alluded to.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I shall need the testimony of Mr. Turner or his son,"
+father answered quietly, as he stood tall and straight before the jury.
+"I want to put Mr. Bangs' wife on the witness stand and question her
+before the jury. Sheriff, call Mrs. Bangs."</p>
+
+<p>"Naw, stranger, naw," said Jed, and he rose as if to combat, but Mr.
+Goodloe laid a restraining hand on his arm, and trembling, he took his
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell nothing, honey," he whispered, as the girl rose from her
+bench, laid aside her cavernous black bonnet and advanced, took the oath
+administered by the sheriff and stood facing father.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mrs. Bangs," said father, with silvery tenderness in his voice
+which I felt sure had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> gained him the reputation of never having lost a
+case in which a woman was involved, "I want you to tell us all that
+happened on the day that Jed let the mule escape him. Look at me and
+tell me all about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, stranger," began the mountain girl, with a look of confidence
+coming into her face that was like a little pink wide-open arbutus, "I
+reckon you won't believe me&mdash;like Jed didn't at first, though he do
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell, honey," the prisoner commanded and implored in the one
+plea. "I'd rather take the pen. They won't believe you."</p>
+
+<p>"It war this way," she continued, without seeming to hear the command of
+her young husband, upon whose arm the parson again laid a restraining
+hand. "Jed he had unhitched the team and tied them with their rope
+halters to the fence 'fore our cabin, when it was almost dark 'fore we
+got thar. Then while I was unpacking the wagon he got on one horse and
+rid down the side of the gulch to see whar water was at. I was jest
+takin' the things in when a man come along leading five mules and riding
+on one. He was a city stranger in fine clothes and he asked me fer a
+meal because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> he had lost his way from a man who had a tent and grub. My
+mammy allus cooked fer strangers, so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She shore do that," ejaculated Mr. Turner, proud of his noted
+hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>"So I made up a fire hasty in the yard and put on a coffee pot," the
+girl continued. "I had some corn pone and bacon my mammy had give me fer
+a snack and I het that up. Whilst I got the meal the stranger he went on
+unloading our wagon and then he come to a bundle of bed quilts what my
+mammy have been saving fer me from her mammy and her grandmammy. He took
+a notion to them and ast me how old they was and I told him about as old
+as any twenty-inch cedar on Old Harpeth. He asked me to trade 'em, but I
+couldn't abear to until he had riz to fifty dollars, what was the price
+of a young mule, all on account of his sister wanting quilts like them
+up in a big city. I was kinder crying quiet at letting 'em go, but I
+thought about what that mule would be to Jed who wuz so good to me, so I
+give 'em to him and he tied 'em on his saddle and went away. It war most
+a hour when Jed come and when I told him and showed him the money, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+didn't believe me about them old quilts and he tooken the rope from
+around the neck of the mule he'd been riding and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She paused here in her story and put her scarlet flower face in her
+hands, while Jed groaned and dropped his own face down upon his arm. The
+old judge's face took on a grim sternness, the jury stopped whittling
+and the face of every woman in the court room gazed upon the girl with
+stern unbelieving accusation.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, now, honey, but they won't believe you," commanded Jed with a
+sob.</p>
+
+<p>"Your husband took the rope from around the neck of the mule and left
+him untied?" asked father gently.</p>
+
+<p>"What fer, Melissa?" asked the old judge, without gentleness or any show
+of confidence in what the shrinking woman was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"To beat me with. He war crazed mad and called me a name, but I don't
+hold it ag'in him," answered the young wife, with a glance at the
+cowering prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"He done right," calmly announced one of the twelve good men and true,
+in the muddy boots and flannel shirt, and every mountain woman in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the
+court room nodded her head in approval of the pronouncement.</p>
+
+<p>"Order in the court room. You all shet up and listen," commanded the
+judge, as father looked around the room and then at him with a stern
+demand for control of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what happened, Mrs. Bangs?" father continued to question.</p>
+
+<p>"I hollered and fought and skeered the mule off into the big woods where
+he can't be found to keep my husband out of the pen," she answered with
+a sob. "It took me a week to make him believe about them quilts and then
+pappy come along and fought him about the mule and found the money, as
+he claimed he sold the mule fer what was the quilt money."</p>
+
+<p>"That will do. Thank you, Mrs. Bangs," said father, with the same
+deference and tenderness he had used when he began to question her.
+"Does the prosecution wish to question the witness?"</p>
+
+<p>"They ain't no use of questioning her when she says a man give her fifty
+dollars fer five old quilts," was the answer made by the young
+prosecuting attorney, who did not rise to his feet to make this remark.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Please ask Mrs. Bangs if the quilts were woven ones of three colors,
+and then call me to the stand," I said to father quickly.</p>
+
+<p>He put the question to the weeping young wife and got an affirmative
+answer, after which he dismissed her and had the sheriff swear me in.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you throw any light upon the matter of the purchase or sale of
+these quilts, Miss Powers?" father questioned me formally.</p>
+
+<p>"If they were old hand-woven, herb-dyed, knitted quilts, they are worth
+fifty dollars apiece in New York to-day. I paid that for one not five
+months ago," I said, staring haughtily into the calmly doubting faces of
+the mountaineers in the jury box and on the benches.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to question the witness?" my father asked of the indolent
+young prosecutor.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know who she is and don't believe she is telling the truth," was
+the laconic refusal of the prosecutor to let me influence his case.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, Jim, Parson Goodloe here brought the gal along with him and
+I reckon he can character witness for her," interposed the judge.
+"Sheriff, swear in the parson." His command was duly executed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Goodloe, do you consider Miss Powers a woman who can be depended
+upon to speak the truth?" father asked him formally.</p>
+
+<p>"I do," the Reverend Mr. Goodloe answered quietly, and just for a second
+a gleam from his eyes under their dull gold brows shot across the
+distance to me, and if it hadn't all been so serious I should have
+laughed with glee at his thus having to declare himself about my
+character in public. But the next moment the situation became much more
+serious and my heart positively stopped still as I seemed to see prison
+doors close upon the young husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to question the witness?" father asked of the lolling young
+prosecutor.</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you known the lady, Parson?" he asked, with a drawl and
+one eye half closed.</p>
+
+<p>There was an intense silence in the court room for almost a minute. Then
+the Reverend Mr. Gregory Goodloe answered calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"Three days."</p>
+
+<p>"That might be long enough fer a parson, but it ain't fer a jury," the
+young attorney answered, and there was a quizzical kindness in the old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+judge's face as he smiled at Mr. Goodloe and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goodloe started to speak, but father waved him back to his seat,
+turned to the judge and jury and began the most wonderful speech on the
+subject of circumstantial evidence and ethical law that I have ever
+heard. His beautiful deep voice was as clear as a bell and twenty years
+seemed to have fallen from his shoulders. I was looking at and listening
+to the man he had been before I was born. And when I could tear my eyes
+from his radiant face I watched these stolid mountaineers with whom he
+was working his will with a power they had never experienced before and
+did not understand. The men in the jury box and the men on the hewn
+benches dropped their eyes before his flaming ones as he shamed their
+censorious manhood and some of the sun-bonneted women bent their heads
+and sobbed when he arraigned them for the lack of motherhood and
+sisterhood for the poor young wife who had come over the Ridge to live
+among them.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you men and women rather believe a girl light of love and
+faithless, and send your neighbor to prison for two years of his young
+life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> when he could mean much to you and his state and his nation, than
+to give them a little human sympathy and justice. Do you prefer to pin
+your faith to the value of a worthless, vagrant mule than&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But just here, when Judge Nickols Morris Powers was winding himself up
+for one of the greatest appeals to a jury he had ever made, a mule
+stepped into the case and took away the honor of its winning. He poked
+his inquisitive nose into a back window of the court room which looked
+out upon the edge of the big woods, and gave the whole assemblage a
+hew-haw of derision.</p>
+
+<p>"Lordy mighty, that are Pete come back hisself with all the curkles in
+the big woods sticking to him!" exclaimed Hiram Turner, as he rose and
+went to examine his property. "He wasn't sold to no mule man, fer they
+crops the hair on their hoofs to see if they's healthy 'fore they buys.
+This here frees Jed."</p>
+
+<p>"And now that you gentlemen have the testimony of a mule, will you not
+believe the word of Mrs. Bangs and Miss Powers about the valuable
+quilts?" my father said, after he had commanded silence by raising his
+hand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We shore do believe every word of it, stranger, and you won this here
+case and not that mule," a stern old sister in a gingham apron and black
+bonnet said, with a commanding glance at the jury.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, stranger," answered the hoary old foreman, whom to this day I
+believe to be the meek husband of the commanding old woman in the black
+bonnet. "I have done got the mind of the jury and they all voted fer you
+and not the mule."</p>
+
+<p>"I hereby gives that mule to Jed Bangs and my daughter, Melissa, and
+I'll knock off a half on the price of his teammate to Jed if he gives me
+his fergiveness and hern," old Hiram rose and turned with his hand on
+the forelock of the mule hero to say to the assembled court room. "Go
+around and halter him quick, Jed, 'fore he breaks away again, the durned
+fool," he added in another voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, prisoner, you are declared free, and hurry to ketch him, fer he's
+straining ag'inst Hiram," was the judge's sentence, delivered from the
+bench as everybody rose and began to stream out to watch the tussle
+between Jed and the wild mule.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> Father and the parson were among the
+first to gain the door.</p>
+
+<p>In the next few minutes I found that some of the shy mountain women were
+beginning to hover about me, and in another ten minutes I had laid the
+foundations of an export rug and quilt business that I have a feeling
+will thrive greatly.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you arrested because your mother told you not to sell the quilts?"
+was Charlotte's sympathetic question to the young Mrs. Bangs; and I saw
+the mite take a clean handkerchief from her small pink pocket and apply
+it to the tears that were coursing down Melissa's cheeks over the
+dimples which her smiling mouth was putting in their way. "Just be a
+good girl and God will forgive you," she comforted further, nestling a
+dirty pink cheek, which rubbed off, against Melissa's wet one.</p>
+
+<p>"And I asked if she were totally depraved, less than an hour ago," I
+apologized to my name daughter in my heart.</p>
+
+<p>All the way home I sat beside father, and once I laid a timid hand in
+his, through whose fingers the pride I had in him must have flowed into
+his. He flushed for a second and then was pale again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You can't put new wine in old bottles, daughter," he said sadly, as he
+glanced down into the valley. The car was running smoothly, slowly and
+noiselessly around a sharp curve, and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe both
+heard and answered the sad axiom.</p>
+
+<p>"The finest wine mellows in casks and is then bottled free of dregs,
+Judge. I think the wine of life is of that vintage," he said, with one
+of his radiant smiles that I could see fairly warm father from his
+paleness.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder just what he meant by 'the wine of life,'" I asked myself as I
+went to say good night to Old Harpeth after I put out my light before
+going to bed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>HAVING IT OUT</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Well, of course, we knew Nickols would follow you, Charlotte, but we
+did hope to have you all to ourselves for more than just a week," moaned
+Nell Morgan, as we all sat on the front porch of the Poplars in the warm
+spring sunlight several mornings after I had told them of Nickols'
+arrival on Friday, which announcement had come in the midnight telegram.
+I winced at the words "follow you," and then smiled at the absurdity of
+the little shudder.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Nickols will be absorbing, but we can all sit hard on him and
+perhaps put him in his place," responded Letitia Cockrell, as she drew a
+fine thread through a ruffle she was making to adorn some part of the
+person of one of Nell's progeny. "I do not believe in ever allowing a
+man to take more than his share of a woman's time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you use grocery scales or a pint cup to measure out Cliff Gray's
+daily portion of yourself, Letitia?" asked Harriet Henderson, with a
+very sophisticated laugh in which Nell joined with a little giggle.
+Harriet was appliqueing velvet violets on a gray chiffon scarf and was
+doing it with the zest of the newly liberated. Roger Henderson had had a
+lot of money that, in default of a will, the law gave mostly to Harriet,
+but in life he had not had the joy of seeing her spend it that he might
+have had if he could have gazed back from placid death. "Do you make the
+same allowance of affection to him in the light of the moon that you do
+in the dark?" she further demanded of the serene Letitia.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he doesn't have to see his share divided up into bits and handed
+out to the other men," was the serene answer to Harriet's gibe and which
+was pretty good for Letitia.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child," declaimed Harriet, as she poised a purple violet on the
+end of her needle, "don't ever, ever make the mistake of letting one of
+the creatures know just what is coming to him. Isn't that right, Nell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and it is pretty hard to keep them in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> state of uncertainty
+about you when there are four certain children between you, but I go
+over to visit my mother at Hillsboro as often as she'll have the caravan
+and plead with Billy Harvey or Hampton Dibrell to keep me out until I'm
+late for dinner every time they pick me up for a little charitable spin.
+That and other deceptions have kept Mark Morgan uncertainly happy so
+far, but if I am pushed to the wall I'll&mdash;I'll go to the Reverend Mr.
+Goodloe's study for ministerial counsel like you did last Friday
+afternoon, Harriet," was Nell's contribution to the discussion, which
+she delivered over the head of the Suckling on her breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Now how did you get hold of that choice bit of scandal, Nellie?" asked
+Harriet, with serene interest as she bit off a tag of purple silk thread
+from the stem of one of her violets.</p>
+
+<p>"Billy Harvey says that scandal is a yellow pup that dogs a parson's
+heels, to which everybody throws some kind of bone," remarked Jessie.
+Jessie always vigorously represses Billy in his own presence and then
+quotes him eternally when he is absent.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother Spurlock had come over from the Settlement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> to see him about the
+state of the treasury of the Mothers' Aid Class, and she stopped in to
+get a bundle of clothes I had for her," Nell answered Harriet's
+question. "She said she didn't mind the hour lost if the parson could
+give a 'wee bit of comfort' to your 'wrestling' soul. I didn't like to
+tell her that I thought it might be Mr. Goodloe who was wrestling&mdash;for
+life and liberty&mdash;for you and I have been friends since we could toddle,
+Harriet, but it was temptation to share my anxiety with her." And
+serenely Nellie patted the back of the drowsing Suckling.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong this time, Nell," answered Harriet, as she placed still another
+violet. "I was doing the wrestling, but I went to the mat. I gave up
+twenty-five dollars and took the directorship of that Mothers' Aid.
+Never having been a mother, I pointed out to him that I was not exactly
+qualified, but he laid stress upon my energy and business acumen and I
+gave up. I mentioned you for the honor, but those marvelous eyes of his
+glowed with some sort of inner warmth and he said that you had all you
+could do and would need help from me just as the women at the Settlement
+do. I'm going to present your Susan with a frock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> out of that linen and
+real Valenciennes I bought in the city last week for a blouse for my own
+self, and I'm going to give the making to that little Burns woman, who
+sews so beautifully and cheaply to support her seven offspring, while
+Mr. Burns supports 'The Last Chance' saloon down at the end of the road.
+In that way I'll be aiding two of Mr. Goodloe's flock at the same time,
+and when I told him my decision he laughed and said be sure and have it
+made two inches shorter than you made Sue's frocks, because her bare
+knees ought not to be hid from the world. That was about all that
+transpired in the whole hour of spiritual conference you are spreading
+the scandal about, and you ought to be ashamed."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly something in me made me determine to have it out with those
+four women and see what results I could get. I felt thirsty for
+knowledge of the wellsprings of other people's lives.</p>
+
+<p>"Harriet," I demanded, "just why did you join Mr. Goodloe's church?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see," answered Harriet, as she poised a violet and gave herself
+up to introspection.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Goodloe?" I asked squarely, and my honesty drew its spark from
+hers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mostly," she answered briefly. "And I believe in the church as an
+institution," she added, with honest justice to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it is absolutely horrid of you to ask a question like that,
+Charlotte," said Nell, as she turned the fretting Suckling over on her
+knee and began another series of pats. "We all of us went to church and
+Sunday school when we were children."</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the time I left, not a single one of you ever had gone to church
+with any kind of regularity and not a one of you had ever supported its
+institutions. I've been here less than a week and each one of you has in
+some way shown me how bored you are with the relation. That's all the
+case I have against your or any church&mdash;just that the members are bored.
+Also, do any of you get any help in your daily lives, aside from the
+emotional pleasure it is to you to hear your minister sing twice a week,
+which would be as great or greater if he sang love and waltz songs from
+light opera for you?"</p>
+
+<p>And as I asked my question I looked quickly from one to the other of the
+four women seated with me under the roof of the Poplars and tried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> to
+search out what was in their hearts. I knew them and their lives with
+the cruel completeness it is given to friends to know each other in
+small towns like Goodloets and I could probe with a certain touch. And
+as they all sat silent with me, each one driven to self-question by my
+demand, I threw the flash of a searchlight into each of them. These are
+some of the things that stood out in the illumination:</p>
+
+<p>Harriet Henderson has always been in love with Mark Morgan, since her
+shoe-top-dress days, and she married Roger Henderson because Mark was as
+poor as she before the Phosphate Company gave him his managership. Nell
+and the babies are the nails driven in her heart every day and she loves
+them all passionately. She is only twenty-eight and life will be long
+for her. She needs help to live it. Whence will the help come?</p>
+
+<p>Nell married Mark when she was eighteen and has produced a result every
+year and a half since. She loves him mildly and he loves her after a
+fashion, but her endurance is wearing thin. His mother had seven
+children and he thinks that an ideal number, though she was one
+generation nearer the pioneer woman and also had a nurse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> trained in
+slavery who was a wizard with children. Mark wants to have a lot of joy
+of life and so far he drags poor exhausted Nell with him. It is a
+question how long she can stand the social pace and the over-production.
+What is going to help her when she breaks down? How will she hold him
+faithful while she rears and trains all the kiddies? Where will she get
+spirit to love him and work out their salvation? Also Harriet is always
+there. Something will have to help Nell. What?</p>
+
+<p>Billy loves Nell and doesn't know it. He loved her before she was
+married. The children make him rage superficially and burn inwardly. He
+gambles and drinks, but is honest and adorable. What is going to make a
+real man of him?</p>
+
+<p>Jessie Litton's mother died in a private sanitarium for the mentally
+unbalanced and she knows all about it. She loves Hampton Dibrell and
+never looks in his direction or is a moment alone with him. He is in the
+unattached state of ease where any woman can get him if she cares to
+try, and Jessie has to keep her hands behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Letitia is serenely happy with not a dark corner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> that I know of. She
+loves Cliff Gray and always will. Cliff is faithful and as good as gold,
+but he will hang around Jessie, who encourages him, because she is
+lonely and considers him safely tied up with Letitia. Mr. Cockrell is
+the best lawyer in town and Mrs. Cockrell the most devoted wife and
+mother. I can only feel that Letitia Cockrell needs a jolt and I don't
+see where it is coming from.</p>
+
+<p>And I? I am lonely. And I feel that the constant anxiety about father is
+more than I can bear, worse now when I realize what he has been and
+could be&mdash;and that I love him. He is the hardest drinker in Goodloets
+and yet never is drunk. He is soaked from the beginning of one day to
+another. He began to drink like that the day my mother died and I have
+always known that <i>I</i> was helpless to help him. The weakness was in him,
+only supported by her strength so long as she was there. He was the most
+brilliant mind in the state, and was one of the supreme judges when
+mother died. Now Mr. Cockrell manages his business for him and I have
+lately come to know that I must sit by and watch him disintegrate. I
+cannot endure it now, as I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> been doing. What is going to help me in
+this&mdash;shame for him? I have gone away to my mother's people to forget
+and left him to Dabney, and I've come home&mdash;to begin the suffering all
+over. I'll never leave him again. What's going to help me?</p>
+
+<p>And there is something deeper&mdash;a race something that fairly eats the
+heart out of my pride. On almost every page of the history of the
+Harpeth Valley the name of Powers occurs. One Powers man has been
+governor of the state, and there have been two United States congressmen
+and a senator of our house. Father is the last of the line. Because race
+instinct is the strongest in women, I am the one who suffers as I see my
+family die out. What is going to help me? A few gospel hymns in a tenor
+voice the like of which I should have to pay at least three dollars to
+hear in the Metropolitan? The scene on the porch rose in my mind, but I
+felt that I both doubted and feared such succor.</p>
+
+<p>And I am in still deeper depths. Nickols is the son of father's first
+cousin, and has father's full name, Nickols Morris Powers, and he is the
+last of his branch of the house. Father loves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> him and is proud of him
+and nothing ever enters his mind except that I will marry Nickols and
+start the family all over again. And this is the tragedy. I love Nickols
+and am entirely unsatisfied with him. He is the Whistler nocturne that
+my Sorolla nature demands, and he eternally makes me hold out my hand to
+grasp&mdash;nothing. He stands just beyond. I am unable to decide whether he
+does or does not love me. In New York he lives his life among the
+artists and fashionable people with whom his highly successful
+profession throws him, and I don't see why he cares to come back here
+where he was born and reared, in pursuit of a woman like me. I am as
+elemental as a shock of wheat back on one of father's meadows and
+Nickols is completely evolved. He laughs at race pride and resents mine.
+For six months I had been in New York living with Aunt Clara in Uncle
+Jonathan Van Eyek's old house down on Gramercy just to go into Nickols'
+life with him. I went about in the white lights of both Murray Hill and
+Greenwich Village for about one hundred and eighty-five evenings, and
+then I fled back to my garden and the poplars&mdash;and my anxiety. I thought
+I had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> come home to be free and I found the same old chains. And then
+had come Nickols' telegram of pursuit in the midnight after I had stood
+by in the shadow and watched a strong man pray and a weak man battle
+with himself. I was frightened, frightened at the future, and what was
+going to help me?</p>
+
+<p>"I don't actually understand a word of Gregory Goodloe's sermons, really
+understand them, I mean, but it helps me to see that somebody truly
+believes that there is something somewhere that will straighten out
+tangles&mdash;in life as well as thread."</p>
+
+<p>Harriet broke in on my still hunt into my own and other people's inner
+shrines as she snapped a bit of tangled purple silk thread, knotted it
+and began all over again on the violet.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care what he preaches about&mdash;he's soothing and I need a little
+repose in my life after&mdash;Oh, what is the matter now?" And as she
+finished speaking Nell Morgan arose and went with the Suckling asquirm
+in her arms to meet the large noise that was arriving down the front
+walk.</p>
+
+<p>The delegation was headed by young Charlotte,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> whose blue eyes flamed
+across a very tip-tilted nose that bespoke mischief. Jimmy stolidly
+brought up the rear with small Sue clinging loyally to his dirty little
+paddie, which she only let go to run and bury her cornsilk topknot in
+Harriet's outspread arms, where she was engulfed into safety until only
+the most delicious dimpled pink knees protruded above dusty white socks
+and equally dusty white canvas sandals. Though within a few months of
+four, Sue had discovered Harriet, and never failed to take advantage of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter?" again demanded Nell, as the vocal chords of
+Charlotte ceased reverberating and her countenance resumed a more normal
+color and expression.</p>
+
+<p>"A rock flew and the minister's window got broked." Charlotte gave forth
+this announcement with a diplomacy that might have been admirable
+exerted in a juster cause.</p>
+
+<p>"Who had the rock?" demanded the mother sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Jimmy," was the decided answer, given with a threatening glance at the
+son of the house of Morgan, who quailed in his socks and sandals and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+began an attempt to screw one of his toes under one of the flagstones of
+the walk. I knew in an instant that that rock had never left the hand of
+small James, but the clash of Nell's wits with young Charlotte is so
+constant that at times the maternal ones are dulled. The accused must
+have psychically scented my sympathy, for he lifted large, scared,
+pleading eyes to mine for a brief second and then dropped them again. I
+went to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"Sue, who broke the window?" I asked, as I extricated the four-year-old
+witness from Harriet's chiffon and violets. I doubted if young Susan had
+attained the years of prevarication as yet. I was right.</p>
+
+<p>"Tarlie," was the positive answer. "Boom&mdash;book&mdash;crk!" was the graphic
+description of the crash she added as she squirmed back among the
+violets and the needles and the thread.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte!" exclaimed Nell, in real despair.</p>
+
+<p>"Jimmy did have the rock in his pocket, and he just lent it to me to
+throw at a bird right above the window. It was a nice round one, and he
+brought it from home to see if he could kill anything. It most killed
+the minister, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> rock is a little bluggy. Isn't it, Jimmy? He's
+got it in his pocket for keeps."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered young James, with the brevity with which he usually made
+responses to the loquacity of his sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you hit Mr. Goodloe, as well as broke the window?"
+demanded Nell in still more horror, as she came down two of the front
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't mind," answered Charlotte. "He liked it, because he made us
+both learn a verse of a hymn to sing for punish, and Sue can sing it,
+too. Come on, Sue!" and before any of us could recover from our horror
+at the violence the young parson had suffered at the hands of the
+marauders, Charlotte had lined the other two up on either hand and begun
+her exhibition of the benefit arising from the throwing of the rock. It
+was a very good example of the good that may result from evil, which is
+one of the puzzling reverses of one of the Christian tenets.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Work, for the night is coming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Work through the morning hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Work while the dew is sparkling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Work 'mid springing flowers,'"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>trilled Charlotte in a high, buzzy young voice, while Jimmy piped in a
+few notes lower. Baby Sue's little, clear jumble of words in perfect
+tune was so bewitchingly sweet that Harriet again engulfed her, while
+the outraged mother, not so easily beguiled, sailed down the steps and
+around through the garden toward the chapel, driving the two older
+offenders before her to the scene of the crime.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is going to help Nell train up liars and murderers into good
+citizens?" I asked myself in my depths, as I joined with the others in
+the admiring laugh at young Charlotte's dramatic powers.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Goodloe is the most wonderful thing I ever saw with kiddies," said
+Jessie Litton, as she rose to her feet to begin leave-taking. "Yes, I
+must go, for father expects me to luncheon," she added, at my
+remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to kidnap Sue while I can, and I may never bring her back. I
+must fly!" said Harriet, and she departed hastily to the small roadster
+she had parked beside the gate. "Come on, Letitia, and let me take you
+home," she called over her shoulder, and Letitia followed to secure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> the
+short spin around the corner to the old Cockrell home, which was set
+back from the street behind a tall hedge of waxy-leaved Cherokee roses.
+Thus almost in the twinkling of an eye I was left alone, which state,
+however, did not last more than a few seconds, for around the corner of
+the house from the chapel, from which direction the whole world seemed
+to be going or coming, arrived Mrs. Elsie Spurlock, beaming the welcome
+to me that had always found a ready response.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>DEEP DIGGING</h3>
+
+
+<p>And in another twinkling of eyes, both of mine and hers, I had taken her
+bundle from her, seated her in the largest rocking chair, and she had
+untied her bonnet strings, which denoted that she had come for a genuine
+visit.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, dearie, dearie me, the sight of you is good for tired eyes,
+Charlotte," she bumbled in her rich, deep old voice. As she spoke she
+tucked a white wisp of a curl back into place beneath the second water
+wave that protruded from under the little white widow's ruche in her
+bonnet and continued to beam at me. "I met Nellie Morgan and her
+Annarugans hurrying to pray a pardon from Mr. Goodloe for that rock
+which might have killed him, if thrown an inch to the right, instead of
+only nicking that yellow head of his, the Lord be praised!"</p>
+
+<p>"What was that same Lord doing when he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> let the rock fly from
+Charlotte's hand to within an inch of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's life,
+Mother Spurlock?" I asked her, with the old warfare over the same old
+subject rising at the very first minute of our meeting. I have wondered
+sometimes in the last few years if the wrestling with me over her faith
+was not ordained for the purpose of strengthening Mother Spurlock's
+powers of patient argument. She is the only person in the world to whom
+I speak from the depths, and the relief of her sweetened and seasoned
+wisdom is the straw at which I often clutch to save myself.</p>
+
+<p>"I surmise that He guided the hand of that child so that the verse of
+the hymn, and the chastisement of the rod I hope Nellie will inflict,
+might work together for her good. All of us must at times let a little
+blood for another's good&mdash;heart's blood, very often, not just that from
+our scalps or shins." And as she answered me without a moment's
+hesitation she enveloped me in loving question. "Are you always going to
+occupy the anxious seat in front of the Lord, child? Still, sit as long
+as you like and go on questioning Him. You'll find the answer."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The whole town seems to have gone into your fold and left me on the
+'anxious seat' alone," I answered, as I drew my chair nearer to her and
+took her lined, strong old hand in mine.</p>
+
+<p>"That Billy Harvey passes the collection plate up the aisle on Sunday
+and plays poker all Saturday night till Sunday morning down at the Last
+Chance, in a room in front of the one in which poor Pat Burns, who
+carries a hod for his money, loses his all. Mary Burns sews all day and
+half the night to feed him and the children, but she puts her pittance
+into Billy's plate every Sunday, and I know that she gets the strength
+to go on from day to day from the words that come from the same pulpit
+he sets the plate behind. That is, we call the table out at your Country
+Club a pulpit, until we get our own in the chapel from which to praise
+the Lord. So you see that there are some sheep who have a taint of goat
+hair in their wool still left&mdash;I won't say with you&mdash;out in the world.
+And speaking of that world, have you come back to say good-bye to us?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know yet, Mother Spurlock," I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> answered her candidly. "I ran
+away from that world, but it is coming after me on Friday."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be sent into the vineyard where you are most needed, and there
+you'll serve," she said, with a far-away look coming into her eyes as
+she let her glances roam out to the dim hills of Paradise Ridge. A flood
+of love and reverence rose in my heart for her as I sat quiet and let
+her spirit roam. Mother Spurlock had been the gayest young matron in
+Goodloets, living in the great old Spurlock home with handsome,
+rollicking young George Spurlock for a husband, and three babies around
+her knees, and in one short year she had been left with only one large
+and three tiny graves out in the placid home of the dead, beyond the
+river bend. The babies had been taken by that relentless child foe,
+diphtheria, and young George, reckless with grief, had let a half-broken
+horse break his neck. The young woman, aged by her grief, had sold the
+great house to the next of kin and moved down into an old brick cottage
+that sat "beside the road" in a gnarled old apple orchard, and had
+become the "friend to man." Through the orchard and past the door of the
+Little House ran the path that led from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> the Settlement to the Town, and
+through her heart and hands flowed most of the love and charity that
+bound the rich and poor, brother to brother. Mother Spurlock was never
+without a bundle in which she carried labor of the poor sold for the
+gold of the rich, or gifts from the rich back to the needy. I thought of
+all the long years of service in the vineyard into which her tragedy had
+thrown her, and I bent and picked up the bundle at our feet and held it
+with reverent hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a few baby things that Nellie Morgan gave me to fix up a poor
+little Mother Only in the village," she came back from her reverie to
+say cheerfully, as she saw me with the bundle in my hand. Mother
+Spurlock always refers to the children without the sanction of the law
+for their birth as the Mother Onlies, and somehow, when she speaks it,
+the name carries a world of tenderness into the heart of the hearer.</p>
+
+<p>"Whose now?" I asked her gently, because in a way Mother Spurlock and I
+bore one another's burdens of spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Hattie Garrett's, and it's a week old now. It is one of the saddest
+things that ever happened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> in the village, and we none of us understand.
+You remember, she taught the district school down in the Settlement."</p>
+
+<p>"As none of us understood about Martha Ensley. Is that all a mystery
+still?" I asked, and I stroked the bundle of tiny garments.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and now she's gone nobody knows where, day before yesterday.
+Jacob, her father, was rough and violent with her, but only from grief,
+and she forgave all that. I'm troubled sorely, for she is gentle, and
+not one to fight the world alone. She must have gone to the city, the
+good Lord help her!"</p>
+
+<p>"He will&mdash;He is," I answered quickly, then stopped because I knew I must
+not tell what I had overheard&mdash;should I say in the confessional?</p>
+
+<p>"Praise God! to hear you speak such words. Sometimes a body's faith gets
+out of her heart past her mind and proclaims itself before the higher
+criticism gets a chance to throttle it," the invincible old warrior
+exclaimed with a delighted twinkle in her young blue eyes at having
+caught me with religious goods on me. "He will, He will take <i>care</i> of
+us all, not that He doesn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> expect us to put in about sixteen hours of
+the day helping Him to do it for ourselves and others. That reminds me
+that I seem to be growing to this chair. Luella May Spain has got a nice
+place to work in the telegraph station with Mr. Pate, and if she's to
+look neat she needs a few white shirt waists. I <i>could</i> get them in this
+bundle. If I get too many things from you and Harriet this morning to
+carry myself, Hampton will take me down the hill in his car when he goes
+to lunch, not that I wouldn't be frightened to death to ride with him
+except on the Lord's mission."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that fact would keep Hampton from being run down by
+Harriet when she cuts corners bias, as she insists on doing?" I asked,
+as I started in the door to procure the toilet necessaries to Luella
+May's telegraphic career, whether it devastated my supply of tennis
+clothes or not. Nothing that any woman or any member of her family in
+Goodloets wears or eats is secure from Mother Spurlock, and we have all
+submitted to the fact with the greatest docility.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it does; and three shirt waists will be enough if you add a neat
+black belt," was the answer that followed me through the hall. "Bless<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+my life, Nickols Powers, I was glad to see you at prayer meeting last
+week, even if you and William Cockrell were just caught up out at your
+Club in your chess game," I heard her exclaim, to draw a laughing answer
+in father's most genial rumble. Then I heard him call loudly for Dabney,
+and when Sallie descended with my bundle, that contained a complete
+telegraphic outfit for Luella May which showed a decided leaning to
+tennis style, she met Dabney on the front threshold with a rough parcel
+from which I saw a shirt sleeve and a blue serge trouser leg protrude.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Nickols. Since his accident, Bill Hanks has thinned out to
+just about your size. Now he can go back to his job neatly and
+respectably clad," Mother Spurlock was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"The citizens of Goodloets had better take the habit of wearing a double
+suit of clothing for fear of having Elsie Spurlock strip them in public
+to beyond the law," father grumbled in great pleasure, after he had
+packed her and her bundles in Hampton's car. Father always calls Mother
+Spurlock "Elsie," and once or twice I have seen a faint blush creep to
+her cheeks and a glint flash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> from her eyes, but he blandly goes on
+doing it. I wonder&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Father," I said, as we went slowly up the front walk together, "Nickols
+will be here on Friday; will you have Dabney get his rooms in the north
+wing ready for him? He likes that light, and he can use the long green
+room for a studio when he sketches."</p>
+
+<p>"That's good," answered father heartily. He likes Nickols and Nickols
+manages him beautifully, by giving him all he wants to drink whenever he
+suggests it, even introducing him to new Manhattan beverages. There is
+perpetual war between Dabney, who knows father's nervous limit, and
+Nickols, who doesn't care just as long as things and human beings that
+surround him are kept pleasant. It is all right for the rest of the
+world to have delirium tremens, just so they do it out of his sight and
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder just what Nickols will think of Goodloe," father added, with a
+slightly strained laugh. "You thought he would be enraged at Goodloe and
+me for building the chapel and weeding the garden. Perhaps he will be
+unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe your weeding would make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> anybody unhappy, father," I
+answered with a laugh, choosing to ignore the issue of the building of
+the chapel until Nickols was upon the scene and we could decide just
+what to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Been over the whole garden twice and eaten several meals in the sweat
+of my brow&mdash;that is, I took a cold shower before coming to the table, my
+daughter," father said, and he looked ashamed of himself for being proud
+of his own spurt of normality. I caught my breath, but I was wise enough
+not to show my astonishment. "Goodloe is the most insinuating person I
+ever met, and I advise you to be careful. He makes men do just as he
+wants them to, and I should say that women would eat out of his hand."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I ought to eat a bite or two from his fingers to pay for all
+the work he has got out of you and Dabney. I never saw the garden so
+beautiful or so early. Look, father, the peonies are budding, two weeks
+ahead of their usual time!"</p>
+
+<p>"They'd be damned ungrateful not to grow industriously, after the way
+Dab and I have sprained our old backs spading and feeding them according
+to spiritual direction that stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> over us with a rake," answered
+father, with proud if profane enthusiasm. There was a faint pink glow in
+his haggard, thin cheeks, and he took from his pocket a huge knife I had
+never seen him use before and began carefully to cut away a few dead
+twigs from a budding rose vine.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother always put a rose from this vine at my plate for breakfast,
+and you got yours from that pink bush over there by the sun dial," he
+said, with a softness in his voice that I had not heard since my tenth
+summer, in which my mother had died. I tingled all over, but held on to
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>"You go tell that old black lazybones to come here with his spade this
+minute. I told him about digging in this mulch yesterday before the
+dahlias sprouted, and he hasn't done it. I'm not going to do it for him,
+like I put the fertilizer around the lilacs, just to save him from
+Goodloe. Tell him to come right here to me, and not to let grass grow in
+his shoe tracks," and father picked up a hoe from the walk beside the
+neglected dahlias and began doing the work he had just declared against.
+I fled around to the kitchen, and something lent wings to my feet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dab, what does it mean that father is really taking an interest in
+the garden?" I demanded of the faithful old black friend, whom I found
+enveloped in a kitchen apron helping his wife bring the dinner to a
+serving head.</p>
+
+<p>"Praise God, his salvation am commenced, if it don't kill me before he
+gits it," answered Dab, as he put his hand to his back and groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"They has been jest one-half a demijohn of devil heart whisky ordered up
+outen that cellar in over a month, and I b'lieve this here no account
+nigger drunk a pint of that," Mammy added to his answer. "Last month it
+was two demijohns they had up, and before that it was three or four.
+That parson done it with readin' and talkin' and hoein'. Glory! I wants
+to hold my breath and shout at the same time, and I would if I could
+trust this pullet in the skillet to either you or Dabney whilst I did
+it. The Lord wouldn't listen to no shoutin' from a cook whose chicken
+was frying black while she did her praisin'," and as she spoke Mammy
+began a low humming, swaying from table to stove with a rhythm in the
+swing of her fat body that had a certain dignified beauty to it. It was
+crude emotion, and I knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> it, but I felt it work in my own body as I
+let the significance of what she had told me about the lessening amount
+of whiskey father had been consuming add itself to the scene upon the
+back porch and sink fully into my consciousness. I don't know what might
+have happened to my shouting Methodist grandmother's worldly though
+emotional descendant if father's voice, sharp and clear, with a note of
+command I had forgotten it possessed, had not interrupted me.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte! Dab!" it called; and we both answered with all speed.</p>
+
+<p>"That Parson Goodloe have got the power to draw the teeth of seven
+devils, and you both consider the words of his mouth or he'll git the
+teeth outen yourn," Mammy called after us in ambiguous warning.</p>
+
+<p>And upon our arrival on the scene of action being executed upon the
+dahlias, we found the commander of the devils awaiting us, though in his
+hands was no forked instrument of dentistry, but in one he held a large
+slice of rye bread thickly spread with butter, and the other was
+disarmed by a ripe red apple. As we drew near he finished a direction to
+father and took a huge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> bite out of the slab of bread that left a gap as
+wide as one would expect a Harpeth jaguar to make.</p>
+
+<p>"Harrowing deep makes great growth in all plant life," he was saying
+past the slice of bread with agricultural prosiness to father, who had
+completely sweated down the very high and stiff collar which he always
+wore swathed in a wide tie of black after a Henry Clay cut, in a savage
+attack with the hoe upon the mulch that was smothering the dahlias in
+richness.</p>
+
+<p>"Does the same deep digging result hold true in biological and psychic
+life?" puffed father, and then he leaned on his hoe and looked up at the
+young man towering over him. In his eyes was the appeal of disappointed
+age calling to the ideals of flaming strength and youth in the
+deep-jeweled eyes that answered with a look of passionate tenderness as
+the parson poised the bread for another bite.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,' Mr. Powers, is the direct data we
+have on that subject," he said. Then he, for the first time, observed
+the approach of Dabney and myself, of which his widening smile and the
+quick lowering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> of the slab of rye pone gave notice to father, who
+exploded accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>"You black son-of-a-gun! Why didn't you rake off these dahlias as I told
+you to yesterday? Now you get his hide, Parson!" was the greeting that
+Dabney received, while I was ignored by all concerned.</p>
+
+<p>"That hinge in your back rusty again, Dabney?" questioned the parson,
+with leonine mildness.</p>
+
+<p>"I been upsot by my young mistis coming home," answered Dabney, with a
+quick glance at me as if to indicate me as a substantial excuse for any
+crimes. I stood convicted, for I do use Dabney continually in all my
+hospitalities.</p>
+
+<p>"We understand, Dabney," was the answer he got from the feeding Jaguar,
+who gave me that glint of a laugh that I had learned to expect and
+to&mdash;dread. I knew what he meant to imply, and I also knew that he knew
+that I understood that he considered me a disturbing element. Then he
+again raised the half-demolished hunk of bread to his mouth, stopped and
+regarded the apple in meditative indecision. From head to heels he was
+clothed in the most exquisite white<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> flannel and buckskin tennis
+clothes, but for all their civilized worldliness he resembled nothing so
+much as a feeding king of the forest in the poise of his wonderful head
+and equally wonderful body. I glanced quickly at his face with its
+gentle, deep, comprehending lines, in positive fear of him, and I found
+reassurance in the smile that curled his strong red mouth and glinted at
+me from his brilliant eyes under dull gold. Then, after the smile, he
+decided for the apple rather than further conversation, and was just
+going to set his white teeth in its rosy cheek when I stopped him with
+an almost involuntary exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't!" I pleaded. "Dinner is just ready, and you'll spoil it if you
+eat all that bread and butter and apple." Just exactly a week before, at
+almost that exact hour, the Reverend Gregory Goodloe had refused the cup
+of tea I had stood holding for him in my hand for five minutes on the
+front porch of the Poplars, and I had taken a resolve that never would
+he again receive a food invitation from me. I didn't count Mammy's
+"snack" eaten on the Harpeth adventure. I didn't understand myself and
+my sudden rush of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> dismay at the idea of a spoiled dinner for him, but I
+couldn't stop myself as I added:</p>
+
+<p>"Mammy has apple dumplings and hard sauce; please don't&mdash;I mean please
+<i>do</i> come in to dinner with us."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, but as you see I've about dined," he answered me, as with a
+laugh he held out his fragments. "Jefferson was feeling badly and I sent
+him to bed instead of the parsonage kitchen." Mammy had told me that the
+Reverend Mr. Goodloe had taken hers and Dabney's cherished and perfectly
+worthless only son as his sole domestic dependence, and Mammy had added
+the fact that Jeff had "shot nary crap since the parson rescued him from
+the jaw of the jail."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh," ejaculated Dabney over the hoe he had taken from father and was
+using at his direction while father lined the border beside the bed with
+his sharp spade. I knew the contempt in his voice was for the illness of
+Jefferson, and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe and I both laughed as he took
+the last bite of the brown slab and then held out the unbitten side of
+the apple to me.</p>
+
+<p>"You eat your fruit with me, not in dumplings with hard sauce," he said,
+and there was a wooing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> note in his voice as if he pleaded for that
+friendliness from me to heal a hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"No, <i>I</i> won't eat out of your hand," I answered, with a cool emphasis
+on the "I." And I looked him straight in the eyes, for I wanted him to
+know that I had thoroughly understood his refusal of my invitation
+couched so gently, but which I considered in reality haughty and
+resentful, especially as I had been his guest in his car. "We'll wait
+until you get your shower, father, and not much longer," I said to
+father, as I turned and went along the flagstones to the steps that led
+to the balcony upon which opened the long windows of the dining room. I
+was furious and I was hurt.</p>
+
+<p>At times I become acutely conscious that I am very imperious, but it is
+not entirely my fault. My friends have depended upon my clear head, in
+which father's brain seems to work with a kind of feminine vigor, and I
+have always felt that the superior force with which I have loved and
+cherished them made it all right. I've always stood by them and used
+myself mercilessly for their exigencies, and I suppose I have ruled them
+as mercilessly. I rarely encounter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> another will, and to clash into one
+as strong as mine drew the sparks of my nature. The blaze was soon over,
+but I&mdash;smouldered.</p>
+
+<p>During dinner I was deeply interested in father's plans for my garden,
+which brilliantly carried the plans Nickols and I had made to what I saw
+in another year would be a marvelously artistic completeness. But under
+the joy of hearing him talk as I had never really heard him since I was
+old enough to appreciate his scintillating delicious choice of words and
+phrases, I was hot and sore at the thought of my duty to render
+gratitude where gratitude was due for having him like that.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be perfectly wonderful, father, and Nickols had not worked it
+out to anything like that completeness. He will be wild about it, but
+won't it take a lot of money? And where did you get your inspiration?" I
+asked the question, though I hated the answer I knew it must receive.</p>
+
+<p>"The plans are entirely my own," answered father, with a pleased flush
+making even brighter his dulled eyes and cheeks, faintly glowing from
+the shower at which Dabney had officiated a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> minutes before. I had
+not failed to notice that we had sat down and were halfway through
+dinner and father's hand had not motioned Dabney towards the decanter
+and ice and siphon on the sideboard. "I must confess that the
+inspiration came from a kind of rage when Goodloe said to me how much it
+was to be regretted that all the great gardens in the North are being
+made out of a sort of patchwork of English, French, Italian and even
+Japanese influences. You couldn't expect anything more of the
+inhabitants of the part of the country in the veins of whose people flow
+just about that mixture of blood, but in the Harpeth Valley we have been
+Americans for two and a half centuries, and I'll show 'em an American
+garden if it does unhinge both mine and Dabney's backs and make Cockrell
+swear I'm crazy when he audits my accounts once every month. No, Madam,
+your own grandmother and great-grandmother, in conjunction with
+Goodloe's maternal ancestors, conceived and laid out the beginning of
+the great American garden, and we will combine to produce it."</p>
+
+<p>"What about Nickols' plans?" I asked, trying hard to raise indignation
+in my heart and voice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> at the thought of Nickols Morris Powers' work,
+for which the people of wealth in the North were beginning fairly to
+clamor, being criticized and laid aside at the inspiration of the
+Methodist parson across the lilac hedge. And I succeeded better than I
+expected, for I saw father lose color and tremble with his own rage,
+which he always quells with drink.</p>
+
+<p>"That sunken garden is Italian, and I'm going to tear it out and
+put&mdash;Oh, my daughter; forgive me, but I forgot, in this queer nature
+frenzy that has come over me of late and which I do not at all
+understand, that the garden is yours, was your mother's and
+grandmother's. So far the plans have just been begun, and nothing that
+you and Nickols have done&mdash;Dabney, pour me three fingers of the 1875
+Bourbon." And in a second I saw father grow white and shaking with
+mortification at what he felt to be an unmannerly trespass upon
+another's rights. My father has been a drunkard for nearly twenty years,
+but he is still a great gentleman. Slowly he drank the whiskey, every
+drop of which seemed to go to my heart like cold lead.</p>
+
+<p>"But, father!" I exclaimed, determined to win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> him back. Dabney was
+putting the silver stopper in the decanter over by the sideboard, and I
+thought I saw a sob shake his bent old shoulders as his black hands
+trembled. "I'd like to know if I'm not as purely American as you are,
+and have I not the same right to want, demand and work for an American
+nationalism, even in a garden, as you have? I'll have you know, sir,
+that the future of the nation is in the hands of the women. We can
+produce pure Americans or let the whole country go hybrid." And as I
+spoke I let my temper rise to a point which I hoped would shock father
+and take his mind from the decanter and the ice. "I demand that you
+allow me to carry out your plans for my garden, and that you help me do
+it to the limit of the hinges in your back and Dabney's. And, Dabney,
+don't let me hear another word about that hinge until those dahlias are
+in bloom. Also get me a half dozen bottles of dynamite to blow out that
+Italian garden. I never did like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes'm," answered Dabney, meekly but comprehendingly, for he hastily
+flung a napkin over the ice and gently set the decanter back in its
+rack. "But dynamite, it comes in sticks and not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> in bottles. And it
+would shake the roots of them old poplars clean most down to hell."</p>
+
+<p>"How'll we get that sunken garden out, then, father?" I asked, and I saw
+the life and color come back to his face in a flood of humor.</p>
+
+<p>"We might try filling it in," he answered, and then we both laughed at
+ourselves, with Dabney joining in.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TRISTAN LOVE SONG</h3>
+
+
+<p>After dinner father and I sat out on the porch in the soft, warm breeze
+that waved a misty spring moonlight around us, and talked garden until
+after ten o'clock. He was brilliant and delightful, but three times he
+made trips to ice bowl and decanter on the sideboard.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a great relief and happiness to me if Nickols does sanction
+and set the seal of artistic approval upon our plans," he said, with
+feverish but happy eyes. "You see, Nickols will represent the
+cosmopolitan in judgment upon the normally developed insular. I remember
+once that Mr. Justice Harlan said that in an opinion on freight rates I
+had sent up to him I had represented both the cosmopolitan and the
+insular interest with astonishing equity, and I told him that I
+considered that it took at least six generations of insular mind culture
+to see any kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> national equity. The same thing holds good with a
+garden. It takes the sixth generation on a piece of land to produce a
+garden, and then it has to be laid out around a library full of the
+ideals of poet and scholar. In about three years I can, with your
+permission, present the American nation with a garden that will
+represent the best ideals of Americans; and I must go to bed if I expect
+to get up and hunt the early worm. I can never decide which is the
+harder work, the capture of that creature of tradition or the arousing
+of Dabney to perform that task. You, Dabney."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," came a sleepy groan from just within the door, and in a
+second the old black face was lit up with father's candle until the
+white wool above shone like a halo as it appeared from out the gloom.
+And I sat and watched the two old gentlemen, one black and one white,
+toil slowly up the steps and down the wide hall of the Poplars.</p>
+
+<p>"Father <i>must</i> come back; the nation needs him," I said fiercely under
+my breath as I noticed that in Dabney's hand swung the ice bucket where
+I had been accustomed to see it swing for years,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> but which I had not
+seen him carry before since I came home. "And that's how <i>you</i> help him
+fight to come back," I arraigned myself with bitter scorn. "You have no
+faith nor spiritual sources yourself, and you throw him back into
+degradation when something is helping him crawl out. What's helping him?
+No matter what it is, you are a coward to obstruct it."</p>
+
+<p>And for a long hour I sat thus raging at myself and questioning
+hopelessly, while the young moon rose higher and higher over the tops of
+the silvery poplars and young spring slipped about in the lights and
+shadows, invisible except for perfumed wreathings of gossamer mist.
+Above, I heard father pacing up and down his rooms, slowly, almost
+feebly. Sometimes he would hesitate; then I would hear him stop beside
+the window, where I knew the ice bowl and the decanter were placed upon
+a table which had stood beside the head of his bed so burdened since my
+early childhood. I had always dreaded his moroseness and instinctively
+felt the cause of it. I had never really loved him until just the last
+few days, and now I felt my love rise in a tide that threatened to
+overwhelm me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I found him, and now I've thrown him away," I sobbed to myself.
+Then, as I sat listening, I heard the faltering steps come out into the
+hall above, descend the steps one by one, go through the dark dining
+room groping pitifully, and down the side steps out into the beloved
+garden. Silently I watched the tall figure with the white hair silvered
+radiantly by the moonlight go slowly down the path, past the old
+graybeard poplars, and even up to the lilac hedge that ran as a bulwark
+in front of the dark chapel door, which I could see was ajar as it
+always is.</p>
+
+<p>"He's going for help," I muttered to myself, and I felt the padding of
+fear pursuing me, while also something of the Methodist grandmother
+within me began a queer calling and a tightening at my throat.</p>
+
+<p>Then something happened that interested me so that I lost all personal
+anxiety. Father stopped beside the hedge and picked up something from
+the grass. I saw it was a long, heavy hoe. Walking over to a long bed of
+early roses he and Dabney had been fertilizing in the late afternoon, he
+bent feebly and began to dig the food into their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> roots. As he swung the
+long handle, each blow upon the soft earth became more decided. I crept
+down behind the old snowball bush to be nearer him; I didn't dare go to
+him in his fight, because I had in my selfish heedlessness brought it
+all on, but in a little while he was not alone, for a bent old figure
+with grizzled white wool sticking out from under a red flannel nightcap
+came quietly along the path with a hoe in his hand, fell in directly
+behind his master, and began a rhythmic blow-answering-blow contest with
+the fragrant earth and the demon within the man. For at least an hour
+the two old friends worked up and down the long bed, until I could see
+father begin to totter with weakness.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, come on, Mas' Nick, honey, and go to bed. I'll pour a bucket of
+cistern water over you and rub you down so as you'll sleep like a bug in
+a rug," the staunch old comrade crooned, with a mother note in his
+voice, as he took father's heavy hoe and shouldered it with his.</p>
+
+<p>"I think evening exercise is good for me, Dabney," answered father with
+all the dignity and command come back into his voice. "Put both those
+hoes in the tool house this time, and I'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> not tell Mr. Goodloe you
+left one down by the lilac hedge."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, thanky, sir, fer not telling him," answered Dabney, as he
+followed his master to the tool house under the back steps, deposited
+the garden implements where he was directed, and then again followed his
+idol in through the long dining room window and was lost in the shadow.</p>
+
+<p>I went back to the front steps, again sank down, put my arms on my
+knees, and let my head fall upon my clasped hands. As I sat there alone,
+with the dark house yawning behind me in its emptiness, someone sat down
+beside me and laid a warm, strong hand on my interlaced and strained
+fingers for just about half a second.</p>
+
+<p>"Please forgive me about the apple dumplings and the hard sauce," a
+merry, very lovely voice pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"I went out to Old Harpeth with you when you asked me; but I loathe
+going to church&mdash;I haven't been in one since I was strong enough to
+rebel&mdash;and I'm not going to yours," was the apology I graciously offered
+in return for that about the apple dumplings. "But I'd pay fifty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+dollars for a tenth row seat to hear you sing Tristan in the
+Metropolitan any day if I had to go hungry for a week to pay for it," I
+added, as I laughed as softly as he had pleaded. All the sorrow and
+strain of the last hours had vanished at the touch of his hand, and I
+felt like an impish, teasing child.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll sing some of it for you now, if you'll give fifty cents to Mother
+Spurlock for the Children's Day Picnic. And it'll be a bargain you are
+getting," was the unexpected offer I encountered.</p>
+
+<p>"And a freezer of vanilla ice cream to boot," I assented, generously.</p>
+
+<p>And then something happened to me the like of which I know never
+happened to anybody in all the world, and that could happen only the
+once to me. Gregory Goodloe drew a little closer to me and bent his
+great gold head until his face was just off my left shoulder, and in his
+powerful, rich, fascinating voice, which he muted down in a way that
+made it sound as if he were singing through a golden cloud, he sang
+Tristan's immortal love agony in a way that shut out all the rest of the
+universe and left me alone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> with him in a space swayed by his pleading
+until my mortal body shook in actual pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't! I can't stand it!" I gasped, as I seized his wrist in my strong
+hands and wrung it. "Stop!"</p>
+
+<p>The last tender note breathed itself into the air that seemed to hold it
+in a long caress until it died away, and sobs shook me as I held on
+desperately to his wrist. I felt that I <i>must</i> be comforted. And I was!
+Again the gentle fingers were laid over mine for a still smaller
+fraction of a second, and then again the beautiful, clear voice began to
+sing to me, just to me, out of the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>"'Abide with me, fast falls the even tide,'" he chanted, and then waited
+while my sobs died away and I let go my drowning grasp on his wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I mean. That's just why I wouldn't have any more
+respect for myself if I should go to your church than if I joined in one
+of Mammy's foot-washings down at the river and fell in a fit of shouting
+in which it took two burly coons to 'hold my spirit down,' as she
+describes those gymnastics to me. I hate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> you and I hate my friends for
+indulging in religion, because it is just as 'potent an agent of
+intoxication' as exists to-day, and it blinds us to the need of work
+along scientific lines for the immediate improvement of the race. What
+right have we to intoxicate reason with religion? If religion is
+anything it must be reason." I fairly hurled my words of half-baked
+skepticism at him, with the vision of father and Dabney digging in the
+garden, still in my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I felt just as you do about it a year ago to-day," he answered me
+quietly. "As you state the case of religion as emotion versus reason, it
+doesn't exist. Religion is reason plus emotion, and when you combine the
+two the eyes of your soul are open, whereas they had been closed. Nobody
+can tell you about it, but you begin really to live when you see and
+comprehend. Yes, it is going to take all the scientific reason the world
+possesses to start its salvation, but it will not get far without
+'emotion,' as you call what I <i>know</i> is love of God, and, through that
+love, compassion for man."</p>
+
+<p>"The assumption that every man is blind who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> does not believe as you do,
+stops all argument," I said scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't come to talk religion with you; I came over to get that apple
+dumpling off my conscience, as I couldn't digest it because it wasn't
+there. I preach twice, on Sunday and on Wednesday night, and I'm in my
+study behind the altar every afternoon that I'm not playing tennis. I'll
+be there any time by appointment." The worldly and protective raillery
+in that young Methodist minister's voice almost interrupted my religious
+researches, but I was in depths that were strange to me, and I was
+floundering for a line out.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never be there," I flared at him, then went on with my
+floundering. "If a man is blind, how can he gain the sight that you
+arrogate to yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"A great man once prayed, 'Lord, help thou my unbelief,'" was the gentle
+answer in which was that queer note of apostolic surety with which I
+heard him address the woman in the garden that night.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't pray&mdash;there's nothing there," I said in a very small voice that
+I could scarcely recognize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> as my own. "Oh, I mean that we are all
+floundering, and where can we get the lifeline? Where did you get the
+line that you think will pull you out of the vortex?"</p>
+
+<p>Then for a long moment he and I sat again involved in the emptiness of
+the universe that Tristan's love song had opened for us, and I knew that
+with ruthless feet I had entered his Holy of Holies and was being
+allowed to stand across the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"I never felt that I could tell it before," he said, slowly, and the
+bounds of the emptiness retreated still further away as he turned so
+that he sat facing me and again bent his dull gold head closer to mine.
+In a second I knew why in my mind I had been calling him a Harpeth
+jaguar. It was just my pictorial expression for the word freedom, the
+freedom that comes from power. I knew that mentally and bodily I was
+looking upon the first free man I had ever encountered, and I was
+abashed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell me," I said, with a gentleness in my voice I had never heard
+before, and that came from something that I felt to be strangely like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+meekness, though I had never before met that emotion in myself.</p>
+
+<p>"You know the romance of my father's life," the soft voice went on,
+speaking as if I had not interrupted him, "but nobody knows the tragedy.
+Love for my mother came upon him like an arrow shot out of ambush, and
+he married into a worldly, pleasure-loving, agnostic circle of people
+who all adored and flattered him until he&mdash;he became confused and
+doubting. He had transgressed the law: 'yoke not yourselves with
+unbelievers,' and he suffered. She never understood. It killed him, and
+when he had been dead nearly twenty years I found the diary he kept the
+months before he died. It was last year, just after her death. It was a
+cry to me, who at that time was a mere babe, and it&mdash;it lighted the
+flame he had almost let go out. As I read, the apostolic call came to me
+and I answered. I was starting to the front in France, and I went on. My
+year there was a series of experiences that gave me my surety. One day
+it came more clearly than ever. I had gone out into one of the trenches
+of the first line, because I am so strong that I can carry any man back
+to the stretchers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> across my back or in my arms. I have carried two at a
+time. There were nineteen men in the trench, and I made the twentieth.
+Suddenly a machine gun found the range and mowed them all down like
+cornstalks or wheat heads. Only I was left standing, bleeding under my
+left ribs. I raised my voice and praised God for my surety of
+immortality, and then fell. While I was practically dying in the
+hospital with a clip in my lung I got suddenly and unaccountably well
+and strong, and felt I must come back to try and help others to see what
+we must see to assure every man of his immortality. When the race
+awakens to that fact there will be no more use for machine guns. I may
+not help much, but I can only try. Perhaps I do only work through the
+emotions as yet, but I believe that my ministry will have its fruits. I
+can wait." And the humility and patience in his voice beat against my
+heart and bruised it so that I cried out.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why did you come here?" I positively moaned, as he and I both rose
+and I put out my hand as if to force him out of that aloneness in which
+we stood together.</p>
+
+<p>"America must lead the world in spiritual as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> well as material
+regeneration, and this is the only real and dispassionate America, with
+no foreign pull on its vitals. You must wake up; the cry has been heard
+to 'Come over and help.' Why do you fight the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help fighting. I must do what I conscientiously believe&mdash;" I
+was saying with my hand still outstretched against him, when suddenly
+the still place around us was invaded with a crash and its invisible
+walls thrown down.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte!" came in Nickols' languid, fascinating voice that always
+draws me to the edge of his world. "And Greg Goodloe, by all that is
+good and holy&mdash;in tennis flannels!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>BREASTING THE GALE</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the radiant moonlight I saw the lithe muscles of the Jaguar grow taut
+and stiff, and I felt rather than saw his long, strong hands clench
+themselves. I was about to stretch out my arms and ward off something
+that seemed like danger to Nickols, standing down at the bottom of the
+steps, smiling up at us in the moonlight with his mocking, fascinating
+smile, when suddenly the anger seemed to flow away from the body of the
+parson and he smiled down into the upturned eyes with great gentleness
+as we started down the steps together.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't interrupt the salvation of Charlotte's soul, did I?" Nickols
+asked, as he took my outstretched hand in his left hand and raised it to
+his lips as he held out his right to the Reverend Mr. Goodloe. So real
+had been that fraction of an instant when I had stood between the two
+men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> that I almost felt the sensation of alarm a second time as I saw
+Nickols' slender, magical, artist's fingers laid in the slim, powerful
+hand of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, but the gentle voice reassured me as
+the Harpeth Jaguar answered the intruder, or what he must have felt to
+be the intruder, for I had something of that feeling myself at the
+advent of my lover at the moment he had chosen for his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"The trouble began about apple dumplings and hard sauce," I said, as
+quickly as my wits would act.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, Nickols Powers, since we separated 'somewhere in France,'
+you with your sketch books and I with my hospital stretchers? I got a
+dandy lung clip; did you bring away any lead?" And the parson's voice
+was gentle and cordial and full of a laughing reminiscence.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't smell powder after I left you," answered Nickols, as we all
+ascended the steps and stood in a group before the door. "I got my books
+full of sketches of bits of treasures that the war might destroy, and
+beat it back to civilization. Did the Madonna of the Red Cross you had
+in tow come across as sentimentally as was threatened?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Nickols' voice
+was as cordial as the Reverend Goodloe's, but something in me made me
+resent the question and the manner it was asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She was killed in a field hospital just a few weeks after we left
+her&mdash;'somewhere in France.' She got God's welcome!" was the answer that
+came to the laughing question in a quiet, reverent voice. And as he
+spoke the parson started down the steps, then turned for his farewell.</p>
+
+<p>"That&mdash;or sweet oblivion," said Nickols, as he came to the edge of the
+steps and looked down at the Harpeth Jaguar coolly. I again got the
+sense of danger from the tall, lithe figure that stood in the moonlight,
+radiant before us in the shadow. "We'll contest that point warmly while
+we contest the meeting house Charlotte writes me that you planted in our
+garden&mdash;of Eden."</p>
+
+<p>"I can contest&mdash;if I must," was the serene answer that came back at us
+from over the white silk-clad shoulder. "Good night, both of you, and I
+hope to see you both again soon. Smell the lilacs bursting bud in your
+garden&mdash;of Eden!" With which farewell he left us to our greetings.</p>
+
+<p>"That's some man to be lost in the ranks of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> shibboleths," said
+Nickols with generous ease, as we watched the last glint of the moon on
+the yellow head disappearing around the corner. "Degrees from three old
+colleges, millions, women lovers in millions, all thrown away to sing
+psalms for a few rustics in little old Goodloets. Can you beat it? But,
+blast him, he can't take away my loving welcome with his fatal beauty,"
+and as he spoke, with a tender laugh Nickols held out his arms to me. I
+went into them and he held me close.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't stay away&mdash;with Goodloe and the meeting house in the ring
+against me," he whispered, and he tried to raise my head for the kiss I
+had been holding from him all the long winter of our engagement,
+claiming to want it only under the roof of the Poplars. I burrowed my
+face in his shoulder and held to him with such fervor that it was
+impossible for him to raise my head.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," was my muffled pleading.</p>
+
+<p>"Again, damn that huge blond giant for being in the way of my getting my
+own on the first-sight wave," said Nickols with a good-humored laugh, as
+he pushed me from him. "Take your time. I like ripe fruit&mdash;and kisses.
+Did you say Goodloe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> had come over to steal apple dumplings and you had
+caught him in the act? I never was so hungry before and one of Mrs.
+Dabney's apple dumplings with that hard sugar stuff smothered with
+cream&mdash;well, of course I could wait until breakfast, but I'd be mighty
+weak. Your night train carries no dining car."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel sure that there is at least a half panful in the pantry; let's
+go see," I answered with delight at the practical turn the scene had
+taken, and I led him into the dark house, turned on one or two lights
+and went with him back into the culinary department of the Poplars.</p>
+
+<p>And as I had predicted so we found the larder supplied. With a huge
+plate of the pastry encrusted apples, smothered with all the cream from
+one of Mammy's pans of milk, and a tall bottle from the sideboard,
+Nickols led the way out of the long windows onto the south balcony over
+which the moon, now high in the heavens, poured the radiance of a
+new-toned daylight. I followed him with some glasses and sugar and a
+bowl of cracked ice that I had found in its usual place in the corner of
+the refrigerator.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty good substitute for the affectionate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> sweet I thought of all the
+way down from New York," said Nickols with an adorable laugh, as he
+lifted the first spoonful, dripping with cream, to his mouth. Then with
+the food almost bestowed he paused and looked out beyond the garden
+toward the chapel, which loomed up gray and shimmering in the silver
+light.</p>
+
+<p>"Great heavens!" he ejaculated, and for a long minute the spoon was
+poised while his eyes fairly devoured the scene spread out before him
+against the background of Paradise Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't like it we can get rid of it," I said, as I poured his
+drink over the ice tinkling against the side of the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Not like it!" exclaimed Nickols, as he rose with the spoonful of
+dumplings dashed back into the plate. "That is the most wonderful and
+beautiful landscape effect I have ever beheld. That is just what our
+garden needed. I suppose I would have seen it and put some sort of a
+pavilion there, but that squat and perfect old church would have been
+beyond me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm glad!" I exclaimed, as he sank back on the step beside me, took
+the glass from my hand, drank deeply and this time began a determined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+attack upon the plate in his hand. And then as he ate I told him all
+about father and his plans for the garden and his own improvement and to
+what I hoped the work was leading him. But somehow I couldn't bring
+myself to describe the scene which had that night been enacted in the
+garden&mdash;I couldn't. "Oh, I am so glad you are not furious and will maybe
+be willing to encourage him, even if it does mean to encourage the
+Methodist Church and the minister thereof. You are wonderful, Nickols,"
+I finished with a squeeze of his arm that very nearly jostled the cream
+out of the spoon upon his gray tweed trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd be a wonderful ass not to take advantage of Judge Nickols Powers'
+brain and money, plus Gregory Goodloe's brain and training and money
+combined, to get a result that will be worth a hundred thousand dollars
+to me and all the fame I can conveniently wear. Encourage 'em? Just
+watch me! Only what the judge thinks will take two years can be done in
+one season if we get experts down to do it, which we will. Trees two
+hundred years old <i>can</i> be moved for a few thousand dollars, as well as
+plants in bloom that would require years to transplant. I know the man
+to do it:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> Wilkerson of White Plains. I'll telegraph him in the
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"He won't interfere with&mdash;with father, will he?" I asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit&mdash;he'll just make what the judge and Gregory plan for year
+after next, grow and bloom there in a couple of months. Wilkerson is not
+a creator, he's just nature keyed up to the <i>n</i>th power. And also I'll
+give him for a bait the Jeffries estate I was hesitating about making a
+bid for. All the big fellows are after it. Old man Jeffries has made two
+barrels of money in the last ten years in oil and he is going to build
+an estate up on the Hudson that will make the world gasp. I hadn't put
+in a bid, but this idea of the judge's and Greg's, with the whole
+village grouped about it, has given me the keynote to win the thing from
+the whole bunch of American architects. He wants the village built as
+well as the estate. That American garden idea will bowl him over. He's
+progressively and rabidly American. The bids don't close until December,
+so I'll have time to get real photographs and sketches. Me for the
+reformed judge and the parson!"</p>
+
+<p>"This is the most wonderful thing I ever heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> and I want father pushed
+to the limit with the planning. I don't care where the parson comes in,
+just so I don't have to join the church to get the garden," I said, as I
+tinkled the ice in Nickols' empty glass, while he consumed the last bit
+of cream from the empty plate.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll join the church if it is needed to push the garden," said
+Nickols with a laugh, as he lit a cigarette and puffed a smoke ring out
+toward the gray little chapel. "Most people who join churches do it for
+some kind of pull, social or business, or a respectability stamp or to
+be white-washed. I'll put on a frock coat and pass the plate if it will
+help the parson evolve another phase of gardenism."</p>
+
+<p>"Billy gets home from his poker game at the Last Chance, down in the
+Settlement, on Sunday morning, just in time to bathe and get into his
+frock coat to perform that office," I said with a laugh that had a hint
+of recklessness tinged with contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see Billy through both ceremonials," said Nickols. "Has Billy come
+into the fold?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has! So have all the rest," I answered. "I am the only black sheep
+and they are all backsliding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> down on me. I am getting, and will get,
+the blame of it all as a corrupter of public morals."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you join and then do as you please with the official stamp of
+Christianity upon you?" Nickols asked, as he puffed comfortably away in
+the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>One of the things that cause me the deepest hurt is to try to get
+Nickols to look down into my depths and read one, just any one, of the
+hieroglyphics there. I know each time I open my nature to him he is
+going to turn aside, and yet I will try. As his arm stole around me I
+made another one of the attempts that I always know beforehand are
+doomed to failure.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something in me, a quality of mind that seems to be judicial,
+which insists that as a cold scheme for existence in this universe
+nothing compares with that of life followed by eternal redemption
+through personal effort interpreted by a mediator. The bare Christian
+tenets have a nobility that it kills me to see belittled by the bored,
+half-hearted observances of most of its protestants, who in turn are not
+to be blamed for being half-hearted and bored by the dogmas and
+restrictions and littleness with which the great bare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> scheme has been
+enmeshed and clothed. The Methodist Church positively forbids Billy to
+play poker or drink, but it just as positively forbids him to see
+Pavlowa dance or Beerbohm Tree play Falstaff or Forbes Robertson
+incarnate Hamlet. And look at its wretched machinery&mdash;they allow a young
+man to give his life and expect inspiration from him at six hundred
+dollars a year with a wife and two dozen children, which he has been
+encouraged to bring down upon himself, dependent on that same six
+hundred dollars. The great men who are expected to direct our spiritual
+destinies don't get as much money as many ordinary grocers and certainly
+not enough to support their obligations with dignity. What is true of
+the Methodist Church is true of all the rest, in perhaps a greater
+degree. So with their smallness and their pettiness and their befogging
+stupidity I feel that they may be denying thinkers like you and me the
+use of their scheme and we'll have to find another for ourselves if we
+want immortality."</p>
+
+<p>"Do we want that immortality?" asked Nickols easily. "This world is a
+pretty good old place if you don't regard the 'shalt nots,' but isn't it
+long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> enough to live the allotted time? What do we want to do it all
+over again for, that is, provided we do all the pleasant things while we
+have the chance? I don't want to see any play twice, even a masterpiece.
+I wouldn't want to live again unless I had been a Christian in this life
+and felt that I wanted to come back and do a lot of the things I had
+just heard about and previously hadn't tried."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I wouldn't want another life that is as unsatisfied as this,"
+I murmured, more to myself than to Nickols.</p>
+
+<p>"Do the things that satisfy," he urged again, and I could see a deviltry
+dancing at me out of the corner of his eyes that I resented deeply
+without exactly knowing why.</p>
+
+<p>"Harriet Henderson can't get Mark Morgan's love or&mdash;his children, and
+Nell Morgan is unattainable for Billy. Though they have all the world's
+goods and go a pace that pleases them, they are unsatisfied. If they
+don't get the new deal that immortality promises they lose the whole
+thing," I answered straight out from the shoulder. "And what about those
+who die in infancy and&mdash;and you and me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If you'll just kiss me and hush preaching to me I'll be entirely
+satisfied and ready to die as soon as I have lifted that fifty thousand
+out of old Jeffries with the judge's and the Reverend Gregory's garden
+and done a few more commissions. Try kissing me and see if you don't
+feel more cheerful," Nickols answered with a laugh, as he drew me close
+to him. I sadly shut up the doors of my depths, warded off the
+kiss&mdash;why, I didn't know&mdash;and persuaded him to go up to his rooms which
+I had seen Sallie and Dabney put in order that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>It was midnight when I parted with Nickols at the head of the old
+winding stairs in the fragrant darkness, lit only by the silver light of
+the night from a long window at the front of the hall. He held me close
+for a half second as he whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me make you happy. I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand, and until I do I'd make you miserable, dear," I
+whispered back as I drew myself out of his reluctant arms and went into
+my own door.</p>
+
+<p>Then for a long midnight hour I stood at my deep window and looked out
+over the garden, past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> the squat steeple silvering beyond the lilac
+hedge, to Paradise Ridge in the dim distance, and tried to read my own
+hieroglyphics. I needed help. Nickols had come after me to Goodloets in
+a spirit of gentle determination and I knew the fight would be to the
+finish. And why should I fight? Any woman ought to be proud to marry
+Nickols Morris Powers, especially a woman who had loved him since her
+heart had been developed to the knowledge of love. Very unostentatiously
+and with perfect good taste Nickols had let me see that Marie VanClive
+with her Knickerbocker ancestry and her Manhattan land-grants fortune
+was very decidedly interested in him in her cultured and perfected young
+way, and young Mrs. Houston had herself shown me the same thing on one
+of the week-end flights we had had on her yacht. And beyond all that my
+own heart told me that Nickols was desirable. His gentleness and his
+tenderness and his daring and his humor were irresistible to a woman.
+And his lazy acquiescence in life was peaceful and inviting to my own
+strenuosity. I felt as if I had always been an eagle breasting the gale
+with no place to alight, and now Nickols was calling to me from an
+eyrie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> on a mountain side to come and rest and be mated and comforted.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tired of loneliness and I think I'll drift and be happy," I
+murmured, as I fell asleep with my back to the silver steeple against
+the dim hills.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>INTO BRAMBLES</h3>
+
+
+<p>The next morning I awoke with the same resolve in my heart, to be happy
+if wicked, and proceeded to execute it with a great vigor. And in the
+execution of that resolve dear old Goodloets almost had some of the moss
+of its century's repose scraped off of its back.</p>
+
+<p>First and foremost, we all danced, day and night. We had really begun
+the giddy whirl the summer before when we had built the little clubhouse
+over in the oak grove by the river's edge, just between the Town and the
+Settlement, so that we would no longer feel the limit and limitations to
+our gliding of anybody's double parlors, and conservative Goodloets had
+been duly shocked thereat.</p>
+
+<p>"Ladies did not dance outside of their own and their friends' private
+homes in my day," Mrs. Cockrell had sighed, as she finished the petal
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the rose she was embroidering upon some of Letitia's lingerie.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather they danced in their den of iniquity than to execute these
+modern gyrations in my home," had responded Harriet's mother, Mrs.
+Sproul, as she finished the hundredth round on the shawl she was
+knitting. Harriet's report of the conversation had been received with
+great hilarity that evening at dinner at the Club.</p>
+
+<p>But Goodloets had had a year in which to recover from the shock of the
+institution of the Country Club when I started in to enjoy myself.
+Having church services there on Sundays and Wednesdays during the winter
+had done much to remove the prejudice in the minds of the conservative.
+I suspected the Reverend Mr. Goodloe of a great deal of worldly wisdom
+when I saw how he had been able to persuade the directors, Hampton
+Dibrell and Mark and Cliff, to let him do such a weird thing. Mrs.
+Sproul and Mrs. Cockrell and their friends had first been tolled out to
+prayer meeting and then had come to witness a tennis match. Billy, in
+great glee, recounted to me the first time they had stayed to dinner
+with him and father and Mr. Cockrell. They had been enjoying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> the prayer
+meetings to the utmost and had come out with Mother Spurlock by mistake
+on a Tuesday night, which was the regular dinner dance night. It was
+some time before they discovered their mistake, for they were immensely
+enjoying their visit with Mother Spurlock, and when the dancing began
+Billy had seized Mother Elsie in his arms and danced her the whole
+length of the room. The music had been too much for her feet in their
+sensible shoes, and very suddenly they had unfolded their wings after
+thirty long years of rest and had fairly flown up and down and backwards
+and forwards with Billy's in a sedate version of one of the phases of
+the tango. Mrs. George Spurlock had been the best dancer in Goodloets
+when time was young.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that it was the devil that tempted you, Mother Elsie?" I
+asked her about it one day when she had a leisure moment for teasing.</p>
+
+<p>"Effie Burns' youngest baby was born exactly while I was dancing, and we
+will have six months' trouble with her because her band was not put on
+properly," was her answer, as she took up her parcel of five pairs of
+only slightly worn stockings that five girls in the Settlement needed
+worse than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> I needed darns, and departed in a great hurry. "Oh, but you
+should have seen Hattie Sproul's eyes while I danced," she called back
+over her shoulder as she went through the gate.</p>
+
+<p>And so in the second summer of the Club's existence there had been no
+bridle upon its gayeties&mdash;I had almost used the word license, and I
+suppose it would have been a just one under the circumstances. Billy
+called it "The Bucket of the Lost Lid," and every individual member did
+exactly as he or she chose. The sideboard out on the back porch made as
+good a bar as any in the state with old Uncle Wilks to officiate, and in
+the wing in one of the private dining rooms a huge wheel stood with its
+face to the wall during the day, but came complacently out of its corner
+when night descended. On the porch could always be found either Mrs.
+James Knight or Mrs. Buford Cunningham. They neither of them had
+children, hated home and were serenely happy sitting on the front porch
+knitting silk scarfs and gossiping with all comers, while James and
+Buford hung around the sideboard at the back. They were institutions and
+all of the unmarried boys and girls, men and women, widowed and
+widowered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> came and went at will, with the liberty that the chaperonage
+of their certain presence allowed.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose one of 'em should fall dead and the other have to attend her
+funeral," Nickols remarked one Saturday night at a dinner table not more
+than twelve feet away from the two couples. "The scandal that would soon
+disrupt this town for lack of their free chaperonage would be like an
+earthquake. None of you would have a shred of respectability with which
+to drape yourselves to appear in public."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't wear much respectability anyway in the eyes of the
+Settlement," said Billy, as he mixed the champagne cup with old Wilks
+standing admiringly by. "The floor manager ordered Luella May Spain off
+the floor at the dance they had in the lodge room over the Last Chance
+last Saturday night for appearing in one of Harriet's last year dancing
+frocks Mother Spurlock had collected for her, though they do say that
+Luella May had sewed in two inches of tucker and put in sleeves. How's
+that for an opinion passed upon the high and mighty from the meek and
+lowly?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd been in mourning a year. That was my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> coming out gown and I felt&mdash;"
+Harriet was saying when Billy laughed and interrupted her.</p>
+
+<p>"And you came out, Harriet dear," he assured her, as he poured her
+champagne cup and his and signaled Wilks to serve the rest of us.</p>
+
+<p>On the surface all of the joy that most of Goodloets was having was real
+and brilliant and spontaneous, all the dancing and drinking and high
+playing, but under the surface there were dark currents that ran in many
+directions. Young Ted Montgomery and Billy played poker one Saturday
+night until daylight out at the Club, and Bessie Thornton and Grace
+Payne had "staid by" and were having bacon and eggs with them when the
+sun rose. Judge Payne, Grace's father, has been a widower ten years and
+Grace, with the four younger "pains," as Billy calls them, has run wild
+away from him and her grandmother, old Madam Payne, who lives in a world
+of crochet needles and silk thread with Mrs. Cockrell and Mrs. Sproul.
+One night I went with Billy in his car to take Grace home and he had to
+wait until I tiptoed to her room with my arm around her and put her to
+bed, while Harriet was doing the same thing with Bessie Thornton. Those
+girls are not much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> over twenty and they are only a little more
+"liberated," as they call it, than the rest of their friends. Ted
+Montgomery loves Grace, when he is himself and not at the card table,
+but what chance have they to form a union of any solidity and
+permanence? Billy's nephew, Clive Harvey, has always loved Bessie
+Thornton, but he is teller in the Goodloets bank and almost never sees
+her. He is one of the stewards in the Harpeth Jaguar's church, and the
+suffering on his slim young face hurts me like a blow every time I meet
+him. What's going to satisfy him, no matter what pace he should choose
+to go or how many things he is driven by unhappiness to indulge himself
+in?</p>
+
+<p>And it was true that everything done up in the town had its effect down
+in the Settlement. The lodge hall over the Last Chance was the only hall
+available for the young people in the Settlement to dance, and the bar
+of the East Chance, at which old Jacob Ensley officiated, was no better
+stocked than the lockers at the Country Club. And all of us knew that
+very frequently Billy and Nickols and the rest of our friends went down
+to dance and drink with the girls from the mills and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> shops. Billy
+had told me once that Milly Burt, who stays at the cigar stand in the
+Goodloe Hotel in Goodloets, dances so much like me and is so perfumed
+with my especial sachet from France, Mother Spurlock having collected
+the chiffon blouse from me for her to wear at the entertainment of the
+Epworth League, that he came very near addressing her by my name in
+giving her the invitation to the dance.</p>
+
+<p>"Settlement or Town, they all add up to the sum of girl," he laughed, as
+he told me about that Saturday night frolic in the Last Chance.</p>
+
+<p>It was the day after Billy's account of the ball at the Last Chance, in
+which Luella May and Milly and the rest had frolicked in what ought to
+have been a perfectly harmless way, that Mother Spurlock came to spend
+the afternoon with me and in which we wrestled until I was almost on the
+mat&mdash;not quite.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodloets has always been the gayest town in the state, but it has now
+reached the place of the most wicked," she said, after a few preliminary
+shots had been exchanged. "Every dignity of tradition seems to have been
+dropped and everybody is dance or play or drink or speed mad. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> are
+the most influential personality in the whole town and I want you to
+call a halt."</p>
+
+<p>"But aren't they all happy? Isn't everybody getting the most out of
+life? The men are all working to their capacity and making more money
+than they ever have before. Why shouldn't they play hard?" I answered
+her, as I seated myself in the broad window seat of my room opposite the
+wide maternal ancestral rocker she had chosen.</p>
+
+<p>"Are they happy?" she asked, with her keen eyes on my face.</p>
+
+<p>"They seem to be," I parried.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as far as personal happiness is concerned I think it is not worth
+talking about. It is the good of the whole for which I am working, for
+which I am contending to-day. What you women do, who are not obliged to
+add to the work of the world that you may live in it, is not of any
+great importance; it is for the toilers in the vineyard that I plead.
+The girls and young men in this town cannot dance and drink and play all
+night and do the constructive work of the community in the daytime. If
+Luella May Spain falls asleep or nods at her typewriter and fails to get
+out the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> telegram to you or Nickols which Mr. Tate has shouted to her
+off the keys, do you excuse her because she has been fatiguing herself
+until midnight trying to learn some new dance that Billy Harvey has
+brought down to the Last Chance from your Country Club? You would not!
+She would be fired on your complaint."</p>
+
+<p>"But are we responsible for how the girls and men in the Settlement
+spend their evenings?" I demanded with a fine show of indignation, but
+with a thrill of fear in my heart. There has always been something in
+Luella May Spain's shy and admiring glances that drew me and I have
+always lingered to chat with her a few minutes if business called me
+into the station. The last time I had spoken to her, not a week before,
+she had seemed pale and listless and had answered me with indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"You and your class are the ones in power and what you do and what you
+think is a moral influence that reaches and permeates every soul in this
+town. You are not about your Father's business; and those less powerful
+of brain and character follow you in by-paths from the straight road.
+They are his Little Ones and you lead their feet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> into brambles. Oh,
+Charlotte!" And Mother Spurlock stretched out her hands to me in
+entreaty.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a leader," I denied her. "I don't see a foot ahead of me. I'm
+not worth anything. I'm just living and trying to have a good time doing
+it. You have got a leader, there over the hedge; why don't they follow
+him and not me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Before you came Gregory Goodloe had services three times a week at your
+Country Club, at which the Settlement met the Town. You were not willing
+that even those few hours should be given over to the learning of the
+Father's will from one whose mind and soul are ready to teach, and you
+swept away his pews and his influence. And your dance tunes, to which
+even I yielded, ring in the ears of his flock to drown out the echoes of
+God's hymns. And now those who had begun to lean on him and to follow
+him are turning to persecute him. When Jacob Ensley is drunk he openly
+charges him with inveigling Martha away and hiding her. He was in a
+dangerous state one night a week ago and Billy Harvey had to lock him up
+in his own wine cellar to keep him and a few of his hangers-on from
+'going after the parson,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> who was down there praying with old Jennie
+Neil as she died. He doesn't know his danger from Jacob and I think
+Billy ought to tell him. All Goodloets has admired and aped you since
+your birth, and now that you discountenance him they are again following
+you. There were only ten people at prayer meeting last night in the
+chapel, and the Wednesday before you turned him out of the Club which
+had offered him its hospitality, there were one hundred and thirty,
+Settlement and Town about evenly represented. You are responsible for
+that prayer meeting last night. You may be responsible for the result of
+one of Jacob's drunken fits. Sometime you'll have to answer for what you
+do."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mother Spurlock, I'm not responsible for the failure of Gregory
+Goodloe to get to the heart of your people and hold them happy to his
+services and observances, and I'm certainly not responsible for his
+personal safety. What he offers is not enough to satisfy. His members
+prefer their Country Club and their Last Chance and their knitting and
+embroidery. What we all need from the Country Club to the Last Chance is
+something that makes us want to be constructive, race constructive,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> so
+that life will be desirable on through immortality, if there is such a
+thing. I can't get a glimpse of it. Can you?" and I questioned her
+beseechingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I can. I do! I have faith in my Father's plan to lead me through 'deep
+waters' into 'pleasant pastures,'" she answered me, as her eyes looked
+past me out at Paradise Ridge beyond the chapel.</p>
+
+<p>"Then give it to me," I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. You must seek it yourself, and when you get it you will be
+able to pour it out into the hearts of others as living water. I serve
+by using my two talents of mercy and love, but God will some day give
+you ten and you will have to return an hundred fold. He has given the
+ten to Gregory Goodloe, and now is the night of his despair, but his
+morning will dawn. You can't dance down and drink down and gamble down
+and lust down a man like that. He can bide his time until his sheep come
+to the fold to be fed and warmed in his bosom."</p>
+
+<p>"What practical thing can I do to make you believe that I do not mean to
+pull down any structure that another human is building up with the hope
+it is for the good of the whole, Mother Spurlock?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> I demanded of her,
+goaded to the last point of endurance.</p>
+
+<p>"The dedication services of the chapel will be next Sunday. Come, bring
+Nickols and your father, and let the Town and Settlement see your
+respect for Mr. Goodloe and for his church," she demanded, as she rose
+to go, with patient defeat but a lingering hope in her voice and manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Endorse something that means nothing to me?" I asked with pained
+patience. "You say the people follow me; shall I lead them to drink from
+a spring that I consider dry, that is dry and has no water for my
+thirst? No, Mother Spurlock, if the people among whom I have been born
+trust me I will only lead them by going into paths I know and in which I
+walk for my own good or pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"To the Last Chance?"</p>
+
+<p>"At least they get joy there that makes toil easier or offsets the
+grind," I answered her.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that your final&mdash;" she was asking me with her deep, wise old eyes
+searching me, when she was interrupted by the banging open of my door
+and the inburst of young Charlotte, young James as ever at her heels,
+with Sue clinging to his hand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> To-day, however, Charlotte had added one
+to her cohorts, for she led by the hand a very dirty specimen of the
+masculine gender, somewhat larger than herself and with a flaming red
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mikey Burns, Aunt Charlotte, and he's a nice little boy that's
+dirty and hungry because his mother has got seven like him. Won't you
+wash him and feed him so we can play with him? The preacher cleaned up
+four for us to play with yesterday and they are still clean enough. If
+you clean Mikey I can have a baseball nine, with Sue to get the balls
+that we don't hit. She gets balls nicely and Mikey throws lots
+straighter than I can. Jimmy can hit 'em, too, with a wide stick."</p>
+
+<p>"I tan git 'em," declaimed small Sue with great pride.</p>
+
+<p>"I can pitch 'em," also declared Mikey, with evident desire to back up
+his patroness. "But not as good as her," and his admiration amounted to
+adoration, as he raised his young eyes to Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Oh, you see, even to the second generation they follow,"
+laughed Mother Spurlock, as she escaped through the door and left me
+with my practical demonstration of class leadership.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wash him, Auntie Charlotte, wash him," Charlotte continued to insist.
+"I made Jimmy steal some of his things for him while nurse was
+downstairs. Here they are," and young James, the thief and
+aforementioned murderer, gave up his stolen goods. "And Mr. Nickols says
+that all the Settlement children will go to school with us in the nice
+schoolhouse he and Judge Powers and Minister are going to build in front
+of Mother Spurlock's orchard. That is a law and then we'll have good
+times, all of us. There is not many children in the Town and they are
+all too dressed up, but it is a million down in the Settlement and we
+are going to have two baseball nines and two armies to battle with. I
+asked Mr. Nickols to have a place to wash the Settlements and he said he
+had thought of that and is going to have five shower baths. If you'll
+just wash Mikey for me I'll help you. I can attend to Jimmy's ears for
+nurse real good, can't I, Jimmy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," responded Jimmy with brotherly pride.</p>
+
+<p>"No," remonstrated Mikey with abject fear, for the sake of his ears or
+propriety I was not sure.</p>
+
+<p>I got past the question by motioning him into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> my bathroom and sending
+Charlotte and Sue to bring Dabney. Dabney is Charlotte's slave and was
+soon under way to execute her commands upon Mikey while I beguiled her
+from the superintendence thereof down into the garden with me, where
+from my window I could see Nickols and father in deep conclave over some
+drawings. Father had discarded his Henry Clay costume and looked young
+and alive in some of Nickols' flannels and linen. They looked up with
+interest as I came down the flagstone walk with Charlotte trotting on my
+one side and wee Sue clinging on the other.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you have come, daughter," said father, as he held up one of
+the large blue prints before me. "Now you can help Nickols and me locate
+the exact spot for the public school building. See, here is the public
+square of Goodloets, with the courthouse in the middle."</p>
+
+<p>"That courthouse is as good as any minor <i>hotels de ville</i> in any of the
+small towns in France," said Nickols, as he came and stood beside me,
+looking over my shoulder at the map. "The Farmers' Bank and one or two
+of the very old brick stores are good, too," he added.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, this is Main Street that leads past us down into the Settlement.
+Here is the Poplars, here the chapel, and this is Elsie Spurlock's
+house. Nickols and the parson are inclined to place the schoolhouse
+right opposite, but I am afraid it is too near the Settlement and too
+far from the Town. Do you suppose the Town children will be able to walk
+so far?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really&mdash;really plan to have the Town and the Settlement go to
+school together?" I gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Goodloe thinks that the ideal public school system is only to be
+executed in a democratic&mdash;" father was saying, when Nickols interrupted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter where the two and a half kids from the decadent old
+families that are dying out go to school? Their sterile parents can
+motor 'em down to education!" he exclaimed. "Right here is the logical
+place for the school with the meadow behind it to give a bit of
+distance, the oak grove back of that, the Country Club beyond, with the
+river beginning to curve it in. It solidifies and unifies the landscape
+of the whole town and puts all the community centers where they belong.
+The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> Town and Settlement straggled a bit before, but the chapel and the
+school will unite them! Braid says the schoolhouse can be built of
+weathered stone and concrete and finished by September fifth, in time to
+start school. Wilkerson can begin immediately putting out his hedges and
+the Reverend Gregory is down there now finishing laying out the
+playground with his ball park."</p>
+
+<p>"That's it&mdash;that's the baseball nine Dabney is washing Mikey for!"
+exclaimed Charlotte, catching up with the conversation. "And when we all
+go to school with the Settlements and they are clean some, and Mildred
+Payne and Grace Sproul and some of the others get dirty a little, nobody
+will know the difference and we can play ball and scouts and everything
+Minister teaches us. That school makes enough children to do things. We
+haven't got enough for anything, but the Settlements have, and it is
+mighty good of them to come up and let us play with them."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep up with the times, Charlotte; don't be a back number. Miss
+Olymphia Lassiter's school may have held you and Nell, but it will never
+hold young Charlotte," Nickols jeered, as father began to roll up the
+map and speak to a young man that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> the great Wilkerson of White Plains
+had sent down to juggle with the flora and fauna of the Harpeth Valley.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>WATER AND OIL</h3>
+
+
+<p>I turned from Nickols' raillery and surveyed the great American garden.
+The weeks had flown from May to late July and father's plans were
+beginning to be materialized. Where the sunken garden had been filled in
+a wide stone well house, the like of which can be found at many of the
+farmhouses in the Harpeth Valley, had been built and a chain wheel and
+bucket drew up the water from the deep cistern, which was supplied with
+underground pipes from the south wing of the Poplars.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no water as soft as open-top cistern water, aerated by a chain
+and bucket," father had informed me, and he and Dabney consumed buckets
+of it, while Mammy refused anything else for cooking purposes and
+insisted on a nightly bath of it for my face. A white clematis in full
+bloom clambered over the eaves of the low stone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> house and a blush rose
+nodded at its door, beside which was placed a rough bench made of square
+stones and two large slabs, equally moss-covered and worn.</p>
+
+<p>"It is growing to be perfectly wonderful, Nickols," I said, as if I had
+seen it for the first time, while my eyes followed the sweep of the
+flagstone walk from the well house beneath the old graybeard poplars out
+past stretches of velvety lawn, with groups of shrubs and trees casting
+deep shadows even to the kitchen garden, whose long rows of vegetables,
+bordered with old-fashioned blooming herbs and savories, led the
+observer out into the meadows to the Home Farm and beyond to the dim
+line of Paradise Ridge. "It is different and distinctive and&mdash;and
+American," I added.</p>
+
+<p>"After this garden and the school are finished and a few of the
+unfortunate restorations taken away from some of the old houses, like
+the porch at Mrs. Sproul's and that bathroom addition of Morgan's, I am
+going to bring Jeffries down in his private car and it will be difficult
+to keep him from offering to buy Goodloets and have it all shipped up
+the Hudson. Really, Charlotte, we have seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> a vision of the future
+materialize here and we ought to stand with hats off."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose vision?" I asked, as I stood and let the truth of his statement
+sink in.</p>
+
+<p>"The parson's spiritual vision perhaps filtering through your father's
+mentality, which has welded past, present and future. At least, that is
+the way I see it with the material eye, which is all I have to view it
+with&mdash;if we can call the recognition of beauty and completeness
+material."</p>
+
+<p>"Now Mikey is nice and clean and we can go to Minister to play, thank
+you, Aunt Charlotte," at this point young Charlotte broke in to say,
+thus flinging us a line to haul us out of depths that were slightly over
+our heads. "Isn't he lovely?" And she gazed upon her new-found comrade
+with open admiration and self-congratulation.</p>
+
+<p>And small Mikey was indeed a bonny kiddie attired in the very stylish
+trousers and blouse of small James and shining with Dabney's valeting.
+His nicely plastered red mop to some extent mitigated the effect of the
+bare and scratched feet and his rollicking blue eyes over a nose as
+tip-tilted as Charlotte's own bespoke his delight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, me mother made the togs fer Jim," he asserted with great
+independence, as he rammed his hands into the diminutive pockets in the
+trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she did, and Auntie Harriet paid her for a present to Jimmy. She
+sews for us and not for Mikey and her other children, because her
+husband drinks up his money and our husband don't. Come on, let's go
+help Minister!" was the shot that Charlotte fired, as she departed down
+the garden path with her cohorts.</p>
+
+<p>"What about that for democracy?" demanded Nickols, as he and father and
+I all laughed together.</p>
+
+<p>That night at a dinner party Nell was giving I sat next to the Harpeth
+Jaguar and talked to him for the first time in many weeks. I had been
+avoiding him and I didn't mind admitting it to myself. There was
+something disturbing and puzzling in his serene eyes and free, strong,
+beautiful body that gave me a queer haunting pain back of my breast.
+Into my scheme of doing those things in life that give pleasure and not
+doing those things that give pain he somehow would not fit. He had
+become as much a part of the social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> fabric of Goodloets as was I, and
+he came to our dinner parties, motored with us in his long, gray car and
+was as happy with us seemingly as he was with that same gray car full of
+small fry from the Settlement or going about the business of the chapel.
+The car had always reminded me of his evening clothes, which were
+straight and simple in line with the black silk vest cut up around the
+collar buttoned in the back, but which were so fine in texture and
+perfect in cut and fit that they seemed to be some kind of super clothes
+that ought to be called by a name of their own, just as the people in
+the Settlement had decided to call the car the "Chariot" as soon as they
+had stopped resenting a parson's having it, from finding out how easy
+were its cushions and how swift its ministrations in time of need.</p>
+
+<p>"Parson's Chariot, quick!" had moaned poor old Mrs. Kelly, when she had
+slipped on Mrs. Burns' wet doorstep and dislocated her hip. Little Katie
+Moore had been driven home as swiftly as if on wings after old Dr.
+Harding had been overtaken, ten miles out on Providence Road, and had
+used the back seat for an operating table while he put her small
+splintered ankle in place between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> splints improvised by a long knife
+from the car's kit.</p>
+
+<p>And from a distance I had wondered at the Reverend Gregory Goodloe,
+wondered at his freedom from all resentment because of his ministerial
+and spiritual failures and at his loving serenity and enjoyment of us
+all. He partook of the joy in almost all of our adventures in pleasure,
+and when we did things that in the nature of the case would seem to
+merit his disapproval, he never administered it; he simply was not with
+us, but was serenely about his business at the other end of the town
+from the Country Club or the Last Chance, at whichever resort the
+entertainment that did not interest him was in progress. He seemed
+especially to enjoy coming to our dinner parties and he was such a
+delight with his keen-bladed wit, his flow of joyous laughter and high
+spirits and the music that bubbled up without accompaniment or denial
+whenever we asked for it, that not a woman in town would invite the rest
+to dine until she was sure of securing him first.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/illus186.jpg" width="350" height="501" alt="&quot;I been upsot by my young mistis comin&#39; home.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;I been upsot by my young mistis comin&#39; home.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's so economical," said Nell Morgan, as I helped her arrange her
+guests for Mark's birthday dinner. While she talked I paused to consider
+where to put Harriet Henderson and then dropped her card beside Mark's
+with a little ache in my heart as I tucked Cliff Gray in by Jessie
+Litton and left the place next Nell vacant for Billy. "People never
+empty their champagne glasses when Mr. Goodloe gets to talking, and you
+can put the extra bottles back in the cellar for next time. Do you
+suppose he does it on purpose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody could be as completely happy as he was at Jessie's Friday night
+<i>on purpose</i>," I answered, as I laid the last card and went with Nell to
+greet her first guests.</p>
+
+<p>After the soup I turned toward the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, whose card I
+had placed next my own, and found him looking at me with a particular
+softness in his eyes under the dull gold.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte's and Mikey's nine won twenty-eight to eighteen against Tommy
+Braidy and Maudie Burns. Thank you for getting the pitcher into his
+togs," he said, as he squared his shoulders slightly against the rest of
+the world, the rest of the diners in particular, and bent toward me in
+just that deferential angle that a man uses when he wants to signal to
+the others that for a limited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> time he desires sole possession of the
+woman dining next to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mixing of water and oil in the educational scheme is interesting
+me greatly," I answered him with a laugh. "Do you really think it will
+succeed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any kind of kingdom can be built in the heart of a child, an oligarchy,
+a democracy or a republic," he answered quickly. "Your name-daughter is
+a born socialist."</p>
+
+<p>"She and James are murderers and liars and thieves and are wholly
+engaging. Sue is fast learning from them the habits of their underworld
+and is asleep upstairs now with Harriet's silver and jade chain, which
+she brought home with her without the knowledge of the owner this
+afternoon. What are you going to do about them? I take it you intend to
+build a kingdom in and of their hearts."</p>
+
+<p>"Weed 'em, like Dabney and I did your dahlia bank ten times at least
+this spring. You didn't help with the dahlias, but maybe you will with
+the young Tenderloiners." His eyes entreated mine with a soft radiance
+that almost made me dizzy.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't know weeds from flowers, 'Minister,'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> I answered with
+prompt denial of his plea, but with a soft use of the children's name
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't always know. Let's study botany&mdash;together," he again hazarded
+daringly, and from the tenderness that suddenly curved his strong mouth
+I knew my soft answer had hit its mark. "Are you coming to the
+dedication of the chapel a week from Sunday?" He asked me the question
+directly and with all his softness gone and a commanding note in his
+voice and direct look. His jeweled eyes were so deep back under their
+dull gold brows that between the bars of black lashes they looked like
+stars shining down through a radiant night. They threw their rays
+directly down into my heart and I could see that their owner was reading
+the hieroglyphics of my uncertainties and that I could not hide them
+from him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not," I answered him with the frankness that his gaze compelled.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll not dedicate it until you help me do it and&mdash;" he was saying
+quietly and positively, when Billy broke in over the excluding shoulder.
+Billy really adores Gregory Goodloe, but he enjoys going to the limit of
+his ministerial endurance. Over that limit he has never stepped and he
+never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> will; none of them ever will, for there is that in the Harpeth
+Jaguar which commands the very essence of respect for himself as well as
+his cloth.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Parson, what's that about the dedication of the chapel?" he asked,
+as he twirled his champagne glass to break a few bubbles. "Charlotte and
+Nickols are going to give Harriet and me that tennis dressing down
+Sunday week if you don't need us to dedicate with."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't need you," answered the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, in an easy
+agreeable voice, but that had in it the note that he always uses to make
+Billy halt. "I'm not going to dedicate it yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" came in a perfect chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been working night and day on that altar cloth because I depended
+on you to know the date of the dedication of your own church. I have
+danced only once this week," said Letitia Cockrell, with her usual bland
+directness.</p>
+
+<p>"The communion service from Gorham's has been packed away unopened in my
+office a week," Hampton added in an aggrieved voice. "They hurried it
+for us and it has to be sent back, piece at a time, to be marked."</p>
+
+<p>"The baptismal font is perfectly beautiful and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> I want the Suckling
+sprinkled from it first. If you don't hurry she will get old enough to
+misbehave herself. I know I promised, but I have decided that I can
+never have the others baptized now, they are too bad," said Nell, as she
+paused and listened for some sort of explosion from above as she did
+every minute or two.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll rope Charlotte and drag her to the altar for you, and Mark can sit
+on her feet while the parson sprinkles," offered Billy, and they all
+laughed at the picture that he conjured, which seemed to be in keeping
+with many scenes we had witnessed in the life of small Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>"That won't be necessary. She will stand before me with folded hands
+when her time comes," answered Mr. Goodloe, after he had laughed as
+heartily as anybody else at Billy's threat. "The greatest difficulty
+will be in persuading her to allow me to conduct my own services."</p>
+
+<p>"But what did you put off the dedication date for?" demanded Letitia,
+with the hurry over the altar cloth still rankling.</p>
+
+<p>"I put off the dedication of the chapel until all of the people for whom
+I cared deeply, whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> cooperation with me is positively necessary,
+should be ready to come and help me in the services. When that time
+comes I will have the dedication. It may be a year and it may be
+a&mdash;day," the parson answered with cool directness.</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean Charlotte, the offer I made for young Charlotte holds
+good," said Billy with positive glee. "If you want her I'll rope her and
+drag her in and the rest of you can bid for who holds her down while
+being branded."</p>
+
+<p>"And my answer to your generous offer, Billy Harvey, is&mdash;" Mr. Goodloe
+paused and looked at me, and Jessie giggled with nervousness&mdash;"the same
+that I made to your offer about the constraining of young Charlotte."</p>
+
+<p>"Still it would be great sport to see both the Charlottes&mdash;" Billy was
+saying, when a servant brought a note on his tray and handed it to Mr.
+Goodloe, who glanced at it and then hurriedly opened and read it.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry, Mrs. Morgan, but will you let me answer this summons?" he
+asked, and there was the regret in his rich voice of a great boy at
+being snatched from a feast. "I am so hungry," he added with a laugh.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come back later. I'll save some of everything for you," said Nell
+pleadingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I will if I can," he answered. There was an excited smoulder in the
+stars under the dull gold that made me restless and my eyes sought and
+claimed his for a second in which a quick flash of the jeweled
+tenderness of comprehension was flashed into my depths.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, everybody," he said, and in a second was out of the dining
+room and we could hear him running down the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, if he just wasn't a preacher," sighed Harriet. "I suppose
+somebody in the Settlement is dead or borned or drunk, and he has to go
+and see about it. I wish&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Great Jehovah!" exclaimed Billy, as he suddenly jumped to his feet.
+"Ensley is fighting drunk and has the gang around the Last Chance.
+Parson's life isn't worth a tinker's damn if he runs foul of them with
+all that talk about Martha Ensley and Jacob's threat. She came back last
+night and Goodloe threatened to have Jacob arrested for beating her.
+Come on, Nickols, and let's follow him. We'll be enough. The rest of you
+go on eating, drinking and merrying because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> old Mark was born. We'll
+come right back just as soon as we see that all is serene on the Potomac
+of the Last Chance." And with a last hasty gulp at his wine glass Billy
+followed Nickols out of the room. Nickols was both white and livid and
+the expression of his face frightened me, for I knew that Billy would
+minimize any kind of danger in the presence of a woman while Nickols
+would not take that trouble.</p>
+
+<p>It was with a queer breathlessness that we all sat before our wine
+glasses in the midst of the perfume from the rich food and dying flowers
+and waited&mdash;for what we didn't know.</p>
+
+<p>Then it came!</p>
+
+<p>A shot rang out clear and clean in the darkness and was quickly followed
+by three barking echoes from a repeater.</p>
+
+<p>And there seated in my chair in the brilliantly lighted room, blocks
+away from the scene, I felt a bullet thud against dull gold.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>A BIT OF RAW LIFE</h3>
+
+
+<p>I don't know by what means of personal transportation my body was
+carried down the street to the public square and to the pavement in
+front of the courthouse, but I found myself standing there over a woman
+who had raised Gregory Goodloe's head on her arm and was drawing deep,
+hard sobs as she held a handkerchief to stanch a flow of blood that
+showed crimson in the flash from Nickols' electric cigar lighter.</p>
+
+<p>"'When men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of
+evil against you falsely for my sake&mdash;'" I quoted to myself softly as I
+stood and looked down on the prostrate figure of the big lithe Harpeth
+Jaguar while Billy struggled with a man a little way off in the darkness
+and Nickols shut off the light and went to his aid. I didn't know
+exactly where the words that rose so suddenly from my heart to my lips
+had come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> from, and I only vaguely understood them, but I seemed to be
+saying them without my own volition.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my God, yes, that's what they've done to him," sobbed Martha as
+she looked up, peering at me through the darkness. "Pa is drunk, Miss
+Charlotte; and the rest egged him on. This is the only friend I've got
+and they've killed him."</p>
+
+<p>"Not by a good deal, Martha," came in a hearty grand opera voice just as
+I dropped on my knee, and in time to stop me from taking that bleeding
+gold head on my own breast and&mdash;"Jacob's bullet just clipped me but its
+impact was as good as his fist would have been, which I wish he had
+used." And as he spoke the wounded parson sprang lithely to his feet and
+left us two women kneeling before him. In an instant a thought of Mary
+and the Magdalen flashed through my brain as he bent to raise me to my
+feet, while Martha crouched away from us in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte?" he questioned softly, as if not willing to believe the
+witness of his hands and eyes, muffled by the starry darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Young Charlotte stones you and Jacob shoots<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> you, and I&mdash;" I both
+sobbed and laughed as I clung to his hand just as I heard Billy and
+Nickols throw the cursing, panting man to the ground not ten feet away.</p>
+
+<p>"Now then, Parson, we've got Jacob down and out. Nickols has got his
+foot on his neck and I've got his pistol. What do you want done with
+him?" Billy interrupted me pantingly to demand.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him up," answered Mr. Goodloe, as he gently extricated himself from
+my clinging hand and went over to the scene of the conflict. "Had
+enough, Jacob?" he asked just as gently as he had unhanded himself from
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have had enough when I put you where you can't entice my girl
+again," answered Jacob as he rose slowly to his feet. As he spoke Billy
+went and stood beside the parson and Nickols stepped behind them into
+the shadow in which Martha crouched.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that is not true, Jacob. I helped Martha to go away to a place
+of safety to earn her living and keep her honesty. Isn't that so,
+Martha?" the rich voice softly asked the woman crouching in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"I told him that but he wouldn't believe me and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> the others don't," she
+answered with a sob that was almost a shudder of fear.</p>
+
+<p>"What did she come back fer then?" demanded Jacob. "Answer me that. And
+didn't she go straight to your preaching and praying joint like all the
+other women, fine and sluts, do?" The liquor was still burning in
+Jacob's head but at those words he got a response from the impact of
+Billy's fist that again laid him low.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I dasn't say nothing. I dasn't," moaned Martha, as she clutched at
+my skirts just as Nell and Hampton began to arrive on the scene of
+action, followed by Harriet and Mark and the others. They were all
+panting and wild with anxiety. They had taken the wrong turning at the
+end of the square and had gone around the block, thus giving the little
+tragedy time to enact itself before a mercifully small audience.</p>
+
+<p>"Go away quickly, Martha, in the shadow," I bent and whispered to the
+trembling woman, and I didn't know where the sympathy in my voice came
+from as I stood between her and the rest while she slipped behind an old
+horse block before the court house gate and off in the darkness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> towards
+the Settlement before they had noticed her presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody hurt? What's the matter?" gasped Mark as he seized hold of the
+Reverend Mr. Goodloe's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing serious," answered the parson in a voice that calmed the others
+like oil on choppy water. "Jacob Ensley is out on a drunk and Billy had
+to knock him down to quiet him. All of you go back to dinner quickly,
+for I don't see why Sergeant Rogers should get Jacob this time. Billy
+will help me get him home and I'll remonstrate with him when he is
+sober. I'd rather do it at the Last Chance than at the jail. Jacob is a
+leading citizen and I don't want a jail smirch on him. I intend to use
+him later. Now all of you go. Go!" His voice was as gently positive as
+if he had been speaking to a lot of children and nobody seemed even to
+think of rebelling but we all began to fade away into the starlight as
+rapidly as we had assembled and more quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, and bless you," he said to me, as I went past him in the
+darkness, and for just a second I suspected that his hand was laid on my
+black braids but I was not sure. I knew the gratitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> was for my
+getting Martha off the scene of action so quietly and swiftly.</p>
+
+<p>"A bit of raw life for you, Charlotte," Nickols remarked as he went with
+me through the fragrant night back to Mark's and Nell's feast. "The
+eternal girl, two-men melee."</p>
+
+<p>"In this case it was girl&mdash;three men, the third skunking it," I answered
+in words as coarse and as forcible as the scene I had just witnessed.
+"I'd like to get my bare hands around the throat of the man who is
+hiding behind Martha and that little child."</p>
+
+<p>"That remark from you, my dear Charlotte, just goes to show that when
+women get even the smell of bloodshed they become fiercer than the
+male," said Nickols with a cool laugh that further infuriated me.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do feel like a female jaguar," I answered hotly and then
+collapsed inside at the use of that name for myself in conjunction with
+my secret title for the Reverend Mr. Goodloe.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be better if you felt yourself in the character of a ferret if
+you intend to go out on a still hunt for all unacknowledged paternity,
+even in dear, simple, little old Goodloets," Nickols<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> further jeered as
+we came up the steps of the Morgan house from where the others were just
+going into the dining room to resume their eating and drinking and being
+merry.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll find that one man," I answered as I swept into the dining room,
+seated myself in my place and drained my glass of flat wine.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven help him!" laughed Nickols wickedly, and he raised Mr. Goodloe's
+full glass as he slipped into his place beside me.</p>
+
+<p>For a week after the shooting fray my soul sulked darkly in its tent and
+meditated while I went on my usual gay rounds of self-enjoyment. The
+garden was being brought to a most glorious mid-August triumph and the
+inhabitants for miles around were coming to see it. All of father's old
+friends, from whom he had shrunk in the last years, hung around him in
+the old way. He sat with them under the old graybeard poplars around
+which had been planted a plantation of slim young larches by the wizard
+of White Plains. From discussions about gardening and Americanisms all
+the old Solons of the local bar, and even of the towns around, gradually
+led their fallen leader back into his place and were battling with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> him
+over politics and jurisprudence as they had in past days. The day I went
+into his library to ask father about employing another likely black
+garden boy that Dabney had discovered, and found him, Judge Monfort from
+over at Hillcrest in the third district, Mr. Cockrell and Mr. Sproul
+around his table deep in huge volumes from the shelves, buried in a
+cloud of tobacco smoke and argument in which Latin words flew back and
+forth, I went up to my room and stood helpless before my window looking
+out towards Paradise Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to thank somebody and there is nobody to thank," I whispered,
+with a great emptiness within me. That was the bitterest cry of need my
+heart had ever given forth, and I went swiftly down to Nickols in the
+garden and told him what I had seen and heard.</p>
+
+<p>"It really is a remarkable come-back, sweetheart," he said, with the
+most exquisite sympathy in his voice and face. "Mark Morgan told me just
+an hour ago that they want to have him appointed back to his old place
+on the bench and Mr. Cockrell answered the President's inquiry for a man
+from this section for the Commerce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> Commission with the judge's name.
+It'll be great to see the old boy on one of the seats of the mighty
+again, thanks to the sweat of his brow and mind in this village
+manifestation of American nationalism which has grown out of our little
+old garden plan."</p>
+
+<p>"What can a man or woman do to render gratitude if there seems to be
+nobody to take it, Nickols?" I asked him, not expecting, as usual, that
+he would understand me. For once he did.</p>
+
+<p>"The philosophies all teach 'hand it on' in that case," he answered me.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll hand it on to Martha Ensley and help her and her child to their
+place under the sun," I said slowly, thus by having a reason and an
+obligation back of it, ratifying the vow I had already taken.</p>
+
+<p>"That is an impossibility," answered Nickols with easy coolness. "The
+one 'come-back' that is impossible is the woman in that kind of a
+situation."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never admit such an injustice as that," I said, and I had a queer
+premonition that I would be held to that declaration.</p>
+
+<p>The very next morning after my declaration of purpose to "hand on" my
+father's "come-back" I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> went down into the Settlement to hunt for Martha
+Ensley, not that I was really suffering about her, but because I felt a
+kind of obligation to begin at once a thing that it appealed to my sense
+of justice to accomplish.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes in mid-August there comes down a night over the hot, lush,
+maturing Harpeth Valley which is like a benediction that sprinkles cool
+dew on a thirsting heart. And now the morning was cool and brilliant,
+with the sun evaporating the heavy dew in soft clouds of perfume from
+the grain fields, the meadows and the upturned soil out where the
+farmers were breaking ground after the first harvests. I felt strong and
+calm and full of an electric energy, which I found I needed before I had
+more than started my quest.</p>
+
+<p>I put on my tennis clothes, snowy from collar to shoe tips, like the
+trappings of the White Knight, and started to walk down into the
+Settlement to find Martha. I intended to stop at Mother Spurlock's
+"Little House Beside the Road," and some vague idea was in my mind of
+having her dispatch a messenger to summons Martha to the interview I was
+about to bestow upon her. That is not the way it all happened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> and I was
+hot and dusty and sweat-drenched before I had been on my quest more than
+a few hours.</p>
+
+<p>Mother Elsie was not at home. The door to the Little House was wide
+open, as it always is when cold or rain does not close it, and huge old
+Tabby with one eye purred on the doorstep in the sun. A bird was nesting
+in the wisteria vine above the door and her soft whirring bespoke an
+interesting domestic event as near at hand. It did not in the least
+disturb Tab, and I wondered at the harmony between traditional enemies
+that I met on Mother Spurlock's very doorstep. I went in and drew myself
+a drink of fresh cool water from the cistern at the back door, looked in
+a tin box over the kitchen table and took three crisp tea cakes
+therefrom. I picked up a half knitted sock from beside the huge split
+rocker in the shade of the gnarled old apple tree, which was a rooftree
+in every sense of the word, for it crowded close against the door and
+hovered in the whole tiny house. Just before I left I put all the loose
+change I had in my white linen skirt pocket in an old lacquered tea
+canister which had a slit in it cut with a can opener, and that stood
+on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> the shelf of the old rock chimney in the low living room. I had
+never heard that canister mentioned by Mother Spurlock and I don't know
+how I knew that out of it came the emergency funds for many a crisis in
+the Settlement. Then last I picked a blush rose from the monthly bloomer
+trailing up and over the window and laid it on the empty, worn old Bible
+on the wide arm of the rocker beside a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
+Then I hesitated. I had been so sure of finding Mother Spurlock at home
+and having her hunt up Martha for me that I found it difficult to adjust
+myself to my first complexity of plans. And while I hesitated a resolve
+came into my mind with the completeness of a spoken direction.</p>
+
+<p>"She lives at the Last Chance and I'll go right down there and find
+her," I said to myself, as I started along the peony-bordered path to
+the front gate of the Little House, over which a huge late snowball was
+drooping, loaded down with snowy balls that would hold their own until
+almost the time for frost. At my own decision I had a delicious little
+feeling of fear, which was at least justifiable when I thought of that
+huge drunken figure wrestling with Billy in the darkness and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> whom I
+knew to be the proprietor of the resort into which I had determined to
+penetrate. Also, from my early youth I had heard Jacob Ensley and the
+Last Chance spoken of in tones of dread disapproval. Before I should
+become really frightened I hurried down the hill, past the squalid and
+tumble-down mill cottages which I had never really seen before, where it
+seemed to me millions of children swarmed in and around and about, and
+at last arrived at the infamous social center of the Settlement.</p>
+
+<p>And my astonishment was profound to find that the Last Chance sign hung
+over a very prosperous grocery with boxes and barrels of provender out
+on the pavement under an awning and with huge, newly-painted screen
+doors guarding the wide entrance, at which I hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Come right in, lady, come right in," called a cheerful, booming man's
+voice, and the door was swung open by a large man in a white apron, with
+blue eyes that crinkled at the corners, a wide smile and white hair.
+"What can we do for you to-day? We've a nice lot of late dewberries just
+in from over on Paradise Ridge."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm&mdash;I'm looking for the&mdash;the Last Chance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> Saloon," I faltered, because
+I was too astonished to utter anything but the truth to the delightful
+and tenderly solicitous man standing before me in his huge, clean white
+apron over his blue shirt that matched his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, lady," the nice Irish voice faltered a trifle, about as mine had,
+though plainly with controlled astonishment tinged with amusement,
+"could I get you anything to&mdash;to cool you off and bring it out here in
+the grocery? It is cooler than it is back at the bar. I said to myself
+jest last week, so I did, I said to myself, 'Jacob, you ought to get a
+sody-water fountain for the ladies what has the same right to thirst as
+a man.' And I will, too, if my bad luck just leaves me. How about a nice
+cool bottle of beer sitting comfortable here before the counter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you&mdash;<i>you</i>&mdash;Jacob&mdash;I mean&mdash;Mr. Jacob Ensley?" I further gasped.
+This daylight materialization of the grewsome beast of the night was too
+much for me.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacob Ensley at your service, Miss," he answered with easy dignity.
+"Now, will it be the bottle of beer I shall bring you? Or there's a new
+drink I might mix fer you that a young gentleman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> friend of mine from
+New York has taught me, and with a good Irish name of Thomas
+Collins&mdash;the drink, not the young gentleman." Nickols had been living on
+Tom Collins for the last month and I instantly knew that I recognized
+the young friend from New York. Also my wits were at a branching of the
+road and I didn't know just what to do or say as Jacob waited with easy
+courtesy for my decision. And again I was too much perturbed for
+invention and had to speak out the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Charlotte Powers, Mr. Ensley, and I came down to see your daughter,
+Martha," I said, looking directly into his clear friendly eyes which I
+saw instantly darken with a storm as the smile left his nice mouth and
+it hardened into a straight line.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Miss Powers, but my Martha ain't at home right now to you,
+and I don't know when she will be. Is that all I can do for you? These
+berries now, from over at Paradise Ridge?" And with the ease of a man of
+the great upper world Jacob Ensley of the lower walks of life put me out
+of the door of his private life into the ranks of the meddler and shut
+it in my face. I acknowledged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> to myself that my rebuff was justifiable
+and I was about to make an exit from the scene as gracefully as possible
+with a box of the really delicious berries under my arm when a cry of
+terror in a child's voice came from somewhere at the back of the grocery
+and together the grocer and I ran to see what the matter could be. And
+at the heels of the proprietor I then penetrated the blind of the
+grocery and entered the Last Chance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TENACIOUS TURTLE</h3>
+
+
+<p>"It's Martha's Stray," the big man gasped in a kind of impatient alarm.
+"I just left him here a minute ago to go front." Together he and I
+started around the long room with its bar on the one side backed up by a
+mirror whose gilt frame was swathed in mosquito netting and on either
+side of which were shelves bearing pyramids of bottles. On the bar at
+one end were piled oranges and at the other lemons and limes whose
+sophistication seemed out of place somehow in the Settlement in the
+Harpeth Valley. All the trappings that I judge would go with the
+dispensing of liquor were present, but our eyes could discover no small
+child and we stood together and waited anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"He's got me toe, me toe, and won't let go. He's chewing it off!" at
+last came a lusty yell from just outside a back door that led out into a
+side<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> yard from behind the bar, and with one accord the proprietor of
+the Last Chance and I ran to the scene of the devouring. And as we ran I
+heard a door slam in the rooms back of the bar and we met Martha face to
+face on the scene of action. I shall never forget the picture that
+confronted me there in that little back yard upon which the bar of the
+Last Chance opened, and I somehow never want to.</p>
+
+<p>On a little grass plot a small boy danced and yelled and firmly to one
+of the capering feet was hung a large mud turtle which was flapped this
+way and that by the strenuous young leg, but which held on with
+apparently every intention of letting only the traditional thunder
+loosen its grasp on the pink prize.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand still, you Stray, and let me get at the varmint," commanded Jacob
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Let mother get the beast, sonny," Martha pleaded as she knelt on the
+grass and caught the dancing boy by his arm and brought his dervish
+gyrations to a halt.</p>
+
+<p>I stood unconscious of intrusion and absorbed with interest and watched
+the operations begun on the tenacious turtle and the writhing toe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+Neither of the three principals in the action noticed me at all as
+Martha held the boy and Jacob bent and took hold of the turtle in his
+hard brown spotted shell. And as the operations for his liberation were
+begun the small boy became both still and quiet and I was able to get a
+good view of him as he leaned against his mother's shoulder and held out
+the foot to Jacob.</p>
+
+<p>As I looked at him something queer stirred in me with a sharp pain and
+then was quiet. He was the most delicious bit of five-year-old humanity
+I had ever beheld and I doubt if any childless woman could have seen
+such a child cuddle to another woman's breast and shoulder and not have
+had something of the same thrill of pain. His whiteness and pinkness and
+sturdy chubbiness were like many another infant's charms but his jet
+black top-knot that ascended on one side and cascaded over his ear on
+the other in a hauntingly familiar way, his violet eyes under their long
+lashes and his clear-cut, firm, commanding mouth, that curled into the
+bud of a rose as he sobbed and then unfolded into lines of beauty and
+strength as he hushed at his mother's comforting,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> were not like any
+other young human that I had ever beheld.</p>
+
+<p>"It hurts. It hurts!" he sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, <i>you</i> mustn't cry!" commanded Martha, and there was a little
+bitter emphasis on the "you" that cut me, I didn't exactly know why.</p>
+
+<p>And immediately the curled mouth was set in a firm line and the long
+lashes winked back tears.</p>
+
+<p>"The beast will not leave go at all," was Jacob's verdict as after a
+careful twisting and turning of the ugly turtle he rose to his feet.
+"And they do say to kill it lets a venom into the place it is holt of. I
+dunno what to do." And in his uncertainty Jacob's eyes sought my face
+while at the same instant Martha lifted her wistful eyes to mine. It was
+the instinctive turning of the masses to the domination of my class in
+the time of need of leadership.</p>
+
+<p>"You git it, lady," suddenly demanded the kiddie, and in his voice and
+glance there was none of the deferring to a superior force that I felt
+in the others but a decided command of that force. And as he spoke he
+stretched out an imperious hand that caught and clung to mine. "Git down
+and git it," he again commanded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Have you any ammonia, Martha?" I asked, my wits responding gallantly to
+the sudden demand upon their biological knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"I've some in the chist behind the bar. Times I uses it strong on heavy
+drunks," responded Jacob and he went quickly into the bar and returned
+with the bottle. "It's customers in the grocery and customers at the bar
+that I'm keeping waiting fooling along with the brat and the varmint,"
+he grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"I can manage the turtle and you can go and attend to the customers," I
+answered, thus assuming calmly the command of the craft of the Last
+Chance. Jacob immediately took me at my word and disappeared into the
+bar.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's take him and lay him on the bed so we can muffle the turtle in a
+towel while we use the ammonia," I said to Martha.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Martha, "that will be best. Let mother carry you,
+sonny!" and Martha bent as if to lift him in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"I kin hop," the young sufferer announced. "I'm too big to carry, I am,"
+he added with proud consideration in his glance at Martha's frailness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll carry you and mother can carry the turtle," I answered, and to
+prevent further delay I lifted him in my strong arms while Martha took
+the turtle in her hands, protected by the gingham apron that she wore.
+The black head wilted against my breast and the serious young violet
+eyes were raised to mine in frightened confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a mighty big turkle," he faltered and snuggled closer.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll get him," I reassured, as I laid him on a bed in a room that
+opened, as did the bar, out on the tiny yard.</p>
+
+<p>And as I had promised we performed upon that stubborn turtle. With a
+convulsion, as the ammonia fumes entered his nostrils, if he had such
+things, he let go of the toe, shuddered and withdrew into his shell, to
+die, I supposed, though I afterwards learned that he crawled off in the
+night, much to the kiddie's grief.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a bad smell, poor old turkle," was all the thanks I got as the
+sufferer climbed down from the bed and proceeded to seize his late enemy
+in intrepid and sympathetic hands. His mother rescued both him and the
+turtle by placing the latter in a bucket on a table at the window and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+giving the rescued another bucket to get me a drink of water from the
+well in the yard.</p>
+
+<p>"Northeast, bottom corner," he promised me with hospitality shining from
+his entire face as he experimentally hopped out into the yard, then
+forgot me and the water entirely in making the acquaintance of a very
+dirty little dog that was barking at him through the fence.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's lovely, Martha," I said, speaking from pure impulse in a way
+that could not fail to carry conviction and melt the heart of any woman
+who possessed a treasure like that.</p>
+
+<p>"I know he is, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered with gentle bitterness,
+"and that makes it all the worse for him."</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't; it can't be worse for anybody to be born as beautiful and
+strong as that boy is," I answered her and felt somehow I had fallen
+head foremost into my mission. "I came down here to see you, Martha, and
+now that I have seen him&mdash;I&mdash;it's&mdash;it's a shame, all of it," I ended by
+faltering with a total lack of the eloquence that I felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's just that&mdash;a shame," Martha admitted to me with a great
+hopelessness in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> black eyes. "And nothing can make it better."</p>
+
+<p>"Something can be done!" I answered hotly. "You are young, Martha, and
+he's a baby. You can get out of it all and you can get him out and begin
+all over. I&mdash;I'll help you." And as I spoke I took her hand in mine.
+Mine was brown and hard from tennis and Martha's from toil, but they met
+and clung.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I tried that, Miss Charlotte. I had to come back," answered Martha,
+and a bitter passion suddenly lit her pale face. "I'm too young to be
+let go&mdash;yet."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, Martha?" I asked, and suddenly I felt that some kind
+of chasm had yawned at my feet that I had never suspected to exist
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered as the passion died out
+of her face and voice and the sorrow fell over her like a shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember that afternoon at Mother Spurlock's when we were ten,
+and you climbed the tree and got the apples, while I picked them up for
+her to make apple turn-overs for us?" I asked her suddenly as I held on
+to her hand when she tried to draw it from me. "I cried for a week<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> to
+go and see you, Martha, and it was all wrong that I wasn't allowed. My
+mother would have let me come if she had been alive, but Mammy was an
+ignorant negro and didn't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I cried for you, too," answered Martha, as the saddest smile I had ever
+seen came across the darkness of her face. "And when you was a young
+lady I crept up to the south window of the Poplars and saw you in your
+dress for the big coming-out party. You were like an angel from Heaven
+and I loved you. I wanted to be like you. All us girls did. They have
+always envied you and watched you, but I loved you. I did! I did,
+but&mdash;what chanct has a girl like me got against a man who's like&mdash;like
+you are? But I did love you; I did!"</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't seem right to&mdash;to either of us to have kept us apart," I
+faltered, as Martha suddenly slipped to the floor at my feet and put her
+head in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be kind to me&mdash;I can't stand that. You mustn't, you mustn't! You
+wouldn't if you knew," she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> going to be&mdash;that is, I <i>am</i> going to help you, Martha, and you
+have got to show me how,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> I answered her as a kind of determination
+that was stronger than any like emotion I had ever had came over me.
+"Tell me what to do, Martha, for you and&mdash;and for the kiddie," I
+commanded her with my usual imperiousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Charlotte," said Martha, as she suddenly rose to her knees, looked
+up into my face and bared her shoulder with one motion of her hand,
+"that black bruise is from the licks father gave me when I wouldn't tell
+him why it was I came back after I went away and why it was I went. He
+beat me three times to make me tell whose that boy is&mdash;when he wasn't a
+month old. He knew that Mr. Goodloe helped me to go away three months
+ago and&mdash;and begin again, and he don't really believe that the parson
+enticed me back. The gang just put that in his head when he was
+drinking. He does think that Mr. Goodloe knows about it all and I'm
+afraid&mdash;afraid that some time when he's drunk he'll try to make him tell
+and&mdash;and&mdash;there'll be murder, maybe double murder. I can't tell you
+anything. I'm a fly caught in a web and I'm being drawn down to hell. I
+thought there was a way out; the parson prayed with me and I saw it. I
+saw myself right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> and honest again, but&mdash;but at a word I&mdash;I came back.
+Even the good of the child couldn't hold me when the&mdash;the calling came.
+Please go and leave me, and forget about me and&mdash;and don't come down
+here again."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Martha, I must help you," I answered, decidedly. I had never been
+able to bear any kind of frustration and this made me doubly determined.</p>
+
+<p>"It's too late, Miss Charlotte, but, Oh, it ain't too late for some of
+the others. Luella May and Sadie Todd and the rest. Miss Charlotte, make
+the Town men let 'em alone, and stop the Saturday night games and dances
+down here. You can do it. Pa would kill me for saying it, for it is then
+he makes his money, but it isn't fair, it isn't fair. You Town women do
+the same things, but you are protected and looked after. When Grace
+Payne gets drunk at your Country Club you take her home yourself and see
+no harm comes to her, and the men she's with protect her from
+themselves, but it's not the same with Luella May Spain and&mdash;and me."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know about Grace, Martha?" I faltered with terror in my
+heart. I felt a kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> of class nakedness that made me burn with positive
+physical shame.</p>
+
+<p>"They all watch and talk about what you do, Miss Charlotte, you
+especially, because you are more beautiful and more&mdash;more strong than
+the rest. They all said you'd smash our going to the church meetings
+with the Town folks at the Country Club when you got home. But I always
+stand up that you are right and you are. The Town on the hill and the
+Settlement in the valley are better&mdash;better apart. That's why I'm
+begging you to go and leave me to fight it out or go under. Please go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but, Martha, I didn't&mdash;I don't&mdash;" I was beginning to falter a
+denial to what had suddenly struck me as a truth when we were
+interrupted by the advent of Martha's child, the Stray, as I afterwards
+found was the only name he possessed, one cruelly indicative of his
+relation to the social structure of the world into which he had
+involuntarily been born.</p>
+
+<p>"Bottom of the well, northeast corner," he said, as he set a bucket of
+water at my feet with a jolt that dashed a small wave over my white
+buckskins, and he held out a dipper full to me with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> little twirling
+motion that sent another wave on my skirt and which had an unmistakably
+professional knack to it. I have seen old Wilks set down beer steins and
+cocktail glasses with exactly that twirl ever since he has officiated at
+the lockers and sideboard at the Club, and I now know that his motions
+had the latest Last Chance style to them. Thus, by gossamer links and
+steel cable, the Town and the Settlement seemed to be held together.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me for spilling the water on you," added the young scion of the
+bartender with grave courtesy, as he held a very dirty little paddie
+under the drip of the dipper and elevated the drink for me in such a way
+that I had to steady the small hand that held the handle with mine as I
+drank.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, son, how careless!" Martha was just exclaiming when a call in
+Jacob's sharp voice interrupted her.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha, grocery!" it commanded her and I was not sure whether he was
+ignorant of the fact that I was still her caller or was interrupting her
+on purpose. I think Martha shared the same uncertainty; she blushed and
+looked both ashamed and frightened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll go now, Martha, out this door that leads onto the street," I
+hastened to say to relieve her of the dilemma. "But I'm coming back to
+you," I added with determination, as I made ready to slip out the side
+door of the Last Chance in regular underworld style.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't, Miss Charlotte," she called, as she was passing through
+the other door into the world from which I was escaping. The sad
+significance of our two exits struck me so forcibly that I was two
+blocks away before I really became conscious of things around me, and
+then I was brought back to the squalid street of the Settlement and its
+surroundings by feeling a damp little hand slipped into mine as I strode
+along.</p>
+
+<p>"Please take me with you, Miss Lady," the Stray pleaded, as he ran along
+beside me, trying to keep up with my long steps. "I've got me a dog now
+to keep off turkles from me and you." And the slinking brindle bunch of
+ears and tail and very little else, at our heels, regarded me with the
+same brave entreaty. He and the Stray, indeed, presented a picture of
+chivalrous attention as they stood regarding me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But what will your mother say?" I asked of my small human attendant
+with conscientious contention against my desire to take them both with
+me on out of the dirt and heat and flies and other swarming young humans
+up into the coolness and shade and&mdash;loneliness&mdash;of my own life.</p>
+
+<p>"She groceries all day and has to forget me," he answered calmly. "You
+can bring me back to bed when she is through." And to this plea was
+added a pathetic wag of the brindle tail.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll take you up as far as Mother Spurlock's and give you both a
+tea cake," I capitulated as I started again up the street of the
+Settlement towards the haven of the Town.</p>
+
+<p>And as my escort and I progressed through the Settlement I could see the
+most violent signs of interest being manifested in all of us. Dirty,
+sweaty women, with their sleeves rolled up, came to the doors to look at
+us, and as I greeted them one and all with a nod they smiled back with
+pleased astonishment. I had never been down in the Settlement before,
+but most of them spoke to me by name and one toothless old woman hastily
+broke off a bloom from a struggling geranium,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> came to her rickety gate
+and offered it to me with an admiring smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless my soul, Miss Charlotte, be you a-kidnappin' Martha's Stray?" she
+asked, as I accepted it with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"He and the dog are kidnapping me as far as Mother Spurlock's, and then
+they'll let me go and come back," I answered, with a laugh, as we
+started on. Not once had the strong little fingers let go of my hand as
+we stood and talked and they only held the closer as we started climbing
+the long, hot dusty hill to the Little House by the Side of the Road.
+But in the long climb not once did the sturdy little legs lag or the
+small arm drag on my strength. The clasp was one of equality and
+affectionate attraction, not of dependence.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SHORT-CIRCUIT</h3>
+
+
+<p>And at last we arrived at the old snowball guarding the open gate of the
+Little House and we went under its low boughs and up the walk. But we
+did not march to an undisputed and stealthy raid on the tea cake box
+above the kitchen table. The Little House was no longer the deserted
+scene I had left it, but was teeming with human and juvenile activities
+which streamed out to meet us at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't come in here, Auntie Charlotte," was the command that greeted
+me at the very doorstep as young Charlotte faced me with short skirts
+outspread determinedly, while behind her Mikey of the red head, Jimmy,
+Sue, Maudie, the sister of Mikey, and other known and unknown juveniles,
+presented a solid support of defiance. "We are doing some Lord's work
+and we don't need you, but we'll let the nice little boy and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> lovely
+dog come in. We do need them. Come in, little boy!" and as she spoke
+Charlotte held out a welcoming hand to the Stray, who faltered and
+looked up into my face to see if he might accept the invitation which
+evidently swayed him by its commanding tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't I come in for just a second?" I asked with all due meekness.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for even a second," answered Charlotte sternly. "You'd interrupt
+Minister. You go away and leave the boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how'll I get him back to his mother?" I pleaded, but as I spoke I
+allowed the little fingers to slip from mine and I pushed the waif
+towards Charlotte with the greatest confidence, which evidently
+communicated itself to both him and the dog, for they left me
+simultaneously and went towards the enemy's camp.</p>
+
+<p>"Shoo, it's only little Stray Ensley. I'll take him home when I go," the
+redoubtable Mikey assured me with a wide smile at the kiddie, which was
+answered with a rapture of hero worship.</p>
+
+<p>"What's his name?" demanded Charlotte as if seeking a passport.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Just Stray," answered Mikey in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "He
+ain't got no father, dead or alive."</p>
+
+<p>"Then Stray is just short for stranger, because everybody else has
+fathers, dead, alive or drunk," said Charlotte, in the same
+matter-of-fact tone that Mikey had used, and he in no way seemed to feel
+her remark personally derogatory to his paternal parent.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's take him to Minister to be learned his verses of the song
+and dance. Come on, for we are keeping him and the Lord waiting," said
+Charlotte as she marshaled them all into the Little House and calmly
+shut the door in my face and left me standing alone in the middle of the
+walk. Even the yellow pup had squeezed into the door before it was shut
+and only I was left in the outer darkness away from the grand opera
+voice that I could hear booming with a juvenile chorus out at the back
+of the cottage where I knew the rehearsal was being held under the twin
+of the old apple tree from which the front roof tree over my head was
+eternally separated by the Little House. With actual sadness and a queer
+feeling of shut-outness I did the only thing left to me and sauntered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+slowly on up the hill under the tall old elm trees that the Town had
+planted a century ago to keep the heat from the heads of the like of me
+while the toilers down in the Settlement had no such proof of ancestral
+care.</p>
+
+<p>"They are producing in the sweat of their brows while I&mdash;saunter," I
+said to myself, as I stretched out my bare arm from which the white silk
+sleeve had been rolled away after the prevailing mode of the sport for
+which it was designed, and flexed and regarded the bunch of muscles that
+knotted themselves on my smooth, tanned forearm.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>could</i> swing a wash tub as well as the best racquet this side of
+the Meadowbrook Club," I added aloud with a queer kind of primitive
+shame mixed with my physical pride in myself.</p>
+
+<p>"Or juggle a heavy baby and a kitchen stove into a square meal?" added a
+laughing voice as the Jaguar padded up beside my shoulder on his tennis
+shoes before I had heard him at all, so deep was my absorption in my own
+judgment and absolution of myself.</p>
+
+<p>"Still I was put out just a few minutes ago by a woman half my size," I
+laughed in return as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> the long strides shortened into harmony with mine.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard about it and ran after you to ask you to come back or, if you
+refused, to let me go with you wherever you are going. I left Mother
+Spurlock in charge of the newly installed Epworth Leaguers. Charlotte
+disapproved of my coming and said so," and we both laughed in delight
+over my strenuous name-daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you asking me <i>quo vadis?</i>" I demanded, with a look at him out of a
+corner of my eye that got in return a glint of the jewels under dull
+gold that always infuriated as well as interested me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge&mdash;'"
+the parson suddenly chanted under his breath, using the old Gregorian
+measure for the few words of the oldest song of impersonal love extant.
+"Thank you for bringing Martha's boy up to the Little House. Jacob has
+refused both Mother Spurlock and me to let him come."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't bring him. He and the pup brought me and then he was stolen
+from me into the fold, as it were," I answered as I paused at the front
+gate of the Poplars, which had a white clematis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> drifting over its tall
+stone pillars and clutching at the straight iron bars as if trying to
+keep me out of even my own fold. "Will you come in with me?" I asked
+with a laugh, as I flung the old gate wide in spite of the tendril
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>The parson laughed, whistled a strain of his "whither thou goest" chant
+to me and followed me across the lawn to the foot of the poplars. On the
+bench surrounding their trunks I found my basket with the fine seam I
+was sewing for the Suckling in it and I dropped upon the thick mat of
+grass on the very edge of the shadow from the silver branches above and
+began to hunt for my thimble, leaving the Jaguar standing over me.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop looking down on me and come tell me what particular religious
+incantations were going on from which Charlotte so violently barred me,"
+I laughed up at him, as I threw a flat grass cushion a little way from
+my skirts, upon which he immediately sank and seemed to curl up at my
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I had the whole bunch rehearsing the children's part in the dedication
+services of our chapel. Do you know that small Sue can really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> sing? The
+rest stagger well but Susan sings. It is delicious. It is going to be
+hard on you women folks to hear her chant her responses to me on that
+great day." And as he spoke he looked beyond me over to his beautiful
+shimmering gray chapel and there was not a glint in his eyes that showed
+me he was trying to sound out my intentions about attendance on that
+ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>"Please, Mr. Goodloe, don't be serious in saying as you did last night
+that you are not going to dedicate your chapel until I&mdash;I help you," in
+all gentleness I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't do it until you come," he answered me with just as great
+gentleness and he turned his head away from me, but not before I saw a
+glow in his eyes that made me suddenly strong and calm and curiously
+humble.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I could go as your guest," I faltered, offering a compromise which I
+felt sure would not be accepted.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't, I just can't dedicate the chapel until you echo my ceremony in
+your heart," he answered me with his eyes still turned away from me and
+looking with the greatest sadness out on Paradise Ridge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why?" I asked with a simple directness that the situation demanded and
+with no trace of the coquetry the question might have held.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I tell you all of the reason with no reservations?" the parson
+asked, as he swung around on his mat and faced me, with his eyes looking
+straight into mine.</p>
+
+<p>"All," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"In every community there is one soul which holds the real leadership of
+the souls of those surrounding them. God seems to appoint captains of
+the regiments of His people to lead them along the way, Christ the
+captain of all the hosts. Spiritually you are more evolved than any
+other person in this town and with you doubting I cannot get the others
+to see. You are so gorgeous and so brilliant that you blind them all.
+They have always followed your lead&mdash;up or down. There are a few like
+Mother Spurlock who have gained their Christ knowledge through
+suffering, but they are not of the calibre to help others to gain
+theirs. With your hand in mine I can make this whole community see and
+know; separated from you, you going one way and I another, I can do
+nothing. You simply short-circuit my force and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> I am helpless without
+you." He spoke very simply and directly down into my heart.</p>
+
+<p>"That is not true; no one person is responsible for any spiritual
+decision that another makes," I answered hotly with an awful sense of
+having had a burden placed on my shoulders that they could not carry.</p>
+
+<p>"The old 'brother's keeper' question will never be settled in any but
+the right way," he answered me straight from the shoulder. "You are
+responsible for the attitude of this whole town towards the cause I
+represent and they'll have to wait for your eyes to be opened and for
+you to make them see."</p>
+
+<p>"You minimize yourself," I answered quickly, for in some curious way it
+hurt me to see that great strong man sit at my feet baffled by a force
+that he declared to be in me but which I did not acknowledge or
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>"They were listening to me&mdash;from a distance, as it were&mdash;and I might
+have made them hear if you had not come home and thrown them back into
+the old pleasant groove of non-action and non-belief. In a week you had
+swept away all I had builded in six months." He spoke with simple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+conviction and not a trace of the bitterness that might have been in the
+arraignment.</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody in this town adores you," were the words that gushed out of
+my heart for his comforting before I could stop them. "That is one
+reason I have acted as I have. I do not, I cannot believe that the
+religion which is great enough to bring the redemption of the whole race
+into a desirable immortality can be composed of nine-tenths emotion,
+with which all of them were following your beautiful voice and beautiful
+eyes and beautiful church and beautiful words. If I am to be saved it
+will be by something sterner than that; it will be something that makes
+me sweat drops of blood from my mind, take up a hard cross of duty and
+work, work to make the fibre of my soul strong enough to enjoy the
+robust kind of immortality that alone seems worth while to me. Your Son
+of Man walked from town to town in the hot sun and taught the people,
+healed the multitude and yet had not where to lay his head to rest. His
+church has lost His vigor. Your whole scheme hasn't enough action in it.
+Your organization is too easy and too full of surface observances. It is
+conducted with slipshod<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> business methods and there is no force in it to
+help me. If I join any church ever it will have to be a new one that can
+compare with modern business in its efficiency. Your scheme of
+redemption to immortality through an efficient mediation is perfectly
+sound, but you don't back it up."</p>
+
+<p>"The Church of Christ has stood, endured and done business for almost
+two thousand years," he answered quietly. "It is in some ways all you
+say of it, but it has at least proved its vitality. Why seek to found a
+new organization with a new head and a new scheme of immortality if you
+recognize this scheme as good? The place to reorganize a business is
+from the inside, not the outside. These people <i>must</i> get their vision
+<i>now</i>. Will you come and help me?" As he spoke he looked again down into
+the depths from which I had been trying to translate some of the
+hieroglyphics to him and he held out his long powerful hand to me in an
+entreaty that shook my very foundations.</p>
+
+<p>"You make me want to do as you ask me, but I do not see what it is we
+should strive for, what it is from which we should be saved. There are
+tears in my eyes but do you want my emotions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> without my reason?" And I
+asked my question with a quiver almost of timidity.</p>
+
+<p>"No, both!" he answered me, as he dropped his hand and arm from their
+attitude of entreaty, shook his head sadly and again turned from me and
+looked out on the dim distance of Old Harpeth. Suddenly I had the
+feeling of having a great door shut in my face, and a terror of being
+left all alone in the world came over me. Without knowing what I did I
+stretched out my hand and caught at his arm and moved closer to him,
+suddenly cold in the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm frightened," I whispered, as I bowed my head on my hand, clutching
+his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little wandering, hunting lamb," he crooned to me as he laid a
+tender hand on my bowed head. "Keep watch over her, Lord Jesus," he
+prayed under his breath and then as suddenly as I had felt the fear I
+found again my courage.</p>
+
+<p>"That cry was woman to man, not child to priest. It is only honest to
+tell you so," I said, as I suddenly raised my head and threw another
+gauntlet that I knew would bring on another battle. "I hate myself for
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to win you for God and have you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> come to me then as a gift
+from Him, but it may have to be the other way round," was the answer he
+struck out at me with, and as he spoke he clasped my hand in his with a
+force that seemed to create the great silent, untenanted space around us
+as it had that night he had sung the Tristan music to me in the
+moonlight. "I'm going to save you and&mdash;and <i>have</i> you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" I cried, as I tried to draw my hand away, found it held beyond
+my effort and then suddenly released.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew the first minute I looked into your eyes, but I'll wait," he
+said softly into the silence around us.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, don't even think such a thing," I exclaimed, and I wanted to
+rise to my feet and break the spell of that space around us, but I could
+only cower closer to him on the grass beneath the rustling silver
+leaves. "I'm going to marry Nickols in a few months and then I'm going
+out of this world of yours and you can lead them all to&mdash;to safety."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it's in God's hands. He'll keep you and give you to me when the
+time comes. It all may mean suffering to us both, probably does, but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+accept the cup&mdash;in His good time," and as he spoke he looked again into
+my eyes with a lonely sadness that I could not endure.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to get away from you," I gasped and I felt that I must get out
+of the aloneness with him.</p>
+
+<p>"We are in God's hands," he said again, as his warm hands found and held
+mine. "We must wait on Him with&mdash;" Then suddenly the world closed in on
+us again and we were on our feet&mdash;apart.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>ABIDE WITH ME</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Auntie Charlotte, you stole Minister away from us in a no-fair way,"
+stormed Charlotte as she came around the young larches and wild swamp
+root that had formed the world apart for the dangerous Jaguar and me.
+"Mother Spurlock can't sing to any good and Sue is so little we gets the
+key away from her. Let him come right back!" As she made this peremptory
+demand for the release of my prisoner, my name-daughter stood her ground
+with her cohorts, who had been scrambling around and over and through
+the shrubbery, massed behind her. There were Mikey of the red head,
+small James, the musical wee Susan, Maudie Burns and Jennie Todd,
+besides several more of the Burns family, a few Sprouls and Paynes and a
+very ragged young Jones, and they all looked at me with hostile and
+accusing eyes as Charlotte hurled a final invective at me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> "You are
+wicked and the devil will burn you up," she threatened.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't neither, at all. Hush up!" came a defense and a command in a
+very imperious young voice, and the Stray followed the voice from around
+the large trunk of the oldest graybeard. He had arrived late on the
+scene of action because his impedimenta had been the wriggling puppy of
+brindle hue, which he immediately released as he came over and stood
+between the Reverend Mr. Goodloe and me, with my hand in his own small
+paddie and defiance and defense to the limit in his high-held young head
+with its black crest and snapping violet eyes. At last I felt Charlotte
+had met her match and I trembled for the result.</p>
+
+<p>"She never stoled nothing," he further declared, looking Charlotte full
+in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"I meant she tooken him away, Stranger," parleyed Charlotte with extreme
+mildness for her and giving to the Stray the name that she had decided
+upon by translating the cognomen of his state into that of another
+almost equally forlorn. "My father told my Auntie Harriet that Aunt
+Charlotte would git Minister yet and I'll call the devil to stop her if
+she tries to get him away."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll bust that devil's head with a rock and a bad smell," answered the
+Stray as he held tighter to my hand and hurled back his threat that held
+a remembrance of the conquering of the tenacious turtle.</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie Harriet answered father that Auntie Charlotte and the devil
+could do most anything that&mdash;" small James was contributing to the
+general assault when with a wave of a calming hand Mr. Goodloe took the
+field.</p>
+
+<p>"That will do, youngsters," he commanded with extreme mildness it seemed
+to me, considering the appalling situation. "I thought you had had about
+enough practice for to-day and Charlotte could have taught the little
+boy&mdash;er&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stranger," prompted Charlotte.</p>
+
+<p>"You could have taught him up to the point you knew so I could have a
+nice rest here under the lovely trees. Are you being kind to me in not
+helping me a little bit? You know what you promised me." And the beloved
+"Minister's" voice was just as grave and just as serious as if he had
+been reproving one of his deacons.</p>
+
+<p>"Is talking to Auntie Charlotte and holding her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> hand the Lord's work?"
+demanded Charlotte, looking him straight in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered Mr. Goodloe, gravely, looking her as straight in the eye
+as she had looked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Then come on, Stranger, and learn the march without any tune but Sue,"
+she said as she stretched out her hand to the Stray, who ignored it and
+clung to me with his serious eyes raised to mine.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go with you now over in the chapel and play for you on the organ
+and then we can all teach him," said the parson, and he picked wee
+Susan, the music box, up in his arms and buried his lips in the curls on
+the back of her fragrant little neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all done with Auntie Charlotte?" asked young Charlotte, with
+the extreme of consideration for him, not for my feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for the present," he answered, and he held out his free hand to
+the Stray, who was still clinging to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Go with him, sonny, and Mikey will take you home," I said to my small
+champion, using the tender name that I had heard Martha give him. As I
+spoke I laid his hand in that of Mr. Goodloe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> and I didn't raise my eyes
+to his but turned from them and left him standing in the midst of his
+flock of lambs under the silver leaves and out in the bright light,
+while I went into the cool dark hall and on up to my own room which was
+also cool and dark.</p>
+
+<p>"I am lost and blind and I don't know what to do," I murmured as I flung
+myself down on my window seat and looked through the narrow opening of
+the shutters out to the everlasting hills across the valley. "I know I
+am ineffective and perfectly worthless as I am but I will not, I will
+not be swayed by&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte," called father's voice with its commanding note which had
+apparently come into it now to stay.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered, and went down immediately, glad of the interruption
+to my self-communion and arraignment.</p>
+
+<p>I found father and Nickols and Mark Morgan and Billy Harvey and Mr.
+Cockrell down in father's study and I could see from their faces that
+something unusual had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"City Council voted the appropriation to meet Cockrell's and my donation
+for the schoolhouse,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> contracts have been signed and dirt is to be
+broken to-morrow by Henry Todd and thirty workmen Nickols has ordered
+down from the city," father announced, with jubilation in his voice. "We
+thought Goodloe was here in the garden with you."</p>
+
+<p>"He was, but he has taken the children with him over to his chapel," I
+answered, and for some reason I blushed, for I saw Mark Morgan's eyes
+laughing at me and I also saw a glint I didn't like in Nickols' eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"School to be opened on September twelfth and then let the kids fight it
+out," said Billy. "I bet on Charlotte to beat out the whole Settlement
+the first day if allowed full swing."</p>
+
+<p>"If Goodloe didn't stand behind this mixing of&mdash;of social oil
+and&mdash;water, I'd be scared to death," said Mark.</p>
+
+<p>"Mike Burns and Henry Todd and Spain had better be afraid of a loss of
+progeny," jeered Billy. "I bet Charlotte and James and the scions of the
+Sprouls and Paynes can lead the Settlement scions into by-paths of
+iniquity of which they never dreamed."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you had ten, blast you, for being so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> sensible as to have none,"
+Mark answered him, and I felt rather than saw the bolt of pain that shot
+through Billy's heart. It's because Nell and her children are not his
+that Billy is bad, and what is going to help him?</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's go over to the parsonage and tell Goodloe all about it,"
+father suggested, and the other men followed him out into the garden
+path that led through the Eden of my foremothers straight into that
+little Methodist chapel. Only Nickols remained with me upon the wide
+high vine-shadowed porch.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll marry you the first of October, Nickols, and then we can go to
+France as you want to," I said to him without any preamble, and as I
+spoke I drew close to him as if for protection from something I didn't
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Fleeing from the wrath to come?" questioned Nickols with a tender jeer
+as he took me in his arms and his lips sought the kiss I had been
+keeping from him. Again I refused it and he laughed as he pushed me from
+him and there was still more of the jeer in the laugh though the passion
+in his eyes was devouring and glad.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we go north, right after Mr. Jeffries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> has finished his visit.
+Let's have the ideal village wedding. We'll have out the school children
+if any are left from the mix-up, and Goodloe can make us man and wife
+out here under the trees in our own garden. Then we'll go away from the
+whole show, the Christian religion included, and live happy ever after."
+And as he spoke Nickols again drew me to him and sought the kiss I still
+could not give him.</p>
+
+<p>"Nickols, Mother Spurlock and poor little Mrs. Burns and&mdash;and Mr.
+Goodloe have something very real that we haven't," I faltered and,
+utterly weary, I laid my head down against his strong shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what they say, but they can't prove it. They can't pass it on,
+so it mustn't really be anything. They are not tightwads, so they
+wouldn't hold back on us with their salvation, would they? Well, then,
+they haven't anything. It's all just a substitute for love, dear. Mother
+Spurlock fell back on it when she lost her husband. The little Burns
+woman wouldn't have it any more than Nell has if Mike Burns was like
+Mark Morgan. And Goodloe would lose it in a week if&mdash;if he could get you
+in his arms." As Nickols<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> spoke, his arms about me trembled and strained
+me to him.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" I exclaimed as if I had heard blasphemy uttered.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i>, dear, it is just suppressed sex. The scientists agree on that
+and all the religions are just that, from the most primitive to the most
+evolved. Some are more frank about it than others. The Igorrotes when
+they have their religious dancing at the mating season are more open
+than the Methodists about their being one and the same thing, but it all
+sums up alike. You can't get away from those facts."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I want to be dead," I said as I drew myself from his arm and stood
+on the edge of the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Or you want to love," muttered Nickols under his breath as he watched
+me sullenly for a second. "Then it's October, is it?" he asked with one
+of his infectious, delicious laughs that have always broken across my
+serious moods and made them froth.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we'll tell Nell and Harriet and Jessie and Mrs. Sproul all about
+it, as I see them coming, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> gossip bent I feel sure," he said as he
+went halfway down the walk to meet the girls before I could restrain
+him.</p>
+
+<p>I shall always have with me the picture that Nickols made as he stood
+tall and handsome and smiling against the background of the wonderful
+garden he had helped to create, with the women smiling and clinging to
+him as he looked up at me with a great laughing light in his face. In
+some ways he was the handsomest man I had ever seen and his distinctions
+sat upon him as easily as the college honors of a boy. A wave of race
+pride and love swept up in my heart as I looked at him and I felt that
+in him must be the refuge that I sought. His sophistries always sank
+deep into me.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte, my dear," said Mrs. Sproul, as I led her to a seat beneath
+the vines in a shady corner, "I wish I was sure that your mother knew of
+this safe happiness of yours. She adored Nickols and nothing could have
+given her a greater joy. And, my dear, for you to have held him against
+the world, as it were, is a triumph, I assure you. Always remember that
+men of his kind are&mdash;are desirable. I'll have a long talk with you
+before you go away with him." And I didn't know why,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> but the smile with
+which Mrs. Sproul whispered and patted my hand made me burn all over
+with protest.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't have you for a husband unless we were both convicted
+together to a chain gang for at least five years after the ceremony,
+Nickols Powers," said Harriet, with a laugh for which Nickols raised her
+hand to his lips as he responded.</p>
+
+<p>"You like husbands in safety deposit vaults, don't you, Harriet?" At
+which sally they all laughed as they seated themselves around Mrs.
+Sproul and me.</p>
+
+<p>"Why will women want husbands to be as stationary as&mdash;as hitching posts,
+Mrs. Sproul?" demanded Nickols as he leaned against one of the tall
+pillars and lighted a cigarette for himself after having lighted one for
+her and Jessie. Jessie Litton had always smoked, in secret until the
+last year or two, and Mrs. Sproul had frankly taken up the habit as a
+comfort for old age, she insisted. I suspect that she had had it for a
+long time in advance of the fashion. It was a really delicious sight to
+see the old world grace with which she accomplished it.</p>
+
+<p>"Women have the nestling habit and that is why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> they want to believe men
+to be sturdy oaks in whose branches they can safely anchor a family as
+well as twine around in their affectionate gourd fashion," answered Mrs.
+Sproul, as she daintily puffed a smoke ring at Nickols.</p>
+
+<p>"A lot of times the gourd vine grows so strong that she doesn't realize
+she is supporting her family by her own strength long after the oak has
+faded away in her coils and sprouted up from an acorn in some other
+locality," said Jessie, as she, too, puffed a ring of smoke in Nickols'
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this agriculture, biology or religion we are discussing?" demanded
+Harriet with a laugh as we all rose and went to the edge of the porch to
+meet Billy and Mark and father, who had with them the beloved
+"Minister."</p>
+
+<p>"Congratulations and condolences, Mr. Powers," said Mrs. Sproul as she
+laid her hand in father's.</p>
+
+<p>"On what score, my dear madam," he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"You know I asked for Charlotte on my fifteenth and her tenth birthday,
+Judge," Nickols said, with his ready grace in any situation, and he came
+and stood beside father and took his hand in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> his with the gentle
+affection a girl might have shown the older man. "You said 'yes' then
+and it has taken all these years to make her echo the word," and as he
+finished speaking he held out his arm and drew me close to father and
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah!" exclaimed Mark, but I saw him exchange a glance of amusement
+with Harriet, and Nell gave him a warning little squeeze of the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless you both," said father, as he gave us both a hug.</p>
+
+<p>All this I saw and noted before I raised my eyes to meet the jeweled
+eyes under dull gold that I knew were gazing straight at me as Gregory
+Goodloe stood in the background against the dark vine while the
+rejoicings over the announcement of my betrothal were enacted. Somehow I
+felt I could not make myself face their gaze, which yet I knew I must. I
+met a flash that burned down into the very darkest spots in my nature
+and illuminated them all. There was not a trace of male anger or demand
+in the gaze but a cold valuation of me and the entire situation that
+burned me as ice burns raw flesh, then over all of us there suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+poured from the same source a tenderness that was as radiant as the
+summer sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, God bless us all!" he exclaimed, as he held out his hands to all
+of us, one of which Nickols took, with a swift challenging glance that
+in the radiance softened to confidence, and the other father took and
+fairly clung to in his happiness. I was glad, glad that I didn't have to
+endure the touch of his hand on mine after that glance, but not for one
+instant did my heart accuse his radiance of being dramatics. I rather
+felt that it came from a warmth within him by which everybody else in
+the world might be comforted but for which I would forever be cold.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>want</i> to be worth her, old man," Nickols said to him with a
+curiously pleading note in his voice, and he, too, seemed to me to be
+clinging to some of the strength that was not for me.</p>
+
+<p>"Then God help you," was the answer given with the very essence of
+gentleness, but with a level glance into Nickols' eyes that was
+profoundly sad.</p>
+
+<p>"And now let's hear the wedding plans," demanded Harriet. "This marrying
+and giving in marriage is the best way I know of to make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> time pass, and
+let's make Charlotte give us full measure. I'm matron of honor, of
+course, and I suggest only twelve bridesmaids. I intend to be preceded
+to the altar by Sue in an embroidered silk muslin I will provide, with a
+bonnet of tulle in which nestles a pink rose to match the ones in her
+basket. There will also be a display of pink knees that will be
+ravishing and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just let me remind you, Harriet, that this is Charlotte's wedding and
+not that of my daughter, Susan, and her often-mentioned knees," said
+Mark with a laugh that they all echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to marry Susan's pink knees when they are ripe," remarked
+Billy and his suppression lasted long enough for me to attain command
+enough of myself to manage the plans of my own wedding.</p>
+
+<p>Later when they had all gone by way of the chapel to help Mr. Goodloe
+decide on some designs for a memorial window to his father he was having
+made by a great artist he and Nickols had selected, I went in to make my
+announcement to Mammy and Dabney.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ram in the cork to the demijohn, honey, and it'll be all right,"
+was Dabney's semi-cordial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> consent, but Mammy went on industriously
+beating her biscuits for supper the one hundred and twenty licks
+prescribed by her reputation as a cook and her conscientious guarding of
+that same reputation.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you say, Mammy?" I insisted on her giving her opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, if you want to eat plain biscuits instead of the showbread
+from before the mercy seat&mdash;one hundred and two, one hundred and
+three&mdash;" was the answer given between the licks upon the white dough,
+and I fled before I should get a clearer manifestation of the
+disappointment I felt raging in her faithful old heart.</p>
+
+<p>That night a young crescent moon was hung over the very crown of Old
+Harpeth as I threw the shutters of my window wide to the night breezes
+after I had put out my light and was ready for bed. I stood in its soft
+light and looked across to the dark mass of the chapel opposite and saw
+that a dim light was still burning from the window by the organ loft.
+And as I stood and looked, the empty place that I had felt in the very
+center of my heart grew colder and more bleak until suddenly across the
+garden on perfumed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> waves of sound came the Tristan love song and filled
+my emptiness with a pain that was both hot and cold. I stood and let the
+flood dash over me as long as I could and then with a sob I sank on the
+floor and rested my head on the window seat and began to weep as only
+women such as I know how to weep. Then into my sorrow very quietly there
+again stole another strain after the Tristan song had sobbed away into
+the night and suddenly my own weeping was stilled and again something
+within me was healed by the great tender voice singing out in the
+darkness beyond the hedge:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Abide with me; fast falls the eventide&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">... ... ... ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Help of the helpless, O abide with me!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"I don't know what to do, I don't know," I cried, and sobbed myself to
+sleep on my pillow after I had watched the light across the garden go
+out and after all in the little parsonage beyond the hedge was dark and
+quiet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>A CLANDESTINE ADVENTURE</h3>
+
+
+<p>It seems a strange, almost savage thing that the few months before a
+woman's marriage are always filled so full of the doing of thousands and
+tens of thousands of small things that she has no time to think of the
+hugeness of the responsibilities she is assuming. Perhaps if she were
+given time to realize them she would never assume them. Once or twice in
+the long two, nearly three months that I had given myself to get ready
+to marry Nickols, I paused and found myself thinking of the weighty
+things of life, but I soon was able to shake off the thought of the
+future. The time I felt it press most heavily was one morning that
+Jessie Litton and I sat quietly sewing on some sort of fluff she and
+Harriet had planned for my adornment, and very suddenly Jessie laid down
+her ruffle and looked at me as she said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte, I would be frightened, positively frightened, at the
+prospect of marrying Nickols Powers."</p>
+
+<p>"I am; but why would you be?" I asked her directly.</p>
+
+<p>"I read that long r&eacute;sum&eacute; of his work in the Review last night and for
+the first time I really realized what an important person he is to the
+development of American art. He really is a huge national machine and
+you'll be one of the important cogs on which the whole thing runs.
+You'll be ground and ground by his life and you'll have to make good or
+be responsible for some sort of a crash."</p>
+
+<p>"No," I answered, slowly drawing my thread through the sheer cloth. "No,
+Nickols will live his own way regardless of the cogs on which it grinds.
+I shall have an enormous task in keeping up with the social side of his
+life, but Nickols is not the kind of a man who takes a woman into his
+work."</p>
+
+<p>As I made my answer I was stabbed by the memory of the words that
+Gregory Goodloe had said to me on that day in the garden: "Separated
+from you, you going one way and I another, I can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> do nothing. You
+short-circuit my force&mdash;I am helpless without you." And <i>he</i> had been
+inviting me into the work for which he had been ordained into the holy
+Church of Christ. I felt myself groping blindly into the futility of my
+own life, and I was sick at heart.</p>
+
+<p>"And if that is so, I would be still more frightened," Jessie said,
+gazing at me with dismayed and honest affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let's talk about it," I answered her and took up my sewing. At
+that moment and from that moment I cast myself into the whole whirl of
+activities in Goodloets and gave myself no more time or strength for
+self-communion. I was fleeing, and from what I dared not know.</p>
+
+<p>And it was a busy month that stretched from August through September.
+Nickols said it would be his last fling at the old town and he proposed
+to leave his mark on its mossy sides. And he did.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place money was pouring into little old Goodloets from
+three huge sources. The little one-horse tannery down by the river
+beyond the Settlement doubled, tripled and then quadrupled its capacity
+and next to it the little old saddle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> and harness factory in which Mr.
+Cockrell and old Mr. Sproul had been making saddles and harness since
+the days of the Confederacy, did the same and sent out consignment after
+consignment of saddles and bridles which were paid for in huge checks of
+Russian origin which almost paralyzed the Goodloets Bank and Trust
+Company and which worked pale Clive Harvey into the night until he
+managed to get young Henry Thornton in to assist him. His salary was
+raised three times until it was large enough to harbor Bessie and any
+number of small editions of them both, only she preferred to drink and
+dance and joy-ride with Hugh Payne, who could not have supported such a
+flowering by his own effort to have saved his own life and soul.</p>
+
+<p>And then to burden poor Clive still further, Hampton Dibrell and Mr.
+Thornton hastily built huge pens over by the railroad and in these
+assembled hundreds and thousands of mules to be shipped through to
+France, which brought in return a steady stream of French francs to be
+translated into American dollars. Still further, Billy and Mark and
+Cliff, with Nickols' assistance, and the telegraph system, speculated in
+War Brides<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> down on Wall Street until their individual bank accounts
+began to mount to giddy sums. Father and Mr. Sproul and more of the
+other men did likewise and Buford Cunningham got some spectacular
+returns from copper in Canada that Billy said would make Mrs. Buford
+Cunningham try to buy the Country Club outright for a summer home. And
+while there was prosperity in the Town the Settlement also had its
+share. Wages rose higher and higher and many of the women went to work
+at the machines in the saddle factory, leaving the care of the children
+to the old dames, which resulted in an added pandemonium in the
+Settlement streets.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what is the matter. Goodloets is money mad," wailed Mother
+Spurlock, as she sank with weariness into the rocker on my porch one hot
+August afternoon. "The girls and the women are all at work and two
+babies have died this week from pure lack of mother's care, I might say
+mother's milk. Ed Jones' wife weaned her six-months'-old baby so she
+could go in the factory, and left it on condensed milk with old Mrs.
+Jones, who fed it incessantly and not at all cleanly. Now it is not
+expected to live. And they dance at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> the Last Chance until one o'clock
+almost every night. Is the world mad?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, just prosperous, Mother Elsie," I answered her as I gave her a
+large fan and Dabney brought her a tall glass of very cold tea. "Little
+old Goodloets is having the same boom that the rest of America is
+getting from feeding and furnishing the rest of the warring world."</p>
+
+<p>"Nickols Powers told me just last night that over two hundred thousand
+dollars would be spent on the improvements to this town in the next two
+months, counting the new schoolhouse, the restoration of the courthouse,
+the paving of the public square and the enlargement of the electric
+light plant. That doesn't count the money everybody is putting on their
+own private homes. That camp of workmen down by the river that Nickols
+has had sent down from the city has a hundred men in it now, and that is
+one thing that demoralizes the Settlement. Jacob Ensley has had that
+dance hall enlarged twice and he has employed George Spain to stand
+behind the bar. It is breaking Mrs. Spain's heart, but she is helpless,
+for George is being paid three dollars a day for being just where he
+wants to be. I don't know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> what to do. I firmly believe the town is mad,
+with only Gregory Goodloe to stand between it and God's wrath."</p>
+
+<p>"What is he doing to stem the joy tide?" I asked with a laugh, for it
+did seem in a way funny to see one of the leading citizens of old
+Goodloets so distressed over its improvement and modernization through
+its enormous prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>"He was down in the workmen's camp last night having a song service and
+seventy-five of them stayed there singing until midnight. Jacob had to
+put out his lights at eleven o'clock because there were not enough to
+pay to keep open. The chapel was full Sunday night and Jacob closed the
+Last Chance at six o'clock for the first time in its existence. The men
+passed it on to him to do it and he came and sat in a back pew himself.
+They all call Mr. Goodloe 'Parson,' and he walks in and around and about
+this town night and day shedding a kind of peace and good will even into
+the darkest corners. He lends a hand here and there with the work, eats
+out of the men's dinner pails when that Jefferson is too lazy to cook
+for him, or takes a bite off some stove down in the Settlement out of
+some old woman's pork and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> cabbage pot with just as much grace and
+heartiness as he eats at Nell Morgan's or Harriet Henderson's most
+elaborate dinners. And outside of his pulpit he never preaches; he just
+lives. This is what I heard Jacob say to him just yesterday:</p>
+
+<p>"'Sure, and I wint up to set in one of your pews to see if your action
+in your own job was as good as it is in the many you lend a hand to week
+about.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well?' asked Mr. Goodloe, as he picked up, one of those rosy apples
+from the box Jacob keeps out on the sidewalk to blind the Last Chance.</p>
+
+<p>"'I knows when to run and not be caught,' Jacob answered, as he put
+another apple in the parson's pocket and went back into the grocery
+door."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever see Martha?" I asked with a kind of impatience. I had been
+three times down to the Last Chance and each time Jacob's excuses for
+Martha had been positive though courteous, and I had come away baffled,
+with the green groceries I had purchased as a blind to my visit. I had
+written to her and had had no response. At that I had stopped, with a
+self-sufficient feeling of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> a duty well done, but through it all I also
+felt that she was on the other side of a prison wall crying to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," answered Mother Spurlock, with real pain in her voice. "She
+stays in that back room and cooks for Jacob, and the child stays with
+her and has only the small yard back of the bar in which to play. Jacob
+only let him come up to sing with Mr. Goodloe and the children a few
+times and now he is kept as near in prison as his mother. Jacob's
+attitude grows more morose about her and the child every day. I don't
+understand it. I never will. Martha was the loveliest girl that ever
+bloomed in the Settlement, and now she has been plucked and thrown into
+the dust. And the child is too young to share her prison fate. He must
+be got out and away."</p>
+
+<p>"He will," I answered, with a calm confidence. I didn't tell Mother
+Spurlock, and I didn't know exactly why I didn't, but I was deeply
+involved in a clandestine affair with the Stray which was fast becoming
+one of the adventures of my life. It had begun in a positively weird
+manner and was continuing along the same lines. One morning several
+weeks after my first acquaintance and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> turtle adventure with him I had
+waked up at dawn and gone to look out of the window just as the morning
+star was fading over Old Harpeth. In the dim light I had spied a small
+figure down in the garden, hopping along by a row of early young rose
+bushes, with a can in one hand and a long stick in the other. Hastily
+getting into a few clothes I crept down through the silent house and out
+in the garden to find the Stray busily engaged in knocking large slugs
+off into a can.</p>
+
+<p>"I feed 'em to mother's bird in the cage, 'cause he can't get out to get
+'em," he explained. "They all sleep hard 'cause they work so late and I
+crawl out the window and go back while they don't wake up. I like your
+yard better than I do mine." The statement was made simply, without envy
+of apology.</p>
+
+<p>And from that morning a queer kind of dawn life went on between the
+small boy and me. Morning after morning he threw a pebble to waken me
+and I hurried down to our tryst, which extended through the hour that
+lies between the crack of day and the first glint of the awakening sun.
+At first I had carried sweetmeats to our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> tryst, which were accepted
+with moderate pleasure, but one morning I had taken a huge volume of
+Rackham's Mother Goose which Nickols had brought me, and from then on
+our hour had been one of spiritual communion. I found the young mind
+insatiate and I had to ransack the library for stories and poems and
+pictures suitable to his years, though he rapidly developed a very
+advanced taste. The morning I read him the Shakespearian lines woven
+around the little Princes in the Tower, having suitably connected up the
+story for him with words of my own, we forgot the time and he overstayed
+his limit, for Dabney was opening the house when he fled. For five
+mornings he did not come and I could find no way to get news of him. I
+asked Mikey and got a maddening response.</p>
+
+<p>"They shut up Stray in the back yard because he's a shame to old Jake,"
+was his answer to my question. "Jake would shoot anybody that climbed
+that fence."</p>
+
+<p>"I bet I could get over and the bad man not see if I could get out in
+the dark," Charlotte declared as she stood listening to my questioning.
+"And I am going after Stranger that way, too,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> if ever they leave the
+front door to my house unlocked. It is wicked to shut up a little boy,
+and the devil would help me get him out." Charlotte's purpose was high
+if she did slightly mix her theology.</p>
+
+<p>That night a wonderful thing happened in my moonlit room. I was dead
+asleep when I felt a soft hand stroking my face, and then my hair, and I
+awoke to find the Stray standing by my bed.</p>
+
+<p>"They tied me in bed when they found out I had runned away in the
+mornings to see you, but I gnawed the rope that he put, because I wanted
+to tell you that I can go to the big school when it opens because
+Minister told him that he would be put in jail if I didn't. It is a law.
+I heard him last night, and mother cried a long time, for what, I don't
+know. Was she glad or sorry? Do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, darling, I don't know, and I wish I did," I answered him as I put
+my arms around him while he snuggled his black-crested head down beside
+mine on the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother is sick, she cries so much," he said with a manly struggle
+that drowned the sob in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> his throat. "I don't know what to do. Do you
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll find out," I said with a sudden fierceness as I strained him
+against my shoulder for an instant and then sat up in bed as if I must
+do something at once.</p>
+
+<p>"I must run right back and tie myself before he wakes up and whips me,"
+the Stray said, and it sickened me to see him wrap the gnawed rope
+around his little arm.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" I exclaimed, and held out my arms to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I must, but I don't mind whippings if I can read books in school and
+you make mother not cry," and before I could stop him he ran out of the
+dim room and I could hear his cautious bare feet patter down the long
+stairway and hall.</p>
+
+<p>That moonlight tryst was the last of the adventure, but I did not worry,
+for I knew that the school would be opened formally in ten days, and I
+had laid my plans for Stray in an interested friendship with the very
+competent young woman who had already come down from the state normal
+college to teach the amalgamated young ideas of Goodloets to shoot.
+Also, I had vague plans that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> hurt me, of getting Jessie or Harriet to
+continue the trysts for me after the wedding, whose details they were
+all pushing to completion by a mid-September day.</p>
+
+<p>And added to the strenuosity of the laying of my plans for at least a
+year's absence, I had to help father make his arrangements for a six
+months' stay in Washington, for he had accepted the President's
+appointment on the Commerce Commission, and night and day he was at his
+library desk. The silver-topped decanter still stood on the sideboard in
+the dining room, and the silver ice bowl was formally filled before
+every meal by Dabney. The mint glass was kept fresh and fragrant but
+apparently father had forgotten entirely about all three. He ate twice
+as much as I had ever seen him consume and the worn lines in his face
+were slowly filling out into a delicious joviality. Mr. Hicks, the
+little tailor who had always clothed him, had little by little made over
+the outer man with new garments as the old ones grew restrictive, and
+Mother Spurlock had carried his entire discarded wardrobe, garment at a
+time, down to the Settlement for the clothing of some of her most needy
+friends.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the most reborn person I had ever seen was Dabney. The little black
+man had lived so long under the shadow of father's moroseness that when
+the pressure was lifted from his bent black shoulders he rebounded to an
+amazing extent. His reaction took the form of gala attire in which
+Nickols encouraged him to the extent of silk hosiery of the most
+delicate shades from his own wardrobe, with ties to match, not to
+mention his own last year's Panama hat, pressed over into the extreme of
+the prevailing style for youthful masculine head adornment. Also Nickols
+bestowed upon him a very up-to-date Palm Beach suit, purchased at the
+Hicks shop, and on his first appearance in the kitchen for his wife's
+inspection I was present.</p>
+
+<p>"Go take them clothes off, nigger, and put 'em along of my black silk
+shroud in the bottom drawer of the chist," she commanded, as she put her
+hands on her sixty-inch waist and stood before him with arms akimbo.
+"Folks is got no business to dress in life so fine that they shames they
+burying clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"Shoo fly, I'm jest going to Washington, not to Heaven, in this here
+rig. When I git into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> Heaven it'll be 'cause I'm hiding behind that
+black silk skirt of your shroud, honey, if I'm as naked as borned," was
+the admiring, wily and also wholly sincere answer to Mammy's fling at
+the gorgeous raiment.</p>
+
+<p>And while the Poplars teemed with wedding plans Nickols kept the whole
+village steamed up to be in readiness for the visit of Mr. Jeffries,
+which was dated for just a week before the wedding, and the village
+festival at the opening of the new school was to be the most important
+ceremonial of the whole visit. Father was to give him a dinner at which
+all of the Solons of the Harpeth Valley were to be present, and a ball
+at the Country Club was being planned by Billy with all enthusiasm. But
+the center of the buzz was down at Mother Spurlock's Little House, where
+Mr. Goodloe daily, and it seemed almost hourly, drilled the children for
+the ceremonial of the opening of their house of learning across the way
+from the Little House by the Road. Only echoes of the orgies reached the
+outside, and gossip ran high in the Settlement as well as the Town at
+the fragments that the delighted scions brought home, of curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> folk
+dances mixed with fragments of weird tunes.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, a minister of the gospel to teach me Mikey to stand on one leg
+and spin around on the other with his hands over his head is a quare
+thing, but the Riverend Goodloe is no ordinary man," said Mrs. Burns to
+Mother Spurlock, who answered:</p>
+
+<p>"You can trust him, Mrs. Burns, even with Mikey's legs."</p>
+
+<p>And during all the long weeks of activity not once did I have a word
+alone with the Harpeth Jaguar. We met constantly at dinner at the tables
+of our friends and he came and went at the Poplars with the same freedom
+that Nickols enjoyed. He was long hours in the library with father, and
+somehow I felt that he was strengthening the structure that he had
+builded on the ruined foundation and something passionate rose in my
+heart and filled it with pain every time I heard his ringing laugh come
+from the library table, accompanied by father's booming chuckle. Also,
+he worked early and late in the garden with Nickols and the young man
+from White Plains, and I saw that Nickols' artistic ideas flowed at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> top
+speed when Gregory Goodloe was standing by.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same thing over at the new schoolhouse. Mr. Todd and the men
+worked miracles with their stone and mortar and wood and iron when he
+was standing by or lending a hand. The school was built partly of stone
+like the chapel and partly of old purple-pink brick like Mother
+Spurlock's Little House, and it was beamed with heavy timbers. It was
+roofed with heavy colonial clapboards which made it look as if it had
+already stood a century before the floors were laid or the very modern
+desks installed. It was built to house increasing generations, though
+only about fifty children would open its portals of education.</p>
+
+<p>"It speaks of education de luxe, doesn't it?" Billy asked as Nell and
+Harriet and I stood with him and Nickols and the parson watching Mr.
+Todd directing the men in screwing down the desks just a few days before
+the opening.</p>
+
+<p>"There is scarcely a village in England to compare with old Goodloets
+now, and nothing at all like it," said Nickols, as he looked first up
+the hill to the Town and down the hill to the Settlement. "I know that
+it is the first spot in America to express what the full grown nation is
+going to be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> When we add beauty to the materially perfected mode of
+existence we are enjoying, life will be too short in the living. That
+schoolhouse ought to produce some results in art cultures in the infant
+mind of Goodloets."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, America is learning that the foundation of its national existence,
+trait upon trait, must be laid in the lives of the children," said Mr.
+Goodloe, slowly, and he smiled as across from the Little House came wee
+Susan's exquisite treble in a waltz song which was backed up by Mother
+Spurlock's bumble and Charlotte's none too accurate accompaniment. And
+we all smiled with him.</p>
+
+<p>Always it seemed to me I was with him and a part of a number of people
+who felt the radiance of his loveliness, and not once had I for a second
+come into personal touch with him. I had, like the rest, got my smiles
+and friendliness from the dark eyes under dull gold, but the door to the
+land in which I had been with Tristan when he sang his death song had
+vanished and there were no traces of its portals. The only sign that was
+between him and me was his continued evasion of setting a date for the
+dedication of the chapel. He always answered inquiries by saying that
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> opening of the school must come first and when the dedication was
+mentioned he never looked in my direction. My soul seemed to be standing
+still and listening for something that never came.</p>
+
+<p>And then Mr. Jeffries arrived on the scene of action.</p>
+
+<p>That night of Billy's ball for the magnate, who was having the time of
+his gray-headed life under Billy's and Nickols' enthusiastic direction,
+the strange alien thing that had been developed in my depths, part
+unrest and part rebellion, since I had first looked into the eyes of the
+young Methodist parson, who had intruded himself and his chapel into my
+existence, got its death blow. In my presence Nickols made his formal
+request of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe to officiate at our marriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Greg, old fellow, you are going to marry us next Tuesday,
+aren't you?" asked Nickols, as we stood on the steps of the Poplars
+after dinner, chatting with him as he was leaving to go over to the
+chapel while we went out to the dance. "I suppose there is some sort of
+formal way to make the request, but I don't know it."</p>
+
+<p>"If there is I don't know it, either," was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> kindly answer, which
+both Nickols and I took for assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Nickols, as he turned away towards father and Mr.
+Cockrell and Mr. Jeffries, who had come out on the porch with their
+cigars, and left him and me standing alone in the starlight.</p>
+
+<p>"God guard you!" he said to me without taking the hand I held out to him
+in the darkness with a kind of desperation that seemed that of a
+drowning woman. "Good-bye!" and he was gone out into the night, leaving
+me, I knew, forever outside of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, Oh wait!" I pleaded, but he was gone and I didn't even know if he
+heard the cry out into the velvet darkness.</p>
+
+<p>That night was the most brilliant night that Goodloets had ever known.
+The Town was full of guests who had motored over from all the towns
+around in the Harpeth Valley. The Governor had come down from the
+capital in his huge touring car to congratulate father on his
+appointment and to meet Mr. Jeffries. His adjutant-general and several
+of his aids were with him in their showy State Guard uniforms and all of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> girls were rosy with excitement at the presence of so many rows of
+brass buttons. Mr. Jeffries opened the ball, and to the delight and
+amusement of us all, he succeeded in leading out with him Mrs. Sproul,
+who turned the opening dance into a stately old Virginia reel, which so
+delighted the tango dancers with its novelty that the dance was repeated
+several times during the evening by enthusiastic requests.</p>
+
+<p>And while the Town reveled in celebration of the new Goodloets, down in
+the Settlement like rejoicings were being held at the dance hall of the
+Last Chance. In fact, the whole small city was in the throes of a great
+rejoicing. Why shouldn't all Goodloets revel when it was enjoying a
+prosperity beyond anybody's dreams of two years before? Everybody had
+been generous to the old town with the money that had come so easily
+from other suffering people's necessities, and security and good
+fellowship and prosperity reigned supreme. In each heart there was the
+feeling that now the old town and their personal lives were founded on
+solid rocks of peace and plenty and it was the time to eat, drink and be
+merry.</p>
+
+<p>At supper the Governor's first toast, after that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> to the town itself,
+was to father and his distinctions. Then Mr. Jeffries toasted Nickols
+and me. He called Nickols the "American Wizard of Habitations," and,
+amid cheering and clapping hands, announced his intention to have
+Nickols build the American town on the Hudson. He called me the "Heart
+of the Achievement," and father's pride as he looked down the long table
+at Nickols and me was very wonderful and beautiful; and as great a pride
+rose in my heart as I saw him lift his glass of water to pledge me,
+leaving the bubbles breaking in his champagne.</p>
+
+<p>It was very near dawn when we all motored home and it was upon the verge
+of the crack of day by the time Dabney and Nickols had got the Governor
+and Mr. Jeffries and the other guests settled under the wide roof of the
+Poplars, which had never hovered a more distinguished or brilliant house
+party.</p>
+
+<p>For a few quiet minutes after they had all gone to their rooms Nickols
+and I stood alone on the front porch in the cool darkness with its hint
+of the dawn, while old Dabney shut up the back part of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"The school festival will be over to-morrow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> sweetheart, and the next
+day they will all be gone. The photographers are all through with the
+photographing and to-morrow night all the extra workmen go back to the
+city. There'll be three whole quiet days for you to get ready to give me
+that kiss, which I won't take when you are as tired as you are now,"
+said Nickols, as he put a limp arm around me and leaned against the tall
+door post.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow the old makes way for the new. Goodloets is dead! Long live
+Goodloets!" I answered, as I in turn leaned against Nickols' jaded arm
+for only a second before we preceded Dabney up the stairs to our rooms.</p>
+
+<p>In my room I went immediately to the window and opened wide the heavy
+shutters. I found myself looking down on Goodloets, which lay below the
+darkness of the Poplars like a long glowworm, brilliant with the lights
+from the homes of the revelers who were going to bed with a sense of
+perfect security. Still farther down the hill the lights from the
+Settlement glowed with scarcely less brilliancy and I felt sure that the
+Last Chance was still harboring a last fling of joy.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly over my spirit came a deep wave of depression that amounted to
+a great fear and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> as I stood trembling in the darkness, a broad ray
+of morning light shot up over Paradise Ridge and spread rapidly into a
+crimson glow that was reflected against a black cloud hanging low over
+the head of Old Harpeth. A flash of lightning darted from the cloud and
+spread its gold fire through the crimson of the coming day, and then the
+sullen-pointed cloud sank rapidly below Paradise Ridge, over which it
+had risen, as if reconnoitering. Positively shuddering, I knelt against
+the window seat and watched the day come with a hitherto unknown terror.
+Then as I watched the dawn begin to drive away the sullen clouds a rich
+voice began to sing out beyond the old poplars as a window of the gray
+chapel was thrown open:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Arise, my soul, arise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shake off thy guilty fears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">... ... ... ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the throne my Surety stands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My name is written on His hands."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The calmness that came into my frightened heart was like the peace of a
+deep sleep, and with its strength I faced the day that was to be that of
+my humiliation and which was to be the crest of the wave of the high
+tide of Goodloets.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE JEWEL IN THE MATRIX</h3>
+
+
+<p>When I awoke from a few hours of deep and exhausted sleep I found my
+room fast filling with the strenuosities of the day. In fact, I opened
+them upon Harriet Henderson, up, dressed and briskly doing. She had a
+large pasteboard box with her and the minute I brushed repose from my
+eyes she opened it and held up for my inspection a very short tulle
+garment besprinkled with tiny silk rosebuds, along with a bonnet and
+other wee but distinctly feminine paraphernalia to match. A basket
+adorned with a huge bow of tulle came from another box and I was forced
+to voice my admiration with the greatest vigor.</p>
+
+<p>"How I'll ever keep from eating Sue up before she gets to the altar, I
+can't see," said Harriet, as she held the wee frock for a second against
+her breast. It hurts me to the quick of my own breast to see Harriet's
+eyes when she broods over Sue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> I don't see how she is going to live
+life always as hungry as she is now.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I might just as well wear my tennis things, because the
+guests will be already as completely enraptured as is humanly possible
+before my entry upon the scene of action of my own wedding," I said, as
+I sat up and took the small bonnet in my own hand. "It is too bad that
+Jessie and Letitia should worry themselves over my own wedding frock, if
+Susan is&mdash;" I was just saying when Nell arrived beside my bed with the
+Suckling in the very act of obtaining her early luncheon from the
+maternal fount. The nurse has always had to follow Nell about with her
+successive hungry offspring.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, I really don't know what to do, but young Charlotte has given
+every single presentable garment that Jimmy possessed to different
+unclothed children in the Settlement, who were needed in the pageant,
+and Mark and Billy are laughing at her, while Jimmy is howling. I just
+ran in to see Harriet a minute and ask her if she&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Jimmie's wedding garments came home from Mrs. Burns' yesterday and
+I'll lend them to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> you just to spite those men, who are simply ruining
+Charlotte by the day," said Harriet, as Nell handed her the replete
+Suckling wrong end foremost and picked up the small tulle bonnet with a
+gurgle of maternal rapture that was in some ways as young as the happy
+gurgle that the Suckling gave as she settled into Harriet's dependable
+arms for her morning nap. Harriet cradled her against her own round,
+firm breast and for a second brooded then joined in Nell's rapture over
+the garments for the bedizening of wee Susan.</p>
+
+<p>"If Harriet didn't dress and discipline my children I feel sure they
+would be found naked in a reform school," Nell said, with a happy and
+careless gratitude. There are some women to whom life is incidental and
+maternity the most casual adventure of all. The happy-go-lucky variety
+are apt to produce just such children as Charlotte or young James or
+Susan, and it is well if into their young lives there comes the hungry
+woman with a brooding mission.</p>
+
+<p>"Young Charlotte will probably be the first woman governor of the state
+and&mdash;" Harriet was saying with a laugh when Letitia and Jessie arrived
+precipitately. Letitia had a parcel which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> contained a lingerie garment
+of mine, whose lace and embroidery and ribbon combined would have
+enraptured most women, and Jessie carried in her hand a package of
+belated wedding cards. They were followed closely by Mammy, who was in
+turn followed by the meek Sally. Mammy's address was delivered to me
+first.</p>
+
+<p>"Git up quick, honey; the men folks has begun on the second round of
+waffles and they'll be calling for you. The day is on its shanks and
+a-going," she admonished, while Sallie turned on my bath.</p>
+
+<p>"They are having breakfast out in the garden and the day is perfect. Do
+you want blue or pink ribbons in this Valenciennes set, Charlotte?" said
+Letitia, as she seated herself on the foot of my bed and drew out a
+ribbon bag whose contents were of many colors.</p>
+
+<p>"A fashionable wedding is a white lie; you invite all the people you
+especially want to stay away," sighed Jessie, as she seated herself at
+my desk and lighted a cigarette, at which Mammy rolled her black eyes
+and departed with her nose in the air.</p>
+
+<p>And while they all chatted over the sealing of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> my fate I arose and had
+my toilet made in my dressing room, in full hearing of the discussions
+about the best groupings of bridesmaids and the horror at the count of
+the cases of wine Billy had ordered from the city for the dinner to the
+groomsmen the night before the wedding.</p>
+
+<p>"I adore Mark seven-tenths full, but I don't like to endure the end of
+the jag next morning," laughed Nell, as she began to put ribbons into
+the bodkins for Letitia. I saw Harriet give her a long look from under
+her half-lowered eyelashes as she hugged the Suckling closer to her
+breast. Billy had told Harriet and me casually a few nights before that
+"old Mark's drinking to a double-decker liver and a sidestep in his
+heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, gentlemen always drink in moderation. I never worry over Cliff,"
+said Letitia complacently, as she tied a decorative shoulder knot.</p>
+
+<p>"You expect to give him a daily dose of three drops on a lump of sugar,
+Letitia?" asked Harriet, as she exchanged glances with Jessie. One
+evening last week Jessie and Harriet had motored Cliff in from the Club
+just in time to save him from going over the riffles and Letitia had
+been dancing with him without noticing his staggers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There, that is the very last stitch to be taken on your trousseau,
+Charlotte," said Letitia, as she laid down the filmy garment she had
+been adorning with blue bowknots. "Press it, Sallie, and lay it with the
+rest of the set in the second tray of the medium-sized trunk. You can
+lock it and give me the key."</p>
+
+<p>"I just can't stand it, Charlotte," said Jessie to me in a low voice, as
+I came from the hands of the skillful Sallie and stood beside the window
+next to the desk. "You are all I have got and only you&mdash;you understand.
+I can't give you up. I'm frightened."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush&mdash;so am I," I answered her, as my hand gripped her shoulder under
+her heavy linen frock until I felt it must bruise it. Then I turned to
+the others, collected them and descended to finish breakfast with the
+Poplars' guests.</p>
+
+<p>Never a more radiantly beautiful morning had spread its loveliness over
+the Harpeth Valley than the one I found out in the garden that
+twenty-seventh day of September, the gala day in the history of
+Goodloets. Huge white clouds drifted back and forth in a deep blue sky
+and they were rosy at times with the sunlight, but from some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> of the
+largest little tongues of lightning darted, while others were lit by
+what seemed to be an internal glow of fire. Cool winds, perfumed with
+the harvests and the ripening orchards and the vineyards out in the
+valley, rustled in the treetops and flaunted in the vines. The ardent
+sun seemed to be drawing from the bosom of the earth a hot mist which
+lay over the town like a filmy bridal veil, only stirred gently by the
+vagrant veering gusts of wind. Nature seemed to be holding herself in
+leash and only breathing upon the earth gently, as if to stir some
+latent lushness into autumnal activity.</p>
+
+<p>"A perfect Harpeth day for Mr. Jeffries," said the Governor, as he came
+from his seat at the table to greet the girls and me. The rest of the
+masculine breakfasters followed and I could see from the devastation of
+the table that they had all breakfasted well and to repletion. I also
+detected the worthless Jefferson, whom Mr. Goodloe had evidently loaned
+to his parents for the occasion, lift father's full glass of julep and
+drain it with one gulp, grab the half glass that Nickols had left, gulp
+it and begin on the finger or so in Billy's tumbler before Dabney could
+forcibly but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> quietly restrain him. In fact, I felt there would have
+been a riot among my servitors if Mr. Goodloe had not stepped aside and
+spoken a low word to Jefferson, which sent him busily at the table with
+his tray.</p>
+
+<p>And from that moment Nickols' triumphant procession of inspection of
+Goodloets began. Mr. Jeffries stood in the middle of the reincarnated
+old garden, looked for a long time at the Poplars, which was like a
+green encrusted gem with its old purple red brick under the vines,
+glanced again and again at the chapel with its weathered stone that
+stood beyond the silver-leafed graybeards, then let his eye wander down
+the broad elm-bordered main street past the courthouse and past the
+Settlement to the river bending around it all.</p>
+
+<p>"Money couldn't build anything like it, Powers," he said to Nickols at
+his side. "Time and gentle living have formed it as a jewel is made in a
+matrix. I was born in a mining camp, but I want you to start something
+like it all for my great grandchildren to live in. How many generations
+will it take?"</p>
+
+<p>"Give me five years, Mr. Jeffries," laughed Nickols in answer. "Greg
+Goodloe's great great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> grandfather and mine fought off the Indians from
+a stockade which stood where his chapel does now, but a year of modern
+life about represents a generation of pioneer endeavor."</p>
+
+<p>"Not too fast, youngster, not too fast," said Mr. Jeffries, and I saw
+him exchange a grave glance with father. "What we Americans must have is
+stabilizers now that we have annihilated time. Without the discovery of
+something of that sort we will hurl along to destruction. What say you,
+Mr. Goodloe?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have the same 'covert of wings' that David used when things spun too
+fast for him," answered Mr. Goodloe with the jeweled radiance that
+always came from his face when he spoke of his faith even casually.
+"Only 'where there is no vision the people perish,' and a people who
+invent flying machines and hold international law to account have
+vision. We don't know how much we've got, but it'll save us."</p>
+
+<p>"After the material glass through which we see darkly is completely
+smashed for us," said father, with a curious sternness coming into his
+face that made me wonder. "But we must take Mr. Jeffries for a nearer
+inspection of our metropolis,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> be with Mrs. Sproul in time for luncheon
+and then help Mr. Goodloe open the institute of learning for young
+Goodloets."</p>
+
+<p>In the motor cars parked before the tall gate of the Poplars all of the
+guests embarked for their review of the beauties of Goodloets. Nickols
+remained behind them while the half sober but skillful Jefferson
+wrestled with a slight tire trouble of his slim blue racer. For a few
+minutes we were alone in the center of the wonderful garden, which had
+never seemed so lovely as upon the day in which it had fulfilled its own
+and Nickols' destiny.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day has brought just what I have longed for, have worked for and
+waited for, the commission for the spending of millions of dollars to
+make a little corner of the earth beautiful. Not a bad religion, that,"
+said Nickols, as he told me that Jeffries had spoken a few words of
+decided business to him as he had packed him into Mr. Cockrell's car
+with father and Mr. Goodloe. "We'll take a honeymoon wander on the other
+side, as far from the machine guns as possible, and then I'll come home
+to begin my masterpiece." And as Nickols spoke his wonderful eyes
+glowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> as he looked out at Paradise Ridge as if he were gazing into a
+radiant future&mdash;perhaps he saw a city not made with hands and did
+not&mdash;recognize it. "I see it all," he said, and put his arm around me
+while we started down the front walk as Jefferson pressed the horn to
+signal the readiness of the tire.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm too busy to go with you, but I'll meet you at Mrs. Sproul's," a
+sudden impulse made me say, for I had intended until that instant to
+accompany him.</p>
+
+<p>"A man can't eat his bride and have a trousseau, too," he laughed, as he
+drove off rapidly, leaving me standing by the old gate watching him.
+Then I turned and slowly walked out into the garden and down to the old
+graybeards. And seated on one of the grass mats I found the reason I had
+unconsciously been drawn back. Martha was waiting for me there.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Martha," I exclaimed, startled without understanding just why. "I
+might have gone and not known you were waiting. Why didn't you come and
+tell me you were here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't&mdash;I found I couldn't," she answered me, looking up into my
+face with her strange, sad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> eyes. "I&mdash;I suppose I just came to peep in
+on you like I did to the coming-out party." She laughed softly, with a
+note of self-scorn in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Is anything the matter with&mdash;with Sonny?" I asked quickly, again
+unconsciously using the name for the Stray that her tenderness had given
+him. Her white face and desperate manner frightened me.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he's dressed in one of Jimmy Morgan's old suits and he is going to
+be taken from me this afternoon forever," she answered with the note of
+bitterness deepening.</p>
+
+<p>"But you want him to go to school, don't you, Martha?" I asked
+patiently, as I sat down on a mat beside her. I spoke to her as one
+speaks to the limited intelligence of a child and I was slightly
+impatient at her distress.</p>
+
+<p>"He asked me yesterday why everybody called him Stray and if it did mean
+Stranger like Charlotte said, and if he would always be called that or
+have an everyday name like Jimmy. Soon he'll know and then I'll lose him
+as I'm losing everything else."</p>
+
+<p>"Why won't you let me help you to&mdash;to begin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> over again?" I asked her,
+this time with less patience. "Why have you&mdash;you locked yourself away
+from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't&mdash;I won't ever tell you. I must go back, now I've seen you
+in&mdash;in your happiness. But I don't hate you&mdash;I never have." And as she
+spoke Martha rose and began to walk rapidly away from me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please don't go, Martha," I said. "In just three days I'll be going
+away for a long time, you know, and I want to help you in some way
+before I go. You ought to let me, and it worries me that you don't, now
+of all times," and as I put my selfish plea for ease to my conscience,
+something that was hot and rebellious made me want to stop the woman who
+was hurrying away from me.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't, I won't make you unhappy&mdash;but I must go. I must! I'll&mdash;I'll be
+happy&mdash;and good now&mdash;if <i>you'll</i> only be happy. Good-bye!" And as she
+called back at me over her shoulder, Martha ran from me down through the
+hedge and into the door of the chapel, which always, night and day, rain
+and storm, stood slightly ajar. A queer pain smote me to see that she
+had run from me into the only place in all the broad, smiling Harpeth
+Valley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> where I could not&mdash;or would not, follow her. And the sanctuary
+that she sought was for every man, woman or child who wanted it&mdash;only I
+could not and would not seek it.</p>
+
+<p>"'The covert of wings,'" I whispered to myself, as I went down the
+street to Mrs. Sproul's as rapidly as possible to be rid of my own
+company. As I repeated the words that the parson had used to Mr.
+Jeffries I noticed one great white cloud with a dark center flash fire
+into another, to a great crashing and rumbling. "I wonder if it is
+really going to storm," I speculated gloomily, as I turned into the
+Sproul gate, but the brilliant sunshine seemed to fling me a dazzling
+denial from every petal of the white clematis that wreathed itself
+across the front porch, under which Mrs. Sproul, arrayed in all the
+midday magnificence of good form, sat and waited for her guests. Mrs.
+Cockrell sat beside her and they were delighted to see me and demanded
+happiness from me which it was hard for me to give from the depths that
+had been stirred by my strange interview with Martha, to which I felt I
+ought to have a key, but could not find it anywhere.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PAGEANT</h3>
+
+
+<p>"We were just saying, Charlotte dear, that this absurd school affair has
+completely overshadowed your wedding day," said Mrs. Cockrell, as she
+rocked back and forth in tune with her Irish point rose she was
+constructing. "It seems to me a wedding ought to come before a school
+festivity."</p>
+
+<p>"Social law requires that marriage take precedence of schooling," said
+Mrs. Sproul, as her mischievous old eyes snapped at Mrs. Cockrell's
+placid conventionality. "The correct order is for women to take husbands
+and then school children should be the inevitable outcome. They are not,
+however, in this day and generation, which is about to be the last, I'm
+thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"There will be thirty-nine kiddies from the Settlement and eleven from
+the Town to feast on reason and flow soul together in the new school," I
+laughed, as I sat down between them. "Also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> I'm thinking that a lot more
+will be forthcoming from the Settlement by next week. Young Charlotte
+and Mother Spurlock clothed as far as they could, but they will keep at
+it, I feel sure. I feel guilty at the idea of taking three trunks of
+clothes away from the watchful eye of Mother Elsie, only I'm leaving the
+accumulation of years for her distribution."</p>
+
+<p>"The passport to Elsie Spurlock's heart is a condition composed of rags,
+hunger and unhappiness. She has no sympathy or time for a sanitary and
+contented friend," said Mrs. Sproul with a decided tartness that was
+only a reflex of the deep affection she bore the mistress of the Little
+House, which had existed since childhood and would endure.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear some of the cars coming," announced Mrs. Cockrell, as she began
+to crochet furiously at the last petal of a rose. "Is my cap straight? I
+do so want to finish this row and can't go in to look."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll put out St. Peter's eye with a crochet needle while he's
+unlocking the pearly gates for you, Lettie Cockrell," said Mrs. Sproul,
+as she rose and stood with ceremony at the head of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> steps to meet
+the Governor and Mr. Jeffries and father as they came up her front walk.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sproul always has the most delightful old world sort of midday
+dinners and it was two o'clock before we all arose from her long table,
+at one end of which had been demolished a spiced ham and from the other
+end had disappeared two fat summer turkeys. A saddle of lamb had been
+passed in between and we had wound up with sweet potato custards, apple
+float and ice cream.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand now," said Mr. Jeffries, as his keen old eyes twinkled
+down the table at Nickols. "This food should produce geniuses. The South
+feeds for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we eat, drink, are merry and do it all over again to-morrow," said
+Mark, as he walked beside Mrs. Sproul from the devastated dining room.
+"And we must all hurry if we are to see your young ideas begin to shoot.
+This day isn't really hot, but just thinks it is. Look at those clouds
+boiling up back of Old Harpeth as if wanting to storm, but afraid to
+begin it. There's not a breath of air stirring. Wish it <i>would</i> shower,
+for I believe the colors of Goodloe's pageant would run and I'd like to
+see the true hue of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> melee of his come out in the wash. It would do
+Charlotte good to fade a bit. She has been hectic since daylight and the
+rest of my juvenile family with her. Jimmy is S and Z in the alphabet
+and Sue has got a huge A sewed on her back. Goodloe intends that
+education shall be nailed to 'em."</p>
+
+<p>And at his admonition to hurry and the alluring description of the
+entertainment to come, we all betook ourselves on foot toward the
+schoolhouse down the street a few blocks, halfway between the Town and
+the Settlement.</p>
+
+<p>And as we went all the rest of the Town hurried out of wide, high,
+vine-covered doors, down broad, flower-lined walks, and joined us from
+under bowers of blooming roses, honeysuckle and clematis. We actually
+approached the schoolhouse in the form of quite a large procession, and
+as we wound our way down the hill we met a like procession winding
+itself up the hill from the Settlement, a procession arrayed in its best
+bib, tucker and boiled shirt, just as we were adorned in silk, lace,
+fine muslin and linen.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks like two armies approaching each other&mdash;Greek is going to meet
+Greek," said Billy.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather Greek meets Vandal, and there stands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> Goodloe to do the
+interpreting," Nickols jeered in answer.</p>
+
+<p>And as we all flocked into the wide gate of the school yard I was again
+struck with the great beauty of the tall, broad, lithe, free man who
+stood in the middle of the walk just inside, welcoming Town and
+Settlement alike. And while he greeted us, his enthusiastic flock of
+older children seated the groups of guests on the long rough benches
+which were placed facing the door of the schoolhouse, leaving a wide
+space at the foot of the steps, which was roped off with golden chains
+of black-eyed daisies and which was evidently to be used as a stage for
+the pageant.</p>
+
+<p>"Just look how Goodloe is failing to mix his oil and water," Nickols
+whispered to me, as we observed all of the Settlement groups gravely
+gravitate to the left side of the walk while all the Town in chattering
+parties took seats on the right. "That's right, Burns, take off my last
+summer coat," he added, still in a whisper to me as the Burns parent
+struggled out of the unendurable gift garment and thus gave a signal
+that whipped off every coat on the left side of the walk in the
+twinkling of an eye, to the evident distress of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> tightly girted and
+uncomfortable but more formal feminine members of the Settlement
+contingent. Conjugal strife was about to make its appearance when Mother
+Spurlock, who was seated beside poor little Hettie Garrett, holding the
+Mother Only in her arms with never a glance for Mrs. Sproul, who had
+beckoned her to a seat next to her own beruffled silk skirts, passed the
+word around that such comfort was to be accorded the masculine guests.
+Even with such sanction, however, Luella May Spain looked pained at her
+father's gay new red suspenders, and I could see that Mr. Todd's striped
+shirt was hurting the feelings of Sadie Todd dreadfully, and she and
+Luella May returned Billy's gallant salute with the greatest
+embarrassment. And in all the buzz I found myself looking anxiously for
+Martha Ensley's pale face and dark eyes, but failed to find them.</p>
+
+<p>"This is one place she ought not to have to peep into; here she has the
+rights of her citizenship and her motherhood," I said to myself.</p>
+
+<p>But if the Town and the Settlement sat in the seats of the audience,
+divided by the walk as were the walls of waters by the dry path along
+which Moses led his chosen people out of the darkness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> of Egypt, such a
+division was not noticeable among the performers of the pageant who were
+supposed to be in hiding with their costumes behind a tall screen of
+shrubs at one side of the schoolhouse, but who bubbled out on all sides.
+Charlotte appeared once holding small Maudie Burns in a comforting
+embrace and guided her to her mother for some sort of attention to the
+very short skirts of blue gingham which were draped with about ten yards
+of green crepe paper, while both Harriet and I gasped as we saw Mikey
+jauntily hand the Suckling, tightly wrapped in brown swaddlings, into
+the rapturous and tender embrace of Katie Moore, who had blue wings
+sewed to her small gingham shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Great Guns! They've got Sucks in it, too!" gasped Billy. "That child is
+too young to educate and Goodloe ought to be restrained from
+cradle-snatching like&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But just here Billy was interrupted and the audience all quieted down as
+Mr. Goodloe, in his white flannels and with his gold head ablaze in the
+sun, which suddenly shone out fiercely from behind a white cloud which
+was sheeting internally with electricity, mounted two of the front<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+steps of the schoolhouse and held up his hand for silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Todd," he said with beautiful deference, "will you lead us in
+prayer?" There was a perceptible rustle of feeling on the Settlement
+side of the walk, for Mr. Todd was one of the parson's deacons, but he
+had also been the master workman in the building of the schoolhouse, and
+his neighbors were quick to respond to the tribute offered him before
+the distinguished men present. He rose, gaunt and grizzled in his shirt
+sleeves, but what he said was brief and as square-cut and to the point
+as any nail he had ever driven. I saw the Governor and father exchange
+glances and I noticed when the Governor responded to his call he was
+much less ornate of speech than usual and much more universal. They all
+spoke, from Nickols along the line to father, and after repeated urgings
+Mother Spurlock rose to the occasion, and by way of making the Town and
+Settlement at home in its new joint quarters announced that the tea
+canister with its slit would hereafter be nailed just inside the
+schoolhouse door.</p>
+
+<p>The laugh and delighted applause that was given her seemed to have been
+the last straw to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> the actors behind the shrubbery, restrained by their
+young preceptress, for the pageant broke upon us.</p>
+
+<p>First Mikey, with huge white cambric stork wings, hopped upon the stage
+of sward and deposited the brown-wrapped Suckling in a hollow log in the
+center, and departed flapping. After that the ceremonial developed
+itself into the education that was to flow down upon her defenseless
+head at the waving of the wand of Minerva, who was Charlotte with a
+tinsel star of wisdom resting rampantly upon her brow. And it came down
+upon the Suckling with a vengeance. A whole troop of young letters of
+the alphabet, led by small Susan with the large red A upon her fat back,
+danced around the Suckling's helplessness and finally backed up to the
+audience to spell the word "Reading." Next in hopped a flock of numerals
+led by the indefatigable Mikey, which backed up and presented themselves
+from one to ten to thus imply the hated science of "Arithmetic."</p>
+
+<p>The Suckling slept on amid delighted gurgles from her mother and
+Harriet. She slept through a presentation of the script letters of
+"Writing" and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> was still unconscious when "Geography" in crepe paper,
+with flags of all nations, grouped around her. She only awoke when, all
+by himself, sturdily, with his head in the air and fairly radiant with
+beauty and courage, the Stray marched upon the scene, rolled into a
+white roll of paper and girt about with a broad red ribbon sealed upon
+his back to represent "Diploma." Silently and intent upon his duty he
+walked straight to the Suckling in her log crib, bent over her, crooned
+to her reassuringly a second, lifted her in his white arms and backed
+off behind a tall laurel bush with her nodding in delight over his
+shoulder. The boy was so beautiful and the little scene so tender that
+the entire audience caught its breath at its&mdash;audacity. A gauntlet had
+been thrown into the faces of both the Town and Settlement and they both
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>They sat perfectly still with astonishment while the performers were
+being massed in the schoolhouse by the young teacher for their final
+march out to the steps for the hymn singing with the beloved "Minister,"
+which was to conclude the ceremonials.</p>
+
+<p>And while the audience sat awaiting the further<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> presentations to be
+made them by their offspring, Mr. Goodloe came out the door and halfway
+down the steps. Then suddenly he stopped and looked out over the valley
+with such an expression on his face that with one accord his audience
+rose and looked with him. And as it looked a groan came that was a
+chorus melted into one voice of terror, while all of them stood helpless
+with amazement. While we had all been sitting in the curious sweltering
+heat, watching with pride a future for our children being foretold for
+them by themselves, death had reared itself behind Old Harpeth, coiled
+itself into a huge black spiral of thunder and lightning and was driving
+down the valley upon Goodloets with a velocity that defied the eyes to
+follow. For a long second every man and woman stood rooted to his
+foothold on the earth and watched the tornado strike the edge of the
+Settlement, smash down the saddlery as if it were a house of cards, and
+churn the little tannery into the river. Then as it grasped the roof of
+the Last Chance and began twisting it with a roar that grew in volume
+every instant, Gregory Goodloe suddenly raised his hand and spoke in a
+perfectly calm voice that rang out above the groan of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> the tortured
+shanties of the Settlement which were crashing down against each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God, we trust in the covert of thy wings," he prayed for a second
+and then commanded: "Fall to the earth, all of you, and let it pass over
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"The children!" came a cry that was a wail of parenthood, as we all sank
+to the ground just as the terrible black monster tore the roof from the
+Little House and hurled it toward us across the street. I saw a huge
+rafter hurtle through the air and strike down Mark Morgan as he started
+toward the steps of the schoolhouse, and by not a half inch did it miss
+drunken, useless Mike Burns as it fell beside him. Then I covered my
+eyes as the cloud and the wind passed over me and I only heard it strike
+and rend and crash and tear the schoolhouse, beam from beam and stone
+from stone. An eerie wail of the voices of little children was mixed
+with the roar of the monster which crashed on up through the Town,
+laying low the homes of our pride and prosperity, leaving us with our
+faces to the ground while upon us began to pour a deluge of cold rain.</p>
+
+<p>"Mark! Mark!" I heard Harriet moan beside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> me and I saw her crawl under
+the wind toward where Mark had fallen.</p>
+
+<p>"My babies, Oh, my babies!" came a wail in Nell's voice, and I saw her
+try to rise, be knocked over by the wind and then begin to crawl toward
+the wrecked mass that a second before had been the schoolhouse and from
+which now could be heard the screams and cries of the children. Then as
+suddenly as it had laid us low the cruel wind left us and with one
+accord we all sprang to our feet and surged toward the children's calls
+and cries that came out to us in the semi-darkness that still enveloped
+us, though both the wind and the rain were abating.</p>
+
+<p>But before a huge slab that had been the top step of the schoolhouse we
+were all halted by a voice so stern and commanding that even the
+agonized mothers and fathers paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop! Not a man or a woman must come a step nearer," said the parson,
+with the authority in his voice that must always be obeyed when used by
+one human being to another. "The roof of the house has split and sunk in
+the middle and only one side beam is supporting it. If it is touched by
+so much as a hand it may lose its balance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> and fall on the children.
+Only one man must come forward and put his shoulder under the beam at
+the other end while I hold this. The children must come out one by one,
+so as not to shake anything on them. The beam may fall. Do you all
+understand me? One man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Me, Parson, me!" demanded Mr. Todd.</p>
+
+<p>"A broader, younger man, Todd," answered the parson, and he was casting
+his eye over the huddled people before him when a wail came clear and
+distinct from within the ruin.</p>
+
+<p>"Stranger is caught and bleeding! Hurry, hurry!" were the words that
+Charlotte sent forth with all the strength of her young lungs.</p>
+
+<p>"It's my child, Oh, it's mine!" came an answering, cry, and from behind
+some hiding place Martha Ensley flung herself across the front of the
+huddled group of the Settlement people and against the defense of
+Gregory Goodloe's strong arm which held her from the tottering doorway
+he was supporting. "Let me get him out!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Martha," the parson said calmly and tenderly, as he held her back.</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>you</i> come and get him," Martha said, as she suddenly straightened
+herself and looked out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> among us of the Town. "He's yours&mdash;come and save
+him!" But even in her agony she was cautious in her appeal, which came
+without the demand of a name. We all held our breath for an instant,
+Settlement and Town. Who would answer her?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>LIGHT&mdash;INTO DARKNESS</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Yes, Martha," came the answer after an instant's pause, and Nickols
+Powers stepped from my side to that of Martha Ensley and took her wrung
+hands in his. For another long moment we all stood tense at the
+acknowledgment that the tragedy had forced to the surface. I stood
+beside father like a woman of ice, yet on fire with a contemptuous
+humiliation. The eyes of all my world were for an instant turned on me,
+then they were all called back to the tragedy that was tottering over
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry, hurry!" came another wail from within the ruins in Charlotte's
+voice. "He's bleeding!"</p>
+
+<p>Again Martha started to fling herself past Nickols and the parson with a
+scream of terror which was faintly echoed from within.</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody come to Martha," commanded Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> Goodloe, as he held her off
+with one hand while he eased the beam on his shoulder so that Nickols
+could slip in past him to the other end.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a great, beautiful warmth melted the horror of pride and
+humiliation that had frozen my heart as Nickols had stepped from my side
+to that of Martha in acknowledgment of her claim upon him for the saving
+of the child. All fear for her or us or the babies passed from me. My
+soul had gone out into a darkness, called on some great Power that must
+be there directing such a thing as was happening to us, and calm and
+clear the answer of courage flowed into me.</p>
+
+<p>Then without another moment's hesitation I stepped forward and held out
+my arms to Gregory Goodloe for Martha. He put her into their strong
+embrace and I pressed her head down upon my shoulder in a great
+tenderness I had never felt before, while Nickols, with a long, hunted
+look at us both, crawled into the crumbling ruin and crouched under the
+beam as Gregory Goodloe directed him.</p>
+
+<p>The wind had died down, the clouds were rolling away the darkness and
+the rain had almost stopped as we all stood and waited for Gregory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+Goodloe to bring from that ruin, in the way his superior judgment
+thought best, either life or death. From within there came sobs and
+smothered little moans that were so mingled that they could not be
+identified by even the mother hearts held at bay by the faith that made
+them obey the parson's command.</p>
+
+<p>And then as I stood there with the mother of the child of my lover
+cowering against my breast, with the man who in a few days was to have
+been my husband, crouched under almost certain grinding death, and
+looked into what at any moment might be the grave of all the babies of
+the women I held dear, a light was flooding into my darkness and all of
+the obscure, untranslatable writings on my nature became clear and I
+received my consciousness of my Master, the Lord Jesus, with a cry that
+I sent up for His mediation for the lives of the little ones. It was my
+first prayer.</p>
+
+<p>"O Christ in Heaven, help save them!" I pleaded. "Quick, Gregory,
+quick!" I added another supplication in the next breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Sue is bleeding, too!" again came a wail in Charlotte's voice. "Mikey's
+got the baby, but he's caught."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nell had been kneeling beside Mark's prostrate form, but at Charlotte's
+call she laid his head on Harriet's breast and flung herself against my
+arm outstretched to receive and restrain her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Nickols, steady! I'll lift them past the beam," said the parson,
+as he braced himself in the door space which had been crushed into a
+narrow opening.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte, take the baby from Mikey and hand her to me first," he
+commanded. "Where are you caught, Mikey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me leg," wailed Mikey and his wail was echoed by poor little Mrs.
+Burns.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said the parson, as he handed the brown swaddled bundle to Nell,
+who caught it in her arms and sank shuddering to my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Charlotte, I want you to get all the other children who are not
+caught into line and make them walk carefully, just as you did here to
+me," said the parson in a perfectly calm voice, the one he had used to
+command his small congregation in the weeks of the drill.</p>
+
+<p>"They are all crying and got their heads covered up," answered Charlotte
+in despair. "They won't get up and march." Loud wails of fear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> and
+anguish accompanied this statement, as if to corroborate it.</p>
+
+<p>"Sing with me, Susan, sing the march," came the command without an
+instant's delay from the lips of the beloved Minister.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Onward, Christian soldiers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marching as to war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the cross of Jesus<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Going on before&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>came wee Sue's high, sweet voice which rose from the cavern and joined
+with the parson's in the old song that has led strong men through many a
+death watch.</p>
+
+<p>For a long moment we all waited and then out of the hole in the mass of
+stones and timbers and bricks, led by wee bleeding Susan, crawled a slow
+stream of bloody, bruised, sobbing infant humanity to be absorbed with
+cries of rapture into waiting arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry, Goodloe, get the boy and Charlotte; my God, hurry, the beam is
+sinking!" came in Nickols' smothered voice.</p>
+
+<p>Martha started, but I held her tight against my breast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've got Mikey's pants loose with my teeth," came in Charlotte's voice,
+as a creaking of the timbers made a shudder run through the waiting
+crowd as every man and woman who held a restored treasure close, waited
+to see what would happen to the three left in the settling ruins.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out, Mikey, come out," called the Burns paternal parent.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't! I'm going to help Charlotte git out Stray," was the undutiful
+response of courage to the craven.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he caught, Charlotte?" asked the parson, as he edged a little
+farther under the beam, which tottered and brought him to a cautious
+standstill.</p>
+
+<p>"His middle. Mikey's pushing and I'm pulling, but he's all bluggy. He's
+dead all but his toes that wiggle."</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry, Goodloe, hurry!" groaned Nickols, with what seemed a final
+inspiration of breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Pull him loose and come quick, Charlotte, you and Mikey. Never mind the
+blood," was the firm command and in a few seconds Charlotte and Mikey
+squeezed through the fast closing opening,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> bloody and torn, but with
+the limp Stray dragged between them. A great cheer went up as Martha
+turned and caught the unconscious boy in her arms, then it froze in the
+throats that had been uttering it. Slowly, but more rapidly than could
+be stayed by human hands, the whole heavy roof crushed down upon the
+rest of the ruin; and under it and the beam went Nickols Powers with
+only one deep groan. Mr. Goodloe tried to hold up the whole side of the
+roof on his own shoulders and only staggered out from the very brink of
+being involved in the crash. Martha sank to the ground and hid her head
+in my knees and sobbed while I heard a great cry break from my father's
+lips. Nickols was the last of his race and our pride was blasted when he
+fell.</p>
+
+<p>"Now forward, every man of you, but lift and dig carefully," commanded
+the parson, as he stood on the very edge of the ruin. "Todd, you stand
+at the corner and show them how to roll back the timbers to the right.
+Carefully, men, but quick, quick, and with the help of God!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed hours that the men wrestled with the timbers and tore away
+brick and stone and steel, but it was only a few minutes before they
+pried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> up a section of the heavy roof and lifted Nickols from the debris
+beneath.</p>
+
+<p>"He's breathing," said Mr. Todd, as he laid him in the parson's great,
+strong, outstretched arms open to receive him and which bore him out
+through the crowd swiftly and laid him across the seats of Nickols' car.
+Doctor Harding had just put Mark, a limp, heavy body, into his own car,
+with Harriet to support the bleeding head, and Nell crouched beside him
+with the Suckling in her arms, and sent them on up into the devastated
+Town. Now he came and helped us settle Nickols on his cushions.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I send my car and Colonel Leftwick for surgeons and nurses from
+the Capital?" asked the Governor. "How is it with Morgan?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead," answered the old doctor with the calm serenity that he had
+acquired after so many years of giving up his friends. "This case is
+another matter. There may be a chance and I'll need help. We don't yet
+know how many more are injured in the whole town. We'll need help."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll drive for it myself," answered the Governor, as he swung into
+his powerful car and started it out into the valley. "I'll make it back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+in six hours. No other man can drive this car as fast as I can."</p>
+
+<p>And true to his promise, he was back within the time with nurses and
+surgeons and supplies of all kinds. By that time the whole Harpeth
+Valley had heard of our tragedy and all who could find a way were
+hurrying to our rescue or comforting.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn of the beautiful new day found Nickols still alive, stretched
+on his bed in his own wing of the Poplars, which alone of all the homes
+in the Town had not been touched by the storm monster. The old house
+stood unharmed in all its beauty in its garden which had hardly a leaf
+or a branch broken, and hovered under its roof the last of the name of
+its builders. He lay quiet and unconscious while his life jetted itself
+away from a great hole in his lung made by a splinter from the beam he
+had held up until old Goodloet's children had been given back to its
+future. The great surgeon who had come down with the Governor, watched,
+shook his head and went at his task again and again with a dogged
+courage. For an hour he would leave him to go and help Dr. Harding with
+some of the other injured, but back he would come to his fight for
+Nickols' life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And all over the stricken town there were similar tragedies being
+enacted. Over at the Morgans Mark lay cold and still in the long parlor,
+which was almost the only part of the handsome old house left intact by
+the tornado, and Harriet sat beside him while Nell nursed maimed wee
+Susan and torn Jimmy, and restrained Charlotte from injuring her sorely
+twisted ankle.</p>
+
+<p>Down at the Last Chance, Jacob Ensley was stretched upon a bed in the
+bar with a sheet drawn straight and decorously over his bruised white
+head. He had been killed by a blow from a roof timber, while from right
+beside him young George Spain had been rescued unharmed. When he had
+crawled from the ruins he had held in his hand a bottle of whiskey which
+he had just uncorked for his own and Jacob's refreshment when the
+tornado tore at the East Chance, and scarcely a drop had been spilt. And
+the tornado had displayed the vagaries of its kind.</p>
+
+<p>Old Granny Todd had been lifted in her rocking chair and carried halfway
+over the Town and left beside the Spain cottage with her feeble life
+intact, while Mrs. Spain, upon whose shoulders the burden of mothering
+all seven of the Spains rested<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> heavily, had had one of those valuable
+shoulders broken and was left crushed and bleeding beside the rocking
+chair in which the helpless old dame arrived for her enforced visit. The
+household goods of one family had been torn from them and thrown into
+the melee of another, and the Jamison clock was found ticking busily
+away over on the roof of the Todd's chicken house. A girl mother in a
+little cottage on the edge of the river bank was found floating against
+the shore in her wooden bedstead, drowned, while near her the little two
+days' old life had been perfectly preserved upon the pillow in the
+rocking chair where it had been sleeping when the great storm beast had
+made its raid.</p>
+
+<p>And all Goodloets mourned, crying for her children, and would not be
+comforted. The second day after the storm the dead were buried. Mr.
+Goodloe, with old Mr. Stokes, the Presbyterian minister, on one hand,
+and the Baptist student preacher on the other, stood in the center of
+the beautiful city of the dead, over which the storm had passed
+unheeding, and had services for the rich and the poor alike. With the
+same ceremonial were buried Mark Morgan and Jacob<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> Ensley, and the girl
+mother, Ted Montgomery, who had been struck down by the falling sign of
+the Bank and Trust Company on Main Street, and a score of others.</p>
+
+<p>Then after all the tears had been shed and the sobs had ceased, all the
+flowers strewn and the reluctant feet had left the silent city, I went
+over behind the tall cedars into a corner and knelt beside Martha
+Ensley, who had flung herself down across the new-made grave that held
+all that was left of Jacob Ensley, the man who had bulwarked sin in his
+Settlement and menaced all of Goodloets for many a year. The wide-eyed
+boy crouched beside her and I took his hand in mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha," I said, as I bent beside her in the twilight. "I want you to
+come home with me, you and Sonny. Your place is there now and you must
+bring him." All day I had thought and I had prayed to be aided in doing
+what I knew was best.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Miss Charlotte, no," she said, and shrank from my arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Martha," I said, and drew her closer.</p>
+
+<p>"It happened the summer we were all first grown and you were in Europe.
+I couldn't fight him off. I knew he belonged to you and I loved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> you,
+but I couldn't fight him off," she sobbed and the Stray's little arms
+went around her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll fight fer you&mdash;I'll fight," he said, with brave, wonderment in his
+eyes and voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I went away this summer and I wanted to stay. Mr. Goodloe tried to help
+me, but Nickols found where I was and made me come back. It was wrong to
+you and I knew it. I stayed shut up in my room, but he would come. And I
+sent him to his death. He was yours and I killed him for you! Please go
+away and leave me!" And again Martha cowered away from me.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody need know you are in the house, Martha, but you must come with
+me," I said, and I spoke with such quiet authority that she rose and
+followed me out of the shadows into the starlit night which had come
+down over stricken Goodloets. I found Billy waiting for me in his car
+and he spoke gently to Martha and settled her and the boy on the back
+seat with never a question in his kind eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"God, you women!" he said to me under his breath, but I avoided his eye
+and he drove us silently to the Poplars. The long halls were quiet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> and
+empty in the anxious hush of the whole house which was keeping its
+life&mdash;or death watch. I led Martha to the room that opened into mine, in
+which all of the girl guests of the Poplars always slept, and made her
+take off her hat and make the boy comfortable. Then I went for Dabney
+and asked him to take food to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes'm, I will. God love my little miss," was his answer, and I knew
+that I could trust his kindness to Martha and the boy.</p>
+
+<p>Then I went into the library to father. I found Mr. Goodloe with him and
+father's calm under his anxious suffering gave me a thrill at the
+thought of the regained strength it implied. The parson's face was
+grave, but full of a white light from the fire burning back under the
+dull gold brows. His warm hands took my cold ones in them and pressed
+them palm to palm in the attitude of prayer and very tenderly, from his
+soul to mine, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"'The Lord is good, for his mercy endureth forever.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Forever?" I asked him, looking up with the child's faith that had been
+born in my heart shining in the confidence in my eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Forever," he answered me with quiet authority.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said father solemnly, as if himself reassured after doubts. Then,
+after a second's pause: "Daughter, Nickols is conscious and is asking
+for you. Will you go to him?"</p>
+
+<p>I took my hands out of those which had given to mine the strength of
+prayer and went.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SPARK AND THE BLAZE</h3>
+
+
+<p>I found Nickols lying in his own dim and high bedroom, perfectly
+motionless under the white sheet, as he had been for two days, the only
+difference that now his great dark eyes burned into mine and on his
+mouth there rested a faint trace of the old mocking smile. I sat down
+close beside his pillow on a low chair which the nurse placed for me as
+she gave me a warning look and left us alone.</p>
+
+<p>"This is your wedding day, Charlotte, and the license is over on the
+desk to destroy," he said, with the mocking light in his eyes flaring up
+into greater strength. "I suppose you are duly grateful for the merciful
+escape accorded you."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't, dear," I said, and I reached out and took his burning
+hand in mine.</p>
+
+<p>"You never really cared, Charlotte. You cold women make havoc in a man's
+life. I've no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> excuses to make, but I wish I could hear you say that you
+forgive me. I'd go out more contentedly." And the light that sprang up
+into his face showed me just what a hold I had on his loyalty and the
+thing a man calls his honor. And it came to me on the wings of a quick,
+silent prayer, prayed in a heart unlearned in the forms of petitions,
+that I must make a fight to give him the peace of his heritage of
+immortality before he entered it.</p>
+
+<p>"I do forgive you, Nick dear, as I hope to be forgiven by the Master for
+the wrongs I have done others&mdash;the wrong of accepting your life&mdash;in
+coldness," I answered, looking him steadily in the eye as I made my
+simple declaration of my new-found faith to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You?" he faltered. "Do I behold you entered into the creed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me, Nick, for the time is short," I said, as I held his hand
+close in mine. "We were blind&mdash;blind. When you and the children were in
+that death house I found that I must ask help. I cried out in my
+blindness and was answered, as Christ gave his promise that the eyes of
+those who ask should be opened. And you must ask so that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> you will have
+a vision to help&mdash;help you go to the blessed immortality that awaits
+you. Ask, Oh, Nick, ask with me. Please, Lord Jesus, help us!" And as I
+uttered my few faltering words of petition I fell on my knees beside the
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's too late now," he answered, but a helplessness came into his
+bitterness. "I've done all the damage I could and I'm not going to
+whimper. You'll help poor Martha?" he questioned softly, and I could
+have cried out in thankfulness for the ray of tenderness that came
+across his white face.</p>
+
+<p>"God has given you time to right the worst wrong, Nick," I said, as a
+sudden thought came to me that gave to me a healing which I knew I must
+pour out upon his wounds. "Marry Martha and give the boy your name and
+your money to grow good and great with. Jacob is dead. They are alone in
+the world. Give them to me that way, Nick, give them to me to care for
+for you until we are all together where everything is made right."</p>
+
+<p>For a long moment he lay perfectly still and looked into my eyes and I
+saw a wonder grow in his that spread all over his whole face.</p>
+
+<p>"Some kind of a God must have created a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> woman like that in you. Almost
+I believe. Call Goodloe quick, and your father." And then he closed his
+eyes and I could see a deathly weakness stealing over him. I called the
+nurse and sent her for father and Gregory Goodloe, and to old Dabney who
+had come to wait by the door I whispered to bring Martha and the boy and
+keep them in the room beyond. Then I went back and knelt by the pillow
+and took the hand which was beginning to grow cold in mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Could it be possible?" the white lips muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Say it, Nickols; say, 'Lord, help thou my unbelief,'" I begged him.</p>
+
+<p>"Amen," he whispered with a quick smile just as father and Gregory
+Goodloe came into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodloe, what was the exact story about that skulker of a thief on the
+cross?" Nickols asked with a sudden strength in his voice as he opened
+his eyes and looked straight at the parson.</p>
+
+<p>"'The thief said unto Jesus, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into
+thy kingdom." And Jesus said unto him, "Verily I say unto thee, to-day
+shalt thou be with me in Paradise,"' are the exact words, Nickols," the
+parson answered him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte, ask the judge if he is willing that I should wipe the slate
+clean as you propose in case there really is a door and an old Peter to
+present a purified passport to," the dying man said to me with a touch
+of his old whimsicality. "I give up, Greg; the soul that Charlotte
+possesses can't be put out into nothingness; and if she's got one I have
+too," he said, after a moment's fight for breath. "Hurry, all of you, to
+get my passport made out and bring the girl here to me. Quick, get her.
+There is very little time."</p>
+
+<p>"She's here, Nick," I answered, and after a few words to father and the
+parson, to which they both gave assent, I called Martha and the boy into
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>Straight as a bird to its nest Martha flew to the bedside and the dying
+arms found strength to lift themselves and take her and the child into
+their embrace.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you forgive me and let me make it as right with the world for you
+and him as I can, Martha?" he asked. "I love you, but I'd have drawn us
+all down into hell."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed Martha, looking up at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> me with positive fear of
+me and of father and of our world in her wild face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Martha," I said, as I knelt beside her and took the Stray in my
+arms, toward which he in his terror at the scene strained. "Father is a
+justice and he'll make the license over there in the desk right. You
+must, Martha, you must! It gives you and the boy to me to care for."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Martha," echoed Nickols' voice, out of which the strength was
+quickly going. "Help me wipe off as much of the slate as you can," and
+the wandering hand suddenly encountered the boy's wee paddie resting on
+the edge of the bed and clasped it close.</p>
+
+<p>And with the three of us crouched there beside him, father and Mr.
+Goodloe bound them legally and in the name of God, just as the last
+flicker of strength flared up in Nickols' body. Immediately I rose with
+the child in my arms and Martha took Nickols' head on her faithful
+breast while the life ebbed away.</p>
+
+<p>"Amen, Charlotte, amen," were his last whispered words and I understood
+that he was ratifying again my prayer for light to lead the way of his
+faltering steps.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And then came a stillness in which we all stood with bowed heads while
+Martha sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Nickols Morris Powers was an event of national interest and
+telegrams and letters and representatives of the press poured into
+Goodloets from all parts of the country. Mr. Jeffries and the Governor
+stayed with us until it was all over, and when Mr. Jeffries left he
+pressed into father's hand a large check of five figures.</p>
+
+<p>"To help them build again, those who need it, in memory of him," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>The Governor and his staff spent time and effort in helping to
+reorganize Goodloets, but through it all it was the powerful Harpeth
+Jaguar on whom we all leaned. He came and went day and night, tireless,
+quiet, commanding, and with that great light shining from back of his
+eyes upon us all. And in his ministrations down in the Settlement he
+took Martha with him day after day. He forced her to use up all of the
+strength that she possessed each day so that she would drop with
+exhaustion at night. To me he left most of the comforting of Nell&mdash;and
+Harriet. Like all women of buoyant and shallow nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> Nell soon began
+to rebound from her tragedy and it was hard to keep Billy within
+decorous bounds in his comforting of her. It would have been impossible
+to have done it at all with the former Billy, but the quiet, steady
+light that shone in his honest eyes whenever he helped with Nell and the
+children spoke well for a reformed and perfectly satisfactory future for
+them all.</p>
+
+<p>"Billy," I said to him one afternoon when he had taken all four of the
+kiddies out in his car to get wild grapes, when Harriet had counted on
+having wee Susan to herself for the afternoon, while Nell was
+interestedly busy over somber but much needed winter clothes for
+herself. "You have just got to make up your mind that Harriet is going
+to absolutely possess Sue for the future. I don't know about any
+legalities but I am going to see that Harriet gets Susan."</p>
+
+<p>"What you say goes, Charlotte, as it always has," he answered me, with
+honest adoring in his young eyes that had lost their reckless hunger.
+"And if you aren't careful you'll lead us all into Kingdom Come in blind
+bridles. Be careful not to over-fill Goodloe's fold. I don't want to
+crowd you. I'll take my turn when it comes." He was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> laughing as he
+spoke but there was a depth to the laughter that I understood.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Billy, for your consideration," I answered him, as I took
+small Sue's hand and turned in at the Sproul gate.</p>
+
+<p>Harriet sat on the steps in the fading sunlight and the small music box
+flung herself into the outstretched arms with a force that was alarming.
+It was easy to see that Susan was most temperamental and would be a
+handful of anxieties in the years to come, anxieties that Harriet
+needed.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, she doesn't belong to me and I'm a fool," Harriet muttered
+as Susan darted away to see what treasure for her lurked in the pocket
+of Mrs. Sproul's beflowered silk skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"I started plans to get her for you, just five minutes ago, dear," I
+said, as I sat down beside her. "I laid down the law to Billy on the
+subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte," answered Harriet, as she looked with brooding into my eyes,
+"do you really believe that&mdash;that we will find them again and&mdash;and&mdash;<i>do</i>
+you really believe?" And the question was so hungry and haunted and so
+like what had driven me for years that my heart ached in my breast for
+her, but I knew that I could only stand fast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> and pray that she be
+comforted. I couldn't make her see.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, I <i>know</i>&mdash;but I can't make you know. Just go on&mdash;on
+<i>hungering</i> like you are and you'll be fed," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"You've always understood, Charlotte, and if you say that the pain will
+some day be eased I'll&mdash;I'll believe it. Yes, I'll make a start by
+believing in you and there's no telling where it will land me."</p>
+
+<p>The confidence with which she raised her comforted eyes to mine made a
+stab of pain hit me full in the breast. Words that Gregory Goodloe had
+spoken to me out under the old graybeards were the weapon used. "With
+your hand in mine I can make this whole community see and know;
+separated from you&mdash;" In all humility I now understood what he meant.</p>
+
+<p>And in all the weeks in which he and I had worked together Gregory
+Goodloe had given me not one single personal word or look. The priest
+had comforted and strengthened me but the man had forever shut me out of
+his heart. My suffering was intense, and yet, and yet I knew that in my
+heart there was strength to endure the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> want of him with all
+cheerfulness even to the end. At last I had found the key to my own
+hieroglyphics and I could be honest with myself. I knew that I loved
+Gregory Goodloe as it is seldom given to a woman to love a man, but I
+also knew that the awakening of spirit I had found was not in any way
+connected with my woman's love for him, but had come to me from the
+years of suffering I had had while I sought it. I refused to acknowledge
+that a sex spark had in any way set off the blaze; the fire had been
+laid in my soul and it would burn on without any of his tending. But
+even in that honest surety Nickols' mocking words "religion is
+suppressed sex" haunted me. I knew it could not be true, so I put it all
+out of my mind as I left Harriet and walked down the street towards the
+Poplars.</p>
+
+<p>I was due in the library to help father in the packing of some of his
+papers, for I had insisted that he go on to Washington to fulfill his
+appointment. Martha and the boy would be with me and if he only left me
+Dabney I could be safe and busy for the winter. Strange to say, Mammy's
+disappointment at Dabney's loss of a sojourn in a strange clime was
+greater than his own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe in glorifying men by needing of them to any great
+measure," she declared. "With me in the house and the preacher across
+the fence it don't make no difference how good looking you are, Miss
+Charlotte, you won't be too much for our protection. Dabney can jest go
+on with the jedge."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, little miss, you don't need me, but I sorter got rheumatics
+in my homesick and I begged off from Mas' Nickols," Dabney replied with
+the wily soothing that had made his conjugal life both pleasant and
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>I was thinking of the argument and smiled with tenderness as I saw the
+old grizzled white head bent over a hoe down in the dahlias, which he
+was bedding. The young man from White Plains had stayed to put the
+garden to bed as far as possible, and had left with perfect confidence
+in Dabney and the likely yellow boy he had found.</p>
+
+<p>And now in late October the garden was in a conflagration of blossoming
+glory. The borders of the walks blazed with the red and blue and gold
+and purple of chrysanthemums and asters and zinnias and dahlias, while
+long tendrils of russet autumn vines trailed in and over and around the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+flowers and shrubs and hedges. The tang of ripening and falling seed was
+mixed in all the perfume, and gorgeous leaves were beginning to rustle
+on the green grass. It was Nickols' first harvest of beauty, and somehow
+I felt that there was no need to regret that his eyes were not mortally
+there to gather the fruits.</p>
+
+<p>I went from the front porch up to my room to take off my hat and see if
+Martha had come from a day with Mother Spurlock down in the Settlement.
+I found instead of Martha or the boy or Mother Elsie, Jessie Litton
+seated at my desk and looking out the window across to Paradise Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>"I came up to wait, Charlotte, because&mdash;because I'm in deep water and
+need a hand out. You have always helped and somehow I feel that you have
+so much more to give me now than you ever had. Clifton Gray told me last
+night that he loved me and is going to break his engagement with Letitia
+Cockrell. He had heard Letitia and Nell talk over Nell's mourning
+trousseau for the winter and he was disgusted&mdash;that, and&mdash;and I think it
+has been coming some time. He is with Mr. Goodloe a lot lately in
+getting things about the town started to going again and he is&mdash;is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
+thinking. I don't know how to help him think; it's a thing I've never
+done. I am at sea myself but I know that he must not throw Letitia over.
+Will you talk to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help him if&mdash;if Mr. Goodloe can't," I faltered, simply sick
+with distress.</p>
+
+<p>"Cliff said not a week ago that your eyes made him feel like a light he
+saw ahead on a wooded island after he had drifted without a paddle two
+days in a canoe one time in Canada. You'll have to talk to him. Give him
+a little life kernel; I've only got shells for myself. I'm going down to
+Florida suddenly next week and when I come back I&mdash;I, well, I'll either
+go into the movies or study with Mother Spurlock to get a deaconess'
+cap." As she spoke I saw that the fight was on in Jessie's soul, and it
+would be to a finish.</p>
+
+<p>"God bless and keep you, dear," I held her back long enough to say as
+she picked up her sweater and left me. Hampton Dibrell has been
+constantly with Bessie Thornton since Ted Montgomery's death, and I knew
+that Jessie's time of trial had come, for her love for him had grown
+through her denial because of the taint of her mad mother. And somehow I
+felt sure of the outcome,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> that she would find strength to let him go. I
+didn't know why I felt so sure; but I did, and I went down to the
+library with a great peace in my heart that I knew later would be in
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>And I made my entry into father's den in the midst of a scene of great
+moment. I paused and listened with profound respect. Tradition was on
+trial and the result I felt would be momentous. Father sat in his huge
+chair before a small crackling fire in the wide chimney, and Martha's
+boy stood before him with a large, profusely illustrated volume of Hans
+Christian Andersen clasped passionately to his little breast. He had the
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>"And Charlotte said they is no fairies anywhere and I say they is," he
+declaimed, while father listened attentively. Suddenly I saw what I had
+never seen before, that father's white hair rose in a crest on one side
+and descended in a cascade on the other at exactly the same angle as the
+black locks of the young arguer before him, and as they calmly regarded
+each other I thought I had never seen such a likeness in personality as
+well as form of feature. Love flooded all over me and I wanted to hug
+them both but was restrained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> to silence by the gravity of the
+situation.</p>
+
+<p>"And why did you argue that there are fairies?" father interrogated
+calmly and judicially.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlotte said they ain't here 'cause she and me had never saw one, and
+I said, 'How could a book and pictures be about nothing at all?' I
+showed her this book that Lady gaved me and she said, 'Maybe, but ask
+Minister.' I said, no, I'd ask you 'cause you are older and mighter saw
+one onct. Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, you argued from a positive, about ten pounds of positive, I
+should judge from the size of that volume, while Charlotte certainly
+argued from a negative viewpoint," said father, and his eyes twinkled as
+he gave me an almost imperceptible wink. By his answer he also avoided
+answering the question of faith put to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see one?" came back the question in a tone that demanded an
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes Minister now and you can ask him," father said in all
+cravenness as Mr. Goodloe came in the door behind me and came and stood
+at my side. He had a huge yellow plume<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> of goldenrod which he handed me
+without looking at me directly. I buried my nose in its crispness and
+watched to see him meet the issue.</p>
+
+<p>The boy put the question carefully just as he had put it to father, but
+there was a quaver in his voice as he ended with his plea.</p>
+
+<p>"Is they no fairies, 'cause you can't see 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel them in your heart?" was the counter question that came
+gravely from the lips of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, here," answered the pleader as he laid his hand carefully on the
+pit of his stomach, which is nearer the seat of heartache than many a
+perturbed older person has come.</p>
+
+<p>"Then for you there are fairies, right there in your heart, even if
+Charlotte has lost them out of hers," was the answer, with a theology
+that staggered me and set father smiling back into his youth.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go tell her and maybe give her some of mine," exclaimed the boy as
+he ran from the room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COVERT OF WINGS</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Oh, the faith of youth, the faith that reaches out to give itself,"
+sighed father as he turned to his papers.</p>
+
+<p>"Can faith give itself?" I asked, as I raised my eyes to the stars under
+dull gold through which Gregory Goodloe was pouring a great smile down
+into my depths.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes&mdash;just sometimes I think that perhaps it can&mdash;it does," he
+answered me slowly and took my hands in his and held them with their
+palms together prayerwise, a thing he had done several times in the
+weeks past. Then he turned and walked over to father's desk and stood
+looking down at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to dedicate the chapel on Sunday, Mr. Powers, as that is your
+last Sunday before you go to Washington," he said, and as he spoke he
+smiled first down into father's eyes raised to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> and then into
+mine&mdash;impersonally. I couldn't trust myself to speak but turned and went
+up to my room to weep with a hurt that soon sent me to my knees, blind
+for the comfort that came&mdash;that I knew always would come now, no matter
+what the hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows it has come to me, and he's thankful&mdash;but he doesn't care," I
+sobbed and then laughed at my own contradictions.</p>
+
+<p>Martha found me kneeling beside my window seat when she came in with
+Mother Spurlock and she shielded me until I could wipe away the tears
+and be as glad to see them both as I really was.</p>
+
+<p>They were full of the plans for the dedication, which it gave me another
+stab to find they had been discussing with Mr. Goodloe for several days.
+In the hard weeks that had passed I had been their confidant, adviser
+and many times their helper in the reconstructing around the tragedies
+in the Settlement, but in this matter I had not been consulted. In fact,
+Mother Spurlock showed an embarrassed hesitation as she talked of it
+that still further hurt me and made me unenthusiastic and cold to their
+plans.</p>
+
+<p>And why should I have been hurt that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> surety in my heart had not
+declared itself to them without words? So wonderful did it seem to me
+that I thought it must be in my every word and deed and look and I was
+confounded that as yet I was considered to be an outsider and not
+entitled to plan for the ceremonial of the dedication of the material
+fold for the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's flock. And then suddenly my hurt was
+swept away by my sense of humor and I laughed to myself when I saw that
+to Mother Spurlock, who had hungered and thirsted for my conversion, I
+would have to prove it, tell it and repeat it.</p>
+
+<p>"Instead of the festal ceremonies in the dedication Mr. Goodloe is going
+to have the simplest dedication ritual and then immediately hold the
+memorial services for our&mdash;our dead," said Mother Spurlock, as she took
+Martha's hand in hers and stroked it. "We want everybody to be there and
+I could use a few more of those trunks full of colored new clothes,
+Charlotte. The people down in the Settlement can use and wear after a
+dye pot when you can't, bless your sweet heart," and as she made her
+ruling request, which was still strong in death, she stroked the fold of
+dull black silk over my knee which was cut from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> same material as
+the straight black widow's gown which Martha wore.</p>
+
+<p>"Make Martha buy you some things for some of them," I said lightly and
+watched Martha as I spoke. She had never by word or deed showed that she
+felt anything but adoringly dependent on me and my bounty, and had put
+the check book I had given her from Mr. Cockrell away in my desk without
+looking at it. I could see that my words both hurt and shocked her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Oh, no," she faltered and turned away toward the window.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Martha," I was beginning to say, when an interruption burst into
+the room. Young Charlotte stood before us and at her side the boy stood
+his ground with the huge book still in what must have been very tired
+arms. Their faces were belligerent and small James had upon his
+countenance the alarm he always shows during Charlotte's most serious
+and dangerous outbursts. Mikey was along, with his mischievous eyes
+dancing with delight at the fray.</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie Charlotte, I think somebody ought to whip Stranger for saying
+that Minister said he had fairies in his stomach. It is a lie."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll lick him fer you, Miss Charlotte," offered Mikey, with a pass at
+the boy that I knew was only an affectionate threat.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll knock a stuffing out of you if you touch him," answered Charlotte,
+taking Mikey's offer with her usual literal directness. "When he's
+whipped, nobody but Auntie Charlotte can do it. Are you going to do it
+now, Auntie Charlotte? We don't want the devil to get him for badness."
+And as she spoke she took the boy's hand and held it tightly as if
+willing to defend him from the flesh, the devil and the world, only
+excepting myself.</p>
+
+<p>"But he did say that I had them here when I put my hand on it, didn't
+he, Lady?" demanded the accused, with more courage than I would have
+felt at meeting the accusation for him. I simply couldn't face the
+explanation and I became craven.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Goodloe is down in the library. Go ask him what he did say," I
+suggested hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"We looked everywhere for him and that is the place we skipped. I felt
+sure you wouldn't know anything at all about it, Auntie Charlotte, but
+Stranger said you know just as much as Minister, which is another thing
+I am going to ask<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> him about. Come on, Stranger." And with her usual
+lightning rapidity, Charlotte began to marshal her forces out of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't!" were the words I sent faltering after her determination
+to question Mr. Goodloe about his and my relative erudition, but I felt
+that they made no impression.</p>
+
+<p>"Sonny thinks about you just as Charlotte does about Mr. Goodloe, and
+he'll say so to everybody," said Martha, with a sad smile after the door
+had closed with vigor enough to startle the household.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a fine child," said Mother Spurlock, with a great tenderness in
+her smile at Martha. "Did you ask Mrs. Todd if that big hulk of a Jones
+boy could get into the coat that Dabney got me from the judge's closet?"
+she said, continuing the subject in hand, which lasted her for another
+hour. When she went she took Martha with her to carry half the bundles
+down to the Little House, the roof of which was the first thing to be
+patched in stricken Goodloets.</p>
+
+<p>That night I felt the hands of the Stray on my face in the darkness and
+his soft cheek cuddle to mine.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> say they <i>is</i> fairies, Lady," he coaxed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There are fairies and there always will be for you," I answered, as I
+drew him close and kissed the fragrant mouth so near mine. "Go back to
+mother now," I added, as I felt the sleepy huddle of his little shoulder
+against mine. He went and I promised myself that no matter how lonely I
+was to be I would always send him back to his mother and not ever forget
+that her claim was first. Tears were in my eyes as I turned my face into
+the pillow, but suddenly the refrain of the song I had once heard in the
+night, "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," sung itself in my heart
+until I again fell to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The dedication day for Goodloe Chapel arrived upon Goodloets just one
+month from the day upon which the beast of storm had ravaged it, and as
+that fateful morning dawned with an extraordinary grandeur, so that
+Sunday in mid-October came up from behind Paradise Ridge with unusual
+beauty, only with the difference of calmness instead of splendor and
+peace instead of tumult. The sun was warm and benignant, with not a
+cloud in the deep blue sky to obscure its blessing. A gentle breeze blew
+in from the fields and meadows laden with rich harvest odors and every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>
+shrub and flower and vine which had been hiding back a few late buds let
+them burst forth in honor of the day, and in many instances they bloomed
+from a new growth thrown over the scars in the sides of the old town. In
+one short month most of the ruins had been reduced to orderly piles of
+material to be used in rebuilding, and a great many of the deepest
+gashes had been healed completely and covered with merciful vine and
+blossom. And it had also been like that with most of the scars in the
+lives of the bereaved; they ached, but they had been covered with a
+courage to go on building again until the new structure could be
+complete.</p>
+
+<p>I think something of this feeling was in the minds of most of the people
+as they began to assemble around Goodloe Chapel long before the time for
+its opening. And as had happened once before, the procession from the
+Town met the procession from the Settlement, only this time they were
+not divided so completely from the right to the left. A tall mill woman,
+whose husband had gone down in the crash at the saddlery, came and took
+Nell's hand in hers and laid a strong arm around her shoulders, while
+Harriet went over and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> took from the arms of the young father the little
+motherless mite who had been rescued from the pillow floating on the
+river. Billy shook hands with a young tanner in tight but wholly new
+clothes, to whom Luella May Spain introduced him as her imminent
+husband.</p>
+
+<p>In times of stress women are apt to seize and cling to the arm of
+masculine protection, and Luella May had chosen to forget the
+fascination of Billy's hesitation and two-steps and secure for herself a
+life of thorough normality. She would probably never forget those dances
+with Billy, and they would lend a kind of reminiscent glow of pleasure
+over her boiling cabbage pots, but it would be no worse than that.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Todd was shaven and habitated in the neat black coat he had thrown
+off as he went at the ruin of the schoolhouse a month before, and with a
+tender smile on his lean old face he came over and stood beside Martha,
+as if to be watchful of her in the new order of her life.</p>
+
+<p>And it was for quite a half hour that most of the inhabitants of
+Goodloets stood around in the yard of the chapel and waited for the
+formal opening of the doors. We all knew that the chapel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> would not hold
+the half of us, for the small Presbyterian congregation had been
+dismissed by Mr. Farraday to come over and join us in the dedication,
+and after a short service the boy Baptist divine had brought his flock
+to do honor to the opening of the new fold. In fact, by count almost
+every citizen in Goodloets stood before the chapel doors and waited for
+them to be thrown open. And in the crowd who waited there was this
+difference from the last time we had been together: All the children
+were with us and not separated from us by walls that crash. I think that
+the second meeting of Town and Settlement would have been impossible if
+each parent had not had the confidence inspired by the small hands in
+theirs.</p>
+
+<p>And for still more minutes we were patient while the delicious autumn
+sun beamed upon us with Indian summer warmth and Old Harpeth looked down
+on us from out on Paradise Ridge with its crown wreathed with purple and
+gold and russet, all veiled in a tender haze.</p>
+
+<p>Then as the old clock on the courthouse up on the square boomed the hour
+of eleven, Dabney with ceremony opened wide the tall doors and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> stepped
+back into the shadow, Jefferson bowing and smiling behind him. With one
+accord the people started toward the door, and then everybody again
+stood still and seemed to be waiting for something.</p>
+
+<p>I knew for what they waited and I took Martha's hand in mine, with the
+boy's in hers on the other side, and slowly we walked through the path
+made for us between our friends and neighbors and in at the chapel door.
+As I passed Harriet I motioned to her and she put her arm around Nell
+and followed us, while Billy came behind them with father and the
+children. And behind them walked all of those who had been bereaved by
+the storm, and those who had been lamed and were suffering came with
+them.</p>
+
+<p>My entry into the chapel had been accomplished and I felt like a
+storm-torn bird who finds its sanctuary among the green leaves of a
+great tree, while with Martha and the boy I went up to the very chancel
+rail itself.</p>
+
+<p>Then I lifted my eyes and looked up into Gregory Goodloe's face, from
+which the white light of a great joy tinged with a great sorrow, looked
+down upon us. And as had been the case for all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> the long weeks stretched
+out behind me there was in his eyes no glance to me of a personal
+understanding; all the passion was that of a shepherd for his flock, and
+in its greatness I humbly acquiesced as I fell upon my knees in the
+front pew with Martha beside me, while he lifted his hands for the
+opening prayer of his service.</p>
+
+<p>And in his short prayer he made the dedication of the pile of stone and
+mortar which had stood before the face of the wind as sturdily as old
+Harpeth itself. His words held the simplicity of those of a great poet
+and each was a separate jewel that could be imbedded in the hearts of
+his people to last for the span of their lives. He made a grateful
+acknowledgment of the safety of the chapel and of the spared lives of
+those before him, and in a few ringing sentences he prayed that we all
+be delivered from the blindness of the prosperity which was upon us when
+the disaster had made us halt in our rush and give time for brother to
+face and call upon brother in affliction. So ringing and vivid was the
+self-accusation of heedlessness in the few sentences when he dealt with
+the condition of all of us when sorrow had come upon us, that we all
+held our breath with almost a groan of conviction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> and his promise of
+our humbled and contrite hearts was ratified with a breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>Then we rose from our knees and sat once more facing him while he stood
+before us and began to read the memorial services for our dead. And
+through the whole beautiful ritual he led us to the very words of
+triumph:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written;
+Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting?
+O grave, where is thy victory?"</p></div>
+
+<p>The warmth in his beautiful voice and the light upon his face poured
+over us all with a healing that we knew would endure.</p>
+
+<p>After the dedication prayer and the memorial service the old
+Presbyterian minister, whom we had all known and loved since infancy,
+talked tenderly and with great sympathy to us for a few minutes and the
+stammering young Baptist divine gave us an insight into a heart of
+youthful devoutness.</p>
+
+<p>And then came my hour.</p>
+
+<p>"And now that we have given to the Lord formally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> this sanctuary we have
+builded for him, I want to open its spiritual doors to any of you who
+feel in your hearts the desire to unite with us in our worship of Him,"
+were the words of invitation that I suddenly felt beat themselves, in
+the rich voice of the man in the pulpit, upon my heart. "I am going to
+baptize the children, but are there any of you of 'riper years' who
+desire to unite with us to 'constantly believe God's holy word, and
+obediently keep his commandments'?" And as he spoke he came down from
+the pulpit, stood at the chancel rail and stretched out his hands to all
+of us. Without a second's delay I rose and went and knelt before him and
+bowed my head in my hands. On my right knelt the young tanner and on my
+left I felt rather than saw Clifton Gray.</p>
+
+<p>"The Ministration of Baptism to such as are of Riper Years" is long and
+full of holy austerity. Word for word, response for question, I followed
+the rich voice leading me, but not until it asked concerning our faith
+in the "life everlasting" did I raise my eyes to those glowing above me
+as I made answer:</p>
+
+<p>"All this I steadfastly believe."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was an instant's hush in the church as I made my response and in
+all humility I seemed to feel that it reverberated in some of the
+others' depths until it waked a faint echo. They had seen me face my
+humiliation and had watched how I took it and it had had its effect. It
+was as if I publicly led them to the well-spring of my courage and
+offered it to them. Luella May stole forward and crowded in between the
+young tanner and me, and I saw great tears steal out of father's closed
+eyes and roll down his cheeks, as he came and knelt just behind me, with
+two mill hands and several women.</p>
+
+<p>And then, after our blessing, while we rose and stood on the right and
+the left of the chancel the parson asked that the children be brought
+forward for baptism.</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for anybody to come with her, Charlotte rose, took a
+hand of Sue on one side and one of Jimmy on the other, and came and
+stood looking up into the beloved Minister's eyes with such a vision in
+her young face that I caught my breath. Then Nell came and with her came
+Harriet with the Suckling asleep in her arms. The bereaved young father
+held his baby in his arms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> alone and Mrs. Burns went and stood beside
+him with Mikey and Maudie and the other five toddlers in front of her.
+Other children were brought forward by parents from the Town and the
+Settlement and were ranged to the right and to the left, but still I saw
+that Martha cowered in her pew holding the hand of the Stray in hers as
+he knelt beside her. Then I knew what I must do and I went quietly and
+lifted her and led her to the chancel to a place just beside where
+Harriet stood with the Suckling in her arms. I held one of the Stray's
+little hands in mine, and young Charlotte dropped Jimmy's hand and
+reached out and took the other in hers. So we stood and waited while the
+beloved voice read through the beautiful ceremony with which children
+are taken into the arms of their faith before they are yet ready to
+understand what it is some day to mean to them.</p>
+
+<p>"It is your duty to teach him ... to obediently keep God's holy will and
+commandments all of his life," were the closing words of the address
+with which the parson looked us full in the eye and laid the vow upon
+our souls. Then he reached out his hands, drew the Stray to him first,
+encircled him with his strong arm, laid his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> hands on the bowed black
+head, and looking me straight in the eye asked the question of his
+ritual:</p>
+
+<p>"Name this child."</p>
+
+<p>For an instant I glanced at Martha and then at father standing beside
+me, and as he nodded I slightly bent my head and into a deathly
+stillness all over the chapel I let the name fall clear and distinct:</p>
+
+<p>"Nickols Morris Powers."</p>
+
+<p>A beautiful ray of light flooded from one of the tall windows over both
+of us as he ratified the name with a few drops of water upon the boy's
+brow, and then turned to Harriet and repeated his question while he took
+the Suckling into his arms with the greatest tenderness. Then through
+the group he went, naming his lambs as he held them against his heart or
+within the circle of his strong arm. It was all so tender and so
+beautiful that every eye in the chapel was wet with tears and sobs
+echoed softly through his last prayer.</p>
+
+<p>However, at one time in the ceremonial there was danger of a laugh from
+the aggregate, overwrought nerves when Charlotte promptly named<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> herself
+without waiting for Nell's response which came late but in time to save
+embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was all over and the whole congregation trooped but into the
+sunshine. Father walked home with young Nickols on one side and
+Charlotte on the other, Martha carrying the Suckling and walking beside
+Harriet, who led Sue past the destruction of her white dress which every
+mud puddle threatened. Cliff Gray came with me slowly up the street
+after all the others had gone ahead and most of them had turned into the
+gates of their respective homes.</p>
+
+<p>"Is everything all right now, Cliff?" I questioned him, as we walked
+slowly under the old elms of our ancestors' planting. "It is all right
+now?" I asked again, while Cliff looked off into the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"I have faith that I can make it that way now, Charlotte dear," he
+answered, as I paused to turn in at my gate. We clasped hands for a
+second and then he went on down the street toward the Cockrell gate; and
+Letitia's material point of view on existence I knew would have a fair
+chance at his hands.</p>
+
+<p>I felt that I had never loved my friends as I did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> that wonderful
+Sunday, and I hoped it would not bore them if I at times let some of it
+overflow into their well ordered lives.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of that long, hazy, dreamy, wonder day, in the morning of which
+our hearts had been poured so full, we all of us spent with father, as
+he was to leave us the next morning. Against the remonstrance of his
+maternal parent, the worthless Jefferson had been chosen to go along in
+the place of his father Dabney. The young negro's brisk packings filled
+the house with a joy note that was delightful and Mammy admonished him
+on subjects moral every time he came near the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the afternoon I left father down in the garden with young
+Nickols, to whom he was confiding the care of some very choice hollyhock
+seeds that would need gathering in the next few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father got them from England," the judge said gravely, as he
+showed the small paddies how to roll out the thin seed without crushing
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Have I got any father but the Lady?" asked the youngster with all
+seriousness, as he beamed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> up in my direction. Suddenly Martha turned
+and went indoors and up to her room. I followed her and sat down beside
+the bed on which she had flung herself.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to make him understand it all; I can't," she said, after I
+had tenderly hushed her weeping. "I give him to you. I&mdash;I won't be with
+him long." As she spoke I noticed how the light shone through her pale
+fingers as she held them up to clasp mine.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go away to Florida for a rest, Martha," I said, with the
+reassurance I found I had constantly to use to her. There was a great
+and beautiful tenderness in the soul of Martha, but she was completely
+lacking in any of the worldly initiative that makes lives move on. She
+seemed to be standing still.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll go away," she answered softly, as she unclasped her hand from
+mine, nestled her face in the pillow and shut her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I left her to sleep and a year from that hour I knew that I had not
+understood the measure of her exhaustion. She faded like a flower and
+drifted on into eternity like a gossamer thread in the breeze.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And it was with some of the depression that a kind of maternal brooding
+over her gave me that I went out into the garden that night after all
+the rest had gone to bed. A pale silver moon-crescent poised on the brow
+of Old Harpeth and a tingling little breeze was coming down from the
+north as if sent as a warning of the winter soon to be upon us. I went
+down to the old graybeard poplars and their leaves seemed to hiss
+together in the moonlight instead of rustling softly as they had been
+all summer. A great many of them were drifted in dry waves on the grass
+and their gold was turned to silver in the moonlight. Many of the tall
+shrubs were naked ghosts of their former selves and gnashed their bones
+drearily. I leaned against the tallest old poplar and looked out across
+the valley with a kind of stillness in my heart that seemed to be
+listening and then listening.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm thankful, thankful that strength has been given me to endure it
+all&mdash;life," I said to myself, almost under my breath. "And no matter
+what comes I can never lose it. I can go out into life now alone
+and&mdash;unafraid."</p>
+
+<p>"'And whither thou goest I too will go, and thy&mdash;'" came the Gregorian
+chant from close beside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> me, and I turned to find the Harpeth Jaguar
+stalking me in the night.</p>
+
+<p>Then for a long time we stood and looked at each other, he tearing away
+the veil from his man's heart and I laying aside that in my woman's
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've needed you so," I finally said, with a catch in my breath as I
+put my hands in his which he put palm to palm, then raised to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You were in God's hands and I had to wait His time," he answered me.
+"And I would have waited until the stars burn dim. As near as loss came
+I never doubted. I had asked Him for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know I was going to join your church this morning," I
+faltered. "I never intended to join your church. I was going to be
+either a Baptist or a Presbyterian. I was afraid to mix&mdash;my faith
+with&mdash;with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Hasn't it been tried sufficiently to stand any test? I think so. Ah,
+dear, come to me&mdash;it's been long for me, too." His arms entreated me,
+but I held myself away with my praying hands pressed to his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure that I'm not mixing you and&mdash;your faith?" I asked, looking
+him honestly in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> face and giving voice to the thought that Nickols
+had put into my mind and which had tortured me all the weary months
+past.</p>
+
+<p>"Did any thought of me make you bring Martha Ensley to Nickols' death
+bed and take into your heart and home what the world calls dishonor?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," I answered with honesty to myself.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you once since you knew&mdash;<i>knew</i>&mdash;felt that you must turn to me for
+comfort and help in one of your dire hours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not once," I answered again with honesty.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you not learned to turn to Him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have!" I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"That's God's love. Then you can give me the love that belongs to me in
+your heart's kingdom, can't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid&mdash;I'm going to love you too much&mdash;I feel it coming. What'll
+you do with it? Stop me!" I said with both a sob and a laugh, as I began
+to let myself be drawn into the strong, hungry arms.</p>
+
+<p>"You great, big, splendid woman of God! You've got love enough in you to
+feed a multitude and you'll do it. Give me a part of my share now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> It's
+mine. God sent you to me; I'm going to take you."</p>
+
+<p>And he did. His lips pressed mine until I gave back a betrothal kiss
+that was as complete as a great red flower. His arms held me so that
+they were a circle of pain, but all the while I kept my hands prayerwise
+between the clamor of our breasts.</p>
+
+<p>"Say it&mdash;'the covert of thy wings'&mdash;all that David said," I whispered.</p>
+
+<p>And he answered:</p>
+
+<p>"'I will abide in thy tabernacle forever: I will trust in the covert of
+thy wings.'"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S</h2> <h4>STORIES OF ADVENTURE</h4>
+
+<p>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>KAZAN</i></p>
+
+<p>The tale of a "quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky" torn
+between the call of the human and his wild mate.</p>
+
+<p><i>BAREE, SON OF KAZAN</i></p>
+
+<p>The story of the son of the blind Grey Wolf and the gallant part he
+played in the lives of a man and a woman.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM</i></p>
+
+<p>The story of the King of Beaver Island, a Mormon colony, and his battle
+with Captain Plum.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE DANGER TRAIL</i></p>
+
+<p>A tale of snow, of love, of Indian vengeance, and a mystery of the
+North.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE HUNTED WOMAN</i></p>
+
+<p>A tale of the "end of the line," and of a great fight in the "valley of
+gold" for a woman.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH</i></p>
+
+<p>The story of Fort o' God, where the wild flavor of the wilderness is
+blended with the courtly atmosphere of France.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE GRIZZLY KING</i></p>
+
+<p>The story of Thor, the big grizzly who lived in a valley where man had
+never come.</p>
+
+<p><i>ISOBEL</i></p>
+
+<p>A love story of the Far North.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE WOLF HUNTERS</i></p>
+
+<p>A thrilling tale of adventure in the Canadian wilderness.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE GOLD HUNTERS</i></p>
+
+<p>The story of adventure in the Hudson Bay wilds.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE</i></p>
+
+<p>Filled with exciting incidents in the land of strong men and women.</p>
+
+<p><i>BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY</i></p>
+
+<p>A thrilling story of the Far North. The great Photoplay was made from
+this book.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap, Publishers, New York</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>THE NOVELS OF</h3> <h2>GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL LUTZ</h2>
+
+<p>May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset &amp; Dunlap's list.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>THE BEST MAN</i></p>
+
+<p>Through a strange series of adventures a young man finds himself
+propelled up the aisle of a church and married to a strange girl.</p>
+
+<p><i>A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS</i></p>
+
+<p>On her way West the heroine steps off by mistake at a lonely watertank
+into a maze of thrilling events.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE ENCHANTED BARN</i></p>
+
+<p>Every member of the family will enjoy this spirited chronicle of a young
+girl's resourcefulness and pluck, and the secret of the "enchanted"
+barn.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE WITNESS</i></p>
+
+<p>The fascinating story of the enormous change an incident wrought in a
+man's life.</p>
+
+<p><i>MARCIA SCHUYLER</i></p>
+
+<p>A picture of ideal girlhood set in the time of full skirts and poke
+bonnets.</p>
+
+<p><i>LO, MICHAEL!</i></p>
+
+<p>A story of unfailing appeal to all who love and understand boys.</p>
+
+<p><i>THE MAN OF THE DESERT</i></p>
+
+<p>An intensely moving love story of a man of the desert and a girl of the
+East pictured against the background of the Far West.</p>
+
+<p><i>PHOEBE DEANE</i></p>
+
+<p>A tense and charming love story, told with a grace and a fervor with
+which only Mrs. Lutz could tell it.</p>
+
+<p><i>DAWN OF THE MORNING</i></p>
+
+<p>A romance of the last century with all of its old-fashioned charm. A
+companion volume to "Marcia Schuyler" and "Phoebe Deane."</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Ask for Complete free list of G. &amp; D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction</i></p>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Grosset &amp; Dunlap, Publishers, New York</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART'S KINGDOM***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 18756-h.txt or 18756-h.zip *******</p>
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+</pre>
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Heart's Kingdom, by Maria Thompson
+Daviess, Illustrated by W. B. King
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Heart's Kingdom
+
+
+Author: Maria Thompson Daviess
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2006  [eBook #18756]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART'S KINGDOM***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Kathryn Lybarger, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 18756-h.htm or 18756-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18756/18756-h/18756-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/7/5/18756/18756-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART'S KINGDOM
+
+by
+
+MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
+
+Author of The Melting of Molly, etc.
+
+Illustrated by W. B. King
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "_It's a mighty big turkle," he faltered, and snuggled
+closer._]
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+Copyright, 1917
+by
+The Reilly & Britton Co.
+Made in U.S.A.
+Published September 12, 1917
+Second Printing October 1, 1917
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+       I The World and the Flesh           9
+
+      II The Harpeth Jaguar               27
+
+     III The Gauntlet                     41
+
+      IV To Turkey Gulch                  61
+
+       V Having It Out                    92
+
+      VI Deep Digging                    109
+
+     VII The Tristan Love Song           132
+
+    VIII Breasting the Gale              146
+
+      IX Into Brambles                   161
+
+       X Water and Oil                   181
+
+      XI A Bit of Raw Life               195
+
+     XII The Tenacious Turtle            211
+
+    XIII The Short-Circuit               227
+
+     XIV Abide With Me                   241
+
+      XV A Clandestine Adventure         258
+
+     XVI The Jewel in the Matrix         283
+
+    XVII The Pageant                     297
+
+   XVIII Light--Into Darkness            312
+
+     XIX The Spark and the Blaze         327
+
+      XX The Covert of Wings             344
+
+
+
+
+The Heart's Kingdom
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE WORLD AND THE FLESH
+
+
+"A beautiful woman is intended to create a heaven on earth and she has
+no business wasting herself making imaginary excursions into any future
+paradise. The present is her time for action; and again, Charlotte, I
+ask you to name the day upon which you intend to marry me," said Nickols
+Powers, as he stood lounging in the broad window of Aunt Clara's music
+room and gazing down into the subdued traffic of upper Madison Avenue.
+
+"I wish you had never taken me across that ferry and into that room
+crowded with redolent humanity to hear an absurd little man string
+together vivid, gross words about religion, words that made me tingle
+all over," I answered as I threw my coat on a chair, lifted my hat from
+my head and sat down on the seat before the dark old piano. "I think
+religion is the most awful thing in the world and I am as afraid of it
+as I am of--of death. I'm going home to my father."
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid of it. Religion is the most potent form of
+intoxication known to the human race. That's why I took you over to hear
+the little baseball player. I wanted you to get a sip. But don't let it
+go to your head." And Nickols mocked me with soft tenderness in his
+smile.
+
+"Well, it frightened me, and I don't like it. I'm going home to my
+father and forget it," I reiterated with a kind of numbness upon me, the
+like of which I had never before experienced.
+
+"I'll protect you from any religious danger just as effectively as Judge
+Powers. I'm younger--slightly--than he, but I know just as many of the
+wiles of the world and the flesh as he does and maybe a few more,"
+Nickols assured me, with a flash in his dark eyes that was both wicked
+and humorous, as well as very delightful.
+
+"And the devil, too! But you don't understand. I must go home to my
+father," I answered still again.
+
+"You don't understand yourself," returned Nickols. "There are strange
+hieroglyphics imprinted on every woman's heart and a man can read only
+an unconnected word here and there when he can get his flashlight thrown
+into the depths--if he dares adventure into her life at all. I feel that
+I take my own life in my hands when I allow you to talk to me as I am
+allowing you to-night."
+
+"How do you know that those hieroglyphics might not mean the salvation
+of the world if she could spell them out herself, or some great and good
+person took a steady lamp and went down into her heart and--"
+
+"It takes a very wicked man to read a woman; good men are blinded by
+them and stumble," Nickols assured me as he came over, stood beside me
+and ran his long, slender, artist's fingers up and down the keys of the
+piano, which evoked a strange, diabolical sort of harmony from them. "I
+understand about it all, so please come tell me you'll marry me." This
+time his arms almost encircled me, but I slipped between them as he
+laughed at me with his adorable pagan charm.
+
+"No, Nickols, that would be an easy--and--and delightful way out, but I
+am really frightened down in some queer part of my anatomy that lies
+between my breast bone and my spinal column. Something is stirring in my
+heart and I'm afraid of it. I've got to get out in a wilderness and
+fight with it."
+
+"Take it out on me," offered Nickols, with a laugh that was both wistful
+and provoking.
+
+"No, I've got a home panic and I must go."
+
+"Then when do I get my answer from what is left of you after the
+battle?"
+
+"I'll let you know when to come and get it--under the roof of the
+Poplars," I answered him from the doorway.
+
+And the very next morning I went down into the Harpeth Valley, driven I
+knew not by what, nor to what. I only knew that I felt full of a living,
+smothered flame and I was sure that it was best to let it burst forth in
+my ancestral abiding place.
+
+I was born of a man who has the most evolved brain in the Harpeth
+Valley, who has been a drunkard for twenty years, and of a very
+beautiful and haughty woman whose own mother, to the day of her death,
+shouted at Methodist love feasts. Is it any wonder that when I was tried
+by fire I burned "as the cracklings of thorns under a pot?"
+
+"How _could_ you set that ridiculous little Methodist meeting house on
+the very doorstep of my garden, father?" I demanded, as I stood tall and
+furious before him in the breakfast room on the morning after my return
+home from my winter in the East with Aunt Clara. "Cousin Nickols has
+spent many months out of three years on the plans of restoration for
+that garden, and he is coming down soon to sketch and photograph it to
+use in some of his commissions. What shall I--what will _you_--say to
+him when he finds that the vista he kept open for the line of Paradise
+Ridge has been cut off by that pile of stones to house the singing of
+psalms?" And as I raged I had a feeling of being relentlessly
+pursued--by something I didn't understand.
+
+"Madam," returned father, with a dignity he always used with me when he
+encountered one of my rages, "you will find that the chapel does not in
+any way interfere with Nickols' carefully planned view. Gregory Goodloe
+spent many days of thought in seeking to place it so that it would not
+intrude itself upon your garden, and he built his parsonage completely
+out of view, though it gives him only one large southern window to his
+study and only northern ones to his bedroom."
+
+"Does the creature also sleep and eat and have his being right there
+behind my hollyhocks?" I demanded, and my rage began to merge into
+actual grief, which in turn threatened to come to the surface in hot
+tears.
+
+"Now, Charlotte, my daughter," father was beginning to say with soothing
+in his voice instead of the belligerence that from my youth up had
+always just preceded my floods of tears. Dabney, the shriveled black
+butler, who had always devotedly sympathized with my exhibitions of
+temperament, to which he had, from my infancy, given the name of
+"tantrums," set the platter of fried chicken before father's place at
+the damask and silver-spread old table by the window, through which the
+morning sun was shining genially. Then, with a smile as broad and genial
+as that of the sun, he drew out my chair from behind the ancestral
+silver coffee urn, which was puffing out clouds of fragrant steam.
+
+"Breakfast am sarved, honey chile," he crooned soothingly, "an' yo'
+Mammy done put the liver wing right ag'in yo' fork."
+
+Dabney had many times stemmed my floods with choice food and was trying
+his favorite method of pacification.
+
+I faltered and wavered at the temptation. I was hungry.
+
+"Just wait until you see Goodloe and talk it over with him," father
+said, as he seized the advantage of my wavering and seated himself
+opposite me as Dabney pushed in my chair and whisked the cover off the
+silver sugar bowl and presented one of his old willow-ware cups for
+father's two lumps and a dash of cream. "I asked him to--"
+
+"See him? You don't expect me to discuss Nickols' and my garden with an
+ignorant bucolic Methodist minister, who probably doesn't know a
+honeysuckle from a jimson weed, do you?" I asked with actual rage rising
+again above the tears as I literally dashed the cream into his cup and
+deluged the boiling coffee down upon it so that a scalding splatter
+peppered my hand. "I never want to see or hear or speak to or about
+him. I'll build a trellis as high as his church, run evergreen
+honeysuckle on it and go my way in an opposite direction from his.
+I'll--" Just here I observed consternation spread over Dabney's black
+face, then communicate itself to father's distressed countenance as he
+glanced out the window. Quickly he pushed his morning julep behind the
+jar of roses in the center of the table, while Dabney flung a napkin
+over the silver pitcher with frost on its sides and mint nodding over
+its brim.
+
+And then, as I was about to pour my own coffee and launch forth on
+another tirade on the subject of my neighbor, I heard a rich tenor voice
+singing just outside the window in the garden beside the steps that led
+down from the long windows in the dining room to the old flagstone walk.
+Nickols and I had searched through volumes of dusty antique prints to
+see just how we wanted that walk to lead out to the sunken garden beyond
+the tall old poplars. I also saw the handle of a rake or hoe in action
+across the window landscape and heard unmistakable sounds of vigorous
+gardening.
+
+I rose to my feet with battle in my eyes and then stopped perfectly
+still and listened--unwillingly but compelled.
+
+    "Drink to me only with thine eyes
+    And I will pledge with mine,"
+
+were the words that floated in at the window on the fragrant morning
+sunbeams, in a voice of the most penetrating tenderness I had ever felt
+break against my heartstrings.
+
+"I--I--he sometimes demolishes a--a few weeds," father faltered, while
+Dabney ducked his cotton-wool old head and slipped out of the door.
+
+"You allow him to work in my--garden--and--" I faltered, just recovering
+from the impact of the words of my favorite song of songs hurled at me
+by the unseen enemy, when I was interrupted by his appearance in the
+open door and we stood facing each other.
+
+I am a woman who has very decided tastes about the biological man. I
+know just how I want the creatures to look, and I haven't much interest
+in one that isn't at least of the type of my preferred kind. Because I
+am very tall and broad and deep-bosomed and vivid and high colored, and
+have strong white teeth that crunch up about as much food in the
+twenty-four hours as most field hands consume, and altogether I am very
+much like one of the most vigorous of Sorolla's paintings, that is the
+probable pathological reason I have always preferred an evolved Whistler
+masculine nocturne that retreats to the limits of my comprehension and
+then beckons me to follow. All other men I have grouped beyond the
+border of my feminine nature and sought to waste no thought upon them.
+It was a shock to come, suddenly, in my own breakfast room, face to face
+with a type of man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly
+large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored
+lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond
+Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved
+majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of
+worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly
+strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an
+exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf which, it was a shock to see,
+matched glints from eyes back under his heavy gold brows with what
+appeared to be extreme sophistication. After the shock of the tie the
+loose gray London worsted coat and trousers made only a passing
+impression; and from my involuntary summary of the whole surprising man,
+which had taken less than an instant, my dazed brain came back and was
+held and concentrated by the beauty of the smile that flooded out over
+me in welcome after my father's hurried introduction.
+
+"The Reverend Mr. Gregory Goodloe--my daughter Charlotte," father
+announced, as he rose and waved in my direction a hand that was cordial
+to the point of bravado.
+
+"I'm so glad you came in time to see your crocuses and anemones, Miss
+Powers," the Jaguar said as he took my hand in his. "Dabney has let me
+help him hand-weed them and they are a glory, aren't they?" While he
+spoke he still held my hand and I was still too dazed to regain
+possession of it. Father saved the situation.
+
+"Sit down, sit down, Parson, and let Charlotte give you a cup of coffee
+while it is on the simmer," he urged with hasty hospitality as if intent
+upon effectively bottling me up, at least for the immediate present.
+"She was just pouring my cup. Will you say grace before I take my first
+sip?" was the high explosive he further proceeded to hurl in my face.
+
+And as he spoke I sank dumbly into my chair and helplessly bowed my head
+to a ceremony so obsolete in the world from which I had come that I felt
+as if I was slipping back into the days of the pioneer, when the customs
+of life were still primitive and dictated by emotion rather than mental
+science.
+
+And there, with father's concealed mint julep right against his
+interlaced fingers, the mountain lion bowed his crested head and
+involved me in prayer for the first time since chapel-service in my
+college days.
+
+"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof ... for which we give
+thanks, thy children, with Lord Jesus, Amen!"
+
+"Amen," mumbled father as if from the depths of embarrassment, and
+against my will, as it were, a queer sort of a croon of an echo came
+from my own throat.
+
+Also that was the first time I had ever heard words of prayer under the
+roof of the Poplars. It embarrassed me and I hated it and the cause of
+it. The spell which had possessed me since the entrance of the Reverend
+Goodloe, vanished, and the rage that had been in me at the discovery of
+the intrusion of his chapel and himself upon my life when I had come
+home to be free to be wicked, boiled up within me and then sugared down
+to a rich--and dangerous--syrup. While I poured his coffee I again took
+stock of him, this time coldly and with deadly intent. The reasons for
+his entry into my hitherto satisfactory family life, even at breakfast
+time, I did not know, any more than I knew the reason for the chapel on
+the other side of the hollyhocks, but I felt that I feared both and
+intended to get rid of them. If the enemy had been what one could
+reasonably expect a young Methodist preacher to be, I would have routed
+him and his meekness within the hour and had the chapel moved to a lot
+on a side street in town within the week. However, when a hunter comes
+suddenly upon a Harpeth jaguar he is glad to use his best repeater and
+he is careful how he shoots, though if he is very skillful he may tease
+the lion aloft with a few nipping shots. I felt suddenly very strong for
+the fight that I knew was on, though the lion didn't possess that
+knowledge as yet. Deliberately I fired a preliminary bullet that seemed
+to graze father, though it left the Parson unharmed.
+
+"Will you have your mint julep before I pour your coffee, Mr. Goodloe?"
+I asked, with seemingly careless friendliness. "Dabney, put fresh ice in
+father's glass and fill mine and Mr. Goodloe's."
+
+"I was feeling a little under the weather this morning," said father
+hastily, as he set his glass from behind the rose jar upon Dabney's
+waiter and motioned it all away from him, thus denying the morning
+friend of his lifetime. I had never drunk a julep before breakfast in my
+life, only tasted around the frosty edges of father's, but I held my
+ground, and held out my glass to Dabney, who falteringly, almost in
+terror, took the frosted silver pitcher from the sideboard and poured me
+an unusually large draft of the family beverage.
+
+"Will you have yours now, Mr. Goodloe?" I asked again with still more of
+the sugared solicitation.
+
+"No, I believe I prefer the coffee, but don't pour it until you have
+drunk your julep; you know frost is a thing that soon passes," was the
+cheerful answer, though a suspicion of an amethyst glint made me know
+that the Jaguar had at least heard the zip of the bullet.
+
+I loathed that mixture of ice and sugar and mint and whiskey but I had
+to drink it, and it heated me up inside both physically and mentally,
+and took away all the queer dogging fear. And because of it I don't
+remember what else happened at that breakfast except that I wanted to
+clutch and cling to the warm, strong hand that I again found mine in at
+the time of parting. But I didn't; at least, I don't think I did. After
+it was taken away from me I went very slowly up to my room and again
+went to bed, Mammy caressingly officiating and rejoicing that I was
+going to "nap the steam cars outen my bones."
+
+I fell asleep with the continued strains of "Drink to me only" in my
+ears, and wondering if I ought to put it down as insult added to injury,
+and I awoke several hours later to find Letitia Cockrell, one of the
+dear friends whom many generations had bestowed upon me, sitting on the
+foot of my bed consuming the last of the box of marrons with which
+Nickols had provisioned my journey down from New York. I was glad I had
+tucked the note that came in the box under my pillow the night before. I
+trust Letitia and she is entirely sophisticated, but she has never had a
+lover who lives in Greenwich Village, New York, America.
+
+"Is this the open season for two-day hangovers, in New York?" she
+demanded as she sniffed me suspiciously at the same time she dimpled and
+smiled at me.
+
+"No, this is not a metropolitan hangover. It was acquired at breakfast,
+Letitia," I answered her as I sat up and stretched out my bare arms to
+give her a good shake and a hug. "'You may break, you may shatter the
+glass if you will, but the scent of the julep will hang 'round you
+still,'" I misquoted as I drew my knees up into my embrace and took the
+last remaining marron.
+
+"Why, Mammy said Mr. Goodloe had breakfast with you. Did you sneak it
+from the judge's pitcher?" demanded Letitia, as she likewise drew her
+knees up into her arms and settled herself against one of the posts of
+my bed for the many hours' resume of our individual existences in which
+we always indulged upon being reunited after separation.
+
+"I did not," I answered. "I drank it before his eyes, and then I don't
+remember what happened and I don't care."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Just that. I never have been drunk because I never could drink enough.
+I've always felt that there isn't enough liquid in the world to faze me,
+and I don't like it anyway, but Dabney was so impressed by His Worship
+that he poured it double for me before I had had breakfast. I hope I
+staggered or swore but I don't think I did. The Reverend Goodloe can
+tell you better than I. Ask him."
+
+"Gregory Goodloe? Oh, Charlotte!"
+
+"That's the point I was coming to, Letitia: Just who is this Reverend
+Goodloe that I shouldn't drink a quart of mint julep before him if I
+want to? I had well over a pint of champagne with a Mr. Justice two
+nights before I left New York and I stopped then out of courtesy to one
+of the generals whom we expect to defend us from the Kaiser. Who is your
+Gregory Goodloe? Tell we all about him, unexpurgated and unafraid."
+
+"Didn't you know about him--and the chapel before you came?" Letitia
+queried cautiously, as if fearing the explosion she felt was sure to
+result.
+
+"I did not," I answered. "I met him and his chapel and the mint julep
+all in the same five minutes, and is it any wonder I went down? Go on.
+Tell me the worst or the best. I'm ready." And as I spoke I settled my
+pillows comfortably, getting a little thrill from the crumpled letter
+underneath the bottom one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE HARPETH JAGUAR
+
+
+"It is beautifully romantic, but I don't know what we are going to do
+about it," answered Letitia with genuine trouble, puckering her brow
+under one of her smooth waves of seal-brown hair. Letitia is one of the
+wonderful variety of women who patch out life, piece by piece, in a
+beautiful symmetrical pattern and who do not have imagination enough to
+admire anything about a riotous crazy quilt. She is in love with Clifton
+Gray, has been since she wound her brown braids about her head, and is
+piecing strips of him into her life-fabric by the very sanest
+love--courtship--marriage design.
+
+"We just can't go on as we have been doing lately," she continued. "We
+all decided that you would know what to do about him, and would do it
+when you came home. We suspected Judge Powers hadn't written you all the
+facts when you didn't come and the building went on up. You will be
+able to do something about him, won't you?"
+
+"I think it is likely," I answered, with the brittle sugar in my voice
+that Letitia only half knows the flavor of. "But don't try to sketch
+things, Letitia. Begin at the beginning and go straight to the end; I'll
+pick up the pieces."
+
+"Well, of course you remember the Bishop Goodloe romance, don't you?"
+asked Letitia, hopeful that she could get a small start ahead on her
+chronicle.
+
+"I don't remember anything about any bishop, ever. I forget things about
+that kind of people. What did, or didn't he do?"
+
+"Charlotte!" remonstrated Letitia. "He was the last of the Goodloes who
+built that old Goodloe home on exactly the place where the first Goodloe
+set the stakes of the first stockade put up in the Harpeth Valley, right
+here in Goodloets. It burned down the night he married that Miss Gregory
+in New York, before we were born. Don't you remember we used to play in
+the ruins, just over here beyond the garden where the chapel stands now?
+Your father bought the property. Part of your garden is old Madam
+Goodloe's garden and that's why it was so wonderful for Judge Powers to
+give the lot and let Mr. Goodloe build the chapel there. We all felt
+that, though some of us were scared when we thought about what you might
+do when you came home. Still, after we saw that wonderful little stone
+chapel that Mr. Goodloe had one of the greatest architects in New York
+design, after he had sent him packages of sketches of your garden and
+the Poplars, so it would only make it all the more beautiful, we felt
+better. You don't really mind about it, do you, dear?" Letitia's voice
+was beseechingly enthusiastic, though keyed down with a note of anxiety.
+
+"Go on!" I commanded, packing down the rage in the dark corners of my
+inmost heart.
+
+"Nobody ever knew why Bishop Goodloe never came back after he married
+while on a mission from the Southern Methodist Conference to the
+Northern Methodist Conference. He severed his relations with his own
+Conference, and he never preached again though he was one of the most
+wonderful and eloquent preachers the South has ever known. He was the
+youngest bishop the church had ever ordained. Nobody ever knew what
+happened, and all we know now is that this perfectly beautiful man, who
+is the bishop's son, came down to the General Conference in Nashville,
+was examined and ordained, and the presiding bishop sent him out here to
+Goodloets last November. We don't know anything about him except that he
+has been fighting in the trenches in France for a year and has had a
+bullet cut out of his left lung. Everybody adores him, and we all sit
+spellbound listening to him preach, I think mostly on account of his
+voice, because none of us ever seems to remember what he is preaching
+about. He's been having services in the ballroom at the Country Club but
+he is going to dedicate the chapel soon and we are all relieved. It has
+been fun to go out to church at the Club twice every Sunday and to
+prayer meeting on Wednesday night all winter, and we've danced in the
+long parlor at home and in the double parlors at Jessie Litton's so as
+not to disarrange the pews, I mean the chairs, in the ballroom, but now
+that the spring has come we--we need the Club. I'm glad you will be here
+for the dedication, and you will help us kind of--kind of--"
+
+"Taper off from your religious spree?" I asked with a laugh that Letitia
+echoed shamefacedly.
+
+"That's an awful way to put it--but--"
+
+"True?"
+
+"We've all tried hard, but--but it is such a--a bore. It doesn't seem
+fair to enjoy Gregory Goodloe so much at dinners and parties and not
+show our respect and--and admiration by being good church members.
+Jessie joined his study workers and she took a class of the awful little
+children from down in the Settlement beyond the Phosphate Mills, who all
+smelled terribly. She worked hard with them twice a week for a month,
+and then Mother Spurlock, who is the front pillar of his congregation,
+found that she had taught all the dirty little things to sew with their
+left hands. She came in one morning and found them all stitching away
+industriously backwards, just because Jessie is left-handed herself.
+Mother Elsie laughed until she lost her breath and Mr. Goodloe had to
+help unloosen her belt for her. The meeting broke up with ice cream on
+Jessie for everybody. We all belong to home mission societies and sewing
+circles and--"
+
+"You want me to get you out of your purgatory and let you backslide
+to--"
+
+"Don't say it!" exclaimed Letitia with a laugh. "But we just want not to
+hurt his feelings and--"
+
+"We won't," I said grimly. "Now let's talk about the ball out at the
+Club we are going to give Nickols when he comes down the first of May."
+
+"That's just what I mean. I knew you'd understand and I am so relieved
+that you are not angry about the chapel and things. We can leave it all
+to you and we'll have the times of our lives. Billy Harvey says his
+ankles are getting stiff, it's been so long since he has fox-trotted. Do
+call Mammy or Sallie and let's look at your clothes." With which Letitia
+descended from her spiritual heights into the realm of the material and
+plunged with both Mammy and Sallie into a riot of clothes.
+
+For an hour or two I lay back in my pillows and watched the two black
+women and the white one indulge in primitive decorative orgies, and from
+their delight my eyes would glance out and fix themselves wistfully on
+the dim line of Paradise Ridge which was cut by the square steeple of
+weathered stone just where Old Harpeth humps itself up above the rest of
+the Ridge; and something sore and angry and trapped hurt under my
+breast.
+
+"The earth is the Lord's--" chanted itself in my mind to the tune of
+"Drink to me only," and my hand curled around the letter under my pillow
+as if for comfort and--defense.
+
+"It is just as you told me that night at the piano, Nickols dear:
+'Religion is the most potent form of intoxication known to the human
+race,' and apparently all my friends have been getting the drink habit
+badly. I'll rescue the poor dears and have an interesting time doing
+it," I said to myself after Letitia had departed with my most choice
+millinery creation fastened down upon her sleek braids because she found
+she could not live without it.
+
+And then a strange thing happened, as I lay prone between the
+lavender-scented sheets spread on the four-poster bed of my foremothers,
+ready to drift off into another "bone resting" nap. The flood of tears
+that had risen from my heart when I had sat that night a week ago and
+listened to that remarkable little baseball evangelist, the tide of
+which had been rolled back when Nickols had bent his beautiful dark head
+against mine in Aunt Clara's music room and whispered above the roar of
+New York, "religion is the most potent form of intoxication" to me,
+again welled from my heart and this time flooded my lashes and my cheek
+and my pillow. What was strangest of all, they seemed to wash away all
+the tears of anger and fear that I had been pressing back into my depths
+from breakfast time, and left me weak and again ready for sleep. And
+like a comforted little child, I slept.
+
+It was sunset when I awoke, and I felt as strong as two women and ready
+for action, the call for which was upon me by the time Sallie had put me
+into her favorite creation, selected from the ones she had hung in
+closets and wardrobe.
+
+"Mister Billy Harvey and Mister Hampton Dibrell is down on the front
+porch ready to gallivant you, honey-bunch, and I seen Miss Letitia and
+her Mister Cliff Gray coming in one direction and Miss Jessie in
+another, so I reckon Sallie had better hurry with that New York twilight
+she's fixing on you," Mammy announced as she stood in my doorway and
+beamed upon me. "An' I expects the parson will be stepping over
+likewise fer a few words, seeing you was so sweet and showed sich pretty
+manners to him this morning," she added with reverent delight.
+
+"Sweet? Showed such pretty manners?" I gasped, as Sallie fastened the
+last hook and eye and stood beside Mammy to admire me.
+
+"'Twas no more than you oughter done to the preacher, and I was proud of
+my raising of you when you helt on to him and begged him to stay to
+dinner. I was sho' disappointed that he had to leave us. I'm a Colored
+Methodist, I am, and if I do say it, I knows how to shake a young pullet
+in the skillet fer a preacher's taste, black or white. Now go on down
+and stop that buzzing fer you on the front porch. Sallie, come and carry
+out the tea and cakes to the guests," with which command to both of us
+Mammy rolled her two hundred and fifty pounds down the hall with great
+majesty, while Sallie meekly followed in her wake.
+
+"Sweet! Showed such pretty manners!" I quoted to myself as I slowly
+descended the steps and went out on the wide porch to find my friends
+assembled under the budding rose vine that wreathed the tall white
+pillars of the Poplars.
+
+The parson was not there.
+
+"Rescued!" exclaimed Billy as he grasped one of my hands and hung on
+with a very good imitation of a drowning man seizing a lifeline. They
+all laughed and Hampton Dibrell held my other hand as ardently, though
+not in quite such light vein. I had to rescue it to accept Clifton
+Gray's nosegay of huge violets from his greenhouse, and I embraced
+Jessie with the nosegay pressed to her pink cheeks.
+
+"Oh, Charlotte, I could fox-trot with you a week and not hesitate,"
+exclaimed Billy, still clinging to me.
+
+"Let's begin to-night," I assented warmly. Billy is contagious and to
+dance with him is a high art.
+
+"Let's motor out to the Club in Hamp's car and mine, have a chicken
+supper and dance until sun-up," suggested Billy.
+
+"We can stop by and get Mark Morgan and Nell, and I believe Harriet
+Henderson will come along, if everybody asks her--all the men, I mean,"
+Letitia added with enthusiasm to match Billy's. Harriet Henderson is the
+latest emerged widow in Goodloets and consequently is most interesting
+to the masculine world at present.
+
+"Let's start now, so as to give the chicken plenty of time to get into
+the frying pan and over the fire," said Hampton, who is always the
+practical member to bring up the details of any situation.
+
+"I'm just from the tennis courts and I'll have to stop to dress, I'm
+afraid," said Letitia meekly, as if she felt sure of a storm of
+remonstrance.
+
+"People don't dress to dance these days, Letitia," said Billy, with the
+greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in
+speaking to Letitia's rather literal directness and in which he delights
+greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if you
+roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders, take off your
+collar and tuck in the flaps, it will be enough to satisfy our cravings
+for fashionable and suitable attire. We really want fried chicken rather
+than chicken--"
+
+"That will do, Billy," Letitia answered him with gentle firmness.
+
+"That was just what I remarked, Letitia dear. That will do, for we want
+chicken dressed with cream gravy and don't care about any swathed in
+chiffon. And furthermore--"
+
+"Do hush, Billy; look who's coming," Jessie interrupted him, and there
+before my eyes I saw my entire group of friends begin to preen
+themselves into new beings. Letitia smoothed down her skirts a fraction
+of an inch, rolled down her sleeves another fraction and pushed back
+into her braids a brown lock that was rioting across her brow. Jessie
+shook out her muslin ruffles, reefed a fold of net higher across her
+neck, and pinned it in place with a jeweled pin, while Hampton's and
+Billy's and Cliff's expressions and poses of countenance and bodies
+suddenly fell into lines of decorum.
+
+"Great Smokes! We all forgot it was prayer meeting to-night, and it'll
+be no trotting the fox for ours," Billy groaned, while he rose to his
+feet with a smile of angelic sweetness. "Hello, Parson! We were just
+beginning to think about you," was his greeting to the Sacred Jaguar who
+had come through the garden and around the house. I felt sure that he
+had heard Billy's plaint of disappointment about the dance, for there
+was a quick glint of the amethysts as he halted and stood on the walk
+below us and smiled up at us.
+
+"I welcomed Miss Powers for breakfast, and now I find I want to come
+over and do it again for tea," he said, and as I was perfectly cool,
+sober and in my right mind at the moment he spoke, I had to concede that
+his voice was the most wonderful I had ever heard, and something in me
+made me resent it as well as the curious veneer that had spread over my
+friends at his entry upon the scene. There they stood and sat, six
+perfectly rational, fairly moral, representative free and equal
+citizens, cowed by the representative of something that they neither
+understood nor cared about, and it made me furious. They all wanted to
+go to the Club to dance, to do the natural, usual, perfectly harmless
+thing, and they were being constrained. If they had wanted to go to the
+prayer meeting as they wanted to dance, they would have been natural and
+joyful and eager about it.
+
+"I resent, even _I_ resent people's being bored with the God they think
+exists, and I think it is disrespectful to go into His presence like
+that," I said to myself, and then I suddenly determined to begin my
+rescue work for the religiously involved, and now I felt was the
+appointed time. Also I felt the excitement that comes from turning and
+facing the foe which has pursued.
+
+"I'm glad you came over, Mr. Goodloe," I said with nice, cool
+friendliness in my voice. "Billy was just planning a glorious fox-trot
+for this evening and then suddenly remembered with dismay that you were
+to have your--entertainment at the Club to-night. Couldn't we--we make
+some sort of compromise? Or at least couldn't you cut your--prayers
+short so he can get in an hour or two of his favorite pleasure
+after--after duty well done?" As I spoke I had come to the edge of the
+steps and thus stood alone above him, looking down on him with a kind of
+cool aloofness as if he belonged to another world, while I heard all of
+his recent converts grouped back of me give little gasps of dismay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GAUNTLET
+
+
+Was that young Methodist minister crushed by my plainly intended
+gauntlet flung down to him? He was not.
+
+"I'm glad I came over in time to put Billy out of his misery," he
+answered, smiling up at me with a quick comprehension that was enraging.
+"I'm going to have informal services in the chapel to-night to try out
+the acoustics before the contractor turns over the building. I am not
+satisfied about the sounding board he has put in, and the only way is to
+try it with at least part of the seats occupied. We'll sing a bit and
+plan the dedication; not have a formal service. So then, Billy, you can
+have your fox-trotting and a good time to all of you, bless you, my
+children." As he spoke he smiled at the entire group with the most
+delightful interest and pleasure. He was dressed in a straight black
+coat with a plain silk vest cut around a white collar that buttoned in
+the back, and his dull gold mane was brushed down sleek and close to his
+beautiful head. Not a flash of expression in his strong face showed that
+he felt any resentment or dismay at thus having some of his most
+prominent church members backslide from his prayer meeting into a
+fox-trot, and yet I knew--knew that he fully appreciated the situation
+and laid the blame of it where the blame was due.
+
+"Of course we will come to the services first--that is, if you--if you
+don't object," Letitia said with her usual directness and lack of any
+kind of finesse, thus bringing the situation to a decided head.
+
+"Why not come over for the songs and then not stay for the conference?"
+was the genial answer that positively astonished me, and as he spoke he
+came up the steps and stood beside me. "Dabney and I found the first
+Star of Bethlehem when we were weeding this afternoon. I brought it to
+you carefully, and can I have a cup of that tea he has been trying to
+make you serve for the last five minutes?" With these words the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe turned me around and sent me to the tea tray that Dabney
+and Sallie had put on a table under the rose vine; but not before he had
+taken up my hand, put the star flower in it and curled my fingers over
+it. "I'll pass the muffins, Billy, and you take the cakes for Miss
+Powers, and be more careful than you were last Sunday with my collection
+plate for the poor." Billy feigned confusion, accepted the plate and was
+just about to begin a defense, when a diversion occurred to stop him.
+
+"There comes Mark and Mrs. Mark," he exclaimed, "but they have got an
+offspring apiece in their embrace and several trailers. Somebody ought
+to remonstrate with Nell Morgan or have the firmness to apply the
+superfluous blind kitten treatment every spring. Three children are
+patriotic, but five are populistic and ought to be frowned upon," and
+Billy grumbled all the while the Morgans were flocking up the front
+walk. When they came to the steps the Jaguar descended and held out his
+clerically befrocked arms so that the gurgler from Mark's shoulder and
+the giggler from Nell's arms both fell into his embrace at one time.
+"You young marplots, you!" he said as the gurgler printed a wet kiss on
+his left ear and regarded him with rapture while the small cooer,
+proclaimed as feminine by neck and sleeve ribbons, cuddled against his
+shoulder with soft confidence. "They're going to take you both down to
+the river and drown you," he confided with a soft note in his voice that
+was an answer to the coo.
+
+"I wish you would," said Mark, as, with a laugh, he shook my hand
+extended from the group around me, composed of Nell and the other three
+kiddies, all crowded together in one passionate greeting. "Nurse and
+Julia and the house and garden man have all gone to a wedding, so we
+have fed 'em and are now starting out for a razoo, and we don't care
+whether it lasts until midnight or not. Young Charlotte, you hug one
+side of your Aunt Charlotte and let Jimmy get his innings on the other
+side. Here, break away, all of you!" and while everybody laughed, Mark
+disentangled the greetings, and seated the separated juvenile members in
+a row on the steps beside the parson and the two babes. Nell he left in
+the hollow of my arm.
+
+"Oh, it is so good to have you at home, Charlotte," she said, with
+another hug. "We miss you terribly. We depend on you for everything.
+Things don't go right without you. I had a terrible time with--that is,
+you haven't seen baby yet. Give her to me, Mr. Goodloe," and as she
+spoke Nell leaned over to get the cooer out of the Jaguar's arms for my
+inspection.
+
+"You'll get neither Babe nor Suckling," was his answer as he cuddled the
+two closer and hunched his shoulders in Nell's direction. "Don't you
+know enough to let well enough alone? If they have got to go out to the
+Club and fox-trot until midnight they ought to have repose now."
+
+"We promised to be good at church, but we didn't promise anything about
+the Country Club, and if we go there we are going to be as bad as
+anybody out there is," announced small Charlotte with determined
+composure. "Dabney says that fox-trotting is a devil's dance and we want
+to see you all do it with him."
+
+"Help!" exclaimed Billy, while Mr. Goodloe put his arm around Charlotte
+and drew her to him with a kind of fierce tenderness.
+
+"Isn't she awful?" exclaimed Nell. "We meant to ask you if we could take
+them with us out to the Club to prayer meeting. Some of the Settlement
+women bring their babies and I know mine will be as good. Charlotte and
+Sue and Jimmy promised, and the sound of your voice bewitches the babies
+as it does all of us."
+
+As Nell finished speaking and bent to pat the head of the Suckling on
+his shoulder, the Reverend Mr. Goodloe looked straight into my eyes and
+laughed, perfect comprehension of me and my revolt in his direct
+amethyst glances which shot into my depths.
+
+"They are all going over to listen to Mr. Goodloe sing hymns at his
+chapel, Nell, and then all of you are coming by here for me to go out to
+the Club to dance a few hours," was my answer to the shot as I calmly
+refused the invitation into the fold that had been given me with the
+rest of the backsliding flock.
+
+"We can't go--the babies would never in the world--" Nell was beginning
+to exclaim.
+
+"Drat 'em!" exclaimed Billy, looking down aggrievedly at the small crew
+of marplots. "A pair of perfectly good chaperons are hard to get, and to
+think of that bunch of little miseries getting in the way of a good old
+fox--"
+
+"They'll all go to sleep during the services and I'll keep them on my
+bed in the parsonage until the fun is over, and agree to deliver them on
+claim," Mr. Goodloe interrupted Billy to say with quiet decision.
+
+"Now that is what I call some church relation, nursery and parsonage
+combined," said Billy with the deepest gratitude. "The rest of you hurry
+over those muffins, even if you haven't had any of Mammy's for six
+months, and, since the chicken fry is off, go home to get suppers and
+ready for psalm-singing and foxing. Parson, you are some sport, and I'll
+hold both of those puppies while you drink your tea from the hands of
+fair Charlotte."
+
+"Thank you, I don't believe I want any tea after all, and I think I'll
+take these 'puppies' on home with me through the garden, for they are
+both dying to the world." As he spoke the parson rose to his feet and
+stood with the two drowsing babies in his arms, looking down at me as I
+stood with his cup of tea in my hand. And as he looked I felt my whole
+rebellious heart and mind laid bare and I knew that he knew that I was
+ready to fight him to the last ditch in the battle for possession of the
+souls of my friends. I would fight for their independence of thought
+and sincerity of life, and he would fight to lead them off into a far
+country in quest of what I considered a tradition, a shibboleth, "a
+potent agent for intoxication" of the reason by which man must progress.
+I also knew that I faced a foe versed in the warfare between religion
+and modern scientific decisions about it and that he would be one worthy
+of my metal. His refusal of my cup of tea, for which he had announced
+that he came, was his gauntlet and I accepted it as I turned with the
+queer sugared rage in my heart and set the cup on the table.
+
+And as I had planned, and the Jaguar directed, the evening came to pass.
+While I slipped into some dancing fluff, the strains of the most
+wonderful hymn that the Christian religion possesses floated across my
+garden and into my window and again beat against my heart. The parson
+was singing with the rest of them, but his voice seemed to lift theirs
+and bear them aloft on the strong, wide wings that went soaring away
+into the night, even up to the bright stars that gleamed beyond the tips
+of the old graybeard poplars. A queer tight breath gripped my heart for
+a second as his plea, "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," beat
+against it, then I laughed it away.
+
+"It _is_ 'a potent agent for intoxication' when brewed by the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe, and here's where I run, both physically and mentally," I
+said to myself as I ran down the steps and out to the two cars that
+stood honking impatiently by the gate.
+
+I don't think I ever enjoyed a dance more, and I am sure that my
+pleasure was partly due to the wild spirits of the religiously released
+who were having the first joy fling for six months.
+
+"I'll not get enough until I wilt upon the floor and have to be carried
+out," said Billy, as he held me closer and slid two steps to the right
+and then back to get me out of the way of Hampton and Harriet Henderson,
+who were dancing with regardless joy.
+
+"Will you feel that way about church next Sunday?" I asked him, but my
+demand made no apparent dent, for he danced on without answering.
+
+At an hour after that of midnight the revelers came home and left me at
+my gate, by request, to walk alone in the brilliant spring moonlight
+through my garden to the wide door back of the white pillars. After they
+had seen me safely started, they glided away and I stood on the steps
+and watched Nell and Mark reclaim their family from a tall dark figure
+that carried out two loads to the parental arms. Then the hush that
+comes upon the world in the midnight hours fell over the Poplars and I
+stood leaning against one of the tall pillars and reveled in it.
+
+Goodloets is one of the tradition-grayed old towns that are rooted deep
+in the Harpeth Valley since the days of the Colonies, and in it can be
+found perhaps the purest Americanism on the American continent. The
+Poplars, under whose broad roof I made the seventh generation nested and
+fledged, spreads out its wings and gables upon a low hill which is the
+first swell of the Harpeth hills, and the rest of the old town stretches
+out on the hillside before it down to the valley, in which runs the
+Harpeth River, curving around the town and flowing out of the valley to
+the Mississippi. Behind the Poplars roll the fields and meadows of the
+Home Farm, which has given food and sustenance to the Poplars' brood
+since the days of the redskins, when it was cleared by the first Powers
+and his servants, with muskets ready to fire into the surrounding
+forests. To the left of the Poplars and beyond the chapel lies the
+Settlement, in which those lacking in worldly goods have lived for
+generations in a kind of semi-poverty, which is about the only poverty
+known in the Harpeth Valley. Lately, the Settlement has taken unto
+itself a measure of prosperity, because of the great tannery and harness
+works in its midst on the banks of the river, which is bringing in gold
+from Russia and France. Everybody has made money in the last few years,
+and the fashionable wing of Goodloets to the left of the Poplars shows
+improvements and restorations that are both costly and sometimes
+amazing. However, fortunately the inhabitants of the old village are
+conservative, and very little of the delicious moss of tradition has
+been scratched off; it has only been clipped into prosperous decorum,
+and antiquity still flings its glamour over the town.
+
+"I feel as much rooted as one of the old poplars," I said to myself as
+some whim made me go down the steps and out into the garden, along the
+walks with their budding borders of narcissus and peonies, down through
+Nickols' sunken garden to the two oldest of all the poplars that now
+seemed to be standing sentinel to prevent any raid from me on the little
+stone meeting house over the lilac hedge. "You dear old graybeard," I
+said to the one on my left, as I looked up and saw a faint feathering of
+silver on its branches. And as I spoke I took the old trunk into my
+embrace and laid my cheek against the rough bark.
+
+And then something happened. Afterwards I was glad that I was leaning
+against the strength of the old graybeard poplar and hidden behind it.
+
+Suddenly from out the shadows beyond the lilac hedge, through whose bare
+branches any movement in the yard of the chapel showed plainly, a woman
+came stumbling along towards the gate and beside her walked the parson
+with his arm supporting hers. She was sobbing the hard, dry sobs that
+any woman knows are those of despair, and which call any other woman who
+hears them. My first impulse was to run to the hedge and speak to her;
+then I stopped, for I was arrested by what the parson was saying to her.
+
+"What does it matter, Martha? You have your Master's forgiveness and His
+permission to go and sin no more, even though those sins be as
+scarlet." And as he spoke his voice was that of quiet authority as if he
+felt fully his apostolic right to unloose sins upon this earth.
+
+"He'll come back now that _she_ has, and he'll come to me again. I can't
+fight him. I'll slip back into hell. Just give me the money to go out
+into the city and I'll not bother anybody any more. I'll take the child
+and I'll die for all anybody in Goodloets ever knows. Lend me the money;
+I'll send it back!" The girl's voice was hard and defiant and she turned
+and faced the minister as if at bay. "Give me that money, if all that
+praying and singing and preaching that you've done is true. I want to go
+in the morning before he follows her here and puts me in hell again. God
+won't clean me twice."
+
+"You shall go," came the calm answer in the apostle's beautiful voice,
+"but I will have to have a few days to provide a place of safety for you
+in the city, where the child can be cared for while you get suitable
+work."
+
+"I won't wait. He'll follow her and he'll look down on me and the child
+and damn me again. I won't wait. I'm weak and I dasn't. Give me that
+money to-night!" And the demand was passionate and savage.
+
+"Then I'll meet you at the morning train with it and rush you to a place
+of safety if there is no other way. You must go back home now, and it
+will be best not to tell anyone where you are going until you no longer
+fear your weakness, for they might betray your hiding place. Strength
+will be given you, Martha, if you only ask."
+
+"I'll pray, Parson, I'll pray, now that you are going to give me my
+chance to get strong enough to be good. I'll work and I'll pray, but
+hide me until I do get strong." And the hard, dry sobs melted as the
+girl put her head down upon the gate a moment and then went out through
+it.
+
+"God bless you, child, and keep you ever in thought of Him," were the
+words that she carried away with her as she hurried down the street
+toward the Settlement.
+
+Then for a second some awful fear came across my heart that I did not
+understand. I now know that it was a premonition of what was to wring my
+own heart and I cowered against the old tree in agony. Gregory Goodloe
+was not more than six feet away from me on the other side of the
+budding, fragrant hedge, and in the moonlight I could see the beautiful
+strength of his golden head and strong placid face, on which lines of
+pain were drawn, and I had to restrain myself from crying out to him in
+my own pain. I wanted to go quickly and cling to his strength. Then I
+stopped and listened.
+
+He had raised his face to the stars and was praying.
+
+"O Father," he asked, as if speaking to someone with whom he walked in
+the cool of the midnight, "help the weak on whom the strong prey."
+
+Then he went into the dark door of the little chapel and left me out in
+the cold midnight alone. The fear was gone, and comforted I went back
+through my budding garden and arrived at the front door just as old Mr.
+Pate, the telegraph operator at the little station down the street,
+turned in at the gate.
+
+"Miss Charlotte," he puffed, as he fairly flung the telegram at me,
+"this come fer you at ten o'clock and I risked it and run up here with
+it after I heard them ottermobiles go by. I'm courting Mrs. Jennie Hicks
+myself and I understands about courtings." And before I could speak he
+had run on back down the street.
+
+As I stood and looked at the yellow envelope fear again gripped my
+heart, and without opening it I walked into the house, locking the great
+door behind me with trembling fingers, and went toward a light I saw
+shining from the trellised back porch and which I did not understand. I
+have never in my life been the least bit afraid of anything, except
+something within my own body, from the hideous pain of my green-apple
+days to the pain I had felt as I talked beside the piano with Nickols in
+New York, a thousand miles away; but something made me pause just for a
+second in the pantry doorway before I stepped into the light upon the
+porch. I shall never forget the scene that was enacted before my
+wondering eyes in the dim light of a candle burning upon a table near
+the refrigerator.
+
+Father stood with a bowl of ice in his hand and his fingers were just
+closing around a squat, black bottle that I knew contained the rarest
+and choicest whiskey ever run from a distillery. His iron-gray hair was
+rampant, his dressing gown fell away from his throat and showed the
+knotting of the great cords that ran down into his shoulders, and his
+dark eyes glittered under their heavy, black brows, while his mouth was
+twisted and white. Then, as I looked, something happened. A stealthy
+padding of feet came around the house from the garden and up the back
+steps, under the budding rose vine that was climbing through the trellis
+as if to clutch at the light, and a huge figure loomed up from out the
+shadow.
+
+It was the powerful Harpeth Jaguar out hunting, and his weapon was a
+hoe, while under his arm he carried a roll that looked like a
+contribution to a rag man of bedding and old clothes.
+
+"I tell you, Mr. Powers, there is frost in the air and I have collected
+everything in the parsonage that would cover those late anemones. I saw
+your light and I thought you might add to the collection. Now what would
+we do if they should be wilted by the frost just as they are ready to
+burst bud? Our honor is involved with Graveson, who brought the seeds
+all the way from Guernsey through the trenches of France and trusted
+them to me for propagation. Why, they represent a man's life work, and
+that life may be put out by a bullet any moment! We'll have to rescue
+them." As he spoke, the great jeweled eyes shone with excitement under
+the dull gold brows and he seemed not to see at all the incriminating
+ice and bottle.
+
+"Could you get into Mrs. Dabney's linen closet? We've got to have
+something." He shivered in a little wind that blew under the rose vine
+with a frosty gust. I was just observing that he was attired in his
+pajama jacket and gray flannel trousers, and that his bare heels and
+ankles declared themselves above and at the back of his slippers, when
+my eyes were drawn to my father's face and rested there. My heart stood
+still while I watched it change. All the pain and appetite, straining as
+a beast strains at a leash, faded from his face. The deathly pallor
+vanished and the color of human blood returned. The glitter in his deep
+old eyes changed in a second from that of ferocity to that of anxious
+excitement.
+
+"I do not know where the household linen is kept and I hesitate to
+disturb Dabney, as he retired with an aching tooth; but I observed a box
+of my daughter's apparel beside a trunk in the back hall which Dabney
+had not carried up on account of its weight and which he was requiring
+his wife to unpack piece by piece. I'll raid it for enough to save our
+treasures and accept whatever is my just chastisement in the morning,"
+he said in a voice of guilty stealth.
+
+And there I stood in the shadow of the pantry and saw my father take two
+armfuls of my costly linen and lace out into the garden. Nothing was
+spared me, for from the window I could see him and the marauding Jaguar
+weight their perfumed whiteness down with sticks and stones and clods of
+earth. I suffered, but silently.
+
+"Good night, sir. God's blessing," I heard the rich voice calling as the
+half-bare feet padded away as swiftly as they had come through the
+garden, leaving father standing under the rose vine watching him go. And
+I watched father--and for some reason my breath seemed suspended in my
+lungs.
+
+For a very long minute he stood looking at the ice bowl and the bottle;
+then with a queer wry smile he walked over and put them both in the
+refrigerator, though the bottle's place was in the sideboard, and closed
+the door carefully. Then he paused again and said under his breath,
+"_You_, Judge Nickols Morris Powers!" He smiled at himself with
+humorous pity and tiptoed past me into the front hall and up the
+stairway to his rooms above.
+
+I seemed to feel strange padding footsteps down in my depths and I also
+tiptoed up to my room after I had heard his door shut.
+
+After I had switched on my light (for under the roof of the Poplars
+electricity had come to aid the candles of hallowed tradition, and was
+called by Mammy, in deep suspicion, "ha'nt light") I discovered clutched
+in my cold fingers the yellow envelope the romantic Mr. Pate had brought
+to me in the midnight. It read:
+
+     "Am coming down on Friday. Am afraid to trust the world and the
+     flesh and think the third member of the carnal firm ought to be
+     on the job.      N."
+
+"Now I am frightened really," I confided to myself as I slipped between
+the scented sheets and drew a corner of the rose-colored blanket over my
+head. "I don't know what to do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TO TURKEY GULCH
+
+
+The next morning I was very late in descending to my breakfast, but
+arrived in time to witness Mammy's arraignment of my father, which was
+conducted in perfect respect, but with great severity.
+
+"I know, Jedge, that menfolks don't know lace that costs a million
+dollars a yard from a blind woman's tatting, and that's what makes me
+say what I does, that it sure am dangersome fer 'em to go on a rampage
+in womenfolks' trunks. I ain't never goin' to git the stains from them
+clods of earth outen my lambs' clothes, even if the minister did help
+you put 'em on 'em."
+
+"But, Melissa, those anemones were more valuable than any lace ever
+manufactured, and I am sure that Charlotte will absolve me when she
+hears of the exigencies of the case," father pleaded over the top of
+his morning paper. Mammy was pretending to dust his study, as a blind to
+the lecture she was administering.
+
+"Yes, sir, I knows all that; but that lace was a heap more valuable than
+that toothache in that wuthless Dabney's jaw, which he could er wropped
+up, and hunted out all the old sheets for you instid of that petticoat
+with them real lace ruffles," was Mammy's firm rejoinder, while she
+passed a feather duster over the table and rolled her eyes at Dabney.
+
+"Let's let them both off this time, Mammy. Dabney can take the trunks
+where they belong and lock them up," I said, as I went toward the dining
+room, while she followed to minister upon my tardiness.
+
+"Them was all your finest lingerings," she said as she plied me with
+breakfast. "And they was all lost on menfolks. They hasn't even one lady
+rode by while I had 'em on the line in the sunshine," she grumbled as
+she finally retired to the kitchen.
+
+After finishing my coffee I sauntered to the front of the house, led by
+a chorus of hearty laughter in a fluty tenor voice, accompanied by a
+bass growl, in which I was sure that father was recounting the scrape in
+which his and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's anemone adventure had got them.
+I assured myself that I was annoyed by this repeated early morning
+invasion of ministerial calls and intended to retire to my room until it
+was over, but without knowing why, I found myself in the library and
+greeting the enemy.
+
+"Please forgive us. The case was one of dire necessity," the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe pleaded, as he rose and took my hand in his, and held it in
+such a way that I was forced to look in his face and smile, whether I
+wished it or not.
+
+"From ambush I saw you take them, and I was powerless to prevent," I
+answered with a smile at father.
+
+"I came over to ask you if you wouldn't like to go away out into the
+Harpeth Hills on a mission with me this wonderful morning. I don't know
+exactly whether I am called to officiate at a birth or a death or that
+intermediate festivity, a wedding. This is the summons from an old
+friend of mine:" As he spoke he held out to me a greasy paper on which
+were a few words scrawled with a pencil.
+
+     "Parson we need you in the morning bad. Please come with Bill
+     as brings this. Bring a bible and liniment and oblige your true
+     friend Jed Bangs and wife."
+
+"Isn't your friend Bill able to elucidate?" I asked, as I passed the
+paper on to father.
+
+"Bill seems to be dumb without being deaf and has no histrionic talent
+to act out the necessity, so I'm going with him. The Bangs family live
+up on old Harpeth at Turkey Gulch, and Jed has shot partridges with me
+all winter. Please, you and the Judge, come with me. I can get the car
+over Paradise Ridge if I turn it into a wildcat. The morning is
+delicious, and I feel that I'll need you both." Never in the world have
+I heard a man's voice with such compelling notes in it that range from a
+soft coax to a quiet command.
+
+I had not the slightest idea of going with him and I was about to refuse
+with as much sugary hauteur as I dared use to him, when I looked into
+father's face and accepted. I had never been on a picnic with my father
+in my life and I could not understand the pleading in his eyes for my
+acceptance of this invitation to an adventure in his company, but then,
+several times since I had come home, I had seen a father I had never
+known before, and he fascinated me.
+
+"The mountain laurel is in bloom and the rhododendron, and you are a
+very gracious lady," the Reverend Mr. Goodloe assured me with a deep bow
+over my hand, which he kissed in a very delightful foreign fashion which
+made Mammy, who had come to the door to hear my decision, roll her eyes
+in astonishment which, however, held no hint of criticism, for with her
+the spiritual king could do no wrong.
+
+"I got a snack fixed up jest's soon as that Dabney tol' me about the
+junket," she announced. "And I'll put a little wine jelly and flannels
+in if it am a baby and a bunch of white jessimings in case it am a
+death."
+
+"Suppose it is a wedding?" I asked her.
+
+"I don't take no notice of weddings. It was a wedding that got me into
+all the trouble of that Dabney and his wuthless son, Jefferson, what
+ain't like me in no way." With which fling at Dabney--who was hovering
+at the door--she rolled herself back to her kitchen.
+
+"What have you been doing to her now, you rascal?" father demanded of
+Dabney, who was handing him his hat and holding out his light overcoat
+to put him into it.
+
+"I jist stepped into the kitchen while her light rolls fer supper was
+raisin' and got a ruckus fer it," was his mild answer. Dabney lived his
+connubial life mildly in the midst of the storms of his better half.
+
+"Well, don't do it again. And put that spade in Mr. Goodloe's car, for
+I'm going to bring in some honeysuckle roots and a laurel sprout or two
+to try out in the garden," father commanded, as I took my coat and hat
+from the chair where I had thrown them the afternoon before, and went
+out to the very unministerial-looking car which stood before the
+parsonage.
+
+Of course, I had accepted the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's invitation for the
+journey out into the hills in order to sit beside this very new kind of
+father I was dimly discovering myself to possess, but I do not to this
+day know how it happened that I was crushed against the arm steering the
+gray racer as we sped through Goodloets toward Old Harpeth, while the
+judge sat beaming, though silent, beside the more silent Bill--who did
+not beam, but looked out at the road ahead with the shadow in his face
+of the fatalism that so many of the mountain folk possess.
+
+We were just turning out from the edge of the town, past the last house
+with its stately white pillars, when a bunch of pink-and-white
+precipitated itself directly in front of the car--which made the first
+of the wildcat springs that its master had prophesied for it and then
+stood with its engine palpitating with what seemed like mechanical fear,
+while I buried my head on the strong arm next to me, which I could feel
+tremble for an instant as the Reverend Mr. Goodloe breathed a fervent,
+"Thank God." Father rose from his seat with a good round oath and silent
+Bill snorted like a wild animal.
+
+"Why didn't you stop when you saw me coming?" an imperious young voice
+demanded in tones of distinct anger, and Charlotte, my name daughter of
+the house of Morgan, calmly climbed up on the running board, over the
+door next to father, and settled herself in between him and the silent
+Bill. "Now you can go on," she calmly announced, in a very much
+mollified tone of voice as she shook out her ruffles into a less
+compressed state and wiped her face with her dirty hand, much to the
+detriment of the roses in her cheeks.
+
+"Where are you going, Charlotte, may I inquire?" asked the Reverend Mr.
+Goodloe in a cheerful and calm voice, though I saw that his fingers
+still trembled on the steering wheel as he held back the enraged gray
+engine. I was still speechless and I saw that father was in the same
+condition.
+
+"You said I might go 'next time' when my Auntie Harriet didn't want me
+to go with you last Tuesday on account of my stomach from the raw potato
+Jimmy dared me to eat. This is that time," she calmly answered, as she
+gave an interested look at the silent Bill and again settled the short,
+pink skirts.
+
+"Yes, I did say that," admitted Mr. Goodloe, as he turned in his seat as
+far as he could and began to argue the question. "But we shall be gone
+almost all day and I am afraid your mother wouldn't want you to be gone
+that long."
+
+"Is it true for you to say that when you know that she will be mighty
+glad for you to keep me safe with you all day?" Charlotte demanded of
+him, looking directly into his smiling, friendly face.
+
+"No, that wasn't quite honest, I'll admit," he answered her gravely with
+the guilt of conviction showing in his face just as plainly as it would
+have shown if one of his deacons had caught him evading a question of
+grave moment. "And as it is the fulfillment of a promise which you
+claim, I am going to ask Miss Powers and the judge if they will permit
+me to add you to the party, and then go and get permission from your
+mother to take you with us."
+
+"My mother told me to go and bother Auntie Charlotte an hour or two and
+that was when I met you. I ran into the car just minding my mother,"
+Charlotte answered him with calm pride at her near achievement of death
+through literal obedience.
+
+"Just drive by and we'll call to Nell. I am afraid the case must have
+been desperate, for I am seldom the victim," I said in an undertone to
+our host, who acquiesced with a laugh. "Harriet Henderson must be dead,
+for Nell usually sends the worse one to her," I added under my breath.
+
+"My Auntie Harriet is having a man cut the ache out of one of her
+teeth," Charlotte remarked, apropos of nothing, as the huge car swung
+around into the street in which the Morgans reside. "And, besides, I
+don't like her any more, because, when she said Sue had to have part of
+the doll house she bought for us to play in down at her home, and I said
+then Sue would have to take the outside because I wanted the inside, she
+locked it up for all this week."
+
+"The modern business acumen of the feministic persuasion," father
+remarked, as we all laughed at this candid revelation of an egocentric
+attitude of mind in small Charlotte.
+
+After a few whirls of the gray wheels we paused a moment at the Morgan
+gate.
+
+"Heavens, yes, and thank you," called Nell in response to our demand for
+her small daughter's company. "If I had another one clean, I'd give it
+to you."
+
+"Better go on quick, for Jimmy can wash in a piece of a minute if he
+wants to," warned Charlotte, and in a second the parson had sent the
+gray car flying out toward Old Harpeth, though I saw him glance back
+with a trace of distress in his eyes at the fading vision of a small boy
+running, howling, to the front gate of the Morgan residence.
+
+"Now mother'll whip him for crying if she does as she says she would,
+but she won't," observed the tender big sister, as she rose to her feet
+and waved a maddening farewell to the distressed urchin being left
+behind.
+
+"Is she totally depraved?" I asked of the young Charlotte's spiritual
+adviser at my side.
+
+"No; perfectly honest," he answered me with a glint in his eyes that was
+a laughing challenge.
+
+"There is something awful about honesty," I answered, without appearing
+to notice the glint.
+
+"There wouldn't be if it were a universal custom," was the answer I got
+as we whirled by a farmer's wood lot and began to climb the first
+foothill of Old Harpeth.
+
+All my life I have been going out to Old Harpeth on excursions, but
+never had I spent a day like the one I had begun with the Jaguar in his
+native fastnesses. The whole old mountain was beginning to bud and I
+could almost see it draping on a regal Persian garment of rose and green
+threaded with purple and blue woven against the old brown and gray of
+the earth color. The wine-colored trillium with its huge spotted leaves,
+the slender white dog-tooth violets, the rose-pink arbutus, the blue
+star myrtle and the crimson oak buds, were matted into a vast robe that
+was gorgeously oriental, while a perfume that was surely more delicious
+than any ever wafted from the gardens of Arabia floated past us in gusts
+through which the gray car sped without the slightest shortness of
+breath. I seemed a million miles away from the great fetid city in which
+I had been living--and fast going farther. As we wound up and up into
+the great forest which is the crown of Old Harpeth, we could look down
+through occasional vistas and see the Harpeth River curling and bending
+through pastures in which the chocolate plowed fields were laid off in
+huge checks with the green meadows, while the farmhouses and barns
+dotted the valley like the crude figures on a hand-woven chintz.
+
+There are very few men who know enough not to talk to a woman when she
+has no desire for their conversation, but the Reverend Jaguar seemed to
+be one of the variety who comprehend the value of silences, and neither
+of us spoke for at least ten miles, though, of course, it was his duty
+to make hay while the sun of my nature shone upon him and delicately to
+inquire into my spiritual condition. He didn't. He just let the wind
+blow into my empty spaces and kept his eyes and thoughts on the road
+ahead of him. Charlotte's chatter with father was blown back from me and
+I was happy in a kind of aloneness I had never felt before.
+
+"We are in Hastings County now and in a few minutes we shall be in Hicks
+Center, the county seat," were the first words that broke in on my
+self-communion as we began to speed past rough board and log cabins,
+each surrounded by a picket fence which in no way seemed to fend the
+doorsteps from razor-back pigs, chickens and a few young mules and
+calves. "It must be court day, for I don't see a single inhabitant
+sitting chewing under his own vine and fig tree."
+
+"Yes; it's the first Monday," answered father, as the gray machine
+pulled gallantly through a few hundred feet of thick, black mud and
+turned from the wilderness into the public square of the metropolis of
+Hicks Center.
+
+"Yes, court is in session and there the whole population is in the
+courthouse," said father, as we glided slowly down the village street.
+"They must be trying a murder or a horse-stealing case," and I saw his
+eyes gleam for a second under their heavy brows as the eyes of an old
+war horse must gleam when he scents powder.
+
+"Ugh," assented silent Bill, making the first remark of the journey, and
+as he spoke the syllable he rose and pointed to the courthouse, which
+stood in the midst of a mud-covered public square, completely surrounded
+by hitching-posts to which were hitched all the vehicles of locomotion
+of the last century down to the present in Hicks Center--which had not
+as yet arrived as far as the day of the motor car.
+
+"Is Jed in there, Bill?" demanded the Reverend Mr. Goodloe; and as Bill
+assented with muscular vigor, if not vocal, he drew the gray car up
+beside, an old-fashioned carryall, whose wheels were at least five feet
+high and which had hitched to its pole an old horse and a young mule.
+
+"That team makes a nice balance of--temperament," Mr. Goodloe remarked,
+as he lifted out Charlotte and then turned to swing me, in his strong
+arms, free of a mud puddle and onto the old brick pavement which was
+green with the moss of generations.
+
+Then, piloted by the silent Bill, we made our way through a quiet throng
+of men and women and children, from the awkward age of shoe-top trousers
+and skirts to that which, in many cases, was partaking from the maternal
+fount, as the women stood in groups and whispered as they looked at us
+shyly. Somehow their decorous calico skirts, which just cleared the
+ground, made me feel naked in my own of white corduroy, which was all of
+eight inches from the mud in which theirs had draggled.
+
+And as silent as they, even Charlotte's chatter subdued, we entered the
+court room and were led through a crowd up to the front seat. At least
+the rest of us were seated, but the judge, jury and prisoner and
+prosecuting attorney rose in a body and shook hands with the Reverend
+Mr. Goodloe as if he were their common and best beloved son.
+
+"He's been in the Harpeth Valley less than a year, and look at that.
+We've been here all our lives and they don't know who we are,"
+whispered father, with the same pride shining in his eyes that shone
+upon the parson from the eyes of the gaunt prisoner, who rose and shook
+hands with Mr. Goodloe with the sheriff beside him, while the rough old
+judge from the bench waited his turn.
+
+"We accommodated Jed by waiting until you come before we begun his
+trial, Parson," the judge said, as he turned back to his bench, which
+was a splint-bottom chair behind a rude table, dignity being lent to the
+chair by its being the only one in the room. The rest of the population
+of the court room of Hicks Center were seated upon benches made of split
+and hewn logs.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Hilldrop," said the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, as he sat down
+beside the prisoner and began a whispered conversation with him.
+
+"The court have come to order. Shoot ahead, Jim, and tell us what Jed
+have done and how he done it," commanded the judge, as he tilted back
+his chair, took out his knife and began to whittle a stick of bright red
+cedar. Twelve good men and true, attired in butternut trousers stuffed
+into muddy boots, settled themselves in the jury box, which was a log
+bench set at right angles to the other benches, a little apart from the
+table and chair of the judge, and nine of them took out their knives and
+bits of cedar and began to follow the lead of the judge in making fine
+pink curls fall upon the floor.
+
+"May it please your honor, the prisoner is charged with the stealing of
+a young mule," said a lanky young mountain lawyer, who had put on a coat
+over his flannel shirt and brushed a little patch of tow hair just above
+his brows in deference to his position of prosecuting attorney.
+
+"State yo' case," commanded the judge, as he tried the point of his
+splinter against his thumb to test its whittled sharpness.
+
+"Hiram Turner, over at Sycamore, lent Jed a team of mules to haul his
+daughter, who married Jed, home in a wagon with her beds and truck, and
+when he come down Paradise Ridge to git the team, Jed claimed one had
+got away from him and run off in the big woods. They was a horse and
+mule trader come along the same day Jed lost the mule and when Hi and
+his boy, Bud, knocked Jed down in a fight they found fifty dollars on
+him in a wad what he won't say where he got it."
+
+With which concise statement the prosecuting attorney sat down and
+fanned his perspiring brow with his ragged felt hat.
+
+"Got anything to say, Jed?" inquired the judge in a friendly and
+leisurely fashion, after the accused had been duly sworn in by the
+sheriff. "How come a man like you to let a mule git away from him?"
+
+With the judge's friendly question there entered another actor on the
+scene, in the person of a mountain girl who had been cowering on a bench
+just behind Jed, her face hidden by a black calico split bonnet.
+
+"Please lemme tell, Jed," she pleaded in a soft whisper that only father
+and I heard, as we sat just behind her.
+
+"Naw," was the one word he gave her, but it was spoken with a soft
+little purr in his husky voice. Then he answered the judge with a kind
+of quiet dignity, which I saw that the twelve booted jurymen listened to
+with respect.
+
+"Jedge," he said, with a stern look into the judge's face, "I reckon
+you'll have to send me down to the pen. I let that mule git away from me
+and I didn't steal or sell him; that is all I got to say." And he sat
+down. I felt father start at my side and then sink back onto his bench.
+
+"Where did you git the money, Jed?" the judge demanded.
+
+"That I ain't a-telling," answered Jed determinedly. "Jest send me down
+to the pen, fer you-all know all you'll ever know."
+
+"Well, Jed," the judge was beginning to say in an argumentative tone of
+voice, when father arose and stepped in front of the bench.
+
+"May it please your honor to appoint a counsel for the defense?" he
+asked in a ringing voice that brought all the outsiders crowding into
+the door. I had never heard or seen my father in a court room and I had
+never suspected him of the resonant silver voice with which he made his
+demand.
+
+"We ain't got a lawyer in Hicks Center but Jim Handy here, and he can't
+prosecute and defend too. I always kinder looks out fer the prisoners
+myself," answered the judge.
+
+"Then may I offer myself to the prisoner to conduct his defense?" father
+demanded, and he looked over at Jed, who in turn looked at Mr. Goodloe
+before he nodded.
+
+"Then shoot ahead, stranger. Jim have told all they is about it, but
+you can have Hi and Bud Turner sworn in and git any more they have got
+to say. Them men speaks truth when they speaks." At which statement
+every good man and true nodded his head with firm conviction. A gaunt
+old mountaineer who sat over by the window cleared his throat in an
+embarrassment that marked him as the Hiram Turner alluded to.
+
+"I don't think I shall need the testimony of Mr. Turner or his son,"
+father answered quietly, as he stood tall and straight before the jury.
+"I want to put Mr. Bangs' wife on the witness stand and question her
+before the jury. Sheriff, call Mrs. Bangs."
+
+"Naw, stranger, naw," said Jed, and he rose as if to combat, but Mr.
+Goodloe laid a restraining hand on his arm, and trembling, he took his
+seat.
+
+"Don't tell nothing, honey," he whispered, as the girl rose from her
+bench, laid aside her cavernous black bonnet and advanced, took the oath
+administered by the sheriff and stood facing father.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Bangs," said father, with silvery tenderness in his voice
+which I felt sure had gained him the reputation of never having lost a
+case in which a woman was involved, "I want you to tell us all that
+happened on the day that Jed let the mule escape him. Look at me and
+tell me all about it."
+
+"Well, stranger," began the mountain girl, with a look of confidence
+coming into her face that was like a little pink wide-open arbutus, "I
+reckon you won't believe me--like Jed didn't at first, though he do
+now."
+
+"Don't tell, honey," the prisoner commanded and implored in the one
+plea. "I'd rather take the pen. They won't believe you."
+
+"It war this way," she continued, without seeming to hear the command of
+her young husband, upon whose arm the parson again laid a restraining
+hand. "Jed he had unhitched the team and tied them with their rope
+halters to the fence 'fore our cabin, when it was almost dark 'fore we
+got thar. Then while I was unpacking the wagon he got on one horse and
+rid down the side of the gulch to see whar water was at. I was jest
+takin' the things in when a man come along leading five mules and riding
+on one. He was a city stranger in fine clothes and he asked me fer a
+meal because he had lost his way from a man who had a tent and grub. My
+mammy allus cooked fer strangers, so--"
+
+"She shore do that," ejaculated Mr. Turner, proud of his noted
+hospitality.
+
+"So I made up a fire hasty in the yard and put on a coffee pot," the
+girl continued. "I had some corn pone and bacon my mammy had give me fer
+a snack and I het that up. Whilst I got the meal the stranger he went on
+unloading our wagon and then he come to a bundle of bed quilts what my
+mammy have been saving fer me from her mammy and her grandmammy. He took
+a notion to them and ast me how old they was and I told him about as old
+as any twenty-inch cedar on Old Harpeth. He asked me to trade 'em, but I
+couldn't abear to until he had riz to fifty dollars, what was the price
+of a young mule, all on account of his sister wanting quilts like them
+up in a big city. I was kinder crying quiet at letting 'em go, but I
+thought about what that mule would be to Jed who wuz so good to me, so I
+give 'em to him and he tied 'em on his saddle and went away. It war most
+a hour when Jed come and when I told him and showed him the money, he
+didn't believe me about them old quilts and he tooken the rope from
+around the neck of the mule he'd been riding and--"
+
+She paused here in her story and put her scarlet flower face in her
+hands, while Jed groaned and dropped his own face down upon his arm. The
+old judge's face took on a grim sternness, the jury stopped whittling
+and the face of every woman in the court room gazed upon the girl with
+stern unbelieving accusation.
+
+"Go on, now, honey, but they won't believe you," commanded Jed with a
+sob.
+
+"Your husband took the rope from around the neck of the mule and left
+him untied?" asked father gently.
+
+"What fer, Melissa?" asked the old judge, without gentleness or any show
+of confidence in what the shrinking woman was saying.
+
+"To beat me with. He war crazed mad and called me a name, but I don't
+hold it ag'in him," answered the young wife, with a glance at the
+cowering prisoner.
+
+"He done right," calmly announced one of the twelve good men and true,
+in the muddy boots and flannel shirt, and every mountain woman in the
+court room nodded her head in approval of the pronouncement.
+
+"Order in the court room. You all shet up and listen," commanded the
+judge, as father looked around the room and then at him with a stern
+demand for control of the situation.
+
+"Then what happened, Mrs. Bangs?" father continued to question.
+
+"I hollered and fought and skeered the mule off into the big woods where
+he can't be found to keep my husband out of the pen," she answered with
+a sob. "It took me a week to make him believe about them quilts and then
+pappy come along and fought him about the mule and found the money, as
+he claimed he sold the mule fer what was the quilt money."
+
+"That will do. Thank you, Mrs. Bangs," said father, with the same
+deference and tenderness he had used when he began to question her.
+"Does the prosecution wish to question the witness?"
+
+"They ain't no use of questioning her when she says a man give her fifty
+dollars fer five old quilts," was the answer made by the young
+prosecuting attorney, who did not rise to his feet to make this remark.
+
+"Please ask Mrs. Bangs if the quilts were woven ones of three colors,
+and then call me to the stand," I said to father quickly.
+
+He put the question to the weeping young wife and got an affirmative
+answer, after which he dismissed her and had the sheriff swear me in.
+
+"Can you throw any light upon the matter of the purchase or sale of
+these quilts, Miss Powers?" father questioned me formally.
+
+"If they were old hand-woven, herb-dyed, knitted quilts, they are worth
+fifty dollars apiece in New York to-day. I paid that for one not five
+months ago," I said, staring haughtily into the calmly doubting faces of
+the mountaineers in the jury box and on the benches.
+
+"Do you want to question the witness?" my father asked of the indolent
+young prosecutor.
+
+"Don't know who she is and don't believe she is telling the truth," was
+the laconic refusal of the prosecutor to let me influence his case.
+
+"Well, now, Jim, Parson Goodloe here brought the gal along with him and
+I reckon he can character witness for her," interposed the judge.
+"Sheriff, swear in the parson." His command was duly executed.
+
+"Mr. Goodloe, do you consider Miss Powers a woman who can be depended
+upon to speak the truth?" father asked him formally.
+
+"I do," the Reverend Mr. Goodloe answered quietly, and just for a second
+a gleam from his eyes under their dull gold brows shot across the
+distance to me, and if it hadn't all been so serious I should have
+laughed with glee at his thus having to declare himself about my
+character in public. But the next moment the situation became much more
+serious and my heart positively stopped still as I seemed to see prison
+doors close upon the young husband.
+
+"Do you want to question the witness?" father asked of the lolling young
+prosecutor.
+
+"How long have you known the lady, Parson?" he asked, with a drawl and
+one eye half closed.
+
+There was an intense silence in the court room for almost a minute. Then
+the Reverend Mr. Gregory Goodloe answered calmly:
+
+"Three days."
+
+"That might be long enough fer a parson, but it ain't fer a jury," the
+young attorney answered, and there was a quizzical kindness in the old
+judge's face as he smiled at Mr. Goodloe and shook his head.
+
+Mr. Goodloe started to speak, but father waved him back to his seat,
+turned to the judge and jury and began the most wonderful speech on the
+subject of circumstantial evidence and ethical law that I have ever
+heard. His beautiful deep voice was as clear as a bell and twenty years
+seemed to have fallen from his shoulders. I was looking at and listening
+to the man he had been before I was born. And when I could tear my eyes
+from his radiant face I watched these stolid mountaineers with whom he
+was working his will with a power they had never experienced before and
+did not understand. The men in the jury box and the men on the hewn
+benches dropped their eyes before his flaming ones as he shamed their
+censorious manhood and some of the sun-bonneted women bent their heads
+and sobbed when he arraigned them for the lack of motherhood and
+sisterhood for the poor young wife who had come over the Ridge to live
+among them.
+
+"Would you men and women rather believe a girl light of love and
+faithless, and send your neighbor to prison for two years of his young
+life when he could mean much to you and his state and his nation, than
+to give them a little human sympathy and justice. Do you prefer to pin
+your faith to the value of a worthless, vagrant mule than--"
+
+But just here, when Judge Nickols Morris Powers was winding himself up
+for one of the greatest appeals to a jury he had ever made, a mule
+stepped into the case and took away the honor of its winning. He poked
+his inquisitive nose into a back window of the court room which looked
+out upon the edge of the big woods, and gave the whole assemblage a
+hew-haw of derision.
+
+"Lordy mighty, that are Pete come back hisself with all the curkles in
+the big woods sticking to him!" exclaimed Hiram Turner, as he rose and
+went to examine his property. "He wasn't sold to no mule man, fer they
+crops the hair on their hoofs to see if they's healthy 'fore they buys.
+This here frees Jed."
+
+"And now that you gentlemen have the testimony of a mule, will you not
+believe the word of Mrs. Bangs and Miss Powers about the valuable
+quilts?" my father said, after he had commanded silence by raising his
+hand.
+
+"We shore do believe every word of it, stranger, and you won this here
+case and not that mule," a stern old sister in a gingham apron and black
+bonnet said, with a commanding glance at the jury.
+
+"Yes, stranger," answered the hoary old foreman, whom to this day I
+believe to be the meek husband of the commanding old woman in the black
+bonnet. "I have done got the mind of the jury and they all voted fer you
+and not the mule."
+
+"I hereby gives that mule to Jed Bangs and my daughter, Melissa, and
+I'll knock off a half on the price of his teammate to Jed if he gives me
+his fergiveness and hern," old Hiram rose and turned with his hand on
+the forelock of the mule hero to say to the assembled court room. "Go
+around and halter him quick, Jed, 'fore he breaks away again, the durned
+fool," he added in another voice.
+
+"Yes, prisoner, you are declared free, and hurry to ketch him, fer he's
+straining ag'inst Hiram," was the judge's sentence, delivered from the
+bench as everybody rose and began to stream out to watch the tussle
+between Jed and the wild mule. Father and the parson were among the
+first to gain the door.
+
+In the next few minutes I found that some of the shy mountain women were
+beginning to hover about me, and in another ten minutes I had laid the
+foundations of an export rug and quilt business that I have a feeling
+will thrive greatly.
+
+"Were you arrested because your mother told you not to sell the quilts?"
+was Charlotte's sympathetic question to the young Mrs. Bangs; and I saw
+the mite take a clean handkerchief from her small pink pocket and apply
+it to the tears that were coursing down Melissa's cheeks over the
+dimples which her smiling mouth was putting in their way. "Just be a
+good girl and God will forgive you," she comforted further, nestling a
+dirty pink cheek, which rubbed off, against Melissa's wet one.
+
+"And I asked if she were totally depraved, less than an hour ago," I
+apologized to my name daughter in my heart.
+
+All the way home I sat beside father, and once I laid a timid hand in
+his, through whose fingers the pride I had in him must have flowed into
+his. He flushed for a second and then was pale again.
+
+"You can't put new wine in old bottles, daughter," he said sadly, as he
+glanced down into the valley. The car was running smoothly, slowly and
+noiselessly around a sharp curve, and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe both
+heard and answered the sad axiom.
+
+"The finest wine mellows in casks and is then bottled free of dregs,
+Judge. I think the wine of life is of that vintage," he said, with one
+of his radiant smiles that I could see fairly warm father from his
+paleness.
+
+"I wonder just what he meant by 'the wine of life,'" I asked myself as I
+went to say good night to Old Harpeth after I put out my light before
+going to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HAVING IT OUT
+
+
+"Well, of course, we knew Nickols would follow you, Charlotte, but we
+did hope to have you all to ourselves for more than just a week," moaned
+Nell Morgan, as we all sat on the front porch of the Poplars in the warm
+spring sunlight several mornings after I had told them of Nickols'
+arrival on Friday, which announcement had come in the midnight telegram.
+I winced at the words "follow you," and then smiled at the absurdity of
+the little shudder.
+
+"Yes, Nickols will be absorbing, but we can all sit hard on him and
+perhaps put him in his place," responded Letitia Cockrell, as she drew a
+fine thread through a ruffle she was making to adorn some part of the
+person of one of Nell's progeny. "I do not believe in ever allowing a
+man to take more than his share of a woman's time."
+
+"Do you use grocery scales or a pint cup to measure out Cliff Gray's
+daily portion of yourself, Letitia?" asked Harriet Henderson, with a
+very sophisticated laugh in which Nell joined with a little giggle.
+Harriet was appliqueing velvet violets on a gray chiffon scarf and was
+doing it with the zest of the newly liberated. Roger Henderson had had a
+lot of money that, in default of a will, the law gave mostly to Harriet,
+but in life he had not had the joy of seeing her spend it that he might
+have had if he could have gazed back from placid death. "Do you make the
+same allowance of affection to him in the light of the moon that you do
+in the dark?" she further demanded of the serene Letitia.
+
+"Well, he doesn't have to see his share divided up into bits and handed
+out to the other men," was the serene answer to Harriet's gibe and which
+was pretty good for Letitia.
+
+"My dear child," declaimed Harriet, as she poised a purple violet on the
+end of her needle, "don't ever, ever make the mistake of letting one of
+the creatures know just what is coming to him. Isn't that right, Nell?"
+
+"Yes, and it is pretty hard to keep them in a state of uncertainty
+about you when there are four certain children between you, but I go
+over to visit my mother at Hillsboro as often as she'll have the caravan
+and plead with Billy Harvey or Hampton Dibrell to keep me out until I'm
+late for dinner every time they pick me up for a little charitable spin.
+That and other deceptions have kept Mark Morgan uncertainly happy so
+far, but if I am pushed to the wall I'll--I'll go to the Reverend Mr.
+Goodloe's study for ministerial counsel like you did last Friday
+afternoon, Harriet," was Nell's contribution to the discussion, which
+she delivered over the head of the Suckling on her breast.
+
+"Now how did you get hold of that choice bit of scandal, Nellie?" asked
+Harriet, with serene interest as she bit off a tag of purple silk thread
+from the stem of one of her violets.
+
+"Billy Harvey says that scandal is a yellow pup that dogs a parson's
+heels, to which everybody throws some kind of bone," remarked Jessie.
+Jessie always vigorously represses Billy in his own presence and then
+quotes him eternally when he is absent.
+
+"Mother Spurlock had come over from the Settlement to see him about the
+state of the treasury of the Mothers' Aid Class, and she stopped in to
+get a bundle of clothes I had for her," Nell answered Harriet's
+question. "She said she didn't mind the hour lost if the parson could
+give a 'wee bit of comfort' to your 'wrestling' soul. I didn't like to
+tell her that I thought it might be Mr. Goodloe who was wrestling--for
+life and liberty--for you and I have been friends since we could toddle,
+Harriet, but it was temptation to share my anxiety with her." And
+serenely Nellie patted the back of the drowsing Suckling.
+
+"Wrong this time, Nell," answered Harriet, as she placed still another
+violet. "I was doing the wrestling, but I went to the mat. I gave up
+twenty-five dollars and took the directorship of that Mothers' Aid.
+Never having been a mother, I pointed out to him that I was not exactly
+qualified, but he laid stress upon my energy and business acumen and I
+gave up. I mentioned you for the honor, but those marvelous eyes of his
+glowed with some sort of inner warmth and he said that you had all you
+could do and would need help from me just as the women at the Settlement
+do. I'm going to present your Susan with a frock out of that linen and
+real Valenciennes I bought in the city last week for a blouse for my own
+self, and I'm going to give the making to that little Burns woman, who
+sews so beautifully and cheaply to support her seven offspring, while
+Mr. Burns supports 'The Last Chance' saloon down at the end of the road.
+In that way I'll be aiding two of Mr. Goodloe's flock at the same time,
+and when I told him my decision he laughed and said be sure and have it
+made two inches shorter than you made Sue's frocks, because her bare
+knees ought not to be hid from the world. That was about all that
+transpired in the whole hour of spiritual conference you are spreading
+the scandal about, and you ought to be ashamed."
+
+Suddenly something in me made me determine to have it out with those
+four women and see what results I could get. I felt thirsty for
+knowledge of the wellsprings of other people's lives.
+
+"Harriet," I demanded, "just why did you join Mr. Goodloe's church?"
+
+"Let's see," answered Harriet, as she poised a violet and gave herself
+up to introspection.
+
+"Mr. Goodloe?" I asked squarely, and my honesty drew its spark from
+hers.
+
+"Mostly," she answered briefly. "And I believe in the church as an
+institution," she added, with honest justice to herself.
+
+"I think it is absolutely horrid of you to ask a question like that,
+Charlotte," said Nell, as she turned the fretting Suckling over on her
+knee and began another series of pats. "We all of us went to church and
+Sunday school when we were children."
+
+"Up to the time I left, not a single one of you ever had gone to church
+with any kind of regularity and not a one of you had ever supported its
+institutions. I've been here less than a week and each one of you has in
+some way shown me how bored you are with the relation. That's all the
+case I have against your or any church--just that the members are bored.
+Also, do any of you get any help in your daily lives, aside from the
+emotional pleasure it is to you to hear your minister sing twice a week,
+which would be as great or greater if he sang love and waltz songs from
+light opera for you?"
+
+And as I asked my question I looked quickly from one to the other of the
+four women seated with me under the roof of the Poplars and tried to
+search out what was in their hearts. I knew them and their lives with
+the cruel completeness it is given to friends to know each other in
+small towns like Goodloets and I could probe with a certain touch. And
+as they all sat silent with me, each one driven to self-question by my
+demand, I threw the flash of a searchlight into each of them. These are
+some of the things that stood out in the illumination:
+
+Harriet Henderson has always been in love with Mark Morgan, since her
+shoe-top-dress days, and she married Roger Henderson because Mark was as
+poor as she before the Phosphate Company gave him his managership. Nell
+and the babies are the nails driven in her heart every day and she loves
+them all passionately. She is only twenty-eight and life will be long
+for her. She needs help to live it. Whence will the help come?
+
+Nell married Mark when she was eighteen and has produced a result every
+year and a half since. She loves him mildly and he loves her after a
+fashion, but her endurance is wearing thin. His mother had seven
+children and he thinks that an ideal number, though she was one
+generation nearer the pioneer woman and also had a nurse trained in
+slavery who was a wizard with children. Mark wants to have a lot of joy
+of life and so far he drags poor exhausted Nell with him. It is a
+question how long she can stand the social pace and the over-production.
+What is going to help her when she breaks down? How will she hold him
+faithful while she rears and trains all the kiddies? Where will she get
+spirit to love him and work out their salvation? Also Harriet is always
+there. Something will have to help Nell. What?
+
+Billy loves Nell and doesn't know it. He loved her before she was
+married. The children make him rage superficially and burn inwardly. He
+gambles and drinks, but is honest and adorable. What is going to make a
+real man of him?
+
+Jessie Litton's mother died in a private sanitarium for the mentally
+unbalanced and she knows all about it. She loves Hampton Dibrell and
+never looks in his direction or is a moment alone with him. He is in the
+unattached state of ease where any woman can get him if she cares to
+try, and Jessie has to keep her hands behind her.
+
+Letitia is serenely happy with not a dark corner that I know of. She
+loves Cliff Gray and always will. Cliff is faithful and as good as gold,
+but he will hang around Jessie, who encourages him, because she is
+lonely and considers him safely tied up with Letitia. Mr. Cockrell is
+the best lawyer in town and Mrs. Cockrell the most devoted wife and
+mother. I can only feel that Letitia Cockrell needs a jolt and I don't
+see where it is coming from.
+
+And I? I am lonely. And I feel that the constant anxiety about father is
+more than I can bear, worse now when I realize what he has been and
+could be--and that I love him. He is the hardest drinker in Goodloets
+and yet never is drunk. He is soaked from the beginning of one day to
+another. He began to drink like that the day my mother died and I have
+always known that _I_ was helpless to help him. The weakness was in him,
+only supported by her strength so long as she was there. He was the most
+brilliant mind in the state, and was one of the supreme judges when
+mother died. Now Mr. Cockrell manages his business for him and I have
+lately come to know that I must sit by and watch him disintegrate. I
+cannot endure it now, as I have been doing. What is going to help me in
+this--shame for him? I have gone away to my mother's people to forget
+and left him to Dabney, and I've come home--to begin the suffering all
+over. I'll never leave him again. What's going to help me?
+
+And there is something deeper--a race something that fairly eats the
+heart out of my pride. On almost every page of the history of the
+Harpeth Valley the name of Powers occurs. One Powers man has been
+governor of the state, and there have been two United States congressmen
+and a senator of our house. Father is the last of the line. Because race
+instinct is the strongest in women, I am the one who suffers as I see my
+family die out. What is going to help me? A few gospel hymns in a tenor
+voice the like of which I should have to pay at least three dollars to
+hear in the Metropolitan? The scene on the porch rose in my mind, but I
+felt that I both doubted and feared such succor.
+
+And I am in still deeper depths. Nickols is the son of father's first
+cousin, and has father's full name, Nickols Morris Powers, and he is the
+last of his branch of the house. Father loves him and is proud of him
+and nothing ever enters his mind except that I will marry Nickols and
+start the family all over again. And this is the tragedy. I love Nickols
+and am entirely unsatisfied with him. He is the Whistler nocturne that
+my Sorolla nature demands, and he eternally makes me hold out my hand to
+grasp--nothing. He stands just beyond. I am unable to decide whether he
+does or does not love me. In New York he lives his life among the
+artists and fashionable people with whom his highly successful
+profession throws him, and I don't see why he cares to come back here
+where he was born and reared, in pursuit of a woman like me. I am as
+elemental as a shock of wheat back on one of father's meadows and
+Nickols is completely evolved. He laughs at race pride and resents mine.
+For six months I had been in New York living with Aunt Clara in Uncle
+Jonathan Van Eyek's old house down on Gramercy just to go into Nickols'
+life with him. I went about in the white lights of both Murray Hill and
+Greenwich Village for about one hundred and eighty-five evenings, and
+then I fled back to my garden and the poplars--and my anxiety. I thought
+I had come home to be free and I found the same old chains. And then
+had come Nickols' telegram of pursuit in the midnight after I had stood
+by in the shadow and watched a strong man pray and a weak man battle
+with himself. I was frightened, frightened at the future, and what was
+going to help me?
+
+"I don't actually understand a word of Gregory Goodloe's sermons, really
+understand them, I mean, but it helps me to see that somebody truly
+believes that there is something somewhere that will straighten out
+tangles--in life as well as thread."
+
+Harriet broke in on my still hunt into my own and other people's inner
+shrines as she snapped a bit of tangled purple silk thread, knotted it
+and began all over again on the violet.
+
+"I don't care what he preaches about--he's soothing and I need a little
+repose in my life after--Oh, what is the matter now?" And as she
+finished speaking Nell Morgan arose and went with the Suckling asquirm
+in her arms to meet the large noise that was arriving down the front
+walk.
+
+The delegation was headed by young Charlotte, whose blue eyes flamed
+across a very tip-tilted nose that bespoke mischief. Jimmy stolidly
+brought up the rear with small Sue clinging loyally to his dirty little
+paddie, which she only let go to run and bury her cornsilk topknot in
+Harriet's outspread arms, where she was engulfed into safety until only
+the most delicious dimpled pink knees protruded above dusty white socks
+and equally dusty white canvas sandals. Though within a few months of
+four, Sue had discovered Harriet, and never failed to take advantage of
+her.
+
+"What is the matter?" again demanded Nell, as the vocal chords of
+Charlotte ceased reverberating and her countenance resumed a more normal
+color and expression.
+
+"A rock flew and the minister's window got broked." Charlotte gave forth
+this announcement with a diplomacy that might have been admirable
+exerted in a juster cause.
+
+"Who had the rock?" demanded the mother sternly.
+
+"Jimmy," was the decided answer, given with a threatening glance at the
+son of the house of Morgan, who quailed in his socks and sandals and
+began an attempt to screw one of his toes under one of the flagstones of
+the walk. I knew in an instant that that rock had never left the hand of
+small James, but the clash of Nell's wits with young Charlotte is so
+constant that at times the maternal ones are dulled. The accused must
+have psychically scented my sympathy, for he lifted large, scared,
+pleading eyes to mine for a brief second and then dropped them again. I
+went to the rescue.
+
+"Sue, who broke the window?" I asked, as I extricated the four-year-old
+witness from Harriet's chiffon and violets. I doubted if young Susan had
+attained the years of prevarication as yet. I was right.
+
+"Tarlie," was the positive answer. "Boom--book--crk!" was the graphic
+description of the crash she added as she squirmed back among the
+violets and the needles and the thread.
+
+"Charlotte!" exclaimed Nell, in real despair.
+
+"Jimmy did have the rock in his pocket, and he just lent it to me to
+throw at a bird right above the window. It was a nice round one, and he
+brought it from home to see if he could kill anything. It most killed
+the minister, and the rock is a little bluggy. Isn't it, Jimmy? He's
+got it in his pocket for keeps."
+
+"Yes," answered young James, with the brevity with which he usually made
+responses to the loquacity of his sister.
+
+"Do you mean that you hit Mr. Goodloe, as well as broke the window?"
+demanded Nell in still more horror, as she came down two of the front
+steps.
+
+"He didn't mind," answered Charlotte. "He liked it, because he made us
+both learn a verse of a hymn to sing for punish, and Sue can sing it,
+too. Come on, Sue!" and before any of us could recover from our horror
+at the violence the young parson had suffered at the hands of the
+marauders, Charlotte had lined the other two up on either hand and begun
+her exhibition of the benefit arising from the throwing of the rock. It
+was a very good example of the good that may result from evil, which is
+one of the puzzling reverses of one of the Christian tenets.
+
+    "'Work, for the night is coming,
+    Work through the morning hours,
+    Work while the dew is sparkling,
+    Work 'mid springing flowers,'"
+
+trilled Charlotte in a high, buzzy young voice, while Jimmy piped in a
+few notes lower. Baby Sue's little, clear jumble of words in perfect
+tune was so bewitchingly sweet that Harriet again engulfed her, while
+the outraged mother, not so easily beguiled, sailed down the steps and
+around through the garden toward the chapel, driving the two older
+offenders before her to the scene of the crime.
+
+"Who is going to help Nell train up liars and murderers into good
+citizens?" I asked myself in my depths, as I joined with the others in
+the admiring laugh at young Charlotte's dramatic powers.
+
+"Mr. Goodloe is the most wonderful thing I ever saw with kiddies," said
+Jessie Litton, as she rose to her feet to begin leave-taking. "Yes, I
+must go, for father expects me to luncheon," she added, at my
+remonstrance.
+
+"I'm going to kidnap Sue while I can, and I may never bring her back. I
+must fly!" said Harriet, and she departed hastily to the small roadster
+she had parked beside the gate. "Come on, Letitia, and let me take you
+home," she called over her shoulder, and Letitia followed to secure the
+short spin around the corner to the old Cockrell home, which was set
+back from the street behind a tall hedge of waxy-leaved Cherokee roses.
+Thus almost in the twinkling of an eye I was left alone, which state,
+however, did not last more than a few seconds, for around the corner of
+the house from the chapel, from which direction the whole world seemed
+to be going or coming, arrived Mrs. Elsie Spurlock, beaming the welcome
+to me that had always found a ready response.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DEEP DIGGING
+
+
+And in another twinkling of eyes, both of mine and hers, I had taken her
+bundle from her, seated her in the largest rocking chair, and she had
+untied her bonnet strings, which denoted that she had come for a genuine
+visit.
+
+"Well, dearie, dearie me, the sight of you is good for tired eyes,
+Charlotte," she bumbled in her rich, deep old voice. As she spoke she
+tucked a white wisp of a curl back into place beneath the second water
+wave that protruded from under the little white widow's ruche in her
+bonnet and continued to beam at me. "I met Nellie Morgan and her
+Annarugans hurrying to pray a pardon from Mr. Goodloe for that rock
+which might have killed him, if thrown an inch to the right, instead of
+only nicking that yellow head of his, the Lord be praised!"
+
+"What was that same Lord doing when he let the rock fly from
+Charlotte's hand to within an inch of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's life,
+Mother Spurlock?" I asked her, with the old warfare over the same old
+subject rising at the very first minute of our meeting. I have wondered
+sometimes in the last few years if the wrestling with me over her faith
+was not ordained for the purpose of strengthening Mother Spurlock's
+powers of patient argument. She is the only person in the world to whom
+I speak from the depths, and the relief of her sweetened and seasoned
+wisdom is the straw at which I often clutch to save myself.
+
+"I surmise that He guided the hand of that child so that the verse of
+the hymn, and the chastisement of the rod I hope Nellie will inflict,
+might work together for her good. All of us must at times let a little
+blood for another's good--heart's blood, very often, not just that from
+our scalps or shins." And as she answered me without a moment's
+hesitation she enveloped me in loving question. "Are you always going to
+occupy the anxious seat in front of the Lord, child? Still, sit as long
+as you like and go on questioning Him. You'll find the answer."
+
+"The whole town seems to have gone into your fold and left me on the
+'anxious seat' alone," I answered, as I drew my chair nearer to her and
+took her lined, strong old hand in mine.
+
+"That Billy Harvey passes the collection plate up the aisle on Sunday
+and plays poker all Saturday night till Sunday morning down at the Last
+Chance, in a room in front of the one in which poor Pat Burns, who
+carries a hod for his money, loses his all. Mary Burns sews all day and
+half the night to feed him and the children, but she puts her pittance
+into Billy's plate every Sunday, and I know that she gets the strength
+to go on from day to day from the words that come from the same pulpit
+he sets the plate behind. That is, we call the table out at your Country
+Club a pulpit, until we get our own in the chapel from which to praise
+the Lord. So you see that there are some sheep who have a taint of goat
+hair in their wool still left--I won't say with you--out in the world.
+And speaking of that world, have you come back to say good-bye to us?"
+
+"I don't know yet, Mother Spurlock," I answered her candidly. "I ran
+away from that world, but it is coming after me on Friday."
+
+"You'll be sent into the vineyard where you are most needed, and there
+you'll serve," she said, with a far-away look coming into her eyes as
+she let her glances roam out to the dim hills of Paradise Ridge. A flood
+of love and reverence rose in my heart for her as I sat quiet and let
+her spirit roam. Mother Spurlock had been the gayest young matron in
+Goodloets, living in the great old Spurlock home with handsome,
+rollicking young George Spurlock for a husband, and three babies around
+her knees, and in one short year she had been left with only one large
+and three tiny graves out in the placid home of the dead, beyond the
+river bend. The babies had been taken by that relentless child foe,
+diphtheria, and young George, reckless with grief, had let a half-broken
+horse break his neck. The young woman, aged by her grief, had sold the
+great house to the next of kin and moved down into an old brick cottage
+that sat "beside the road" in a gnarled old apple orchard, and had
+become the "friend to man." Through the orchard and past the door of the
+Little House ran the path that led from the Settlement to the Town, and
+through her heart and hands flowed most of the love and charity that
+bound the rich and poor, brother to brother. Mother Spurlock was never
+without a bundle in which she carried labor of the poor sold for the
+gold of the rich, or gifts from the rich back to the needy. I thought of
+all the long years of service in the vineyard into which her tragedy had
+thrown her, and I bent and picked up the bundle at our feet and held it
+with reverent hands.
+
+"Just a few baby things that Nellie Morgan gave me to fix up a poor
+little Mother Only in the village," she came back from her reverie to
+say cheerfully, as she saw me with the bundle in my hand. Mother
+Spurlock always refers to the children without the sanction of the law
+for their birth as the Mother Onlies, and somehow, when she speaks it,
+the name carries a world of tenderness into the heart of the hearer.
+
+"Whose now?" I asked her gently, because in a way Mother Spurlock and I
+bore one another's burdens of spirit.
+
+"Hattie Garrett's, and it's a week old now. It is one of the saddest
+things that ever happened in the village, and we none of us understand.
+You remember, she taught the district school down in the Settlement."
+
+"As none of us understood about Martha Ensley. Is that all a mystery
+still?" I asked, and I stroked the bundle of tiny garments.
+
+"Yes, and now she's gone nobody knows where, day before yesterday.
+Jacob, her father, was rough and violent with her, but only from grief,
+and she forgave all that. I'm troubled sorely, for she is gentle, and
+not one to fight the world alone. She must have gone to the city, the
+good Lord help her!"
+
+"He will--He is," I answered quickly, then stopped because I knew I must
+not tell what I had overheard--should I say in the confessional?
+
+"Praise God! to hear you speak such words. Sometimes a body's faith gets
+out of her heart past her mind and proclaims itself before the higher
+criticism gets a chance to throttle it," the invincible old warrior
+exclaimed with a delighted twinkle in her young blue eyes at having
+caught me with religious goods on me. "He will, He will take _care_ of
+us all, not that He doesn't expect us to put in about sixteen hours of
+the day helping Him to do it for ourselves and others. That reminds me
+that I seem to be growing to this chair. Luella May Spain has got a nice
+place to work in the telegraph station with Mr. Pate, and if she's to
+look neat she needs a few white shirt waists. I _could_ get them in this
+bundle. If I get too many things from you and Harriet this morning to
+carry myself, Hampton will take me down the hill in his car when he goes
+to lunch, not that I wouldn't be frightened to death to ride with him
+except on the Lord's mission."
+
+"Do you think that fact would keep Hampton from being run down by
+Harriet when she cuts corners bias, as she insists on doing?" I asked,
+as I started in the door to procure the toilet necessaries to Luella
+May's telegraphic career, whether it devastated my supply of tennis
+clothes or not. Nothing that any woman or any member of her family in
+Goodloets wears or eats is secure from Mother Spurlock, and we have all
+submitted to the fact with the greatest docility.
+
+"I know it does; and three shirt waists will be enough if you add a neat
+black belt," was the answer that followed me through the hall. "Bless
+my life, Nickols Powers, I was glad to see you at prayer meeting last
+week, even if you and William Cockrell were just caught up out at your
+Club in your chess game," I heard her exclaim, to draw a laughing answer
+in father's most genial rumble. Then I heard him call loudly for Dabney,
+and when Sallie descended with my bundle, that contained a complete
+telegraphic outfit for Luella May which showed a decided leaning to
+tennis style, she met Dabney on the front threshold with a rough parcel
+from which I saw a shirt sleeve and a blue serge trouser leg protrude.
+
+"Thank you, Nickols. Since his accident, Bill Hanks has thinned out to
+just about your size. Now he can go back to his job neatly and
+respectably clad," Mother Spurlock was saying.
+
+"The citizens of Goodloets had better take the habit of wearing a double
+suit of clothing for fear of having Elsie Spurlock strip them in public
+to beyond the law," father grumbled in great pleasure, after he had
+packed her and her bundles in Hampton's car. Father always calls Mother
+Spurlock "Elsie," and once or twice I have seen a faint blush creep to
+her cheeks and a glint flash from her eyes, but he blandly goes on
+doing it. I wonder--
+
+"Father," I said, as we went slowly up the front walk together, "Nickols
+will be here on Friday; will you have Dabney get his rooms in the north
+wing ready for him? He likes that light, and he can use the long green
+room for a studio when he sketches."
+
+"That's good," answered father heartily. He likes Nickols and Nickols
+manages him beautifully, by giving him all he wants to drink whenever he
+suggests it, even introducing him to new Manhattan beverages. There is
+perpetual war between Dabney, who knows father's nervous limit, and
+Nickols, who doesn't care just as long as things and human beings that
+surround him are kept pleasant. It is all right for the rest of the
+world to have delirium tremens, just so they do it out of his sight and
+hearing.
+
+"I wonder just what Nickols will think of Goodloe," father added, with a
+slightly strained laugh. "You thought he would be enraged at Goodloe and
+me for building the chapel and weeding the garden. Perhaps he will be
+unhappy."
+
+"I don't believe your weeding would make anybody unhappy, father," I
+answered with a laugh, choosing to ignore the issue of the building of
+the chapel until Nickols was upon the scene and we could decide just
+what to do.
+
+"Been over the whole garden twice and eaten several meals in the sweat
+of my brow--that is, I took a cold shower before coming to the table, my
+daughter," father said, and he looked ashamed of himself for being proud
+of his own spurt of normality. I caught my breath, but I was wise enough
+not to show my astonishment. "Goodloe is the most insinuating person I
+ever met, and I advise you to be careful. He makes men do just as he
+wants them to, and I should say that women would eat out of his hand."
+
+"I suppose I ought to eat a bite or two from his fingers to pay for all
+the work he has got out of you and Dabney. I never saw the garden so
+beautiful or so early. Look, father, the peonies are budding, two weeks
+ahead of their usual time!"
+
+"They'd be damned ungrateful not to grow industriously, after the way
+Dab and I have sprained our old backs spading and feeding them according
+to spiritual direction that stood over us with a rake," answered
+father, with proud if profane enthusiasm. There was a faint pink glow in
+his haggard, thin cheeks, and he took from his pocket a huge knife I had
+never seen him use before and began carefully to cut away a few dead
+twigs from a budding rose vine.
+
+"Your mother always put a rose from this vine at my plate for breakfast,
+and you got yours from that pink bush over there by the sun dial," he
+said, with a softness in his voice that I had not heard since my tenth
+summer, in which my mother had died. I tingled all over, but held on to
+myself.
+
+"You go tell that old black lazybones to come here with his spade this
+minute. I told him about digging in this mulch yesterday before the
+dahlias sprouted, and he hasn't done it. I'm not going to do it for him,
+like I put the fertilizer around the lilacs, just to save him from
+Goodloe. Tell him to come right here to me, and not to let grass grow in
+his shoe tracks," and father picked up a hoe from the walk beside the
+neglected dahlias and began doing the work he had just declared against.
+I fled around to the kitchen, and something lent wings to my feet.
+
+"Oh, Dab, what does it mean that father is really taking an interest in
+the garden?" I demanded of the faithful old black friend, whom I found
+enveloped in a kitchen apron helping his wife bring the dinner to a
+serving head.
+
+"Praise God, his salvation am commenced, if it don't kill me before he
+gits it," answered Dab, as he put his hand to his back and groaned.
+
+"They has been jest one-half a demijohn of devil heart whisky ordered up
+outen that cellar in over a month, and I b'lieve this here no account
+nigger drunk a pint of that," Mammy added to his answer. "Last month it
+was two demijohns they had up, and before that it was three or four.
+That parson done it with readin' and talkin' and hoein'. Glory! I wants
+to hold my breath and shout at the same time, and I would if I could
+trust this pullet in the skillet to either you or Dabney whilst I did
+it. The Lord wouldn't listen to no shoutin' from a cook whose chicken
+was frying black while she did her praisin'," and as she spoke Mammy
+began a low humming, swaying from table to stove with a rhythm in the
+swing of her fat body that had a certain dignified beauty to it. It was
+crude emotion, and I knew it, but I felt it work in my own body as I
+let the significance of what she had told me about the lessening amount
+of whiskey father had been consuming add itself to the scene upon the
+back porch and sink fully into my consciousness. I don't know what might
+have happened to my shouting Methodist grandmother's worldly though
+emotional descendant if father's voice, sharp and clear, with a note of
+command I had forgotten it possessed, had not interrupted me.
+
+"Charlotte! Dab!" it called; and we both answered with all speed.
+
+"That Parson Goodloe have got the power to draw the teeth of seven
+devils, and you both consider the words of his mouth or he'll git the
+teeth outen yourn," Mammy called after us in ambiguous warning.
+
+And upon our arrival on the scene of action being executed upon the
+dahlias, we found the commander of the devils awaiting us, though in his
+hands was no forked instrument of dentistry, but in one he held a large
+slice of rye bread thickly spread with butter, and the other was
+disarmed by a ripe red apple. As we drew near he finished a direction to
+father and took a huge bite out of the slab of bread that left a gap as
+wide as one would expect a Harpeth jaguar to make.
+
+"Harrowing deep makes great growth in all plant life," he was saying
+past the slice of bread with agricultural prosiness to father, who had
+completely sweated down the very high and stiff collar which he always
+wore swathed in a wide tie of black after a Henry Clay cut, in a savage
+attack with the hoe upon the mulch that was smothering the dahlias in
+richness.
+
+"Does the same deep digging result hold true in biological and psychic
+life?" puffed father, and then he leaned on his hoe and looked up at the
+young man towering over him. In his eyes was the appeal of disappointed
+age calling to the ideals of flaming strength and youth in the
+deep-jeweled eyes that answered with a look of passionate tenderness as
+the parson poised the bread for another bite.
+
+"'Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,' Mr. Powers, is the direct data we
+have on that subject," he said. Then he, for the first time, observed
+the approach of Dabney and myself, of which his widening smile and the
+quick lowering of the slab of rye pone gave notice to father, who
+exploded accordingly.
+
+"You black son-of-a-gun! Why didn't you rake off these dahlias as I told
+you to yesterday? Now you get his hide, Parson!" was the greeting that
+Dabney received, while I was ignored by all concerned.
+
+"That hinge in your back rusty again, Dabney?" questioned the parson,
+with leonine mildness.
+
+"I been upsot by my young mistis coming home," answered Dabney, with a
+quick glance at me as if to indicate me as a substantial excuse for any
+crimes. I stood convicted, for I do use Dabney continually in all my
+hospitalities.
+
+"We understand, Dabney," was the answer he got from the feeding Jaguar,
+who gave me that glint of a laugh that I had learned to expect and
+to--dread. I knew what he meant to imply, and I also knew that he knew
+that I understood that he considered me a disturbing element. Then he
+again raised the half-demolished hunk of bread to his mouth, stopped and
+regarded the apple in meditative indecision. From head to heels he was
+clothed in the most exquisite white flannel and buckskin tennis
+clothes, but for all their civilized worldliness he resembled nothing so
+much as a feeding king of the forest in the poise of his wonderful head
+and equally wonderful body. I glanced quickly at his face with its
+gentle, deep, comprehending lines, in positive fear of him, and I found
+reassurance in the smile that curled his strong red mouth and glinted at
+me from his brilliant eyes under dull gold. Then, after the smile, he
+decided for the apple rather than further conversation, and was just
+going to set his white teeth in its rosy cheek when I stopped him with
+an almost involuntary exclamation.
+
+"Don't!" I pleaded. "Dinner is just ready, and you'll spoil it if you
+eat all that bread and butter and apple." Just exactly a week before, at
+almost that exact hour, the Reverend Gregory Goodloe had refused the cup
+of tea I had stood holding for him in my hand for five minutes on the
+front porch of the Poplars, and I had taken a resolve that never would
+he again receive a food invitation from me. I didn't count Mammy's
+"snack" eaten on the Harpeth adventure. I didn't understand myself and
+my sudden rush of dismay at the idea of a spoiled dinner for him, but I
+couldn't stop myself as I added:
+
+"Mammy has apple dumplings and hard sauce; please don't--I mean please
+_do_ come in to dinner with us."
+
+"Thank you, but as you see I've about dined," he answered me, as with a
+laugh he held out his fragments. "Jefferson was feeling badly and I sent
+him to bed instead of the parsonage kitchen." Mammy had told me that the
+Reverend Mr. Goodloe had taken hers and Dabney's cherished and perfectly
+worthless only son as his sole domestic dependence, and Mammy had added
+the fact that Jeff had "shot nary crap since the parson rescued him from
+the jaw of the jail."
+
+"Huh," ejaculated Dabney over the hoe he had taken from father and was
+using at his direction while father lined the border beside the bed with
+his sharp spade. I knew the contempt in his voice was for the illness of
+Jefferson, and the Reverend Mr. Goodloe and I both laughed as he took
+the last bite of the brown slab and then held out the unbitten side of
+the apple to me.
+
+"You eat your fruit with me, not in dumplings with hard sauce," he said,
+and there was a wooing note in his voice as if he pleaded for that
+friendliness from me to heal a hurt.
+
+"No, _I_ won't eat out of your hand," I answered, with a cool emphasis
+on the "I." And I looked him straight in the eyes, for I wanted him to
+know that I had thoroughly understood his refusal of my invitation
+couched so gently, but which I considered in reality haughty and
+resentful, especially as I had been his guest in his car. "We'll wait
+until you get your shower, father, and not much longer," I said to
+father, as I turned and went along the flagstones to the steps that led
+to the balcony upon which opened the long windows of the dining room. I
+was furious and I was hurt.
+
+At times I become acutely conscious that I am very imperious, but it is
+not entirely my fault. My friends have depended upon my clear head, in
+which father's brain seems to work with a kind of feminine vigor, and I
+have always felt that the superior force with which I have loved and
+cherished them made it all right. I've always stood by them and used
+myself mercilessly for their exigencies, and I suppose I have ruled them
+as mercilessly. I rarely encounter another will, and to clash into one
+as strong as mine drew the sparks of my nature. The blaze was soon over,
+but I--smouldered.
+
+During dinner I was deeply interested in father's plans for my garden,
+which brilliantly carried the plans Nickols and I had made to what I saw
+in another year would be a marvelously artistic completeness. But under
+the joy of hearing him talk as I had never really heard him since I was
+old enough to appreciate his scintillating delicious choice of words and
+phrases, I was hot and sore at the thought of my duty to render
+gratitude where gratitude was due for having him like that.
+
+"It will be perfectly wonderful, father, and Nickols had not worked it
+out to anything like that completeness. He will be wild about it, but
+won't it take a lot of money? And where did you get your inspiration?" I
+asked the question, though I hated the answer I knew it must receive.
+
+"The plans are entirely my own," answered father, with a pleased flush
+making even brighter his dulled eyes and cheeks, faintly glowing from
+the shower at which Dabney had officiated a few minutes before. I had
+not failed to notice that we had sat down and were halfway through
+dinner and father's hand had not motioned Dabney towards the decanter
+and ice and siphon on the sideboard. "I must confess that the
+inspiration came from a kind of rage when Goodloe said to me how much it
+was to be regretted that all the great gardens in the North are being
+made out of a sort of patchwork of English, French, Italian and even
+Japanese influences. You couldn't expect anything more of the
+inhabitants of the part of the country in the veins of whose people flow
+just about that mixture of blood, but in the Harpeth Valley we have been
+Americans for two and a half centuries, and I'll show 'em an American
+garden if it does unhinge both mine and Dabney's backs and make Cockrell
+swear I'm crazy when he audits my accounts once every month. No, Madam,
+your own grandmother and great-grandmother, in conjunction with
+Goodloe's maternal ancestors, conceived and laid out the beginning of
+the great American garden, and we will combine to produce it."
+
+"What about Nickols' plans?" I asked, trying hard to raise indignation
+in my heart and voice at the thought of Nickols Morris Powers' work,
+for which the people of wealth in the North were beginning fairly to
+clamor, being criticized and laid aside at the inspiration of the
+Methodist parson across the lilac hedge. And I succeeded better than I
+expected, for I saw father lose color and tremble with his own rage,
+which he always quells with drink.
+
+"That sunken garden is Italian, and I'm going to tear it out and
+put--Oh, my daughter; forgive me, but I forgot, in this queer nature
+frenzy that has come over me of late and which I do not at all
+understand, that the garden is yours, was your mother's and
+grandmother's. So far the plans have just been begun, and nothing that
+you and Nickols have done--Dabney, pour me three fingers of the 1875
+Bourbon." And in a second I saw father grow white and shaking with
+mortification at what he felt to be an unmannerly trespass upon
+another's rights. My father has been a drunkard for nearly twenty years,
+but he is still a great gentleman. Slowly he drank the whiskey, every
+drop of which seemed to go to my heart like cold lead.
+
+"But, father!" I exclaimed, determined to win him back. Dabney was
+putting the silver stopper in the decanter over by the sideboard, and I
+thought I saw a sob shake his bent old shoulders as his black hands
+trembled. "I'd like to know if I'm not as purely American as you are,
+and have I not the same right to want, demand and work for an American
+nationalism, even in a garden, as you have? I'll have you know, sir,
+that the future of the nation is in the hands of the women. We can
+produce pure Americans or let the whole country go hybrid." And as I
+spoke I let my temper rise to a point which I hoped would shock father
+and take his mind from the decanter and the ice. "I demand that you
+allow me to carry out your plans for my garden, and that you help me do
+it to the limit of the hinges in your back and Dabney's. And, Dabney,
+don't let me hear another word about that hinge until those dahlias are
+in bloom. Also get me a half dozen bottles of dynamite to blow out that
+Italian garden. I never did like it."
+
+"Yes'm," answered Dabney, meekly but comprehendingly, for he hastily
+flung a napkin over the ice and gently set the decanter back in its
+rack. "But dynamite, it comes in sticks and not in bottles. And it
+would shake the roots of them old poplars clean most down to hell."
+
+"How'll we get that sunken garden out, then, father?" I asked, and I saw
+the life and color come back to his face in a flood of humor.
+
+"We might try filling it in," he answered, and then we both laughed at
+ourselves, with Dabney joining in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE TRISTAN LOVE SONG
+
+
+After dinner father and I sat out on the porch in the soft, warm breeze
+that waved a misty spring moonlight around us, and talked garden until
+after ten o'clock. He was brilliant and delightful, but three times he
+made trips to ice bowl and decanter on the sideboard.
+
+"It will be a great relief and happiness to me if Nickols does sanction
+and set the seal of artistic approval upon our plans," he said, with
+feverish but happy eyes. "You see, Nickols will represent the
+cosmopolitan in judgment upon the normally developed insular. I remember
+once that Mr. Justice Harlan said that in an opinion on freight rates I
+had sent up to him I had represented both the cosmopolitan and the
+insular interest with astonishing equity, and I told him that I
+considered that it took at least six generations of insular mind culture
+to see any kind of national equity. The same thing holds good with a
+garden. It takes the sixth generation on a piece of land to produce a
+garden, and then it has to be laid out around a library full of the
+ideals of poet and scholar. In about three years I can, with your
+permission, present the American nation with a garden that will
+represent the best ideals of Americans; and I must go to bed if I expect
+to get up and hunt the early worm. I can never decide which is the
+harder work, the capture of that creature of tradition or the arousing
+of Dabney to perform that task. You, Dabney."
+
+"Yes, sir," came a sleepy groan from just within the door, and in a
+second the old black face was lit up with father's candle until the
+white wool above shone like a halo as it appeared from out the gloom.
+And I sat and watched the two old gentlemen, one black and one white,
+toil slowly up the steps and down the wide hall of the Poplars.
+
+"Father _must_ come back; the nation needs him," I said fiercely under
+my breath as I noticed that in Dabney's hand swung the ice bucket where
+I had been accustomed to see it swing for years, but which I had not
+seen him carry before since I came home. "And that's how _you_ help him
+fight to come back," I arraigned myself with bitter scorn. "You have no
+faith nor spiritual sources yourself, and you throw him back into
+degradation when something is helping him crawl out. What's helping him?
+No matter what it is, you are a coward to obstruct it."
+
+And for a long hour I sat thus raging at myself and questioning
+hopelessly, while the young moon rose higher and higher over the tops of
+the silvery poplars and young spring slipped about in the lights and
+shadows, invisible except for perfumed wreathings of gossamer mist.
+Above, I heard father pacing up and down his rooms, slowly, almost
+feebly. Sometimes he would hesitate; then I would hear him stop beside
+the window, where I knew the ice bowl and the decanter were placed upon
+a table which had stood beside the head of his bed so burdened since my
+early childhood. I had always dreaded his moroseness and instinctively
+felt the cause of it. I had never really loved him until just the last
+few days, and now I felt my love rise in a tide that threatened to
+overwhelm me.
+
+"Oh, I found him, and now I've thrown him away," I sobbed to myself.
+Then, as I sat listening, I heard the faltering steps come out into the
+hall above, descend the steps one by one, go through the dark dining
+room groping pitifully, and down the side steps out into the beloved
+garden. Silently I watched the tall figure with the white hair silvered
+radiantly by the moonlight go slowly down the path, past the old
+graybeard poplars, and even up to the lilac hedge that ran as a bulwark
+in front of the dark chapel door, which I could see was ajar as it
+always is.
+
+"He's going for help," I muttered to myself, and I felt the padding of
+fear pursuing me, while also something of the Methodist grandmother
+within me began a queer calling and a tightening at my throat.
+
+Then something happened that interested me so that I lost all personal
+anxiety. Father stopped beside the hedge and picked up something from
+the grass. I saw it was a long, heavy hoe. Walking over to a long bed of
+early roses he and Dabney had been fertilizing in the late afternoon, he
+bent feebly and began to dig the food into their roots. As he swung the
+long handle, each blow upon the soft earth became more decided. I crept
+down behind the old snowball bush to be nearer him; I didn't dare go to
+him in his fight, because I had in my selfish heedlessness brought it
+all on, but in a little while he was not alone, for a bent old figure
+with grizzled white wool sticking out from under a red flannel nightcap
+came quietly along the path with a hoe in his hand, fell in directly
+behind his master, and began a rhythmic blow-answering-blow contest with
+the fragrant earth and the demon within the man. For at least an hour
+the two old friends worked up and down the long bed, until I could see
+father begin to totter with weakness.
+
+"Now, come on, Mas' Nick, honey, and go to bed. I'll pour a bucket of
+cistern water over you and rub you down so as you'll sleep like a bug in
+a rug," the staunch old comrade crooned, with a mother note in his
+voice, as he took father's heavy hoe and shouldered it with his.
+
+"I think evening exercise is good for me, Dabney," answered father with
+all the dignity and command come back into his voice. "Put both those
+hoes in the tool house this time, and I'll not tell Mr. Goodloe you
+left one down by the lilac hedge."
+
+"Yes, sir, thanky, sir, fer not telling him," answered Dabney, as he
+followed his master to the tool house under the back steps, deposited
+the garden implements where he was directed, and then again followed his
+idol in through the long dining room window and was lost in the shadow.
+
+I went back to the front steps, again sank down, put my arms on my
+knees, and let my head fall upon my clasped hands. As I sat there alone,
+with the dark house yawning behind me in its emptiness, someone sat down
+beside me and laid a warm, strong hand on my interlaced and strained
+fingers for just about half a second.
+
+"Please forgive me about the apple dumplings and the hard sauce," a
+merry, very lovely voice pleaded.
+
+"I went out to Old Harpeth with you when you asked me; but I loathe
+going to church--I haven't been in one since I was strong enough to
+rebel--and I'm not going to yours," was the apology I graciously offered
+in return for that about the apple dumplings. "But I'd pay fifty
+dollars for a tenth row seat to hear you sing Tristan in the
+Metropolitan any day if I had to go hungry for a week to pay for it," I
+added, as I laughed as softly as he had pleaded. All the sorrow and
+strain of the last hours had vanished at the touch of his hand, and I
+felt like an impish, teasing child.
+
+"I'll sing some of it for you now, if you'll give fifty cents to Mother
+Spurlock for the Children's Day Picnic. And it'll be a bargain you are
+getting," was the unexpected offer I encountered.
+
+"And a freezer of vanilla ice cream to boot," I assented, generously.
+
+And then something happened to me the like of which I know never
+happened to anybody in all the world, and that could happen only the
+once to me. Gregory Goodloe drew a little closer to me and bent his
+great gold head until his face was just off my left shoulder, and in his
+powerful, rich, fascinating voice, which he muted down in a way that
+made it sound as if he were singing through a golden cloud, he sang
+Tristan's immortal love agony in a way that shut out all the rest of the
+universe and left me alone with him in a space swayed by his pleading
+until my mortal body shook in actual pain.
+
+"Don't! I can't stand it!" I gasped, as I seized his wrist in my strong
+hands and wrung it. "Stop!"
+
+The last tender note breathed itself into the air that seemed to hold it
+in a long caress until it died away, and sobs shook me as I held on
+desperately to his wrist. I felt that I _must_ be comforted. And I was!
+Again the gentle fingers were laid over mine for a still smaller
+fraction of a second, and then again the beautiful, clear voice began to
+sing to me, just to me, out of the whole world.
+
+"'Abide with me, fast falls the even tide,'" he chanted, and then waited
+while my sobs died away and I let go my drowning grasp on his wrist.
+
+"That's just what I mean. That's just why I wouldn't have any more
+respect for myself if I should go to your church than if I joined in one
+of Mammy's foot-washings down at the river and fell in a fit of shouting
+in which it took two burly coons to 'hold my spirit down,' as she
+describes those gymnastics to me. I hate you and I hate my friends for
+indulging in religion, because it is just as 'potent an agent of
+intoxication' as exists to-day, and it blinds us to the need of work
+along scientific lines for the immediate improvement of the race. What
+right have we to intoxicate reason with religion? If religion is
+anything it must be reason." I fairly hurled my words of half-baked
+skepticism at him, with the vision of father and Dabney digging in the
+garden, still in my eyes.
+
+"I felt just as you do about it a year ago to-day," he answered me
+quietly. "As you state the case of religion as emotion versus reason, it
+doesn't exist. Religion is reason plus emotion, and when you combine the
+two the eyes of your soul are open, whereas they had been closed. Nobody
+can tell you about it, but you begin really to live when you see and
+comprehend. Yes, it is going to take all the scientific reason the world
+possesses to start its salvation, but it will not get far without
+'emotion,' as you call what I _know_ is love of God, and, through that
+love, compassion for man."
+
+"The assumption that every man is blind who does not believe as you do,
+stops all argument," I said scornfully.
+
+"I didn't come to talk religion with you; I came over to get that apple
+dumpling off my conscience, as I couldn't digest it because it wasn't
+there. I preach twice, on Sunday and on Wednesday night, and I'm in my
+study behind the altar every afternoon that I'm not playing tennis. I'll
+be there any time by appointment." The worldly and protective raillery
+in that young Methodist minister's voice almost interrupted my religious
+researches, but I was in depths that were strange to me, and I was
+floundering for a line out.
+
+"I'll never be there," I flared at him, then went on with my
+floundering. "If a man is blind, how can he gain the sight that you
+arrogate to yourself?"
+
+"A great man once prayed, 'Lord, help thou my unbelief,'" was the gentle
+answer in which was that queer note of apostolic surety with which I
+heard him address the woman in the garden that night.
+
+"I can't pray--there's nothing there," I said in a very small voice that
+I could scarcely recognize as my own. "Oh, I mean that we are all
+floundering, and where can we get the lifeline? Where did you get the
+line that you think will pull you out of the vortex?"
+
+Then for a long moment he and I sat again involved in the emptiness of
+the universe that Tristan's love song had opened for us, and I knew that
+with ruthless feet I had entered his Holy of Holies and was being
+allowed to stand across the threshold.
+
+"Forgive me," I gasped.
+
+"I never felt that I could tell it before," he said, slowly, and the
+bounds of the emptiness retreated still further away as he turned so
+that he sat facing me and again bent his dull gold head closer to mine.
+In a second I knew why in my mind I had been calling him a Harpeth
+jaguar. It was just my pictorial expression for the word freedom, the
+freedom that comes from power. I knew that mentally and bodily I was
+looking upon the first free man I had ever encountered, and I was
+abashed.
+
+"Don't tell me," I said, with a gentleness in my voice I had never heard
+before, and that came from something that I felt to be strangely like
+meekness, though I had never before met that emotion in myself.
+
+"You know the romance of my father's life," the soft voice went on,
+speaking as if I had not interrupted him, "but nobody knows the tragedy.
+Love for my mother came upon him like an arrow shot out of ambush, and
+he married into a worldly, pleasure-loving, agnostic circle of people
+who all adored and flattered him until he--he became confused and
+doubting. He had transgressed the law: 'yoke not yourselves with
+unbelievers,' and he suffered. She never understood. It killed him, and
+when he had been dead nearly twenty years I found the diary he kept the
+months before he died. It was last year, just after her death. It was a
+cry to me, who at that time was a mere babe, and it--it lighted the
+flame he had almost let go out. As I read, the apostolic call came to me
+and I answered. I was starting to the front in France, and I went on. My
+year there was a series of experiences that gave me my surety. One day
+it came more clearly than ever. I had gone out into one of the trenches
+of the first line, because I am so strong that I can carry any man back
+to the stretchers across my back or in my arms. I have carried two at a
+time. There were nineteen men in the trench, and I made the twentieth.
+Suddenly a machine gun found the range and mowed them all down like
+cornstalks or wheat heads. Only I was left standing, bleeding under my
+left ribs. I raised my voice and praised God for my surety of
+immortality, and then fell. While I was practically dying in the
+hospital with a clip in my lung I got suddenly and unaccountably well
+and strong, and felt I must come back to try and help others to see what
+we must see to assure every man of his immortality. When the race
+awakens to that fact there will be no more use for machine guns. I may
+not help much, but I can only try. Perhaps I do only work through the
+emotions as yet, but I believe that my ministry will have its fruits. I
+can wait." And the humility and patience in his voice beat against my
+heart and bruised it so that I cried out.
+
+"Oh, why did you come here?" I positively moaned, as he and I both rose
+and I put out my hand as if to force him out of that aloneness in which
+we stood together.
+
+"America must lead the world in spiritual as well as material
+regeneration, and this is the only real and dispassionate America, with
+no foreign pull on its vitals. You must wake up; the cry has been heard
+to 'Come over and help.' Why do you fight the--"
+
+"I can't help fighting. I must do what I conscientiously believe--" I
+was saying with my hand still outstretched against him, when suddenly
+the still place around us was invaded with a crash and its invisible
+walls thrown down.
+
+"Charlotte!" came in Nickols' languid, fascinating voice that always
+draws me to the edge of his world. "And Greg Goodloe, by all that is
+good and holy--in tennis flannels!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BREASTING THE GALE
+
+
+In the radiant moonlight I saw the lithe muscles of the Jaguar grow taut
+and stiff, and I felt rather than saw his long, strong hands clench
+themselves. I was about to stretch out my arms and ward off something
+that seemed like danger to Nickols, standing down at the bottom of the
+steps, smiling up at us in the moonlight with his mocking, fascinating
+smile, when suddenly the anger seemed to flow away from the body of the
+parson and he smiled down into the upturned eyes with great gentleness
+as we started down the steps together.
+
+"I didn't interrupt the salvation of Charlotte's soul, did I?" Nickols
+asked, as he took my outstretched hand in his left hand and raised it to
+his lips as he held out his right to the Reverend Mr. Goodloe. So real
+had been that fraction of an instant when I had stood between the two
+men that I almost felt the sensation of alarm a second time as I saw
+Nickols' slender, magical, artist's fingers laid in the slim, powerful
+hand of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, but the gentle voice reassured me as
+the Harpeth Jaguar answered the intruder, or what he must have felt to
+be the intruder, for I had something of that feeling myself at the
+advent of my lover at the moment he had chosen for his arrival.
+
+"The trouble began about apple dumplings and hard sauce," I said, as
+quickly as my wits would act.
+
+"How are you, Nickols Powers, since we separated 'somewhere in France,'
+you with your sketch books and I with my hospital stretchers? I got a
+dandy lung clip; did you bring away any lead?" And the parson's voice
+was gentle and cordial and full of a laughing reminiscence.
+
+"Didn't smell powder after I left you," answered Nickols, as we all
+ascended the steps and stood in a group before the door. "I got my books
+full of sketches of bits of treasures that the war might destroy, and
+beat it back to civilization. Did the Madonna of the Red Cross you had
+in tow come across as sentimentally as was threatened?" Nickols' voice
+was as cordial as the Reverend Goodloe's, but something in me made me
+resent the question and the manner it was asked.
+
+"She was killed in a field hospital just a few weeks after we left
+her--'somewhere in France.' She got God's welcome!" was the answer that
+came to the laughing question in a quiet, reverent voice. And as he
+spoke the parson started down the steps, then turned for his farewell.
+
+"That--or sweet oblivion," said Nickols, as he came to the edge of the
+steps and looked down at the Harpeth Jaguar coolly. I again got the
+sense of danger from the tall, lithe figure that stood in the moonlight,
+radiant before us in the shadow. "We'll contest that point warmly while
+we contest the meeting house Charlotte writes me that you planted in our
+garden--of Eden."
+
+"I can contest--if I must," was the serene answer that came back at us
+from over the white silk-clad shoulder. "Good night, both of you, and I
+hope to see you both again soon. Smell the lilacs bursting bud in your
+garden--of Eden!" With which farewell he left us to our greetings.
+
+"That's some man to be lost in the ranks of the shibboleths," said
+Nickols with generous ease, as we watched the last glint of the moon on
+the yellow head disappearing around the corner. "Degrees from three old
+colleges, millions, women lovers in millions, all thrown away to sing
+psalms for a few rustics in little old Goodloets. Can you beat it? But,
+blast him, he can't take away my loving welcome with his fatal beauty,"
+and as he spoke, with a tender laugh Nickols held out his arms to me. I
+went into them and he held me close.
+
+"I couldn't stay away--with Goodloe and the meeting house in the ring
+against me," he whispered, and he tried to raise my head for the kiss I
+had been holding from him all the long winter of our engagement,
+claiming to want it only under the roof of the Poplars. I burrowed my
+face in his shoulder and held to him with such fervor that it was
+impossible for him to raise my head.
+
+"Not yet," was my muffled pleading.
+
+"Again, damn that huge blond giant for being in the way of my getting my
+own on the first-sight wave," said Nickols with a good-humored laugh, as
+he pushed me from him. "Take your time. I like ripe fruit--and kisses.
+Did you say Goodloe had come over to steal apple dumplings and you had
+caught him in the act? I never was so hungry before and one of Mrs.
+Dabney's apple dumplings with that hard sugar stuff smothered with
+cream--well, of course I could wait until breakfast, but I'd be mighty
+weak. Your night train carries no dining car."
+
+"I feel sure that there is at least a half panful in the pantry; let's
+go see," I answered with delight at the practical turn the scene had
+taken, and I led him into the dark house, turned on one or two lights
+and went with him back into the culinary department of the Poplars.
+
+And as I had predicted so we found the larder supplied. With a huge
+plate of the pastry encrusted apples, smothered with all the cream from
+one of Mammy's pans of milk, and a tall bottle from the sideboard,
+Nickols led the way out of the long windows onto the south balcony over
+which the moon, now high in the heavens, poured the radiance of a
+new-toned daylight. I followed him with some glasses and sugar and a
+bowl of cracked ice that I had found in its usual place in the corner of
+the refrigerator.
+
+"Pretty good substitute for the affectionate sweet I thought of all the
+way down from New York," said Nickols with an adorable laugh, as he
+lifted the first spoonful, dripping with cream, to his mouth. Then with
+the food almost bestowed he paused and looked out beyond the garden
+toward the chapel, which loomed up gray and shimmering in the silver
+light.
+
+"Great heavens!" he ejaculated, and for a long minute the spoon was
+poised while his eyes fairly devoured the scene spread out before him
+against the background of Paradise Ridge.
+
+"If you don't like it we can get rid of it," I said, as I poured his
+drink over the ice tinkling against the side of the glass.
+
+"Not like it!" exclaimed Nickols, as he rose with the spoonful of
+dumplings dashed back into the plate. "That is the most wonderful and
+beautiful landscape effect I have ever beheld. That is just what our
+garden needed. I suppose I would have seen it and put some sort of a
+pavilion there, but that squat and perfect old church would have been
+beyond me."
+
+"Oh, I'm glad!" I exclaimed, as he sank back on the step beside me, took
+the glass from my hand, drank deeply and this time began a determined
+attack upon the plate in his hand. And then as he ate I told him all
+about father and his plans for the garden and his own improvement and to
+what I hoped the work was leading him. But somehow I couldn't bring
+myself to describe the scene which had that night been enacted in the
+garden--I couldn't. "Oh, I am so glad you are not furious and will maybe
+be willing to encourage him, even if it does mean to encourage the
+Methodist Church and the minister thereof. You are wonderful, Nickols,"
+I finished with a squeeze of his arm that very nearly jostled the cream
+out of the spoon upon his gray tweed trousers.
+
+"I'd be a wonderful ass not to take advantage of Judge Nickols Powers'
+brain and money, plus Gregory Goodloe's brain and training and money
+combined, to get a result that will be worth a hundred thousand dollars
+to me and all the fame I can conveniently wear. Encourage 'em? Just
+watch me! Only what the judge thinks will take two years can be done in
+one season if we get experts down to do it, which we will. Trees two
+hundred years old _can_ be moved for a few thousand dollars, as well as
+plants in bloom that would require years to transplant. I know the man
+to do it: Wilkerson of White Plains. I'll telegraph him in the
+morning."
+
+"He won't interfere with--with father, will he?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Not a bit--he'll just make what the judge and Gregory plan for year
+after next, grow and bloom there in a couple of months. Wilkerson is not
+a creator, he's just nature keyed up to the _n_th power. And also I'll
+give him for a bait the Jeffries estate I was hesitating about making a
+bid for. All the big fellows are after it. Old man Jeffries has made two
+barrels of money in the last ten years in oil and he is going to build
+an estate up on the Hudson that will make the world gasp. I hadn't put
+in a bid, but this idea of the judge's and Greg's, with the whole
+village grouped about it, has given me the keynote to win the thing from
+the whole bunch of American architects. He wants the village built as
+well as the estate. That American garden idea will bowl him over. He's
+progressively and rabidly American. The bids don't close until December,
+so I'll have time to get real photographs and sketches. Me for the
+reformed judge and the parson!"
+
+"This is the most wonderful thing I ever heard and I want father pushed
+to the limit with the planning. I don't care where the parson comes in,
+just so I don't have to join the church to get the garden," I said, as I
+tinkled the ice in Nickols' empty glass, while he consumed the last bit
+of cream from the empty plate.
+
+"Oh, I'll join the church if it is needed to push the garden," said
+Nickols with a laugh, as he lit a cigarette and puffed a smoke ring out
+toward the gray little chapel. "Most people who join churches do it for
+some kind of pull, social or business, or a respectability stamp or to
+be white-washed. I'll put on a frock coat and pass the plate if it will
+help the parson evolve another phase of gardenism."
+
+"Billy gets home from his poker game at the Last Chance, down in the
+Settlement, on Sunday morning, just in time to bathe and get into his
+frock coat to perform that office," I said with a laugh that had a hint
+of recklessness tinged with contempt.
+
+"I'll see Billy through both ceremonials," said Nickols. "Has Billy come
+into the fold?"
+
+"He has! So have all the rest," I answered. "I am the only black sheep
+and they are all backsliding down on me. I am getting, and will get,
+the blame of it all as a corrupter of public morals."
+
+"Why don't you join and then do as you please with the official stamp of
+Christianity upon you?" Nickols asked, as he puffed comfortably away in
+the moonlight.
+
+One of the things that cause me the deepest hurt is to try to get
+Nickols to look down into my depths and read one, just any one, of the
+hieroglyphics there. I know each time I open my nature to him he is
+going to turn aside, and yet I will try. As his arm stole around me I
+made another one of the attempts that I always know beforehand are
+doomed to failure.
+
+"There is something in me, a quality of mind that seems to be judicial,
+which insists that as a cold scheme for existence in this universe
+nothing compares with that of life followed by eternal redemption
+through personal effort interpreted by a mediator. The bare Christian
+tenets have a nobility that it kills me to see belittled by the bored,
+half-hearted observances of most of its protestants, who in turn are not
+to be blamed for being half-hearted and bored by the dogmas and
+restrictions and littleness with which the great bare scheme has been
+enmeshed and clothed. The Methodist Church positively forbids Billy to
+play poker or drink, but it just as positively forbids him to see
+Pavlowa dance or Beerbohm Tree play Falstaff or Forbes Robertson
+incarnate Hamlet. And look at its wretched machinery--they allow a young
+man to give his life and expect inspiration from him at six hundred
+dollars a year with a wife and two dozen children, which he has been
+encouraged to bring down upon himself, dependent on that same six
+hundred dollars. The great men who are expected to direct our spiritual
+destinies don't get as much money as many ordinary grocers and certainly
+not enough to support their obligations with dignity. What is true of
+the Methodist Church is true of all the rest, in perhaps a greater
+degree. So with their smallness and their pettiness and their befogging
+stupidity I feel that they may be denying thinkers like you and me the
+use of their scheme and we'll have to find another for ourselves if we
+want immortality."
+
+"Do we want that immortality?" asked Nickols easily. "This world is a
+pretty good old place if you don't regard the 'shalt nots,' but isn't it
+long enough to live the allotted time? What do we want to do it all
+over again for, that is, provided we do all the pleasant things while we
+have the chance? I don't want to see any play twice, even a masterpiece.
+I wouldn't want to live again unless I had been a Christian in this life
+and felt that I wanted to come back and do a lot of the things I had
+just heard about and previously hadn't tried."
+
+"Certainly I wouldn't want another life that is as unsatisfied as this,"
+I murmured, more to myself than to Nickols.
+
+"Do the things that satisfy," he urged again, and I could see a deviltry
+dancing at me out of the corner of his eyes that I resented deeply
+without exactly knowing why.
+
+"Harriet Henderson can't get Mark Morgan's love or--his children, and
+Nell Morgan is unattainable for Billy. Though they have all the world's
+goods and go a pace that pleases them, they are unsatisfied. If they
+don't get the new deal that immortality promises they lose the whole
+thing," I answered straight out from the shoulder. "And what about those
+who die in infancy and--and you and me?"
+
+"If you'll just kiss me and hush preaching to me I'll be entirely
+satisfied and ready to die as soon as I have lifted that fifty thousand
+out of old Jeffries with the judge's and the Reverend Gregory's garden
+and done a few more commissions. Try kissing me and see if you don't
+feel more cheerful," Nickols answered with a laugh, as he drew me close
+to him. I sadly shut up the doors of my depths, warded off the
+kiss--why, I didn't know--and persuaded him to go up to his rooms which
+I had seen Sallie and Dabney put in order that afternoon.
+
+It was midnight when I parted with Nickols at the head of the old
+winding stairs in the fragrant darkness, lit only by the silver light of
+the night from a long window at the front of the hall. He held me close
+for a half second as he whispered:
+
+"Let me make you happy. I understand."
+
+"I don't understand, and until I do I'd make you miserable, dear," I
+whispered back as I drew myself out of his reluctant arms and went into
+my own door.
+
+Then for a long midnight hour I stood at my deep window and looked out
+over the garden, past the squat steeple silvering beyond the lilac
+hedge, to Paradise Ridge in the dim distance, and tried to read my own
+hieroglyphics. I needed help. Nickols had come after me to Goodloets in
+a spirit of gentle determination and I knew the fight would be to the
+finish. And why should I fight? Any woman ought to be proud to marry
+Nickols Morris Powers, especially a woman who had loved him since her
+heart had been developed to the knowledge of love. Very unostentatiously
+and with perfect good taste Nickols had let me see that Marie VanClive
+with her Knickerbocker ancestry and her Manhattan land-grants fortune
+was very decidedly interested in him in her cultured and perfected young
+way, and young Mrs. Houston had herself shown me the same thing on one
+of the week-end flights we had had on her yacht. And beyond all that my
+own heart told me that Nickols was desirable. His gentleness and his
+tenderness and his daring and his humor were irresistible to a woman.
+And his lazy acquiescence in life was peaceful and inviting to my own
+strenuosity. I felt as if I had always been an eagle breasting the gale
+with no place to alight, and now Nickols was calling to me from an
+eyrie on a mountain side to come and rest and be mated and comforted.
+
+"I'm tired of loneliness and I think I'll drift and be happy," I
+murmured, as I fell asleep with my back to the silver steeple against
+the dim hills.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+INTO BRAMBLES
+
+
+The next morning I awoke with the same resolve in my heart, to be happy
+if wicked, and proceeded to execute it with a great vigor. And in the
+execution of that resolve dear old Goodloets almost had some of the moss
+of its century's repose scraped off of its back.
+
+First and foremost, we all danced, day and night. We had really begun
+the giddy whirl the summer before when we had built the little clubhouse
+over in the oak grove by the river's edge, just between the Town and the
+Settlement, so that we would no longer feel the limit and limitations to
+our gliding of anybody's double parlors, and conservative Goodloets had
+been duly shocked thereat.
+
+"Ladies did not dance outside of their own and their friends' private
+homes in my day," Mrs. Cockrell had sighed, as she finished the petal
+of the rose she was embroidering upon some of Letitia's lingerie.
+
+"I'd rather they danced in their den of iniquity than to execute these
+modern gyrations in my home," had responded Harriet's mother, Mrs.
+Sproul, as she finished the hundredth round on the shawl she was
+knitting. Harriet's report of the conversation had been received with
+great hilarity that evening at dinner at the Club.
+
+But Goodloets had had a year in which to recover from the shock of the
+institution of the Country Club when I started in to enjoy myself.
+Having church services there on Sundays and Wednesdays during the winter
+had done much to remove the prejudice in the minds of the conservative.
+I suspected the Reverend Mr. Goodloe of a great deal of worldly wisdom
+when I saw how he had been able to persuade the directors, Hampton
+Dibrell and Mark and Cliff, to let him do such a weird thing. Mrs.
+Sproul and Mrs. Cockrell and their friends had first been tolled out to
+prayer meeting and then had come to witness a tennis match. Billy, in
+great glee, recounted to me the first time they had stayed to dinner
+with him and father and Mr. Cockrell. They had been enjoying the prayer
+meetings to the utmost and had come out with Mother Spurlock by mistake
+on a Tuesday night, which was the regular dinner dance night. It was
+some time before they discovered their mistake, for they were immensely
+enjoying their visit with Mother Spurlock, and when the dancing began
+Billy had seized Mother Elsie in his arms and danced her the whole
+length of the room. The music had been too much for her feet in their
+sensible shoes, and very suddenly they had unfolded their wings after
+thirty long years of rest and had fairly flown up and down and backwards
+and forwards with Billy's in a sedate version of one of the phases of
+the tango. Mrs. George Spurlock had been the best dancer in Goodloets
+when time was young.
+
+"Do you think that it was the devil that tempted you, Mother Elsie?" I
+asked her about it one day when she had a leisure moment for teasing.
+
+"Effie Burns' youngest baby was born exactly while I was dancing, and we
+will have six months' trouble with her because her band was not put on
+properly," was her answer, as she took up her parcel of five pairs of
+only slightly worn stockings that five girls in the Settlement needed
+worse than I needed darns, and departed in a great hurry. "Oh, but you
+should have seen Hattie Sproul's eyes while I danced," she called back
+over her shoulder as she went through the gate.
+
+And so in the second summer of the Club's existence there had been no
+bridle upon its gayeties--I had almost used the word license, and I
+suppose it would have been a just one under the circumstances. Billy
+called it "The Bucket of the Lost Lid," and every individual member did
+exactly as he or she chose. The sideboard out on the back porch made as
+good a bar as any in the state with old Uncle Wilks to officiate, and in
+the wing in one of the private dining rooms a huge wheel stood with its
+face to the wall during the day, but came complacently out of its corner
+when night descended. On the porch could always be found either Mrs.
+James Knight or Mrs. Buford Cunningham. They neither of them had
+children, hated home and were serenely happy sitting on the front porch
+knitting silk scarfs and gossiping with all comers, while James and
+Buford hung around the sideboard at the back. They were institutions and
+all of the unmarried boys and girls, men and women, widowed and
+widowered, came and went at will, with the liberty that the chaperonage
+of their certain presence allowed.
+
+"Suppose one of 'em should fall dead and the other have to attend her
+funeral," Nickols remarked one Saturday night at a dinner table not more
+than twelve feet away from the two couples. "The scandal that would soon
+disrupt this town for lack of their free chaperonage would be like an
+earthquake. None of you would have a shred of respectability with which
+to drape yourselves to appear in public."
+
+"They don't wear much respectability anyway in the eyes of the
+Settlement," said Billy, as he mixed the champagne cup with old Wilks
+standing admiringly by. "The floor manager ordered Luella May Spain off
+the floor at the dance they had in the lodge room over the Last Chance
+last Saturday night for appearing in one of Harriet's last year dancing
+frocks Mother Spurlock had collected for her, though they do say that
+Luella May had sewed in two inches of tucker and put in sleeves. How's
+that for an opinion passed upon the high and mighty from the meek and
+lowly?"
+
+"I'd been in mourning a year. That was my coming out gown and I felt--"
+Harriet was saying when Billy laughed and interrupted her.
+
+"And you came out, Harriet dear," he assured her, as he poured her
+champagne cup and his and signaled Wilks to serve the rest of us.
+
+On the surface all of the joy that most of Goodloets was having was real
+and brilliant and spontaneous, all the dancing and drinking and high
+playing, but under the surface there were dark currents that ran in many
+directions. Young Ted Montgomery and Billy played poker one Saturday
+night until daylight out at the Club, and Bessie Thornton and Grace
+Payne had "staid by" and were having bacon and eggs with them when the
+sun rose. Judge Payne, Grace's father, has been a widower ten years and
+Grace, with the four younger "pains," as Billy calls them, has run wild
+away from him and her grandmother, old Madam Payne, who lives in a world
+of crochet needles and silk thread with Mrs. Cockrell and Mrs. Sproul.
+One night I went with Billy in his car to take Grace home and he had to
+wait until I tiptoed to her room with my arm around her and put her to
+bed, while Harriet was doing the same thing with Bessie Thornton. Those
+girls are not much over twenty and they are only a little more
+"liberated," as they call it, than the rest of their friends. Ted
+Montgomery loves Grace, when he is himself and not at the card table,
+but what chance have they to form a union of any solidity and
+permanence? Billy's nephew, Clive Harvey, has always loved Bessie
+Thornton, but he is teller in the Goodloets bank and almost never sees
+her. He is one of the stewards in the Harpeth Jaguar's church, and the
+suffering on his slim young face hurts me like a blow every time I meet
+him. What's going to satisfy him, no matter what pace he should choose
+to go or how many things he is driven by unhappiness to indulge himself
+in?
+
+And it was true that everything done up in the town had its effect down
+in the Settlement. The lodge hall over the Last Chance was the only hall
+available for the young people in the Settlement to dance, and the bar
+of the East Chance, at which old Jacob Ensley officiated, was no better
+stocked than the lockers at the Country Club. And all of us knew that
+very frequently Billy and Nickols and the rest of our friends went down
+to dance and drink with the girls from the mills and the shops. Billy
+had told me once that Milly Burt, who stays at the cigar stand in the
+Goodloe Hotel in Goodloets, dances so much like me and is so perfumed
+with my especial sachet from France, Mother Spurlock having collected
+the chiffon blouse from me for her to wear at the entertainment of the
+Epworth League, that he came very near addressing her by my name in
+giving her the invitation to the dance.
+
+"Settlement or Town, they all add up to the sum of girl," he laughed, as
+he told me about that Saturday night frolic in the Last Chance.
+
+It was the day after Billy's account of the ball at the Last Chance, in
+which Luella May and Milly and the rest had frolicked in what ought to
+have been a perfectly harmless way, that Mother Spurlock came to spend
+the afternoon with me and in which we wrestled until I was almost on the
+mat--not quite.
+
+"Goodloets has always been the gayest town in the state, but it has now
+reached the place of the most wicked," she said, after a few preliminary
+shots had been exchanged. "Every dignity of tradition seems to have been
+dropped and everybody is dance or play or drink or speed mad. You are
+the most influential personality in the whole town and I want you to
+call a halt."
+
+"But aren't they all happy? Isn't everybody getting the most out of
+life? The men are all working to their capacity and making more money
+than they ever have before. Why shouldn't they play hard?" I answered
+her, as I seated myself in the broad window seat of my room opposite the
+wide maternal ancestral rocker she had chosen.
+
+"Are they happy?" she asked, with her keen eyes on my face.
+
+"They seem to be," I parried.
+
+"Well, as far as personal happiness is concerned I think it is not worth
+talking about. It is the good of the whole for which I am working, for
+which I am contending to-day. What you women do, who are not obliged to
+add to the work of the world that you may live in it, is not of any
+great importance; it is for the toilers in the vineyard that I plead.
+The girls and young men in this town cannot dance and drink and play all
+night and do the constructive work of the community in the daytime. If
+Luella May Spain falls asleep or nods at her typewriter and fails to get
+out the telegram to you or Nickols which Mr. Tate has shouted to her
+off the keys, do you excuse her because she has been fatiguing herself
+until midnight trying to learn some new dance that Billy Harvey has
+brought down to the Last Chance from your Country Club? You would not!
+She would be fired on your complaint."
+
+"But are we responsible for how the girls and men in the Settlement
+spend their evenings?" I demanded with a fine show of indignation, but
+with a thrill of fear in my heart. There has always been something in
+Luella May Spain's shy and admiring glances that drew me and I have
+always lingered to chat with her a few minutes if business called me
+into the station. The last time I had spoken to her, not a week before,
+she had seemed pale and listless and had answered me with indifference.
+
+"You and your class are the ones in power and what you do and what you
+think is a moral influence that reaches and permeates every soul in this
+town. You are not about your Father's business; and those less powerful
+of brain and character follow you in by-paths from the straight road.
+They are his Little Ones and you lead their feet into brambles. Oh,
+Charlotte!" And Mother Spurlock stretched out her hands to me in
+entreaty.
+
+"I'm not a leader," I denied her. "I don't see a foot ahead of me. I'm
+not worth anything. I'm just living and trying to have a good time doing
+it. You have got a leader, there over the hedge; why don't they follow
+him and not me?"
+
+"Before you came Gregory Goodloe had services three times a week at your
+Country Club, at which the Settlement met the Town. You were not willing
+that even those few hours should be given over to the learning of the
+Father's will from one whose mind and soul are ready to teach, and you
+swept away his pews and his influence. And your dance tunes, to which
+even I yielded, ring in the ears of his flock to drown out the echoes of
+God's hymns. And now those who had begun to lean on him and to follow
+him are turning to persecute him. When Jacob Ensley is drunk he openly
+charges him with inveigling Martha away and hiding her. He was in a
+dangerous state one night a week ago and Billy Harvey had to lock him up
+in his own wine cellar to keep him and a few of his hangers-on from
+'going after the parson,' who was down there praying with old Jennie
+Neil as she died. He doesn't know his danger from Jacob and I think
+Billy ought to tell him. All Goodloets has admired and aped you since
+your birth, and now that you discountenance him they are again following
+you. There were only ten people at prayer meeting last night in the
+chapel, and the Wednesday before you turned him out of the Club which
+had offered him its hospitality, there were one hundred and thirty,
+Settlement and Town about evenly represented. You are responsible for
+that prayer meeting last night. You may be responsible for the result of
+one of Jacob's drunken fits. Sometime you'll have to answer for what you
+do."
+
+"No, Mother Spurlock, I'm not responsible for the failure of Gregory
+Goodloe to get to the heart of your people and hold them happy to his
+services and observances, and I'm certainly not responsible for his
+personal safety. What he offers is not enough to satisfy. His members
+prefer their Country Club and their Last Chance and their knitting and
+embroidery. What we all need from the Country Club to the Last Chance is
+something that makes us want to be constructive, race constructive, so
+that life will be desirable on through immortality, if there is such a
+thing. I can't get a glimpse of it. Can you?" and I questioned her
+beseechingly.
+
+"I can. I do! I have faith in my Father's plan to lead me through 'deep
+waters' into 'pleasant pastures,'" she answered me, as her eyes looked
+past me out at Paradise Ridge beyond the chapel.
+
+"Then give it to me," I demanded.
+
+"I can't. You must seek it yourself, and when you get it you will be
+able to pour it out into the hearts of others as living water. I serve
+by using my two talents of mercy and love, but God will some day give
+you ten and you will have to return an hundred fold. He has given the
+ten to Gregory Goodloe, and now is the night of his despair, but his
+morning will dawn. You can't dance down and drink down and gamble down
+and lust down a man like that. He can bide his time until his sheep come
+to the fold to be fed and warmed in his bosom."
+
+"What practical thing can I do to make you believe that I do not mean to
+pull down any structure that another human is building up with the hope
+it is for the good of the whole, Mother Spurlock?" I demanded of her,
+goaded to the last point of endurance.
+
+"The dedication services of the chapel will be next Sunday. Come, bring
+Nickols and your father, and let the Town and Settlement see your
+respect for Mr. Goodloe and for his church," she demanded, as she rose
+to go, with patient defeat but a lingering hope in her voice and manner.
+
+"Endorse something that means nothing to me?" I asked with pained
+patience. "You say the people follow me; shall I lead them to drink from
+a spring that I consider dry, that is dry and has no water for my
+thirst? No, Mother Spurlock, if the people among whom I have been born
+trust me I will only lead them by going into paths I know and in which I
+walk for my own good or pleasure."
+
+"To the Last Chance?"
+
+"At least they get joy there that makes toil easier or offsets the
+grind," I answered her.
+
+"Is that your final--" she was asking me with her deep, wise old eyes
+searching me, when she was interrupted by the banging open of my door
+and the inburst of young Charlotte, young James as ever at her heels,
+with Sue clinging to his hand. To-day, however, Charlotte had added one
+to her cohorts, for she led by the hand a very dirty specimen of the
+masculine gender, somewhat larger than herself and with a flaming red
+head.
+
+"This is Mikey Burns, Aunt Charlotte, and he's a nice little boy that's
+dirty and hungry because his mother has got seven like him. Won't you
+wash him and feed him so we can play with him? The preacher cleaned up
+four for us to play with yesterday and they are still clean enough. If
+you clean Mikey I can have a baseball nine, with Sue to get the balls
+that we don't hit. She gets balls nicely and Mikey throws lots
+straighter than I can. Jimmy can hit 'em, too, with a wide stick."
+
+"I tan git 'em," declaimed small Sue with great pride.
+
+"I can pitch 'em," also declared Mikey, with evident desire to back up
+his patroness. "But not as good as her," and his admiration amounted to
+adoration, as he raised his young eyes to Charlotte.
+
+"You see, Oh, you see, even to the second generation they follow,"
+laughed Mother Spurlock, as she escaped through the door and left me
+with my practical demonstration of class leadership.
+
+"Wash him, Auntie Charlotte, wash him," Charlotte continued to insist.
+"I made Jimmy steal some of his things for him while nurse was
+downstairs. Here they are," and young James, the thief and
+aforementioned murderer, gave up his stolen goods. "And Mr. Nickols says
+that all the Settlement children will go to school with us in the nice
+schoolhouse he and Judge Powers and Minister are going to build in front
+of Mother Spurlock's orchard. That is a law and then we'll have good
+times, all of us. There is not many children in the Town and they are
+all too dressed up, but it is a million down in the Settlement and we
+are going to have two baseball nines and two armies to battle with. I
+asked Mr. Nickols to have a place to wash the Settlements and he said he
+had thought of that and is going to have five shower baths. If you'll
+just wash Mikey for me I'll help you. I can attend to Jimmy's ears for
+nurse real good, can't I, Jimmy?"
+
+"Yes," responded Jimmy with brotherly pride.
+
+"No," remonstrated Mikey with abject fear, for the sake of his ears or
+propriety I was not sure.
+
+I got past the question by motioning him into my bathroom and sending
+Charlotte and Sue to bring Dabney. Dabney is Charlotte's slave and was
+soon under way to execute her commands upon Mikey while I beguiled her
+from the superintendence thereof down into the garden with me, where
+from my window I could see Nickols and father in deep conclave over some
+drawings. Father had discarded his Henry Clay costume and looked young
+and alive in some of Nickols' flannels and linen. They looked up with
+interest as I came down the flagstone walk with Charlotte trotting on my
+one side and wee Sue clinging on the other.
+
+"I'm glad you have come, daughter," said father, as he held up one of
+the large blue prints before me. "Now you can help Nickols and me locate
+the exact spot for the public school building. See, here is the public
+square of Goodloets, with the courthouse in the middle."
+
+"That courthouse is as good as any minor _hotels de ville_ in any of the
+small towns in France," said Nickols, as he came and stood beside me,
+looking over my shoulder at the map. "The Farmers' Bank and one or two
+of the very old brick stores are good, too," he added.
+
+"Now, this is Main Street that leads past us down into the Settlement.
+Here is the Poplars, here the chapel, and this is Elsie Spurlock's
+house. Nickols and the parson are inclined to place the schoolhouse
+right opposite, but I am afraid it is too near the Settlement and too
+far from the Town. Do you suppose the Town children will be able to walk
+so far?"
+
+"Do you really--really plan to have the Town and the Settlement go to
+school together?" I gasped.
+
+"Well, Goodloe thinks that the ideal public school system is only to be
+executed in a democratic--" father was saying, when Nickols interrupted
+him.
+
+"What does it matter where the two and a half kids from the decadent old
+families that are dying out go to school? Their sterile parents can
+motor 'em down to education!" he exclaimed. "Right here is the logical
+place for the school with the meadow behind it to give a bit of
+distance, the oak grove back of that, the Country Club beyond, with the
+river beginning to curve it in. It solidifies and unifies the landscape
+of the whole town and puts all the community centers where they belong.
+The Town and Settlement straggled a bit before, but the chapel and the
+school will unite them! Braid says the schoolhouse can be built of
+weathered stone and concrete and finished by September fifth, in time to
+start school. Wilkerson can begin immediately putting out his hedges and
+the Reverend Gregory is down there now finishing laying out the
+playground with his ball park."
+
+"That's it--that's the baseball nine Dabney is washing Mikey for!"
+exclaimed Charlotte, catching up with the conversation. "And when we all
+go to school with the Settlements and they are clean some, and Mildred
+Payne and Grace Sproul and some of the others get dirty a little, nobody
+will know the difference and we can play ball and scouts and everything
+Minister teaches us. That school makes enough children to do things. We
+haven't got enough for anything, but the Settlements have, and it is
+mighty good of them to come up and let us play with them."
+
+"Keep up with the times, Charlotte; don't be a back number. Miss
+Olymphia Lassiter's school may have held you and Nell, but it will never
+hold young Charlotte," Nickols jeered, as father began to roll up the
+map and speak to a young man that the great Wilkerson of White Plains
+had sent down to juggle with the flora and fauna of the Harpeth Valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+WATER AND OIL
+
+
+I turned from Nickols' raillery and surveyed the great American garden.
+The weeks had flown from May to late July and father's plans were
+beginning to be materialized. Where the sunken garden had been filled in
+a wide stone well house, the like of which can be found at many of the
+farmhouses in the Harpeth Valley, had been built and a chain wheel and
+bucket drew up the water from the deep cistern, which was supplied with
+underground pipes from the south wing of the Poplars.
+
+"There is no water as soft as open-top cistern water, aerated by a chain
+and bucket," father had informed me, and he and Dabney consumed buckets
+of it, while Mammy refused anything else for cooking purposes and
+insisted on a nightly bath of it for my face. A white clematis in full
+bloom clambered over the eaves of the low stone house and a blush rose
+nodded at its door, beside which was placed a rough bench made of square
+stones and two large slabs, equally moss-covered and worn.
+
+"It is growing to be perfectly wonderful, Nickols," I said, as if I had
+seen it for the first time, while my eyes followed the sweep of the
+flagstone walk from the well house beneath the old graybeard poplars out
+past stretches of velvety lawn, with groups of shrubs and trees casting
+deep shadows even to the kitchen garden, whose long rows of vegetables,
+bordered with old-fashioned blooming herbs and savories, led the
+observer out into the meadows to the Home Farm and beyond to the dim
+line of Paradise Ridge. "It is different and distinctive and--and
+American," I added.
+
+"After this garden and the school are finished and a few of the
+unfortunate restorations taken away from some of the old houses, like
+the porch at Mrs. Sproul's and that bathroom addition of Morgan's, I am
+going to bring Jeffries down in his private car and it will be difficult
+to keep him from offering to buy Goodloets and have it all shipped up
+the Hudson. Really, Charlotte, we have seen a vision of the future
+materialize here and we ought to stand with hats off."
+
+"Whose vision?" I asked, as I stood and let the truth of his statement
+sink in.
+
+"The parson's spiritual vision perhaps filtering through your father's
+mentality, which has welded past, present and future. At least, that is
+the way I see it with the material eye, which is all I have to view it
+with--if we can call the recognition of beauty and completeness
+material."
+
+"Now Mikey is nice and clean and we can go to Minister to play, thank
+you, Aunt Charlotte," at this point young Charlotte broke in to say,
+thus flinging us a line to haul us out of depths that were slightly over
+our heads. "Isn't he lovely?" And she gazed upon her new-found comrade
+with open admiration and self-congratulation.
+
+And small Mikey was indeed a bonny kiddie attired in the very stylish
+trousers and blouse of small James and shining with Dabney's valeting.
+His nicely plastered red mop to some extent mitigated the effect of the
+bare and scratched feet and his rollicking blue eyes over a nose as
+tip-tilted as Charlotte's own bespoke his delight.
+
+"Anyway, me mother made the togs fer Jim," he asserted with great
+independence, as he rammed his hands into the diminutive pockets in the
+trousers.
+
+"Yes, she did, and Auntie Harriet paid her for a present to Jimmy. She
+sews for us and not for Mikey and her other children, because her
+husband drinks up his money and our husband don't. Come on, let's go
+help Minister!" was the shot that Charlotte fired, as she departed down
+the garden path with her cohorts.
+
+"What about that for democracy?" demanded Nickols, as he and father and
+I all laughed together.
+
+That night at a dinner party Nell was giving I sat next to the Harpeth
+Jaguar and talked to him for the first time in many weeks. I had been
+avoiding him and I didn't mind admitting it to myself. There was
+something disturbing and puzzling in his serene eyes and free, strong,
+beautiful body that gave me a queer haunting pain back of my breast.
+Into my scheme of doing those things in life that give pleasure and not
+doing those things that give pain he somehow would not fit. He had
+become as much a part of the social fabric of Goodloets as was I, and
+he came to our dinner parties, motored with us in his long, gray car and
+was as happy with us seemingly as he was with that same gray car full of
+small fry from the Settlement or going about the business of the chapel.
+The car had always reminded me of his evening clothes, which were
+straight and simple in line with the black silk vest cut up around the
+collar buttoned in the back, but which were so fine in texture and
+perfect in cut and fit that they seemed to be some kind of super clothes
+that ought to be called by a name of their own, just as the people in
+the Settlement had decided to call the car the "Chariot" as soon as they
+had stopped resenting a parson's having it, from finding out how easy
+were its cushions and how swift its ministrations in time of need.
+
+"Parson's Chariot, quick!" had moaned poor old Mrs. Kelly, when she had
+slipped on Mrs. Burns' wet doorstep and dislocated her hip. Little Katie
+Moore had been driven home as swiftly as if on wings after old Dr.
+Harding had been overtaken, ten miles out on Providence Road, and had
+used the back seat for an operating table while he put her small
+splintered ankle in place between splints improvised by a long knife
+from the car's kit.
+
+And from a distance I had wondered at the Reverend Gregory Goodloe,
+wondered at his freedom from all resentment because of his ministerial
+and spiritual failures and at his loving serenity and enjoyment of us
+all. He partook of the joy in almost all of our adventures in pleasure,
+and when we did things that in the nature of the case would seem to
+merit his disapproval, he never administered it; he simply was not with
+us, but was serenely about his business at the other end of the town
+from the Country Club or the Last Chance, at whichever resort the
+entertainment that did not interest him was in progress. He seemed
+especially to enjoy coming to our dinner parties and he was such a
+delight with his keen-bladed wit, his flow of joyous laughter and high
+spirits and the music that bubbled up without accompaniment or denial
+whenever we asked for it, that not a woman in town would invite the rest
+to dine until she was sure of securing him first.
+
+[Illustration: "_I been upsot by my young mistis comin' home._"]
+
+"He's so economical," said Nell Morgan, as I helped her arrange her
+guests for Mark's birthday dinner. While she talked I paused to consider
+where to put Harriet Henderson and then dropped her card beside Mark's
+with a little ache in my heart as I tucked Cliff Gray in by Jessie
+Litton and left the place next Nell vacant for Billy. "People never
+empty their champagne glasses when Mr. Goodloe gets to talking, and you
+can put the extra bottles back in the cellar for next time. Do you
+suppose he does it on purpose?"
+
+"Nobody could be as completely happy as he was at Jessie's Friday night
+_on purpose_," I answered, as I laid the last card and went with Nell to
+greet her first guests.
+
+After the soup I turned toward the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, whose card I
+had placed next my own, and found him looking at me with a particular
+softness in his eyes under the dull gold.
+
+"Charlotte's and Mikey's nine won twenty-eight to eighteen against Tommy
+Braidy and Maudie Burns. Thank you for getting the pitcher into his
+togs," he said, as he squared his shoulders slightly against the rest of
+the world, the rest of the diners in particular, and bent toward me in
+just that deferential angle that a man uses when he wants to signal to
+the others that for a limited time he desires sole possession of the
+woman dining next to him.
+
+"Your mixing of water and oil in the educational scheme is interesting
+me greatly," I answered him with a laugh. "Do you really think it will
+succeed?"
+
+"Any kind of kingdom can be built in the heart of a child, an oligarchy,
+a democracy or a republic," he answered quickly. "Your name-daughter is
+a born socialist."
+
+"She and James are murderers and liars and thieves and are wholly
+engaging. Sue is fast learning from them the habits of their underworld
+and is asleep upstairs now with Harriet's silver and jade chain, which
+she brought home with her without the knowledge of the owner this
+afternoon. What are you going to do about them? I take it you intend to
+build a kingdom in and of their hearts."
+
+"Weed 'em, like Dabney and I did your dahlia bank ten times at least
+this spring. You didn't help with the dahlias, but maybe you will with
+the young Tenderloiners." His eyes entreated mine with a soft radiance
+that almost made me dizzy.
+
+"I wouldn't know weeds from flowers, 'Minister,'" I answered with
+prompt denial of his plea, but with a soft use of the children's name
+for him.
+
+"I don't always know. Let's study botany--together," he again hazarded
+daringly, and from the tenderness that suddenly curved his strong mouth
+I knew my soft answer had hit its mark. "Are you coming to the
+dedication of the chapel a week from Sunday?" He asked me the question
+directly and with all his softness gone and a commanding note in his
+voice and direct look. His jeweled eyes were so deep back under their
+dull gold brows that between the bars of black lashes they looked like
+stars shining down through a radiant night. They threw their rays
+directly down into my heart and I could see that their owner was reading
+the hieroglyphics of my uncertainties and that I could not hide them
+from him.
+
+"I am not," I answered him with the frankness that his gaze compelled.
+
+"I'll not dedicate it until you help me do it and--" he was saying
+quietly and positively, when Billy broke in over the excluding shoulder.
+Billy really adores Gregory Goodloe, but he enjoys going to the limit of
+his ministerial endurance. Over that limit he has never stepped and he
+never will; none of them ever will, for there is that in the Harpeth
+Jaguar which commands the very essence of respect for himself as well as
+his cloth.
+
+"Say, Parson, what's that about the dedication of the chapel?" he asked,
+as he twirled his champagne glass to break a few bubbles. "Charlotte and
+Nickols are going to give Harriet and me that tennis dressing down
+Sunday week if you don't need us to dedicate with."
+
+"No, I won't need you," answered the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, in an easy
+agreeable voice, but that had in it the note that he always uses to make
+Billy halt. "I'm not going to dedicate it yet."
+
+"Why?" came in a perfect chorus.
+
+"I've been working night and day on that altar cloth because I depended
+on you to know the date of the dedication of your own church. I have
+danced only once this week," said Letitia Cockrell, with her usual bland
+directness.
+
+"The communion service from Gorham's has been packed away unopened in my
+office a week," Hampton added in an aggrieved voice. "They hurried it
+for us and it has to be sent back, piece at a time, to be marked."
+
+"The baptismal font is perfectly beautiful and I want the Suckling
+sprinkled from it first. If you don't hurry she will get old enough to
+misbehave herself. I know I promised, but I have decided that I can
+never have the others baptized now, they are too bad," said Nell, as she
+paused and listened for some sort of explosion from above as she did
+every minute or two.
+
+"I'll rope Charlotte and drag her to the altar for you, and Mark can sit
+on her feet while the parson sprinkles," offered Billy, and they all
+laughed at the picture that he conjured, which seemed to be in keeping
+with many scenes we had witnessed in the life of small Charlotte.
+
+"That won't be necessary. She will stand before me with folded hands
+when her time comes," answered Mr. Goodloe, after he had laughed as
+heartily as anybody else at Billy's threat. "The greatest difficulty
+will be in persuading her to allow me to conduct my own services."
+
+"But what did you put off the dedication date for?" demanded Letitia,
+with the hurry over the altar cloth still rankling.
+
+"I put off the dedication of the chapel until all of the people for whom
+I cared deeply, whose cooperation with me is positively necessary,
+should be ready to come and help me in the services. When that time
+comes I will have the dedication. It may be a year and it may be
+a--day," the parson answered with cool directness.
+
+"If you mean Charlotte, the offer I made for young Charlotte holds
+good," said Billy with positive glee. "If you want her I'll rope her and
+drag her in and the rest of you can bid for who holds her down while
+being branded."
+
+"And my answer to your generous offer, Billy Harvey, is--" Mr. Goodloe
+paused and looked at me, and Jessie giggled with nervousness--"the same
+that I made to your offer about the constraining of young Charlotte."
+
+"Still it would be great sport to see both the Charlottes--" Billy was
+saying, when a servant brought a note on his tray and handed it to Mr.
+Goodloe, who glanced at it and then hurriedly opened and read it.
+
+"I am sorry, Mrs. Morgan, but will you let me answer this summons?" he
+asked, and there was the regret in his rich voice of a great boy at
+being snatched from a feast. "I am so hungry," he added with a laugh.
+
+"Come back later. I'll save some of everything for you," said Nell
+pleadingly.
+
+"I will if I can," he answered. There was an excited smoulder in the
+stars under the dull gold that made me restless and my eyes sought and
+claimed his for a second in which a quick flash of the jeweled
+tenderness of comprehension was flashed into my depths.
+
+"Good-bye, everybody," he said, and in a second was out of the dining
+room and we could hear him running down the steps.
+
+"Oh, dear, if he just wasn't a preacher," sighed Harriet. "I suppose
+somebody in the Settlement is dead or borned or drunk, and he has to go
+and see about it. I wish--"
+
+"Great Jehovah!" exclaimed Billy, as he suddenly jumped to his feet.
+"Ensley is fighting drunk and has the gang around the Last Chance.
+Parson's life isn't worth a tinker's damn if he runs foul of them with
+all that talk about Martha Ensley and Jacob's threat. She came back last
+night and Goodloe threatened to have Jacob arrested for beating her.
+Come on, Nickols, and let's follow him. We'll be enough. The rest of you
+go on eating, drinking and merrying because old Mark was born. We'll
+come right back just as soon as we see that all is serene on the Potomac
+of the Last Chance." And with a last hasty gulp at his wine glass Billy
+followed Nickols out of the room. Nickols was both white and livid and
+the expression of his face frightened me, for I knew that Billy would
+minimize any kind of danger in the presence of a woman while Nickols
+would not take that trouble.
+
+It was with a queer breathlessness that we all sat before our wine
+glasses in the midst of the perfume from the rich food and dying flowers
+and waited--for what we didn't know.
+
+Then it came!
+
+A shot rang out clear and clean in the darkness and was quickly followed
+by three barking echoes from a repeater.
+
+And there seated in my chair in the brilliantly lighted room, blocks
+away from the scene, I felt a bullet thud against dull gold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A BIT OF RAW LIFE
+
+
+I don't know by what means of personal transportation my body was
+carried down the street to the public square and to the pavement in
+front of the courthouse, but I found myself standing there over a woman
+who had raised Gregory Goodloe's head on her arm and was drawing deep,
+hard sobs as she held a handkerchief to stanch a flow of blood that
+showed crimson in the flash from Nickols' electric cigar lighter.
+
+"'When men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of
+evil against you falsely for my sake--'" I quoted to myself softly as I
+stood and looked down on the prostrate figure of the big lithe Harpeth
+Jaguar while Billy struggled with a man a little way off in the darkness
+and Nickols shut off the light and went to his aid. I didn't know
+exactly where the words that rose so suddenly from my heart to my lips
+had come from, and I only vaguely understood them, but I seemed to be
+saying them without my own volition.
+
+"Yes, my God, yes, that's what they've done to him," sobbed Martha as
+she looked up, peering at me through the darkness. "Pa is drunk, Miss
+Charlotte; and the rest egged him on. This is the only friend I've got
+and they've killed him."
+
+"Not by a good deal, Martha," came in a hearty grand opera voice just as
+I dropped on my knee, and in time to stop me from taking that bleeding
+gold head on my own breast and--"Jacob's bullet just clipped me but its
+impact was as good as his fist would have been, which I wish he had
+used." And as he spoke the wounded parson sprang lithely to his feet and
+left us two women kneeling before him. In an instant a thought of Mary
+and the Magdalen flashed through my brain as he bent to raise me to my
+feet, while Martha crouched away from us in the dark.
+
+"Charlotte?" he questioned softly, as if not willing to believe the
+witness of his hands and eyes, muffled by the starry darkness.
+
+"Young Charlotte stones you and Jacob shoots you, and I--" I both
+sobbed and laughed as I clung to his hand just as I heard Billy and
+Nickols throw the cursing, panting man to the ground not ten feet away.
+
+"Now then, Parson, we've got Jacob down and out. Nickols has got his
+foot on his neck and I've got his pistol. What do you want done with
+him?" Billy interrupted me pantingly to demand.
+
+"Let him up," answered Mr. Goodloe, as he gently extricated himself from
+my clinging hand and went over to the scene of the conflict. "Had
+enough, Jacob?" he asked just as gently as he had unhanded himself from
+me.
+
+"I'll have had enough when I put you where you can't entice my girl
+again," answered Jacob as he rose slowly to his feet. As he spoke Billy
+went and stood beside the parson and Nickols stepped behind them into
+the shadow in which Martha crouched.
+
+"You know that is not true, Jacob. I helped Martha to go away to a place
+of safety to earn her living and keep her honesty. Isn't that so,
+Martha?" the rich voice softly asked the woman crouching in the dark.
+
+"I told him that but he wouldn't believe me and the others don't," she
+answered with a sob that was almost a shudder of fear.
+
+"What did she come back fer then?" demanded Jacob. "Answer me that. And
+didn't she go straight to your preaching and praying joint like all the
+other women, fine and sluts, do?" The liquor was still burning in
+Jacob's head but at those words he got a response from the impact of
+Billy's fist that again laid him low.
+
+"Oh, I dasn't say nothing. I dasn't," moaned Martha, as she clutched at
+my skirts just as Nell and Hampton began to arrive on the scene of
+action, followed by Harriet and Mark and the others. They were all
+panting and wild with anxiety. They had taken the wrong turning at the
+end of the square and had gone around the block, thus giving the little
+tragedy time to enact itself before a mercifully small audience.
+
+"Go away quickly, Martha, in the shadow," I bent and whispered to the
+trembling woman, and I didn't know where the sympathy in my voice came
+from as I stood between her and the rest while she slipped behind an old
+horse block before the court house gate and off in the darkness towards
+the Settlement before they had noticed her presence.
+
+"Anybody hurt? What's the matter?" gasped Mark as he seized hold of the
+Reverend Mr. Goodloe's arm.
+
+"Nothing serious," answered the parson in a voice that calmed the others
+like oil on choppy water. "Jacob Ensley is out on a drunk and Billy had
+to knock him down to quiet him. All of you go back to dinner quickly,
+for I don't see why Sergeant Rogers should get Jacob this time. Billy
+will help me get him home and I'll remonstrate with him when he is
+sober. I'd rather do it at the Last Chance than at the jail. Jacob is a
+leading citizen and I don't want a jail smirch on him. I intend to use
+him later. Now all of you go. Go!" His voice was as gently positive as
+if he had been speaking to a lot of children and nobody seemed even to
+think of rebelling but we all began to fade away into the starlight as
+rapidly as we had assembled and more quietly.
+
+"Thank you, and bless you," he said to me, as I went past him in the
+darkness, and for just a second I suspected that his hand was laid on my
+black braids but I was not sure. I knew the gratitude was for my
+getting Martha off the scene of action so quietly and swiftly.
+
+"A bit of raw life for you, Charlotte," Nickols remarked as he went with
+me through the fragrant night back to Mark's and Nell's feast. "The
+eternal girl, two-men melee."
+
+"In this case it was girl--three men, the third skunking it," I answered
+in words as coarse and as forcible as the scene I had just witnessed.
+"I'd like to get my bare hands around the throat of the man who is
+hiding behind Martha and that little child."
+
+"That remark from you, my dear Charlotte, just goes to show that when
+women get even the smell of bloodshed they become fiercer than the
+male," said Nickols with a cool laugh that further infuriated me.
+
+"Yes, I do feel like a female jaguar," I answered hotly and then
+collapsed inside at the use of that name for myself in conjunction with
+my secret title for the Reverend Mr. Goodloe.
+
+"It would be better if you felt yourself in the character of a ferret if
+you intend to go out on a still hunt for all unacknowledged paternity,
+even in dear, simple, little old Goodloets," Nickols further jeered as
+we came up the steps of the Morgan house from where the others were just
+going into the dining room to resume their eating and drinking and being
+merry.
+
+"I'll find that one man," I answered as I swept into the dining room,
+seated myself in my place and drained my glass of flat wine.
+
+"Heaven help him!" laughed Nickols wickedly, and he raised Mr. Goodloe's
+full glass as he slipped into his place beside me.
+
+For a week after the shooting fray my soul sulked darkly in its tent and
+meditated while I went on my usual gay rounds of self-enjoyment. The
+garden was being brought to a most glorious mid-August triumph and the
+inhabitants for miles around were coming to see it. All of father's old
+friends, from whom he had shrunk in the last years, hung around him in
+the old way. He sat with them under the old graybeard poplars around
+which had been planted a plantation of slim young larches by the wizard
+of White Plains. From discussions about gardening and Americanisms all
+the old Solons of the local bar, and even of the towns around, gradually
+led their fallen leader back into his place and were battling with him
+over politics and jurisprudence as they had in past days. The day I went
+into his library to ask father about employing another likely black
+garden boy that Dabney had discovered, and found him, Judge Monfort from
+over at Hillcrest in the third district, Mr. Cockrell and Mr. Sproul
+around his table deep in huge volumes from the shelves, buried in a
+cloud of tobacco smoke and argument in which Latin words flew back and
+forth, I went up to my room and stood helpless before my window looking
+out towards Paradise Ridge.
+
+"I want to thank somebody and there is nobody to thank," I whispered,
+with a great emptiness within me. That was the bitterest cry of need my
+heart had ever given forth, and I went swiftly down to Nickols in the
+garden and told him what I had seen and heard.
+
+"It really is a remarkable come-back, sweetheart," he said, with the
+most exquisite sympathy in his voice and face. "Mark Morgan told me just
+an hour ago that they want to have him appointed back to his old place
+on the bench and Mr. Cockrell answered the President's inquiry for a man
+from this section for the Commerce Commission with the judge's name.
+It'll be great to see the old boy on one of the seats of the mighty
+again, thanks to the sweat of his brow and mind in this village
+manifestation of American nationalism which has grown out of our little
+old garden plan."
+
+"What can a man or woman do to render gratitude if there seems to be
+nobody to take it, Nickols?" I asked him, not expecting, as usual, that
+he would understand me. For once he did.
+
+"The philosophies all teach 'hand it on' in that case," he answered me.
+
+"I'll hand it on to Martha Ensley and help her and her child to their
+place under the sun," I said slowly, thus by having a reason and an
+obligation back of it, ratifying the vow I had already taken.
+
+"That is an impossibility," answered Nickols with easy coolness. "The
+one 'come-back' that is impossible is the woman in that kind of a
+situation."
+
+"I'll never admit such an injustice as that," I said, and I had a queer
+premonition that I would be held to that declaration.
+
+The very next morning after my declaration of purpose to "hand on" my
+father's "come-back" I went down into the Settlement to hunt for Martha
+Ensley, not that I was really suffering about her, but because I felt a
+kind of obligation to begin at once a thing that it appealed to my sense
+of justice to accomplish.
+
+Sometimes in mid-August there comes down a night over the hot, lush,
+maturing Harpeth Valley which is like a benediction that sprinkles cool
+dew on a thirsting heart. And now the morning was cool and brilliant,
+with the sun evaporating the heavy dew in soft clouds of perfume from
+the grain fields, the meadows and the upturned soil out where the
+farmers were breaking ground after the first harvests. I felt strong and
+calm and full of an electric energy, which I found I needed before I had
+more than started my quest.
+
+I put on my tennis clothes, snowy from collar to shoe tips, like the
+trappings of the White Knight, and started to walk down into the
+Settlement to find Martha. I intended to stop at Mother Spurlock's
+"Little House Beside the Road," and some vague idea was in my mind of
+having her dispatch a messenger to summons Martha to the interview I was
+about to bestow upon her. That is not the way it all happened and I was
+hot and dusty and sweat-drenched before I had been on my quest more than
+a few hours.
+
+Mother Elsie was not at home. The door to the Little House was wide
+open, as it always is when cold or rain does not close it, and huge old
+Tabby with one eye purred on the doorstep in the sun. A bird was nesting
+in the wisteria vine above the door and her soft whirring bespoke an
+interesting domestic event as near at hand. It did not in the least
+disturb Tab, and I wondered at the harmony between traditional enemies
+that I met on Mother Spurlock's very doorstep. I went in and drew myself
+a drink of fresh cool water from the cistern at the back door, looked in
+a tin box over the kitchen table and took three crisp tea cakes
+therefrom. I picked up a half knitted sock from beside the huge split
+rocker in the shade of the gnarled old apple tree, which was a rooftree
+in every sense of the word, for it crowded close against the door and
+hovered in the whole tiny house. Just before I left I put all the loose
+change I had in my white linen skirt pocket in an old lacquered tea
+canister which had a slit in it cut with a can opener, and that stood
+on the shelf of the old rock chimney in the low living room. I had
+never heard that canister mentioned by Mother Spurlock and I don't know
+how I knew that out of it came the emergency funds for many a crisis in
+the Settlement. Then last I picked a blush rose from the monthly bloomer
+trailing up and over the window and laid it on the empty, worn old Bible
+on the wide arm of the rocker beside a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.
+Then I hesitated. I had been so sure of finding Mother Spurlock at home
+and having her hunt up Martha for me that I found it difficult to adjust
+myself to my first complexity of plans. And while I hesitated a resolve
+came into my mind with the completeness of a spoken direction.
+
+"She lives at the Last Chance and I'll go right down there and find
+her," I said to myself, as I started along the peony-bordered path to
+the front gate of the Little House, over which a huge late snowball was
+drooping, loaded down with snowy balls that would hold their own until
+almost the time for frost. At my own decision I had a delicious little
+feeling of fear, which was at least justifiable when I thought of that
+huge drunken figure wrestling with Billy in the darkness and whom I
+knew to be the proprietor of the resort into which I had determined to
+penetrate. Also, from my early youth I had heard Jacob Ensley and the
+Last Chance spoken of in tones of dread disapproval. Before I should
+become really frightened I hurried down the hill, past the squalid and
+tumble-down mill cottages which I had never really seen before, where it
+seemed to me millions of children swarmed in and around and about, and
+at last arrived at the infamous social center of the Settlement.
+
+And my astonishment was profound to find that the Last Chance sign hung
+over a very prosperous grocery with boxes and barrels of provender out
+on the pavement under an awning and with huge, newly-painted screen
+doors guarding the wide entrance, at which I hesitated.
+
+"Come right in, lady, come right in," called a cheerful, booming man's
+voice, and the door was swung open by a large man in a white apron, with
+blue eyes that crinkled at the corners, a wide smile and white hair.
+"What can we do for you to-day? We've a nice lot of late dewberries just
+in from over on Paradise Ridge."
+
+"I'm--I'm looking for the--the Last Chance Saloon," I faltered, because
+I was too astonished to utter anything but the truth to the delightful
+and tenderly solicitous man standing before me in his huge, clean white
+apron over his blue shirt that matched his eyes.
+
+"Well, lady," the nice Irish voice faltered a trifle, about as mine had,
+though plainly with controlled astonishment tinged with amusement,
+"could I get you anything to--to cool you off and bring it out here in
+the grocery? It is cooler than it is back at the bar. I said to myself
+jest last week, so I did, I said to myself, 'Jacob, you ought to get a
+sody-water fountain for the ladies what has the same right to thirst as
+a man.' And I will, too, if my bad luck just leaves me. How about a nice
+cool bottle of beer sitting comfortable here before the counter?"
+
+"Are you--_you_--Jacob--I mean--Mr. Jacob Ensley?" I further gasped.
+This daylight materialization of the grewsome beast of the night was too
+much for me.
+
+"Jacob Ensley at your service, Miss," he answered with easy dignity.
+"Now, will it be the bottle of beer I shall bring you? Or there's a new
+drink I might mix fer you that a young gentleman friend of mine from
+New York has taught me, and with a good Irish name of Thomas
+Collins--the drink, not the young gentleman." Nickols had been living on
+Tom Collins for the last month and I instantly knew that I recognized
+the young friend from New York. Also my wits were at a branching of the
+road and I didn't know just what to do or say as Jacob waited with easy
+courtesy for my decision. And again I was too much perturbed for
+invention and had to speak out the truth.
+
+"I'm Charlotte Powers, Mr. Ensley, and I came down to see your daughter,
+Martha," I said, looking directly into his clear friendly eyes which I
+saw instantly darken with a storm as the smile left his nice mouth and
+it hardened into a straight line.
+
+"I'm sorry, Miss Powers, but my Martha ain't at home right now to you,
+and I don't know when she will be. Is that all I can do for you? These
+berries now, from over at Paradise Ridge?" And with the ease of a man of
+the great upper world Jacob Ensley of the lower walks of life put me out
+of the door of his private life into the ranks of the meddler and shut
+it in my face. I acknowledged to myself that my rebuff was justifiable
+and I was about to make an exit from the scene as gracefully as possible
+with a box of the really delicious berries under my arm when a cry of
+terror in a child's voice came from somewhere at the back of the grocery
+and together the grocer and I ran to see what the matter could be. And
+at the heels of the proprietor I then penetrated the blind of the
+grocery and entered the Last Chance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE TENACIOUS TURTLE
+
+
+"It's Martha's Stray," the big man gasped in a kind of impatient alarm.
+"I just left him here a minute ago to go front." Together he and I
+started around the long room with its bar on the one side backed up by a
+mirror whose gilt frame was swathed in mosquito netting and on either
+side of which were shelves bearing pyramids of bottles. On the bar at
+one end were piled oranges and at the other lemons and limes whose
+sophistication seemed out of place somehow in the Settlement in the
+Harpeth Valley. All the trappings that I judge would go with the
+dispensing of liquor were present, but our eyes could discover no small
+child and we stood together and waited anxiously.
+
+"He's got me toe, me toe, and won't let go. He's chewing it off!" at
+last came a lusty yell from just outside a back door that led out into a
+side yard from behind the bar, and with one accord the proprietor of
+the Last Chance and I ran to the scene of the devouring. And as we ran I
+heard a door slam in the rooms back of the bar and we met Martha face to
+face on the scene of action. I shall never forget the picture that
+confronted me there in that little back yard upon which the bar of the
+Last Chance opened, and I somehow never want to.
+
+On a little grass plot a small boy danced and yelled and firmly to one
+of the capering feet was hung a large mud turtle which was flapped this
+way and that by the strenuous young leg, but which held on with
+apparently every intention of letting only the traditional thunder
+loosen its grasp on the pink prize.
+
+"Stand still, you Stray, and let me get at the varmint," commanded Jacob
+impatiently.
+
+"Let mother get the beast, sonny," Martha pleaded as she knelt on the
+grass and caught the dancing boy by his arm and brought his dervish
+gyrations to a halt.
+
+I stood unconscious of intrusion and absorbed with interest and watched
+the operations begun on the tenacious turtle and the writhing toe.
+Neither of the three principals in the action noticed me at all as
+Martha held the boy and Jacob bent and took hold of the turtle in his
+hard brown spotted shell. And as the operations for his liberation were
+begun the small boy became both still and quiet and I was able to get a
+good view of him as he leaned against his mother's shoulder and held out
+the foot to Jacob.
+
+As I looked at him something queer stirred in me with a sharp pain and
+then was quiet. He was the most delicious bit of five-year-old humanity
+I had ever beheld and I doubt if any childless woman could have seen
+such a child cuddle to another woman's breast and shoulder and not have
+had something of the same thrill of pain. His whiteness and pinkness and
+sturdy chubbiness were like many another infant's charms but his jet
+black top-knot that ascended on one side and cascaded over his ear on
+the other in a hauntingly familiar way, his violet eyes under their long
+lashes and his clear-cut, firm, commanding mouth, that curled into the
+bud of a rose as he sobbed and then unfolded into lines of beauty and
+strength as he hushed at his mother's comforting, were not like any
+other young human that I had ever beheld.
+
+"It hurts. It hurts!" he sobbed.
+
+"Hush, _you_ mustn't cry!" commanded Martha, and there was a little
+bitter emphasis on the "you" that cut me, I didn't exactly know why.
+
+And immediately the curled mouth was set in a firm line and the long
+lashes winked back tears.
+
+"The beast will not leave go at all," was Jacob's verdict as after a
+careful twisting and turning of the ugly turtle he rose to his feet.
+"And they do say to kill it lets a venom into the place it is holt of. I
+dunno what to do." And in his uncertainty Jacob's eyes sought my face
+while at the same instant Martha lifted her wistful eyes to mine. It was
+the instinctive turning of the masses to the domination of my class in
+the time of need of leadership.
+
+"You git it, lady," suddenly demanded the kiddie, and in his voice and
+glance there was none of the deferring to a superior force that I felt
+in the others but a decided command of that force. And as he spoke he
+stretched out an imperious hand that caught and clung to mine. "Git down
+and git it," he again commanded.
+
+"Have you any ammonia, Martha?" I asked, my wits responding gallantly to
+the sudden demand upon their biological knowledge.
+
+"I've some in the chist behind the bar. Times I uses it strong on heavy
+drunks," responded Jacob and he went quickly into the bar and returned
+with the bottle. "It's customers in the grocery and customers at the bar
+that I'm keeping waiting fooling along with the brat and the varmint,"
+he grumbled.
+
+"I can manage the turtle and you can go and attend to the customers," I
+answered, thus assuming calmly the command of the craft of the Last
+Chance. Jacob immediately took me at my word and disappeared into the
+bar.
+
+"Let's take him and lay him on the bed so we can muffle the turtle in a
+towel while we use the ammonia," I said to Martha.
+
+"Yes," answered Martha, "that will be best. Let mother carry you,
+sonny!" and Martha bent as if to lift him in her arms.
+
+"I kin hop," the young sufferer announced. "I'm too big to carry, I am,"
+he added with proud consideration in his glance at Martha's frailness.
+
+"I'll carry you and mother can carry the turtle," I answered, and to
+prevent further delay I lifted him in my strong arms while Martha took
+the turtle in her hands, protected by the gingham apron that she wore.
+The black head wilted against my breast and the serious young violet
+eyes were raised to mine in frightened confidence.
+
+"It's a mighty big turkle," he faltered and snuggled closer.
+
+"We'll get him," I reassured, as I laid him on a bed in a room that
+opened, as did the bar, out on the tiny yard.
+
+And as I had promised we performed upon that stubborn turtle. With a
+convulsion, as the ammonia fumes entered his nostrils, if he had such
+things, he let go of the toe, shuddered and withdrew into his shell, to
+die, I supposed, though I afterwards learned that he crawled off in the
+night, much to the kiddie's grief.
+
+"That's a bad smell, poor old turkle," was all the thanks I got as the
+sufferer climbed down from the bed and proceeded to seize his late enemy
+in intrepid and sympathetic hands. His mother rescued both him and the
+turtle by placing the latter in a bucket on a table at the window and
+giving the rescued another bucket to get me a drink of water from the
+well in the yard.
+
+"Northeast, bottom corner," he promised me with hospitality shining from
+his entire face as he experimentally hopped out into the yard, then
+forgot me and the water entirely in making the acquaintance of a very
+dirty little dog that was barking at him through the fence.
+
+"Oh, he's lovely, Martha," I said, speaking from pure impulse in a way
+that could not fail to carry conviction and melt the heart of any woman
+who possessed a treasure like that.
+
+"I know he is, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered with gentle bitterness,
+"and that makes it all the worse for him."
+
+"It doesn't; it can't be worse for anybody to be born as beautiful and
+strong as that boy is," I answered her and felt somehow I had fallen
+head foremost into my mission. "I came down here to see you, Martha, and
+now that I have seen him--I--it's--it's a shame, all of it," I ended by
+faltering with a total lack of the eloquence that I felt.
+
+"Yes, it's just that--a shame," Martha admitted to me with a great
+hopelessness in her black eyes. "And nothing can make it better."
+
+"Something can be done!" I answered hotly. "You are young, Martha, and
+he's a baby. You can get out of it all and you can get him out and begin
+all over. I--I'll help you." And as I spoke I took her hand in mine.
+Mine was brown and hard from tennis and Martha's from toil, but they met
+and clung.
+
+"I--I tried that, Miss Charlotte. I had to come back," answered Martha,
+and a bitter passion suddenly lit her pale face. "I'm too young to be
+let go--yet."
+
+"What do you mean, Martha?" I asked, and suddenly I felt that some kind
+of chasm had yawned at my feet that I had never suspected to exist
+before.
+
+"Don't ask me, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered as the passion died out
+of her face and voice and the sorrow fell over her like a shadow.
+
+"Do you remember that afternoon at Mother Spurlock's when we were ten,
+and you climbed the tree and got the apples, while I picked them up for
+her to make apple turn-overs for us?" I asked her suddenly as I held on
+to her hand when she tried to draw it from me. "I cried for a week to
+go and see you, Martha, and it was all wrong that I wasn't allowed. My
+mother would have let me come if she had been alive, but Mammy was an
+ignorant negro and didn't understand."
+
+"I cried for you, too," answered Martha, as the saddest smile I had ever
+seen came across the darkness of her face. "And when you was a young
+lady I crept up to the south window of the Poplars and saw you in your
+dress for the big coming-out party. You were like an angel from Heaven
+and I loved you. I wanted to be like you. All us girls did. They have
+always envied you and watched you, but I loved you. I did! I did,
+but--what chanct has a girl like me got against a man who's like--like
+you are? But I did love you; I did!"
+
+"It doesn't seem right to--to either of us to have kept us apart," I
+faltered, as Martha suddenly slipped to the floor at my feet and put her
+head in her hands.
+
+"Don't be kind to me--I can't stand that. You mustn't, you mustn't! You
+wouldn't if you knew," she sobbed.
+
+"I _am_ going to be--that is, I _am_ going to help you, Martha, and you
+have got to show me how," I answered her as a kind of determination
+that was stronger than any like emotion I had ever had came over me.
+"Tell me what to do, Martha, for you and--and for the kiddie," I
+commanded her with my usual imperiousness.
+
+"Miss Charlotte," said Martha, as she suddenly rose to her knees, looked
+up into my face and bared her shoulder with one motion of her hand,
+"that black bruise is from the licks father gave me when I wouldn't tell
+him why it was I came back after I went away and why it was I went. He
+beat me three times to make me tell whose that boy is--when he wasn't a
+month old. He knew that Mr. Goodloe helped me to go away three months
+ago and--and begin again, and he don't really believe that the parson
+enticed me back. The gang just put that in his head when he was
+drinking. He does think that Mr. Goodloe knows about it all and I'm
+afraid--afraid that some time when he's drunk he'll try to make him tell
+and--and--there'll be murder, maybe double murder. I can't tell you
+anything. I'm a fly caught in a web and I'm being drawn down to hell. I
+thought there was a way out; the parson prayed with me and I saw it. I
+saw myself right and honest again, but--but at a word I--I came back.
+Even the good of the child couldn't hold me when the--the calling came.
+Please go and leave me, and forget about me and--and don't come down
+here again."
+
+"No, Martha, I must help you," I answered, decidedly. I had never been
+able to bear any kind of frustration and this made me doubly determined.
+
+"It's too late, Miss Charlotte, but, Oh, it ain't too late for some of
+the others. Luella May and Sadie Todd and the rest. Miss Charlotte, make
+the Town men let 'em alone, and stop the Saturday night games and dances
+down here. You can do it. Pa would kill me for saying it, for it is then
+he makes his money, but it isn't fair, it isn't fair. You Town women do
+the same things, but you are protected and looked after. When Grace
+Payne gets drunk at your Country Club you take her home yourself and see
+no harm comes to her, and the men she's with protect her from
+themselves, but it's not the same with Luella May Spain and--and me."
+
+"How did you know about Grace, Martha?" I faltered with terror in my
+heart. I felt a kind of class nakedness that made me burn with positive
+physical shame.
+
+"They all watch and talk about what you do, Miss Charlotte, you
+especially, because you are more beautiful and more--more strong than
+the rest. They all said you'd smash our going to the church meetings
+with the Town folks at the Country Club when you got home. But I always
+stand up that you are right and you are. The Town on the hill and the
+Settlement in the valley are better--better apart. That's why I'm
+begging you to go and leave me to fight it out or go under. Please go!"
+
+"Oh, but, Martha, I didn't--I don't--" I was beginning to falter a
+denial to what had suddenly struck me as a truth when we were
+interrupted by the advent of Martha's child, the Stray, as I afterwards
+found was the only name he possessed, one cruelly indicative of his
+relation to the social structure of the world into which he had
+involuntarily been born.
+
+"Bottom of the well, northeast corner," he said, as he set a bucket of
+water at my feet with a jolt that dashed a small wave over my white
+buckskins, and he held out a dipper full to me with a little twirling
+motion that sent another wave on my skirt and which had an unmistakably
+professional knack to it. I have seen old Wilks set down beer steins and
+cocktail glasses with exactly that twirl ever since he has officiated at
+the lockers and sideboard at the Club, and I now know that his motions
+had the latest Last Chance style to them. Thus, by gossamer links and
+steel cable, the Town and the Settlement seemed to be held together.
+
+"Excuse me for spilling the water on you," added the young scion of the
+bartender with grave courtesy, as he held a very dirty little paddie
+under the drip of the dipper and elevated the drink for me in such a way
+that I had to steady the small hand that held the handle with mine as I
+drank.
+
+"Oh, son, how careless!" Martha was just exclaiming when a call in
+Jacob's sharp voice interrupted her.
+
+"Martha, grocery!" it commanded her and I was not sure whether he was
+ignorant of the fact that I was still her caller or was interrupting her
+on purpose. I think Martha shared the same uncertainty; she blushed and
+looked both ashamed and frightened.
+
+"I'll go now, Martha, out this door that leads onto the street," I
+hastened to say to relieve her of the dilemma. "But I'm coming back to
+you," I added with determination, as I made ready to slip out the side
+door of the Last Chance in regular underworld style.
+
+"Please don't, Miss Charlotte," she called, as she was passing through
+the other door into the world from which I was escaping. The sad
+significance of our two exits struck me so forcibly that I was two
+blocks away before I really became conscious of things around me, and
+then I was brought back to the squalid street of the Settlement and its
+surroundings by feeling a damp little hand slipped into mine as I strode
+along.
+
+"Please take me with you, Miss Lady," the Stray pleaded, as he ran along
+beside me, trying to keep up with my long steps. "I've got me a dog now
+to keep off turkles from me and you." And the slinking brindle bunch of
+ears and tail and very little else, at our heels, regarded me with the
+same brave entreaty. He and the Stray, indeed, presented a picture of
+chivalrous attention as they stood regarding me.
+
+"But what will your mother say?" I asked of my small human attendant
+with conscientious contention against my desire to take them both with
+me on out of the dirt and heat and flies and other swarming young humans
+up into the coolness and shade and--loneliness--of my own life.
+
+"She groceries all day and has to forget me," he answered calmly. "You
+can bring me back to bed when she is through." And to this plea was
+added a pathetic wag of the brindle tail.
+
+"Well, I'll take you up as far as Mother Spurlock's and give you both a
+tea cake," I capitulated as I started again up the street of the
+Settlement towards the haven of the Town.
+
+And as my escort and I progressed through the Settlement I could see the
+most violent signs of interest being manifested in all of us. Dirty,
+sweaty women, with their sleeves rolled up, came to the doors to look at
+us, and as I greeted them one and all with a nod they smiled back with
+pleased astonishment. I had never been down in the Settlement before,
+but most of them spoke to me by name and one toothless old woman hastily
+broke off a bloom from a struggling geranium, came to her rickety gate
+and offered it to me with an admiring smile.
+
+"Bless my soul, Miss Charlotte, be you a-kidnappin' Martha's Stray?" she
+asked, as I accepted it with enthusiasm.
+
+"He and the dog are kidnapping me as far as Mother Spurlock's, and then
+they'll let me go and come back," I answered, with a laugh, as we
+started on. Not once had the strong little fingers let go of my hand as
+we stood and talked and they only held the closer as we started climbing
+the long, hot dusty hill to the Little House by the Side of the Road.
+But in the long climb not once did the sturdy little legs lag or the
+small arm drag on my strength. The clasp was one of equality and
+affectionate attraction, not of dependence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE SHORT-CIRCUIT
+
+
+And at last we arrived at the old snowball guarding the open gate of the
+Little House and we went under its low boughs and up the walk. But we
+did not march to an undisputed and stealthy raid on the tea cake box
+above the kitchen table. The Little House was no longer the deserted
+scene I had left it, but was teeming with human and juvenile activities
+which streamed out to meet us at the door.
+
+"You can't come in here, Auntie Charlotte," was the command that greeted
+me at the very doorstep as young Charlotte faced me with short skirts
+outspread determinedly, while behind her Mikey of the red head, Jimmy,
+Sue, Maudie, the sister of Mikey, and other known and unknown juveniles,
+presented a solid support of defiance. "We are doing some Lord's work
+and we don't need you, but we'll let the nice little boy and the lovely
+dog come in. We do need them. Come in, little boy!" and as she spoke
+Charlotte held out a welcoming hand to the Stray, who faltered and
+looked up into my face to see if he might accept the invitation which
+evidently swayed him by its commanding tone.
+
+"Couldn't I come in for just a second?" I asked with all due meekness.
+
+"Not for even a second," answered Charlotte sternly. "You'd interrupt
+Minister. You go away and leave the boy."
+
+"Then how'll I get him back to his mother?" I pleaded, but as I spoke I
+allowed the little fingers to slip from mine and I pushed the waif
+towards Charlotte with the greatest confidence, which evidently
+communicated itself to both him and the dog, for they left me
+simultaneously and went towards the enemy's camp.
+
+"Shoo, it's only little Stray Ensley. I'll take him home when I go," the
+redoubtable Mikey assured me with a wide smile at the kiddie, which was
+answered with a rapture of hero worship.
+
+"What's his name?" demanded Charlotte as if seeking a passport.
+
+"Just Stray," answered Mikey in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. "He
+ain't got no father, dead or alive."
+
+"Then Stray is just short for stranger, because everybody else has
+fathers, dead, alive or drunk," said Charlotte, in the same
+matter-of-fact tone that Mikey had used, and he in no way seemed to feel
+her remark personally derogatory to his paternal parent.
+
+"Well, let's take him to Minister to be learned his verses of the song
+and dance. Come on, for we are keeping him and the Lord waiting," said
+Charlotte as she marshaled them all into the Little House and calmly
+shut the door in my face and left me standing alone in the middle of the
+walk. Even the yellow pup had squeezed into the door before it was shut
+and only I was left in the outer darkness away from the grand opera
+voice that I could hear booming with a juvenile chorus out at the back
+of the cottage where I knew the rehearsal was being held under the twin
+of the old apple tree from which the front roof tree over my head was
+eternally separated by the Little House. With actual sadness and a queer
+feeling of shut-outness I did the only thing left to me and sauntered
+slowly on up the hill under the tall old elm trees that the Town had
+planted a century ago to keep the heat from the heads of the like of me
+while the toilers down in the Settlement had no such proof of ancestral
+care.
+
+"They are producing in the sweat of their brows while I--saunter," I
+said to myself, as I stretched out my bare arm from which the white silk
+sleeve had been rolled away after the prevailing mode of the sport for
+which it was designed, and flexed and regarded the bunch of muscles that
+knotted themselves on my smooth, tanned forearm.
+
+"It _could_ swing a wash tub as well as the best racquet this side of
+the Meadowbrook Club," I added aloud with a queer kind of primitive
+shame mixed with my physical pride in myself.
+
+"Or juggle a heavy baby and a kitchen stove into a square meal?" added a
+laughing voice as the Jaguar padded up beside my shoulder on his tennis
+shoes before I had heard him at all, so deep was my absorption in my own
+judgment and absolution of myself.
+
+"Still I was put out just a few minutes ago by a woman half my size," I
+laughed in return as the long strides shortened into harmony with mine.
+
+"I heard about it and ran after you to ask you to come back or, if you
+refused, to let me go with you wherever you are going. I left Mother
+Spurlock in charge of the newly installed Epworth Leaguers. Charlotte
+disapproved of my coming and said so," and we both laughed in delight
+over my strenuous name-daughter.
+
+"Are you asking me _quo vadis?_" I demanded, with a look at him out of a
+corner of my eye that got in return a glint of the jewels under dull
+gold that always infuriated as well as interested me.
+
+"'Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge--'"
+the parson suddenly chanted under his breath, using the old Gregorian
+measure for the few words of the oldest song of impersonal love extant.
+"Thank you for bringing Martha's boy up to the Little House. Jacob has
+refused both Mother Spurlock and me to let him come."
+
+"I didn't bring him. He and the pup brought me and then he was stolen
+from me into the fold, as it were," I answered as I paused at the front
+gate of the Poplars, which had a white clematis drifting over its tall
+stone pillars and clutching at the straight iron bars as if trying to
+keep me out of even my own fold. "Will you come in with me?" I asked
+with a laugh, as I flung the old gate wide in spite of the tendril
+fingers.
+
+The parson laughed, whistled a strain of his "whither thou goest" chant
+to me and followed me across the lawn to the foot of the poplars. On the
+bench surrounding their trunks I found my basket with the fine seam I
+was sewing for the Suckling in it and I dropped upon the thick mat of
+grass on the very edge of the shadow from the silver branches above and
+began to hunt for my thimble, leaving the Jaguar standing over me.
+
+"Stop looking down on me and come tell me what particular religious
+incantations were going on from which Charlotte so violently barred me,"
+I laughed up at him, as I threw a flat grass cushion a little way from
+my skirts, upon which he immediately sank and seemed to curl up at my
+feet.
+
+"I had the whole bunch rehearsing the children's part in the dedication
+services of our chapel. Do you know that small Sue can really sing? The
+rest stagger well but Susan sings. It is delicious. It is going to be
+hard on you women folks to hear her chant her responses to me on that
+great day." And as he spoke he looked beyond me over to his beautiful
+shimmering gray chapel and there was not a glint in his eyes that showed
+me he was trying to sound out my intentions about attendance on that
+ceremony.
+
+"Please, Mr. Goodloe, don't be serious in saying as you did last night
+that you are not going to dedicate your chapel until I--I help you," in
+all gentleness I said.
+
+"I can't do it until you come," he answered me with just as great
+gentleness and he turned his head away from me, but not before I saw a
+glow in his eyes that made me suddenly strong and calm and curiously
+humble.
+
+"I--I could go as your guest," I faltered, offering a compromise which I
+felt sure would not be accepted.
+
+"I can't, I just can't dedicate the chapel until you echo my ceremony in
+your heart," he answered me with his eyes still turned away from me and
+looking with the greatest sadness out on Paradise Ridge.
+
+"Why?" I asked with a simple directness that the situation demanded and
+with no trace of the coquetry the question might have held.
+
+"Shall I tell you all of the reason with no reservations?" the parson
+asked, as he swung around on his mat and faced me, with his eyes looking
+straight into mine.
+
+"All," I answered.
+
+"In every community there is one soul which holds the real leadership of
+the souls of those surrounding them. God seems to appoint captains of
+the regiments of His people to lead them along the way, Christ the
+captain of all the hosts. Spiritually you are more evolved than any
+other person in this town and with you doubting I cannot get the others
+to see. You are so gorgeous and so brilliant that you blind them all.
+They have always followed your lead--up or down. There are a few like
+Mother Spurlock who have gained their Christ knowledge through
+suffering, but they are not of the calibre to help others to gain
+theirs. With your hand in mine I can make this whole community see and
+know; separated from you, you going one way and I another, I can do
+nothing. You simply short-circuit my force and I am helpless without
+you." He spoke very simply and directly down into my heart.
+
+"That is not true; no one person is responsible for any spiritual
+decision that another makes," I answered hotly with an awful sense of
+having had a burden placed on my shoulders that they could not carry.
+
+"The old 'brother's keeper' question will never be settled in any but
+the right way," he answered me straight from the shoulder. "You are
+responsible for the attitude of this whole town towards the cause I
+represent and they'll have to wait for your eyes to be opened and for
+you to make them see."
+
+"You minimize yourself," I answered quickly, for in some curious way it
+hurt me to see that great strong man sit at my feet baffled by a force
+that he declared to be in me but which I did not acknowledge or
+understand.
+
+"They were listening to me--from a distance, as it were--and I might
+have made them hear if you had not come home and thrown them back into
+the old pleasant groove of non-action and non-belief. In a week you had
+swept away all I had builded in six months." He spoke with simple
+conviction and not a trace of the bitterness that might have been in the
+arraignment.
+
+"Everybody in this town adores you," were the words that gushed out of
+my heart for his comforting before I could stop them. "That is one
+reason I have acted as I have. I do not, I cannot believe that the
+religion which is great enough to bring the redemption of the whole race
+into a desirable immortality can be composed of nine-tenths emotion,
+with which all of them were following your beautiful voice and beautiful
+eyes and beautiful church and beautiful words. If I am to be saved it
+will be by something sterner than that; it will be something that makes
+me sweat drops of blood from my mind, take up a hard cross of duty and
+work, work to make the fibre of my soul strong enough to enjoy the
+robust kind of immortality that alone seems worth while to me. Your Son
+of Man walked from town to town in the hot sun and taught the people,
+healed the multitude and yet had not where to lay his head to rest. His
+church has lost His vigor. Your whole scheme hasn't enough action in it.
+Your organization is too easy and too full of surface observances. It is
+conducted with slipshod business methods and there is no force in it to
+help me. If I join any church ever it will have to be a new one that can
+compare with modern business in its efficiency. Your scheme of
+redemption to immortality through an efficient mediation is perfectly
+sound, but you don't back it up."
+
+"The Church of Christ has stood, endured and done business for almost
+two thousand years," he answered quietly. "It is in some ways all you
+say of it, but it has at least proved its vitality. Why seek to found a
+new organization with a new head and a new scheme of immortality if you
+recognize this scheme as good? The place to reorganize a business is
+from the inside, not the outside. These people _must_ get their vision
+_now_. Will you come and help me?" As he spoke he looked again down into
+the depths from which I had been trying to translate some of the
+hieroglyphics to him and he held out his long powerful hand to me in an
+entreaty that shook my very foundations.
+
+"You make me want to do as you ask me, but I do not see what it is we
+should strive for, what it is from which we should be saved. There are
+tears in my eyes but do you want my emotions without my reason?" And I
+asked my question with a quiver almost of timidity.
+
+"No, both!" he answered me, as he dropped his hand and arm from their
+attitude of entreaty, shook his head sadly and again turned from me and
+looked out on the dim distance of Old Harpeth. Suddenly I had the
+feeling of having a great door shut in my face, and a terror of being
+left all alone in the world came over me. Without knowing what I did I
+stretched out my hand and caught at his arm and moved closer to him,
+suddenly cold in the sunshine.
+
+"I'm frightened," I whispered, as I bowed my head on my hand, clutching
+his arm.
+
+"Poor little wandering, hunting lamb," he crooned to me as he laid a
+tender hand on my bowed head. "Keep watch over her, Lord Jesus," he
+prayed under his breath and then as suddenly as I had felt the fear I
+found again my courage.
+
+"That cry was woman to man, not child to priest. It is only honest to
+tell you so," I said, as I suddenly raised my head and threw another
+gauntlet that I knew would bring on another battle. "I hate myself for
+it."
+
+"I wanted to win you for God and have you come to me then as a gift
+from Him, but it may have to be the other way round," was the answer he
+struck out at me with, and as he spoke he clasped my hand in his with a
+force that seemed to create the great silent, untenanted space around us
+as it had that night he had sung the Tristan music to me in the
+moonlight. "I'm going to save you and--and _have_ you."
+
+"No, no!" I cried, as I tried to draw my hand away, found it held beyond
+my effort and then suddenly released.
+
+"I knew the first minute I looked into your eyes, but I'll wait," he
+said softly into the silence around us.
+
+"No, no, don't even think such a thing," I exclaimed, and I wanted to
+rise to my feet and break the spell of that space around us, but I could
+only cower closer to him on the grass beneath the rustling silver
+leaves. "I'm going to marry Nickols in a few months and then I'm going
+out of this world of yours and you can lead them all to--to safety."
+
+"No, it's in God's hands. He'll keep you and give you to me when the
+time comes. It all may mean suffering to us both, probably does, but I
+accept the cup--in His good time," and as he spoke he looked again into
+my eyes with a lonely sadness that I could not endure.
+
+"I want to get away from you," I gasped and I felt that I must get out
+of the aloneness with him.
+
+"We are in God's hands," he said again, as his warm hands found and held
+mine. "We must wait on Him with--" Then suddenly the world closed in on
+us again and we were on our feet--apart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ABIDE WITH ME
+
+
+"Auntie Charlotte, you stole Minister away from us in a no-fair way,"
+stormed Charlotte as she came around the young larches and wild swamp
+root that had formed the world apart for the dangerous Jaguar and me.
+"Mother Spurlock can't sing to any good and Sue is so little we gets the
+key away from her. Let him come right back!" As she made this peremptory
+demand for the release of my prisoner, my name-daughter stood her ground
+with her cohorts, who had been scrambling around and over and through
+the shrubbery, massed behind her. There were Mikey of the red head,
+small James, the musical wee Susan, Maudie Burns and Jennie Todd,
+besides several more of the Burns family, a few Sprouls and Paynes and a
+very ragged young Jones, and they all looked at me with hostile and
+accusing eyes as Charlotte hurled a final invective at me. "You are
+wicked and the devil will burn you up," she threatened.
+
+"He won't neither, at all. Hush up!" came a defense and a command in a
+very imperious young voice, and the Stray followed the voice from around
+the large trunk of the oldest graybeard. He had arrived late on the
+scene of action because his impedimenta had been the wriggling puppy of
+brindle hue, which he immediately released as he came over and stood
+between the Reverend Mr. Goodloe and me, with my hand in his own small
+paddie and defiance and defense to the limit in his high-held young head
+with its black crest and snapping violet eyes. At last I felt Charlotte
+had met her match and I trembled for the result.
+
+"She never stoled nothing," he further declared, looking Charlotte full
+in the eye.
+
+"I meant she tooken him away, Stranger," parleyed Charlotte with extreme
+mildness for her and giving to the Stray the name that she had decided
+upon by translating the cognomen of his state into that of another
+almost equally forlorn. "My father told my Auntie Harriet that Aunt
+Charlotte would git Minister yet and I'll call the devil to stop her if
+she tries to get him away."
+
+"I'll bust that devil's head with a rock and a bad smell," answered the
+Stray as he held tighter to my hand and hurled back his threat that held
+a remembrance of the conquering of the tenacious turtle.
+
+"Auntie Harriet answered father that Auntie Charlotte and the devil
+could do most anything that--" small James was contributing to the
+general assault when with a wave of a calming hand Mr. Goodloe took the
+field.
+
+"That will do, youngsters," he commanded with extreme mildness it seemed
+to me, considering the appalling situation. "I thought you had had about
+enough practice for to-day and Charlotte could have taught the little
+boy--er--"
+
+"Stranger," prompted Charlotte.
+
+"You could have taught him up to the point you knew so I could have a
+nice rest here under the lovely trees. Are you being kind to me in not
+helping me a little bit? You know what you promised me." And the beloved
+"Minister's" voice was just as grave and just as serious as if he had
+been reproving one of his deacons.
+
+"Is talking to Auntie Charlotte and holding her hand the Lord's work?"
+demanded Charlotte, looking him straight in the face.
+
+"Yes," answered Mr. Goodloe, gravely, looking her as straight in the eye
+as she had looked him.
+
+"Then come on, Stranger, and learn the march without any tune but Sue,"
+she said as she stretched out her hand to the Stray, who ignored it and
+clung to me with his serious eyes raised to mine.
+
+"I'll go with you now over in the chapel and play for you on the organ
+and then we can all teach him," said the parson, and he picked wee
+Susan, the music box, up in his arms and buried his lips in the curls on
+the back of her fragrant little neck.
+
+"Are you all done with Auntie Charlotte?" asked young Charlotte, with
+the extreme of consideration for him, not for my feelings.
+
+"Yes, for the present," he answered, and he held out his free hand to
+the Stray, who was still clinging to me.
+
+"Go with him, sonny, and Mikey will take you home," I said to my small
+champion, using the tender name that I had heard Martha give him. As I
+spoke I laid his hand in that of Mr. Goodloe and I didn't raise my eyes
+to his but turned from them and left him standing in the midst of his
+flock of lambs under the silver leaves and out in the bright light,
+while I went into the cool dark hall and on up to my own room which was
+also cool and dark.
+
+"I am lost and blind and I don't know what to do," I murmured as I flung
+myself down on my window seat and looked through the narrow opening of
+the shutters out to the everlasting hills across the valley. "I know I
+am ineffective and perfectly worthless as I am but I will not, I will
+not be swayed by--"
+
+"Charlotte," called father's voice with its commanding note which had
+apparently come into it now to stay.
+
+"Yes," I answered, and went down immediately, glad of the interruption
+to my self-communion and arraignment.
+
+I found father and Nickols and Mark Morgan and Billy Harvey and Mr.
+Cockrell down in father's study and I could see from their faces that
+something unusual had happened.
+
+"City Council voted the appropriation to meet Cockrell's and my donation
+for the schoolhouse, contracts have been signed and dirt is to be
+broken to-morrow by Henry Todd and thirty workmen Nickols has ordered
+down from the city," father announced, with jubilation in his voice. "We
+thought Goodloe was here in the garden with you."
+
+"He was, but he has taken the children with him over to his chapel," I
+answered, and for some reason I blushed, for I saw Mark Morgan's eyes
+laughing at me and I also saw a glint I didn't like in Nickols' eyes.
+
+"School to be opened on September twelfth and then let the kids fight it
+out," said Billy. "I bet on Charlotte to beat out the whole Settlement
+the first day if allowed full swing."
+
+"If Goodloe didn't stand behind this mixing of--of social oil
+and--water, I'd be scared to death," said Mark.
+
+"Mike Burns and Henry Todd and Spain had better be afraid of a loss of
+progeny," jeered Billy. "I bet Charlotte and James and the scions of the
+Sprouls and Paynes can lead the Settlement scions into by-paths of
+iniquity of which they never dreamed."
+
+"I wish you had ten, blast you, for being so sensible as to have none,"
+Mark answered him, and I felt rather than saw the bolt of pain that shot
+through Billy's heart. It's because Nell and her children are not his
+that Billy is bad, and what is going to help him?
+
+"Well, let's go over to the parsonage and tell Goodloe all about it,"
+father suggested, and the other men followed him out into the garden
+path that led through the Eden of my foremothers straight into that
+little Methodist chapel. Only Nickols remained with me upon the wide
+high vine-shadowed porch.
+
+"I'll marry you the first of October, Nickols, and then we can go to
+France as you want to," I said to him without any preamble, and as I
+spoke I drew close to him as if for protection from something I didn't
+understand.
+
+"Fleeing from the wrath to come?" questioned Nickols with a tender jeer
+as he took me in his arms and his lips sought the kiss I had been
+keeping from him. Again I refused it and he laughed as he pushed me from
+him and there was still more of the jeer in the laugh though the passion
+in his eyes was devouring and glad.
+
+"Suppose we go north, right after Mr. Jeffries has finished his visit.
+Let's have the ideal village wedding. We'll have out the school children
+if any are left from the mix-up, and Goodloe can make us man and wife
+out here under the trees in our own garden. Then we'll go away from the
+whole show, the Christian religion included, and live happy ever after."
+And as he spoke Nickols again drew me to him and sought the kiss I still
+could not give him.
+
+"Nickols, Mother Spurlock and poor little Mrs. Burns and--and Mr.
+Goodloe have something very real that we haven't," I faltered and,
+utterly weary, I laid my head down against his strong shoulder.
+
+"That's what they say, but they can't prove it. They can't pass it on,
+so it mustn't really be anything. They are not tightwads, so they
+wouldn't hold back on us with their salvation, would they? Well, then,
+they haven't anything. It's all just a substitute for love, dear. Mother
+Spurlock fell back on it when she lost her husband. The little Burns
+woman wouldn't have it any more than Nell has if Mike Burns was like
+Mark Morgan. And Goodloe would lose it in a week if--if he could get you
+in his arms." As Nickols spoke, his arms about me trembled and strained
+me to him.
+
+"No!" I exclaimed as if I had heard blasphemy uttered.
+
+"It _is_, dear, it is just suppressed sex. The scientists agree on that
+and all the religions are just that, from the most primitive to the most
+evolved. Some are more frank about it than others. The Igorrotes when
+they have their religious dancing at the mating season are more open
+than the Methodists about their being one and the same thing, but it all
+sums up alike. You can't get away from those facts."
+
+"Then I want to be dead," I said as I drew myself from his arm and stood
+on the edge of the porch.
+
+"Or you want to love," muttered Nickols under his breath as he watched
+me sullenly for a second. "Then it's October, is it?" he asked with one
+of his infectious, delicious laughs that have always broken across my
+serious moods and made them froth.
+
+"Yes," I answered steadily.
+
+"Then we'll tell Nell and Harriet and Jessie and Mrs. Sproul all about
+it, as I see them coming, on gossip bent I feel sure," he said as he
+went halfway down the walk to meet the girls before I could restrain
+him.
+
+I shall always have with me the picture that Nickols made as he stood
+tall and handsome and smiling against the background of the wonderful
+garden he had helped to create, with the women smiling and clinging to
+him as he looked up at me with a great laughing light in his face. In
+some ways he was the handsomest man I had ever seen and his distinctions
+sat upon him as easily as the college honors of a boy. A wave of race
+pride and love swept up in my heart as I looked at him and I felt that
+in him must be the refuge that I sought. His sophistries always sank
+deep into me.
+
+"Charlotte, my dear," said Mrs. Sproul, as I led her to a seat beneath
+the vines in a shady corner, "I wish I was sure that your mother knew of
+this safe happiness of yours. She adored Nickols and nothing could have
+given her a greater joy. And, my dear, for you to have held him against
+the world, as it were, is a triumph, I assure you. Always remember that
+men of his kind are--are desirable. I'll have a long talk with you
+before you go away with him." And I didn't know why, but the smile with
+which Mrs. Sproul whispered and patted my hand made me burn all over
+with protest.
+
+"I wouldn't have you for a husband unless we were both convicted
+together to a chain gang for at least five years after the ceremony,
+Nickols Powers," said Harriet, with a laugh for which Nickols raised her
+hand to his lips as he responded.
+
+"You like husbands in safety deposit vaults, don't you, Harriet?" At
+which sally they all laughed as they seated themselves around Mrs.
+Sproul and me.
+
+"Why will women want husbands to be as stationary as--as hitching posts,
+Mrs. Sproul?" demanded Nickols as he leaned against one of the tall
+pillars and lighted a cigarette for himself after having lighted one for
+her and Jessie. Jessie Litton had always smoked, in secret until the
+last year or two, and Mrs. Sproul had frankly taken up the habit as a
+comfort for old age, she insisted. I suspect that she had had it for a
+long time in advance of the fashion. It was a really delicious sight to
+see the old world grace with which she accomplished it.
+
+"Women have the nestling habit and that is why they want to believe men
+to be sturdy oaks in whose branches they can safely anchor a family as
+well as twine around in their affectionate gourd fashion," answered Mrs.
+Sproul, as she daintily puffed a smoke ring at Nickols.
+
+"A lot of times the gourd vine grows so strong that she doesn't realize
+she is supporting her family by her own strength long after the oak has
+faded away in her coils and sprouted up from an acorn in some other
+locality," said Jessie, as she, too, puffed a ring of smoke in Nickols'
+direction.
+
+"Is this agriculture, biology or religion we are discussing?" demanded
+Harriet with a laugh as we all rose and went to the edge of the porch to
+meet Billy and Mark and father, who had with them the beloved
+"Minister."
+
+"Congratulations and condolences, Mr. Powers," said Mrs. Sproul as she
+laid her hand in father's.
+
+"On what score, my dear madam," he demanded.
+
+"You know I asked for Charlotte on my fifteenth and her tenth birthday,
+Judge," Nickols said, with his ready grace in any situation, and he came
+and stood beside father and took his hand in his with the gentle
+affection a girl might have shown the older man. "You said 'yes' then
+and it has taken all these years to make her echo the word," and as he
+finished speaking he held out his arm and drew me close to father and
+himself.
+
+"Hurrah!" exclaimed Mark, but I saw him exchange a glance of amusement
+with Harriet, and Nell gave him a warning little squeeze of the arm.
+
+"Bless you both," said father, as he gave us both a hug.
+
+All this I saw and noted before I raised my eyes to meet the jeweled
+eyes under dull gold that I knew were gazing straight at me as Gregory
+Goodloe stood in the background against the dark vine while the
+rejoicings over the announcement of my betrothal were enacted. Somehow I
+felt I could not make myself face their gaze, which yet I knew I must. I
+met a flash that burned down into the very darkest spots in my nature
+and illuminated them all. There was not a trace of male anger or demand
+in the gaze but a cold valuation of me and the entire situation that
+burned me as ice burns raw flesh, then over all of us there suddenly
+poured from the same source a tenderness that was as radiant as the
+summer sun.
+
+"Yes, God bless us all!" he exclaimed, as he held out his hands to all
+of us, one of which Nickols took, with a swift challenging glance that
+in the radiance softened to confidence, and the other father took and
+fairly clung to in his happiness. I was glad, glad that I didn't have to
+endure the touch of his hand on mine after that glance, but not for one
+instant did my heart accuse his radiance of being dramatics. I rather
+felt that it came from a warmth within him by which everybody else in
+the world might be comforted but for which I would forever be cold.
+
+"I _want_ to be worth her, old man," Nickols said to him with a
+curiously pleading note in his voice, and he, too, seemed to me to be
+clinging to some of the strength that was not for me.
+
+"Then God help you," was the answer given with the very essence of
+gentleness, but with a level glance into Nickols' eyes that was
+profoundly sad.
+
+"And now let's hear the wedding plans," demanded Harriet. "This marrying
+and giving in marriage is the best way I know of to make time pass, and
+let's make Charlotte give us full measure. I'm matron of honor, of
+course, and I suggest only twelve bridesmaids. I intend to be preceded
+to the altar by Sue in an embroidered silk muslin I will provide, with a
+bonnet of tulle in which nestles a pink rose to match the ones in her
+basket. There will also be a display of pink knees that will be
+ravishing and--"
+
+"Just let me remind you, Harriet, that this is Charlotte's wedding and
+not that of my daughter, Susan, and her often-mentioned knees," said
+Mark with a laugh that they all echoed.
+
+"I am going to marry Susan's pink knees when they are ripe," remarked
+Billy and his suppression lasted long enough for me to attain command
+enough of myself to manage the plans of my own wedding.
+
+Later when they had all gone by way of the chapel to help Mr. Goodloe
+decide on some designs for a memorial window to his father he was having
+made by a great artist he and Nickols had selected, I went in to make my
+announcement to Mammy and Dabney.
+
+"Well, ram in the cork to the demijohn, honey, and it'll be all right,"
+was Dabney's semi-cordial consent, but Mammy went on industriously
+beating her biscuits for supper the one hundred and twenty licks
+prescribed by her reputation as a cook and her conscientious guarding of
+that same reputation.
+
+"What do you say, Mammy?" I insisted on her giving her opinion.
+
+"Of course, if you want to eat plain biscuits instead of the showbread
+from before the mercy seat--one hundred and two, one hundred and
+three--" was the answer given between the licks upon the white dough,
+and I fled before I should get a clearer manifestation of the
+disappointment I felt raging in her faithful old heart.
+
+That night a young crescent moon was hung over the very crown of Old
+Harpeth as I threw the shutters of my window wide to the night breezes
+after I had put out my light and was ready for bed. I stood in its soft
+light and looked across to the dark mass of the chapel opposite and saw
+that a dim light was still burning from the window by the organ loft.
+And as I stood and looked, the empty place that I had felt in the very
+center of my heart grew colder and more bleak until suddenly across the
+garden on perfumed waves of sound came the Tristan love song and filled
+my emptiness with a pain that was both hot and cold. I stood and let the
+flood dash over me as long as I could and then with a sob I sank on the
+floor and rested my head on the window seat and began to weep as only
+women such as I know how to weep. Then into my sorrow very quietly there
+again stole another strain after the Tristan song had sobbed away into
+the night and suddenly my own weeping was stilled and again something
+within me was healed by the great tender voice singing out in the
+darkness beyond the hedge:
+
+    "Abide with me; fast falls the eventide--
+           ... ... ... ...
+    Help of the helpless, O abide with me!"
+
+"I don't know what to do, I don't know," I cried, and sobbed myself to
+sleep on my pillow after I had watched the light across the garden go
+out and after all in the little parsonage beyond the hedge was dark and
+quiet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A CLANDESTINE ADVENTURE
+
+
+It seems a strange, almost savage thing that the few months before a
+woman's marriage are always filled so full of the doing of thousands and
+tens of thousands of small things that she has no time to think of the
+hugeness of the responsibilities she is assuming. Perhaps if she were
+given time to realize them she would never assume them. Once or twice in
+the long two, nearly three months that I had given myself to get ready
+to marry Nickols, I paused and found myself thinking of the weighty
+things of life, but I soon was able to shake off the thought of the
+future. The time I felt it press most heavily was one morning that
+Jessie Litton and I sat quietly sewing on some sort of fluff she and
+Harriet had planned for my adornment, and very suddenly Jessie laid down
+her ruffle and looked at me as she said:
+
+"Charlotte, I would be frightened, positively frightened, at the
+prospect of marrying Nickols Powers."
+
+"I am; but why would you be?" I asked her directly.
+
+"I read that long resume of his work in the Review last night and for
+the first time I really realized what an important person he is to the
+development of American art. He really is a huge national machine and
+you'll be one of the important cogs on which the whole thing runs.
+You'll be ground and ground by his life and you'll have to make good or
+be responsible for some sort of a crash."
+
+"No," I answered, slowly drawing my thread through the sheer cloth. "No,
+Nickols will live his own way regardless of the cogs on which it grinds.
+I shall have an enormous task in keeping up with the social side of his
+life, but Nickols is not the kind of a man who takes a woman into his
+work."
+
+As I made my answer I was stabbed by the memory of the words that
+Gregory Goodloe had said to me on that day in the garden: "Separated
+from you, you going one way and I another, I can do nothing. You
+short-circuit my force--I am helpless without you." And _he_ had been
+inviting me into the work for which he had been ordained into the holy
+Church of Christ. I felt myself groping blindly into the futility of my
+own life, and I was sick at heart.
+
+"And if that is so, I would be still more frightened," Jessie said,
+gazing at me with dismayed and honest affection.
+
+"Don't let's talk about it," I answered her and took up my sewing. At
+that moment and from that moment I cast myself into the whole whirl of
+activities in Goodloets and gave myself no more time or strength for
+self-communion. I was fleeing, and from what I dared not know.
+
+And it was a busy month that stretched from August through September.
+Nickols said it would be his last fling at the old town and he proposed
+to leave his mark on its mossy sides. And he did.
+
+In the first place money was pouring into little old Goodloets from
+three huge sources. The little one-horse tannery down by the river
+beyond the Settlement doubled, tripled and then quadrupled its capacity
+and next to it the little old saddle and harness factory in which Mr.
+Cockrell and old Mr. Sproul had been making saddles and harness since
+the days of the Confederacy, did the same and sent out consignment after
+consignment of saddles and bridles which were paid for in huge checks of
+Russian origin which almost paralyzed the Goodloets Bank and Trust
+Company and which worked pale Clive Harvey into the night until he
+managed to get young Henry Thornton in to assist him. His salary was
+raised three times until it was large enough to harbor Bessie and any
+number of small editions of them both, only she preferred to drink and
+dance and joy-ride with Hugh Payne, who could not have supported such a
+flowering by his own effort to have saved his own life and soul.
+
+And then to burden poor Clive still further, Hampton Dibrell and Mr.
+Thornton hastily built huge pens over by the railroad and in these
+assembled hundreds and thousands of mules to be shipped through to
+France, which brought in return a steady stream of French francs to be
+translated into American dollars. Still further, Billy and Mark and
+Cliff, with Nickols' assistance, and the telegraph system, speculated in
+War Brides down on Wall Street until their individual bank accounts
+began to mount to giddy sums. Father and Mr. Sproul and more of the
+other men did likewise and Buford Cunningham got some spectacular
+returns from copper in Canada that Billy said would make Mrs. Buford
+Cunningham try to buy the Country Club outright for a summer home. And
+while there was prosperity in the Town the Settlement also had its
+share. Wages rose higher and higher and many of the women went to work
+at the machines in the saddle factory, leaving the care of the children
+to the old dames, which resulted in an added pandemonium in the
+Settlement streets.
+
+"I don't know what is the matter. Goodloets is money mad," wailed Mother
+Spurlock, as she sank with weariness into the rocker on my porch one hot
+August afternoon. "The girls and the women are all at work and two
+babies have died this week from pure lack of mother's care, I might say
+mother's milk. Ed Jones' wife weaned her six-months'-old baby so she
+could go in the factory, and left it on condensed milk with old Mrs.
+Jones, who fed it incessantly and not at all cleanly. Now it is not
+expected to live. And they dance at the Last Chance until one o'clock
+almost every night. Is the world mad?"
+
+"No, just prosperous, Mother Elsie," I answered her as I gave her a
+large fan and Dabney brought her a tall glass of very cold tea. "Little
+old Goodloets is having the same boom that the rest of America is
+getting from feeding and furnishing the rest of the warring world."
+
+"Nickols Powers told me just last night that over two hundred thousand
+dollars would be spent on the improvements to this town in the next two
+months, counting the new schoolhouse, the restoration of the courthouse,
+the paving of the public square and the enlargement of the electric
+light plant. That doesn't count the money everybody is putting on their
+own private homes. That camp of workmen down by the river that Nickols
+has had sent down from the city has a hundred men in it now, and that is
+one thing that demoralizes the Settlement. Jacob Ensley has had that
+dance hall enlarged twice and he has employed George Spain to stand
+behind the bar. It is breaking Mrs. Spain's heart, but she is helpless,
+for George is being paid three dollars a day for being just where he
+wants to be. I don't know what to do. I firmly believe the town is mad,
+with only Gregory Goodloe to stand between it and God's wrath."
+
+"What is he doing to stem the joy tide?" I asked with a laugh, for it
+did seem in a way funny to see one of the leading citizens of old
+Goodloets so distressed over its improvement and modernization through
+its enormous prosperity.
+
+"He was down in the workmen's camp last night having a song service and
+seventy-five of them stayed there singing until midnight. Jacob had to
+put out his lights at eleven o'clock because there were not enough to
+pay to keep open. The chapel was full Sunday night and Jacob closed the
+Last Chance at six o'clock for the first time in its existence. The men
+passed it on to him to do it and he came and sat in a back pew himself.
+They all call Mr. Goodloe 'Parson,' and he walks in and around and about
+this town night and day shedding a kind of peace and good will even into
+the darkest corners. He lends a hand here and there with the work, eats
+out of the men's dinner pails when that Jefferson is too lazy to cook
+for him, or takes a bite off some stove down in the Settlement out of
+some old woman's pork and cabbage pot with just as much grace and
+heartiness as he eats at Nell Morgan's or Harriet Henderson's most
+elaborate dinners. And outside of his pulpit he never preaches; he just
+lives. This is what I heard Jacob say to him just yesterday:
+
+"'Sure, and I wint up to set in one of your pews to see if your action
+in your own job was as good as it is in the many you lend a hand to week
+about.'
+
+"'Well?' asked Mr. Goodloe, as he picked up, one of those rosy apples
+from the box Jacob keeps out on the sidewalk to blind the Last Chance.
+
+"'I knows when to run and not be caught,' Jacob answered, as he put
+another apple in the parson's pocket and went back into the grocery
+door."
+
+"Do you ever see Martha?" I asked with a kind of impatience. I had been
+three times down to the Last Chance and each time Jacob's excuses for
+Martha had been positive though courteous, and I had come away baffled,
+with the green groceries I had purchased as a blind to my visit. I had
+written to her and had had no response. At that I had stopped, with a
+self-sufficient feeling of a duty well done, but through it all I also
+felt that she was on the other side of a prison wall crying to me.
+
+"Never," answered Mother Spurlock, with real pain in her voice. "She
+stays in that back room and cooks for Jacob, and the child stays with
+her and has only the small yard back of the bar in which to play. Jacob
+only let him come up to sing with Mr. Goodloe and the children a few
+times and now he is kept as near in prison as his mother. Jacob's
+attitude grows more morose about her and the child every day. I don't
+understand it. I never will. Martha was the loveliest girl that ever
+bloomed in the Settlement, and now she has been plucked and thrown into
+the dust. And the child is too young to share her prison fate. He must
+be got out and away."
+
+"He will," I answered, with a calm confidence. I didn't tell Mother
+Spurlock, and I didn't know exactly why I didn't, but I was deeply
+involved in a clandestine affair with the Stray which was fast becoming
+one of the adventures of my life. It had begun in a positively weird
+manner and was continuing along the same lines. One morning several
+weeks after my first acquaintance and turtle adventure with him I had
+waked up at dawn and gone to look out of the window just as the morning
+star was fading over Old Harpeth. In the dim light I had spied a small
+figure down in the garden, hopping along by a row of early young rose
+bushes, with a can in one hand and a long stick in the other. Hastily
+getting into a few clothes I crept down through the silent house and out
+in the garden to find the Stray busily engaged in knocking large slugs
+off into a can.
+
+"I feed 'em to mother's bird in the cage, 'cause he can't get out to get
+'em," he explained. "They all sleep hard 'cause they work so late and I
+crawl out the window and go back while they don't wake up. I like your
+yard better than I do mine." The statement was made simply, without envy
+of apology.
+
+And from that morning a queer kind of dawn life went on between the
+small boy and me. Morning after morning he threw a pebble to waken me
+and I hurried down to our tryst, which extended through the hour that
+lies between the crack of day and the first glint of the awakening sun.
+At first I had carried sweetmeats to our tryst, which were accepted
+with moderate pleasure, but one morning I had taken a huge volume of
+Rackham's Mother Goose which Nickols had brought me, and from then on
+our hour had been one of spiritual communion. I found the young mind
+insatiate and I had to ransack the library for stories and poems and
+pictures suitable to his years, though he rapidly developed a very
+advanced taste. The morning I read him the Shakespearian lines woven
+around the little Princes in the Tower, having suitably connected up the
+story for him with words of my own, we forgot the time and he overstayed
+his limit, for Dabney was opening the house when he fled. For five
+mornings he did not come and I could find no way to get news of him. I
+asked Mikey and got a maddening response.
+
+"They shut up Stray in the back yard because he's a shame to old Jake,"
+was his answer to my question. "Jake would shoot anybody that climbed
+that fence."
+
+"I bet I could get over and the bad man not see if I could get out in
+the dark," Charlotte declared as she stood listening to my questioning.
+"And I am going after Stranger that way, too, if ever they leave the
+front door to my house unlocked. It is wicked to shut up a little boy,
+and the devil would help me get him out." Charlotte's purpose was high
+if she did slightly mix her theology.
+
+That night a wonderful thing happened in my moonlit room. I was dead
+asleep when I felt a soft hand stroking my face, and then my hair, and I
+awoke to find the Stray standing by my bed.
+
+"They tied me in bed when they found out I had runned away in the
+mornings to see you, but I gnawed the rope that he put, because I wanted
+to tell you that I can go to the big school when it opens because
+Minister told him that he would be put in jail if I didn't. It is a law.
+I heard him last night, and mother cried a long time, for what, I don't
+know. Was she glad or sorry? Do you know?"
+
+"No, darling, I don't know, and I wish I did," I answered him as I put
+my arms around him while he snuggled his black-crested head down beside
+mine on the pillow.
+
+"My mother is sick, she cries so much," he said with a manly struggle
+that drowned the sob in his throat. "I don't know what to do. Do you
+know?"
+
+"I'll find out," I said with a sudden fierceness as I strained him
+against my shoulder for an instant and then sat up in bed as if I must
+do something at once.
+
+"I must run right back and tie myself before he wakes up and whips me,"
+the Stray said, and it sickened me to see him wrap the gnawed rope
+around his little arm.
+
+"No!" I exclaimed, and held out my arms to him.
+
+"I must, but I don't mind whippings if I can read books in school and
+you make mother not cry," and before I could stop him he ran out of the
+dim room and I could hear his cautious bare feet patter down the long
+stairway and hall.
+
+That moonlight tryst was the last of the adventure, but I did not worry,
+for I knew that the school would be opened formally in ten days, and I
+had laid my plans for Stray in an interested friendship with the very
+competent young woman who had already come down from the state normal
+college to teach the amalgamated young ideas of Goodloets to shoot.
+Also, I had vague plans that hurt me, of getting Jessie or Harriet to
+continue the trysts for me after the wedding, whose details they were
+all pushing to completion by a mid-September day.
+
+And added to the strenuosity of the laying of my plans for at least a
+year's absence, I had to help father make his arrangements for a six
+months' stay in Washington, for he had accepted the President's
+appointment on the Commerce Commission, and night and day he was at his
+library desk. The silver-topped decanter still stood on the sideboard in
+the dining room, and the silver ice bowl was formally filled before
+every meal by Dabney. The mint glass was kept fresh and fragrant but
+apparently father had forgotten entirely about all three. He ate twice
+as much as I had ever seen him consume and the worn lines in his face
+were slowly filling out into a delicious joviality. Mr. Hicks, the
+little tailor who had always clothed him, had little by little made over
+the outer man with new garments as the old ones grew restrictive, and
+Mother Spurlock had carried his entire discarded wardrobe, garment at a
+time, down to the Settlement for the clothing of some of her most needy
+friends.
+
+But the most reborn person I had ever seen was Dabney. The little black
+man had lived so long under the shadow of father's moroseness that when
+the pressure was lifted from his bent black shoulders he rebounded to an
+amazing extent. His reaction took the form of gala attire in which
+Nickols encouraged him to the extent of silk hosiery of the most
+delicate shades from his own wardrobe, with ties to match, not to
+mention his own last year's Panama hat, pressed over into the extreme of
+the prevailing style for youthful masculine head adornment. Also Nickols
+bestowed upon him a very up-to-date Palm Beach suit, purchased at the
+Hicks shop, and on his first appearance in the kitchen for his wife's
+inspection I was present.
+
+"Go take them clothes off, nigger, and put 'em along of my black silk
+shroud in the bottom drawer of the chist," she commanded, as she put her
+hands on her sixty-inch waist and stood before him with arms akimbo.
+"Folks is got no business to dress in life so fine that they shames they
+burying clothes."
+
+"Shoo fly, I'm jest going to Washington, not to Heaven, in this here
+rig. When I git into Heaven it'll be 'cause I'm hiding behind that
+black silk skirt of your shroud, honey, if I'm as naked as borned," was
+the admiring, wily and also wholly sincere answer to Mammy's fling at
+the gorgeous raiment.
+
+And while the Poplars teemed with wedding plans Nickols kept the whole
+village steamed up to be in readiness for the visit of Mr. Jeffries,
+which was dated for just a week before the wedding, and the village
+festival at the opening of the new school was to be the most important
+ceremonial of the whole visit. Father was to give him a dinner at which
+all of the Solons of the Harpeth Valley were to be present, and a ball
+at the Country Club was being planned by Billy with all enthusiasm. But
+the center of the buzz was down at Mother Spurlock's Little House, where
+Mr. Goodloe daily, and it seemed almost hourly, drilled the children for
+the ceremonial of the opening of their house of learning across the way
+from the Little House by the Road. Only echoes of the orgies reached the
+outside, and gossip ran high in the Settlement as well as the Town at
+the fragments that the delighted scions brought home, of curious folk
+dances mixed with fragments of weird tunes.
+
+"Sure, a minister of the gospel to teach me Mikey to stand on one leg
+and spin around on the other with his hands over his head is a quare
+thing, but the Riverend Goodloe is no ordinary man," said Mrs. Burns to
+Mother Spurlock, who answered:
+
+"You can trust him, Mrs. Burns, even with Mikey's legs."
+
+And during all the long weeks of activity not once did I have a word
+alone with the Harpeth Jaguar. We met constantly at dinner at the tables
+of our friends and he came and went at the Poplars with the same freedom
+that Nickols enjoyed. He was long hours in the library with father, and
+somehow I felt that he was strengthening the structure that he had
+builded on the ruined foundation and something passionate rose in my
+heart and filled it with pain every time I heard his ringing laugh come
+from the library table, accompanied by father's booming chuckle. Also,
+he worked early and late in the garden with Nickols and the young man
+from White Plains, and I saw that Nickols' artistic ideas flowed at top
+speed when Gregory Goodloe was standing by.
+
+It was the same thing over at the new schoolhouse. Mr. Todd and the men
+worked miracles with their stone and mortar and wood and iron when he
+was standing by or lending a hand. The school was built partly of stone
+like the chapel and partly of old purple-pink brick like Mother
+Spurlock's Little House, and it was beamed with heavy timbers. It was
+roofed with heavy colonial clapboards which made it look as if it had
+already stood a century before the floors were laid or the very modern
+desks installed. It was built to house increasing generations, though
+only about fifty children would open its portals of education.
+
+"It speaks of education de luxe, doesn't it?" Billy asked as Nell and
+Harriet and I stood with him and Nickols and the parson watching Mr.
+Todd directing the men in screwing down the desks just a few days before
+the opening.
+
+"There is scarcely a village in England to compare with old Goodloets
+now, and nothing at all like it," said Nickols, as he looked first up
+the hill to the Town and down the hill to the Settlement. "I know that
+it is the first spot in America to express what the full grown nation is
+going to be. When we add beauty to the materially perfected mode of
+existence we are enjoying, life will be too short in the living. That
+schoolhouse ought to produce some results in art cultures in the infant
+mind of Goodloets."
+
+"Yes, America is learning that the foundation of its national existence,
+trait upon trait, must be laid in the lives of the children," said Mr.
+Goodloe, slowly, and he smiled as across from the Little House came wee
+Susan's exquisite treble in a waltz song which was backed up by Mother
+Spurlock's bumble and Charlotte's none too accurate accompaniment. And
+we all smiled with him.
+
+Always it seemed to me I was with him and a part of a number of people
+who felt the radiance of his loveliness, and not once had I for a second
+come into personal touch with him. I had, like the rest, got my smiles
+and friendliness from the dark eyes under dull gold, but the door to the
+land in which I had been with Tristan when he sang his death song had
+vanished and there were no traces of its portals. The only sign that was
+between him and me was his continued evasion of setting a date for the
+dedication of the chapel. He always answered inquiries by saying that
+the opening of the school must come first and when the dedication was
+mentioned he never looked in my direction. My soul seemed to be standing
+still and listening for something that never came.
+
+And then Mr. Jeffries arrived on the scene of action.
+
+That night of Billy's ball for the magnate, who was having the time of
+his gray-headed life under Billy's and Nickols' enthusiastic direction,
+the strange alien thing that had been developed in my depths, part
+unrest and part rebellion, since I had first looked into the eyes of the
+young Methodist parson, who had intruded himself and his chapel into my
+existence, got its death blow. In my presence Nickols made his formal
+request of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe to officiate at our marriage.
+
+"Of course, Greg, old fellow, you are going to marry us next Tuesday,
+aren't you?" asked Nickols, as we stood on the steps of the Poplars
+after dinner, chatting with him as he was leaving to go over to the
+chapel while we went out to the dance. "I suppose there is some sort of
+formal way to make the request, but I don't know it."
+
+"If there is I don't know it, either," was the kindly answer, which
+both Nickols and I took for assent.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Nickols, as he turned away towards father and Mr.
+Cockrell and Mr. Jeffries, who had come out on the porch with their
+cigars, and left him and me standing alone in the starlight.
+
+"God guard you!" he said to me without taking the hand I held out to him
+in the darkness with a kind of desperation that seemed that of a
+drowning woman. "Good-bye!" and he was gone out into the night, leaving
+me, I knew, forever outside of his life.
+
+"Wait, Oh wait!" I pleaded, but he was gone and I didn't even know if he
+heard the cry out into the velvet darkness.
+
+That night was the most brilliant night that Goodloets had ever known.
+The Town was full of guests who had motored over from all the towns
+around in the Harpeth Valley. The Governor had come down from the
+capital in his huge touring car to congratulate father on his
+appointment and to meet Mr. Jeffries. His adjutant-general and several
+of his aids were with him in their showy State Guard uniforms and all of
+the girls were rosy with excitement at the presence of so many rows of
+brass buttons. Mr. Jeffries opened the ball, and to the delight and
+amusement of us all, he succeeded in leading out with him Mrs. Sproul,
+who turned the opening dance into a stately old Virginia reel, which so
+delighted the tango dancers with its novelty that the dance was repeated
+several times during the evening by enthusiastic requests.
+
+And while the Town reveled in celebration of the new Goodloets, down in
+the Settlement like rejoicings were being held at the dance hall of the
+Last Chance. In fact, the whole small city was in the throes of a great
+rejoicing. Why shouldn't all Goodloets revel when it was enjoying a
+prosperity beyond anybody's dreams of two years before? Everybody had
+been generous to the old town with the money that had come so easily
+from other suffering people's necessities, and security and good
+fellowship and prosperity reigned supreme. In each heart there was the
+feeling that now the old town and their personal lives were founded on
+solid rocks of peace and plenty and it was the time to eat, drink and be
+merry.
+
+At supper the Governor's first toast, after that to the town itself,
+was to father and his distinctions. Then Mr. Jeffries toasted Nickols
+and me. He called Nickols the "American Wizard of Habitations," and,
+amid cheering and clapping hands, announced his intention to have
+Nickols build the American town on the Hudson. He called me the "Heart
+of the Achievement," and father's pride as he looked down the long table
+at Nickols and me was very wonderful and beautiful; and as great a pride
+rose in my heart as I saw him lift his glass of water to pledge me,
+leaving the bubbles breaking in his champagne.
+
+It was very near dawn when we all motored home and it was upon the verge
+of the crack of day by the time Dabney and Nickols had got the Governor
+and Mr. Jeffries and the other guests settled under the wide roof of the
+Poplars, which had never hovered a more distinguished or brilliant house
+party.
+
+For a few quiet minutes after they had all gone to their rooms Nickols
+and I stood alone on the front porch in the cool darkness with its hint
+of the dawn, while old Dabney shut up the back part of the house.
+
+"The school festival will be over to-morrow, sweetheart, and the next
+day they will all be gone. The photographers are all through with the
+photographing and to-morrow night all the extra workmen go back to the
+city. There'll be three whole quiet days for you to get ready to give me
+that kiss, which I won't take when you are as tired as you are now,"
+said Nickols, as he put a limp arm around me and leaned against the tall
+door post.
+
+"To-morrow the old makes way for the new. Goodloets is dead! Long live
+Goodloets!" I answered, as I in turn leaned against Nickols' jaded arm
+for only a second before we preceded Dabney up the stairs to our rooms.
+
+In my room I went immediately to the window and opened wide the heavy
+shutters. I found myself looking down on Goodloets, which lay below the
+darkness of the Poplars like a long glowworm, brilliant with the lights
+from the homes of the revelers who were going to bed with a sense of
+perfect security. Still farther down the hill the lights from the
+Settlement glowed with scarcely less brilliancy and I felt sure that the
+Last Chance was still harboring a last fling of joy.
+
+Suddenly over my spirit came a deep wave of depression that amounted to
+a great fear and then as I stood trembling in the darkness, a broad ray
+of morning light shot up over Paradise Ridge and spread rapidly into a
+crimson glow that was reflected against a black cloud hanging low over
+the head of Old Harpeth. A flash of lightning darted from the cloud and
+spread its gold fire through the crimson of the coming day, and then the
+sullen-pointed cloud sank rapidly below Paradise Ridge, over which it
+had risen, as if reconnoitering. Positively shuddering, I knelt against
+the window seat and watched the day come with a hitherto unknown terror.
+Then as I watched the dawn begin to drive away the sullen clouds a rich
+voice began to sing out beyond the old poplars as a window of the gray
+chapel was thrown open:
+
+    "Arise, my soul, arise,
+    Shake off thy guilty fears;
+          ... ... ... ...
+    Before the throne my Surety stands
+    My name is written on His hands."
+
+The calmness that came into my frightened heart was like the peace of a
+deep sleep, and with its strength I faced the day that was to be that of
+my humiliation and which was to be the crest of the wave of the high
+tide of Goodloets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE JEWEL IN THE MATRIX
+
+
+When I awoke from a few hours of deep and exhausted sleep I found my
+room fast filling with the strenuosities of the day. In fact, I opened
+them upon Harriet Henderson, up, dressed and briskly doing. She had a
+large pasteboard box with her and the minute I brushed repose from my
+eyes she opened it and held up for my inspection a very short tulle
+garment besprinkled with tiny silk rosebuds, along with a bonnet and
+other wee but distinctly feminine paraphernalia to match. A basket
+adorned with a huge bow of tulle came from another box and I was forced
+to voice my admiration with the greatest vigor.
+
+"How I'll ever keep from eating Sue up before she gets to the altar, I
+can't see," said Harriet, as she held the wee frock for a second against
+her breast. It hurts me to the quick of my own breast to see Harriet's
+eyes when she broods over Sue. I don't see how she is going to live
+life always as hungry as she is now.
+
+"I suppose I might just as well wear my tennis things, because the
+guests will be already as completely enraptured as is humanly possible
+before my entry upon the scene of action of my own wedding," I said, as
+I sat up and took the small bonnet in my own hand. "It is too bad that
+Jessie and Letitia should worry themselves over my own wedding frock, if
+Susan is--" I was just saying when Nell arrived beside my bed with the
+Suckling in the very act of obtaining her early luncheon from the
+maternal fount. The nurse has always had to follow Nell about with her
+successive hungry offspring.
+
+"Girls, I really don't know what to do, but young Charlotte has given
+every single presentable garment that Jimmy possessed to different
+unclothed children in the Settlement, who were needed in the pageant,
+and Mark and Billy are laughing at her, while Jimmy is howling. I just
+ran in to see Harriet a minute and ask her if she--"
+
+"Yes, Jimmie's wedding garments came home from Mrs. Burns' yesterday and
+I'll lend them to you just to spite those men, who are simply ruining
+Charlotte by the day," said Harriet, as Nell handed her the replete
+Suckling wrong end foremost and picked up the small tulle bonnet with a
+gurgle of maternal rapture that was in some ways as young as the happy
+gurgle that the Suckling gave as she settled into Harriet's dependable
+arms for her morning nap. Harriet cradled her against her own round,
+firm breast and for a second brooded then joined in Nell's rapture over
+the garments for the bedizening of wee Susan.
+
+"If Harriet didn't dress and discipline my children I feel sure they
+would be found naked in a reform school," Nell said, with a happy and
+careless gratitude. There are some women to whom life is incidental and
+maternity the most casual adventure of all. The happy-go-lucky variety
+are apt to produce just such children as Charlotte or young James or
+Susan, and it is well if into their young lives there comes the hungry
+woman with a brooding mission.
+
+"Young Charlotte will probably be the first woman governor of the state
+and--" Harriet was saying with a laugh when Letitia and Jessie arrived
+precipitately. Letitia had a parcel which contained a lingerie garment
+of mine, whose lace and embroidery and ribbon combined would have
+enraptured most women, and Jessie carried in her hand a package of
+belated wedding cards. They were followed closely by Mammy, who was in
+turn followed by the meek Sally. Mammy's address was delivered to me
+first.
+
+"Git up quick, honey; the men folks has begun on the second round of
+waffles and they'll be calling for you. The day is on its shanks and
+a-going," she admonished, while Sallie turned on my bath.
+
+"They are having breakfast out in the garden and the day is perfect. Do
+you want blue or pink ribbons in this Valenciennes set, Charlotte?" said
+Letitia, as she seated herself on the foot of my bed and drew out a
+ribbon bag whose contents were of many colors.
+
+"A fashionable wedding is a white lie; you invite all the people you
+especially want to stay away," sighed Jessie, as she seated herself at
+my desk and lighted a cigarette, at which Mammy rolled her black eyes
+and departed with her nose in the air.
+
+And while they all chatted over the sealing of my fate I arose and had
+my toilet made in my dressing room, in full hearing of the discussions
+about the best groupings of bridesmaids and the horror at the count of
+the cases of wine Billy had ordered from the city for the dinner to the
+groomsmen the night before the wedding.
+
+"I adore Mark seven-tenths full, but I don't like to endure the end of
+the jag next morning," laughed Nell, as she began to put ribbons into
+the bodkins for Letitia. I saw Harriet give her a long look from under
+her half-lowered eyelashes as she hugged the Suckling closer to her
+breast. Billy had told Harriet and me casually a few nights before that
+"old Mark's drinking to a double-decker liver and a sidestep in his
+heart."
+
+"Oh, gentlemen always drink in moderation. I never worry over Cliff,"
+said Letitia complacently, as she tied a decorative shoulder knot.
+
+"You expect to give him a daily dose of three drops on a lump of sugar,
+Letitia?" asked Harriet, as she exchanged glances with Jessie. One
+evening last week Jessie and Harriet had motored Cliff in from the Club
+just in time to save him from going over the riffles and Letitia had
+been dancing with him without noticing his staggers.
+
+"There, that is the very last stitch to be taken on your trousseau,
+Charlotte," said Letitia, as she laid down the filmy garment she had
+been adorning with blue bowknots. "Press it, Sallie, and lay it with the
+rest of the set in the second tray of the medium-sized trunk. You can
+lock it and give me the key."
+
+"I just can't stand it, Charlotte," said Jessie to me in a low voice, as
+I came from the hands of the skillful Sallie and stood beside the window
+next to the desk. "You are all I have got and only you--you understand.
+I can't give you up. I'm frightened."
+
+"Hush--so am I," I answered her, as my hand gripped her shoulder under
+her heavy linen frock until I felt it must bruise it. Then I turned to
+the others, collected them and descended to finish breakfast with the
+Poplars' guests.
+
+Never a more radiantly beautiful morning had spread its loveliness over
+the Harpeth Valley than the one I found out in the garden that
+twenty-seventh day of September, the gala day in the history of
+Goodloets. Huge white clouds drifted back and forth in a deep blue sky
+and they were rosy at times with the sunlight, but from some of the
+largest little tongues of lightning darted, while others were lit by
+what seemed to be an internal glow of fire. Cool winds, perfumed with
+the harvests and the ripening orchards and the vineyards out in the
+valley, rustled in the treetops and flaunted in the vines. The ardent
+sun seemed to be drawing from the bosom of the earth a hot mist which
+lay over the town like a filmy bridal veil, only stirred gently by the
+vagrant veering gusts of wind. Nature seemed to be holding herself in
+leash and only breathing upon the earth gently, as if to stir some
+latent lushness into autumnal activity.
+
+"A perfect Harpeth day for Mr. Jeffries," said the Governor, as he came
+from his seat at the table to greet the girls and me. The rest of the
+masculine breakfasters followed and I could see from the devastation of
+the table that they had all breakfasted well and to repletion. I also
+detected the worthless Jefferson, whom Mr. Goodloe had evidently loaned
+to his parents for the occasion, lift father's full glass of julep and
+drain it with one gulp, grab the half glass that Nickols had left, gulp
+it and begin on the finger or so in Billy's tumbler before Dabney could
+forcibly but quietly restrain him. In fact, I felt there would have
+been a riot among my servitors if Mr. Goodloe had not stepped aside and
+spoken a low word to Jefferson, which sent him busily at the table with
+his tray.
+
+And from that moment Nickols' triumphant procession of inspection of
+Goodloets began. Mr. Jeffries stood in the middle of the reincarnated
+old garden, looked for a long time at the Poplars, which was like a
+green encrusted gem with its old purple red brick under the vines,
+glanced again and again at the chapel with its weathered stone that
+stood beyond the silver-leafed graybeards, then let his eye wander down
+the broad elm-bordered main street past the courthouse and past the
+Settlement to the river bending around it all.
+
+"Money couldn't build anything like it, Powers," he said to Nickols at
+his side. "Time and gentle living have formed it as a jewel is made in a
+matrix. I was born in a mining camp, but I want you to start something
+like it all for my great grandchildren to live in. How many generations
+will it take?"
+
+"Give me five years, Mr. Jeffries," laughed Nickols in answer. "Greg
+Goodloe's great great grandfather and mine fought off the Indians from
+a stockade which stood where his chapel does now, but a year of modern
+life about represents a generation of pioneer endeavor."
+
+"Not too fast, youngster, not too fast," said Mr. Jeffries, and I saw
+him exchange a grave glance with father. "What we Americans must have is
+stabilizers now that we have annihilated time. Without the discovery of
+something of that sort we will hurl along to destruction. What say you,
+Mr. Goodloe?"
+
+"We have the same 'covert of wings' that David used when things spun too
+fast for him," answered Mr. Goodloe with the jeweled radiance that
+always came from his face when he spoke of his faith even casually.
+"Only 'where there is no vision the people perish,' and a people who
+invent flying machines and hold international law to account have
+vision. We don't know how much we've got, but it'll save us."
+
+"After the material glass through which we see darkly is completely
+smashed for us," said father, with a curious sternness coming into his
+face that made me wonder. "But we must take Mr. Jeffries for a nearer
+inspection of our metropolis, be with Mrs. Sproul in time for luncheon
+and then help Mr. Goodloe open the institute of learning for young
+Goodloets."
+
+In the motor cars parked before the tall gate of the Poplars all of the
+guests embarked for their review of the beauties of Goodloets. Nickols
+remained behind them while the half sober but skillful Jefferson
+wrestled with a slight tire trouble of his slim blue racer. For a few
+minutes we were alone in the center of the wonderful garden, which had
+never seemed so lovely as upon the day in which it had fulfilled its own
+and Nickols' destiny.
+
+"To-day has brought just what I have longed for, have worked for and
+waited for, the commission for the spending of millions of dollars to
+make a little corner of the earth beautiful. Not a bad religion, that,"
+said Nickols, as he told me that Jeffries had spoken a few words of
+decided business to him as he had packed him into Mr. Cockrell's car
+with father and Mr. Goodloe. "We'll take a honeymoon wander on the other
+side, as far from the machine guns as possible, and then I'll come home
+to begin my masterpiece." And as Nickols spoke his wonderful eyes
+glowed as he looked out at Paradise Ridge as if he were gazing into a
+radiant future--perhaps he saw a city not made with hands and did
+not--recognize it. "I see it all," he said, and put his arm around me
+while we started down the front walk as Jefferson pressed the horn to
+signal the readiness of the tire.
+
+"I'm too busy to go with you, but I'll meet you at Mrs. Sproul's," a
+sudden impulse made me say, for I had intended until that instant to
+accompany him.
+
+"A man can't eat his bride and have a trousseau, too," he laughed, as he
+drove off rapidly, leaving me standing by the old gate watching him.
+Then I turned and slowly walked out into the garden and down to the old
+graybeards. And seated on one of the grass mats I found the reason I had
+unconsciously been drawn back. Martha was waiting for me there.
+
+"Why, Martha," I exclaimed, startled without understanding just why. "I
+might have gone and not known you were waiting. Why didn't you come and
+tell me you were here?"
+
+"I couldn't--I found I couldn't," she answered me, looking up into my
+face with her strange, sad eyes. "I--I suppose I just came to peep in
+on you like I did to the coming-out party." She laughed softly, with a
+note of self-scorn in her voice.
+
+"Is anything the matter with--with Sonny?" I asked quickly, again
+unconsciously using the name for the Stray that her tenderness had given
+him. Her white face and desperate manner frightened me.
+
+"No, he's dressed in one of Jimmy Morgan's old suits and he is going to
+be taken from me this afternoon forever," she answered with the note of
+bitterness deepening.
+
+"But you want him to go to school, don't you, Martha?" I asked
+patiently, as I sat down on a mat beside her. I spoke to her as one
+speaks to the limited intelligence of a child and I was slightly
+impatient at her distress.
+
+"He asked me yesterday why everybody called him Stray and if it did mean
+Stranger like Charlotte said, and if he would always be called that or
+have an everyday name like Jimmy. Soon he'll know and then I'll lose him
+as I'm losing everything else."
+
+"Why won't you let me help you to--to begin over again?" I asked her,
+this time with less patience. "Why have you--you locked yourself away
+from me?"
+
+"I can't--I won't ever tell you. I must go back, now I've seen you
+in--in your happiness. But I don't hate you--I never have." And as she
+spoke Martha rose and began to walk rapidly away from me.
+
+"Oh, please don't go, Martha," I said. "In just three days I'll be going
+away for a long time, you know, and I want to help you in some way
+before I go. You ought to let me, and it worries me that you don't, now
+of all times," and as I put my selfish plea for ease to my conscience,
+something that was hot and rebellious made me want to stop the woman who
+was hurrying away from me.
+
+"I won't, I won't make you unhappy--but I must go. I must! I'll--I'll be
+happy--and good now--if _you'll_ only be happy. Good-bye!" And as she
+called back at me over her shoulder, Martha ran from me down through the
+hedge and into the door of the chapel, which always, night and day, rain
+and storm, stood slightly ajar. A queer pain smote me to see that she
+had run from me into the only place in all the broad, smiling Harpeth
+Valley where I could not--or would not, follow her. And the sanctuary
+that she sought was for every man, woman or child who wanted it--only I
+could not and would not seek it.
+
+"'The covert of wings,'" I whispered to myself, as I went down the
+street to Mrs. Sproul's as rapidly as possible to be rid of my own
+company. As I repeated the words that the parson had used to Mr.
+Jeffries I noticed one great white cloud with a dark center flash fire
+into another, to a great crashing and rumbling. "I wonder if it is
+really going to storm," I speculated gloomily, as I turned into the
+Sproul gate, but the brilliant sunshine seemed to fling me a dazzling
+denial from every petal of the white clematis that wreathed itself
+across the front porch, under which Mrs. Sproul, arrayed in all the
+midday magnificence of good form, sat and waited for her guests. Mrs.
+Cockrell sat beside her and they were delighted to see me and demanded
+happiness from me which it was hard for me to give from the depths that
+had been stirred by my strange interview with Martha, to which I felt I
+ought to have a key, but could not find it anywhere.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE PAGEANT
+
+
+"We were just saying, Charlotte dear, that this absurd school affair has
+completely overshadowed your wedding day," said Mrs. Cockrell, as she
+rocked back and forth in tune with her Irish point rose she was
+constructing. "It seems to me a wedding ought to come before a school
+festivity."
+
+"Social law requires that marriage take precedence of schooling," said
+Mrs. Sproul, as her mischievous old eyes snapped at Mrs. Cockrell's
+placid conventionality. "The correct order is for women to take husbands
+and then school children should be the inevitable outcome. They are not,
+however, in this day and generation, which is about to be the last, I'm
+thinking."
+
+"There will be thirty-nine kiddies from the Settlement and eleven from
+the Town to feast on reason and flow soul together in the new school," I
+laughed, as I sat down between them. "Also I'm thinking that a lot more
+will be forthcoming from the Settlement by next week. Young Charlotte
+and Mother Spurlock clothed as far as they could, but they will keep at
+it, I feel sure. I feel guilty at the idea of taking three trunks of
+clothes away from the watchful eye of Mother Elsie, only I'm leaving the
+accumulation of years for her distribution."
+
+"The passport to Elsie Spurlock's heart is a condition composed of rags,
+hunger and unhappiness. She has no sympathy or time for a sanitary and
+contented friend," said Mrs. Sproul with a decided tartness that was
+only a reflex of the deep affection she bore the mistress of the Little
+House, which had existed since childhood and would endure.
+
+"I hear some of the cars coming," announced Mrs. Cockrell, as she began
+to crochet furiously at the last petal of a rose. "Is my cap straight? I
+do so want to finish this row and can't go in to look."
+
+"You'll put out St. Peter's eye with a crochet needle while he's
+unlocking the pearly gates for you, Lettie Cockrell," said Mrs. Sproul,
+as she rose and stood with ceremony at the head of the steps to meet
+the Governor and Mr. Jeffries and father as they came up her front walk.
+
+Mrs. Sproul always has the most delightful old world sort of midday
+dinners and it was two o'clock before we all arose from her long table,
+at one end of which had been demolished a spiced ham and from the other
+end had disappeared two fat summer turkeys. A saddle of lamb had been
+passed in between and we had wound up with sweet potato custards, apple
+float and ice cream.
+
+"I understand now," said Mr. Jeffries, as his keen old eyes twinkled
+down the table at Nickols. "This food should produce geniuses. The South
+feeds for it."
+
+"Yes, we eat, drink, are merry and do it all over again to-morrow," said
+Mark, as he walked beside Mrs. Sproul from the devastated dining room.
+"And we must all hurry if we are to see your young ideas begin to shoot.
+This day isn't really hot, but just thinks it is. Look at those clouds
+boiling up back of Old Harpeth as if wanting to storm, but afraid to
+begin it. There's not a breath of air stirring. Wish it _would_ shower,
+for I believe the colors of Goodloe's pageant would run and I'd like to
+see the true hue of this melee of his come out in the wash. It would do
+Charlotte good to fade a bit. She has been hectic since daylight and the
+rest of my juvenile family with her. Jimmy is S and Z in the alphabet
+and Sue has got a huge A sewed on her back. Goodloe intends that
+education shall be nailed to 'em."
+
+And at his admonition to hurry and the alluring description of the
+entertainment to come, we all betook ourselves on foot toward the
+schoolhouse down the street a few blocks, halfway between the Town and
+the Settlement.
+
+And as we went all the rest of the Town hurried out of wide, high,
+vine-covered doors, down broad, flower-lined walks, and joined us from
+under bowers of blooming roses, honeysuckle and clematis. We actually
+approached the schoolhouse in the form of quite a large procession, and
+as we wound our way down the hill we met a like procession winding
+itself up the hill from the Settlement, a procession arrayed in its best
+bib, tucker and boiled shirt, just as we were adorned in silk, lace,
+fine muslin and linen.
+
+"It looks like two armies approaching each other--Greek is going to meet
+Greek," said Billy.
+
+"Rather Greek meets Vandal, and there stands Goodloe to do the
+interpreting," Nickols jeered in answer.
+
+And as we all flocked into the wide gate of the school yard I was again
+struck with the great beauty of the tall, broad, lithe, free man who
+stood in the middle of the walk just inside, welcoming Town and
+Settlement alike. And while he greeted us, his enthusiastic flock of
+older children seated the groups of guests on the long rough benches
+which were placed facing the door of the schoolhouse, leaving a wide
+space at the foot of the steps, which was roped off with golden chains
+of black-eyed daisies and which was evidently to be used as a stage for
+the pageant.
+
+"Just look how Goodloe is failing to mix his oil and water," Nickols
+whispered to me, as we observed all of the Settlement groups gravely
+gravitate to the left side of the walk while all the Town in chattering
+parties took seats on the right. "That's right, Burns, take off my last
+summer coat," he added, still in a whisper to me as the Burns parent
+struggled out of the unendurable gift garment and thus gave a signal
+that whipped off every coat on the left side of the walk in the
+twinkling of an eye, to the evident distress of the tightly girted and
+uncomfortable but more formal feminine members of the Settlement
+contingent. Conjugal strife was about to make its appearance when Mother
+Spurlock, who was seated beside poor little Hettie Garrett, holding the
+Mother Only in her arms with never a glance for Mrs. Sproul, who had
+beckoned her to a seat next to her own beruffled silk skirts, passed the
+word around that such comfort was to be accorded the masculine guests.
+Even with such sanction, however, Luella May Spain looked pained at her
+father's gay new red suspenders, and I could see that Mr. Todd's striped
+shirt was hurting the feelings of Sadie Todd dreadfully, and she and
+Luella May returned Billy's gallant salute with the greatest
+embarrassment. And in all the buzz I found myself looking anxiously for
+Martha Ensley's pale face and dark eyes, but failed to find them.
+
+"This is one place she ought not to have to peep into; here she has the
+rights of her citizenship and her motherhood," I said to myself.
+
+But if the Town and the Settlement sat in the seats of the audience,
+divided by the walk as were the walls of waters by the dry path along
+which Moses led his chosen people out of the darkness of Egypt, such a
+division was not noticeable among the performers of the pageant who were
+supposed to be in hiding with their costumes behind a tall screen of
+shrubs at one side of the schoolhouse, but who bubbled out on all sides.
+Charlotte appeared once holding small Maudie Burns in a comforting
+embrace and guided her to her mother for some sort of attention to the
+very short skirts of blue gingham which were draped with about ten yards
+of green crepe paper, while both Harriet and I gasped as we saw Mikey
+jauntily hand the Suckling, tightly wrapped in brown swaddlings, into
+the rapturous and tender embrace of Katie Moore, who had blue wings
+sewed to her small gingham shoulders.
+
+"Great Guns! They've got Sucks in it, too!" gasped Billy. "That child is
+too young to educate and Goodloe ought to be restrained from
+cradle-snatching like--"
+
+But just here Billy was interrupted and the audience all quieted down as
+Mr. Goodloe, in his white flannels and with his gold head ablaze in the
+sun, which suddenly shone out fiercely from behind a white cloud which
+was sheeting internally with electricity, mounted two of the front
+steps of the schoolhouse and held up his hand for silence.
+
+"Mr. Todd," he said with beautiful deference, "will you lead us in
+prayer?" There was a perceptible rustle of feeling on the Settlement
+side of the walk, for Mr. Todd was one of the parson's deacons, but he
+had also been the master workman in the building of the schoolhouse, and
+his neighbors were quick to respond to the tribute offered him before
+the distinguished men present. He rose, gaunt and grizzled in his shirt
+sleeves, but what he said was brief and as square-cut and to the point
+as any nail he had ever driven. I saw the Governor and father exchange
+glances and I noticed when the Governor responded to his call he was
+much less ornate of speech than usual and much more universal. They all
+spoke, from Nickols along the line to father, and after repeated urgings
+Mother Spurlock rose to the occasion, and by way of making the Town and
+Settlement at home in its new joint quarters announced that the tea
+canister with its slit would hereafter be nailed just inside the
+schoolhouse door.
+
+The laugh and delighted applause that was given her seemed to have been
+the last straw to the actors behind the shrubbery, restrained by their
+young preceptress, for the pageant broke upon us.
+
+First Mikey, with huge white cambric stork wings, hopped upon the stage
+of sward and deposited the brown-wrapped Suckling in a hollow log in the
+center, and departed flapping. After that the ceremonial developed
+itself into the education that was to flow down upon her defenseless
+head at the waving of the wand of Minerva, who was Charlotte with a
+tinsel star of wisdom resting rampantly upon her brow. And it came down
+upon the Suckling with a vengeance. A whole troop of young letters of
+the alphabet, led by small Susan with the large red A upon her fat back,
+danced around the Suckling's helplessness and finally backed up to the
+audience to spell the word "Reading." Next in hopped a flock of numerals
+led by the indefatigable Mikey, which backed up and presented themselves
+from one to ten to thus imply the hated science of "Arithmetic."
+
+The Suckling slept on amid delighted gurgles from her mother and
+Harriet. She slept through a presentation of the script letters of
+"Writing" and was still unconscious when "Geography" in crepe paper,
+with flags of all nations, grouped around her. She only awoke when, all
+by himself, sturdily, with his head in the air and fairly radiant with
+beauty and courage, the Stray marched upon the scene, rolled into a
+white roll of paper and girt about with a broad red ribbon sealed upon
+his back to represent "Diploma." Silently and intent upon his duty he
+walked straight to the Suckling in her log crib, bent over her, crooned
+to her reassuringly a second, lifted her in his white arms and backed
+off behind a tall laurel bush with her nodding in delight over his
+shoulder. The boy was so beautiful and the little scene so tender that
+the entire audience caught its breath at its--audacity. A gauntlet had
+been thrown into the faces of both the Town and Settlement and they both
+understood.
+
+They sat perfectly still with astonishment while the performers were
+being massed in the schoolhouse by the young teacher for their final
+march out to the steps for the hymn singing with the beloved "Minister,"
+which was to conclude the ceremonials.
+
+And while the audience sat awaiting the further presentations to be
+made them by their offspring, Mr. Goodloe came out the door and halfway
+down the steps. Then suddenly he stopped and looked out over the valley
+with such an expression on his face that with one accord his audience
+rose and looked with him. And as it looked a groan came that was a
+chorus melted into one voice of terror, while all of them stood helpless
+with amazement. While we had all been sitting in the curious sweltering
+heat, watching with pride a future for our children being foretold for
+them by themselves, death had reared itself behind Old Harpeth, coiled
+itself into a huge black spiral of thunder and lightning and was driving
+down the valley upon Goodloets with a velocity that defied the eyes to
+follow. For a long second every man and woman stood rooted to his
+foothold on the earth and watched the tornado strike the edge of the
+Settlement, smash down the saddlery as if it were a house of cards, and
+churn the little tannery into the river. Then as it grasped the roof of
+the Last Chance and began twisting it with a roar that grew in volume
+every instant, Gregory Goodloe suddenly raised his hand and spoke in a
+perfectly calm voice that rang out above the groan of the tortured
+shanties of the Settlement which were crashing down against each other.
+
+"Oh, God, we trust in the covert of thy wings," he prayed for a second
+and then commanded: "Fall to the earth, all of you, and let it pass over
+you!"
+
+"The children!" came a cry that was a wail of parenthood, as we all sank
+to the ground just as the terrible black monster tore the roof from the
+Little House and hurled it toward us across the street. I saw a huge
+rafter hurtle through the air and strike down Mark Morgan as he started
+toward the steps of the schoolhouse, and by not a half inch did it miss
+drunken, useless Mike Burns as it fell beside him. Then I covered my
+eyes as the cloud and the wind passed over me and I only heard it strike
+and rend and crash and tear the schoolhouse, beam from beam and stone
+from stone. An eerie wail of the voices of little children was mixed
+with the roar of the monster which crashed on up through the Town,
+laying low the homes of our pride and prosperity, leaving us with our
+faces to the ground while upon us began to pour a deluge of cold rain.
+
+"Mark! Mark!" I heard Harriet moan beside me and I saw her crawl under
+the wind toward where Mark had fallen.
+
+"My babies, Oh, my babies!" came a wail in Nell's voice, and I saw her
+try to rise, be knocked over by the wind and then begin to crawl toward
+the wrecked mass that a second before had been the schoolhouse and from
+which now could be heard the screams and cries of the children. Then as
+suddenly as it had laid us low the cruel wind left us and with one
+accord we all sprang to our feet and surged toward the children's calls
+and cries that came out to us in the semi-darkness that still enveloped
+us, though both the wind and the rain were abating.
+
+But before a huge slab that had been the top step of the schoolhouse we
+were all halted by a voice so stern and commanding that even the
+agonized mothers and fathers paused.
+
+"Stop! Not a man or a woman must come a step nearer," said the parson,
+with the authority in his voice that must always be obeyed when used by
+one human being to another. "The roof of the house has split and sunk in
+the middle and only one side beam is supporting it. If it is touched by
+so much as a hand it may lose its balance and fall on the children.
+Only one man must come forward and put his shoulder under the beam at
+the other end while I hold this. The children must come out one by one,
+so as not to shake anything on them. The beam may fall. Do you all
+understand me? One man!"
+
+"Me, Parson, me!" demanded Mr. Todd.
+
+"A broader, younger man, Todd," answered the parson, and he was casting
+his eye over the huddled people before him when a wail came clear and
+distinct from within the ruin.
+
+"Stranger is caught and bleeding! Hurry, hurry!" were the words that
+Charlotte sent forth with all the strength of her young lungs.
+
+"It's my child, Oh, it's mine!" came an answering, cry, and from behind
+some hiding place Martha Ensley flung herself across the front of the
+huddled group of the Settlement people and against the defense of
+Gregory Goodloe's strong arm which held her from the tottering doorway
+he was supporting. "Let me get him out!"
+
+"No, Martha," the parson said calmly and tenderly, as he held her back.
+
+"Then _you_ come and get him," Martha said, as she suddenly straightened
+herself and looked out among us of the Town. "He's yours--come and save
+him!" But even in her agony she was cautious in her appeal, which came
+without the demand of a name. We all held our breath for an instant,
+Settlement and Town. Who would answer her?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LIGHT--INTO DARKNESS
+
+
+"Yes, Martha," came the answer after an instant's pause, and Nickols
+Powers stepped from my side to that of Martha Ensley and took her wrung
+hands in his. For another long moment we all stood tense at the
+acknowledgment that the tragedy had forced to the surface. I stood
+beside father like a woman of ice, yet on fire with a contemptuous
+humiliation. The eyes of all my world were for an instant turned on me,
+then they were all called back to the tragedy that was tottering over
+us.
+
+"Hurry, hurry!" came another wail from within the ruins in Charlotte's
+voice. "He's bleeding!"
+
+Again Martha started to fling herself past Nickols and the parson with a
+scream of terror which was faintly echoed from within.
+
+"Somebody come to Martha," commanded Mr. Goodloe, as he held her off
+with one hand while he eased the beam on his shoulder so that Nickols
+could slip in past him to the other end.
+
+Suddenly a great, beautiful warmth melted the horror of pride and
+humiliation that had frozen my heart as Nickols had stepped from my side
+to that of Martha in acknowledgment of her claim upon him for the saving
+of the child. All fear for her or us or the babies passed from me. My
+soul had gone out into a darkness, called on some great Power that must
+be there directing such a thing as was happening to us, and calm and
+clear the answer of courage flowed into me.
+
+Then without another moment's hesitation I stepped forward and held out
+my arms to Gregory Goodloe for Martha. He put her into their strong
+embrace and I pressed her head down upon my shoulder in a great
+tenderness I had never felt before, while Nickols, with a long, hunted
+look at us both, crawled into the crumbling ruin and crouched under the
+beam as Gregory Goodloe directed him.
+
+The wind had died down, the clouds were rolling away the darkness and
+the rain had almost stopped as we all stood and waited for Gregory
+Goodloe to bring from that ruin, in the way his superior judgment
+thought best, either life or death. From within there came sobs and
+smothered little moans that were so mingled that they could not be
+identified by even the mother hearts held at bay by the faith that made
+them obey the parson's command.
+
+And then as I stood there with the mother of the child of my lover
+cowering against my breast, with the man who in a few days was to have
+been my husband, crouched under almost certain grinding death, and
+looked into what at any moment might be the grave of all the babies of
+the women I held dear, a light was flooding into my darkness and all of
+the obscure, untranslatable writings on my nature became clear and I
+received my consciousness of my Master, the Lord Jesus, with a cry that
+I sent up for His mediation for the lives of the little ones. It was my
+first prayer.
+
+"O Christ in Heaven, help save them!" I pleaded. "Quick, Gregory,
+quick!" I added another supplication in the next breath.
+
+"Sue is bleeding, too!" again came a wail in Charlotte's voice. "Mikey's
+got the baby, but he's caught."
+
+Nell had been kneeling beside Mark's prostrate form, but at Charlotte's
+call she laid his head on Harriet's breast and flung herself against my
+arm outstretched to receive and restrain her.
+
+"Now, Nickols, steady! I'll lift them past the beam," said the parson,
+as he braced himself in the door space which had been crushed into a
+narrow opening.
+
+"Charlotte, take the baby from Mikey and hand her to me first," he
+commanded. "Where are you caught, Mikey?"
+
+"Me leg," wailed Mikey and his wail was echoed by poor little Mrs.
+Burns.
+
+"Here," said the parson, as he handed the brown swaddled bundle to Nell,
+who caught it in her arms and sank shuddering to my feet.
+
+"Now, Charlotte, I want you to get all the other children who are not
+caught into line and make them walk carefully, just as you did here to
+me," said the parson in a perfectly calm voice, the one he had used to
+command his small congregation in the weeks of the drill.
+
+"They are all crying and got their heads covered up," answered Charlotte
+in despair. "They won't get up and march." Loud wails of fear and
+anguish accompanied this statement, as if to corroborate it.
+
+"Sing with me, Susan, sing the march," came the command without an
+instant's delay from the lips of the beloved Minister.
+
+    "Onward, Christian soldiers
+    Marching as to war,
+    With the cross of Jesus
+    Going on before--"
+
+came wee Sue's high, sweet voice which rose from the cavern and joined
+with the parson's in the old song that has led strong men through many a
+death watch.
+
+For a long moment we all waited and then out of the hole in the mass of
+stones and timbers and bricks, led by wee bleeding Susan, crawled a slow
+stream of bloody, bruised, sobbing infant humanity to be absorbed with
+cries of rapture into waiting arms.
+
+"Hurry, Goodloe, get the boy and Charlotte; my God, hurry, the beam is
+sinking!" came in Nickols' smothered voice.
+
+Martha started, but I held her tight against my breast.
+
+"I've got Mikey's pants loose with my teeth," came in Charlotte's voice,
+as a creaking of the timbers made a shudder run through the waiting
+crowd as every man and woman who held a restored treasure close, waited
+to see what would happen to the three left in the settling ruins.
+
+"Come out, Mikey, come out," called the Burns paternal parent.
+
+"I won't! I'm going to help Charlotte git out Stray," was the undutiful
+response of courage to the craven.
+
+"Where is he caught, Charlotte?" asked the parson, as he edged a little
+farther under the beam, which tottered and brought him to a cautious
+standstill.
+
+"His middle. Mikey's pushing and I'm pulling, but he's all bluggy. He's
+dead all but his toes that wiggle."
+
+"Hurry, Goodloe, hurry!" groaned Nickols, with what seemed a final
+inspiration of breath.
+
+"Pull him loose and come quick, Charlotte, you and Mikey. Never mind the
+blood," was the firm command and in a few seconds Charlotte and Mikey
+squeezed through the fast closing opening, bloody and torn, but with
+the limp Stray dragged between them. A great cheer went up as Martha
+turned and caught the unconscious boy in her arms, then it froze in the
+throats that had been uttering it. Slowly, but more rapidly than could
+be stayed by human hands, the whole heavy roof crushed down upon the
+rest of the ruin; and under it and the beam went Nickols Powers with
+only one deep groan. Mr. Goodloe tried to hold up the whole side of the
+roof on his own shoulders and only staggered out from the very brink of
+being involved in the crash. Martha sank to the ground and hid her head
+in my knees and sobbed while I heard a great cry break from my father's
+lips. Nickols was the last of his race and our pride was blasted when he
+fell.
+
+"Now forward, every man of you, but lift and dig carefully," commanded
+the parson, as he stood on the very edge of the ruin. "Todd, you stand
+at the corner and show them how to roll back the timbers to the right.
+Carefully, men, but quick, quick, and with the help of God!"
+
+It seemed hours that the men wrestled with the timbers and tore away
+brick and stone and steel, but it was only a few minutes before they
+pried up a section of the heavy roof and lifted Nickols from the debris
+beneath.
+
+"He's breathing," said Mr. Todd, as he laid him in the parson's great,
+strong, outstretched arms open to receive him and which bore him out
+through the crowd swiftly and laid him across the seats of Nickols' car.
+Doctor Harding had just put Mark, a limp, heavy body, into his own car,
+with Harriet to support the bleeding head, and Nell crouched beside him
+with the Suckling in her arms, and sent them on up into the devastated
+Town. Now he came and helped us settle Nickols on his cushions.
+
+"Shall I send my car and Colonel Leftwick for surgeons and nurses from
+the Capital?" asked the Governor. "How is it with Morgan?"
+
+"He is dead," answered the old doctor with the calm serenity that he had
+acquired after so many years of giving up his friends. "This case is
+another matter. There may be a chance and I'll need help. We don't yet
+know how many more are injured in the whole town. We'll need help."
+
+"Then I'll drive for it myself," answered the Governor, as he swung into
+his powerful car and started it out into the valley. "I'll make it back
+in six hours. No other man can drive this car as fast as I can."
+
+And true to his promise, he was back within the time with nurses and
+surgeons and supplies of all kinds. By that time the whole Harpeth
+Valley had heard of our tragedy and all who could find a way were
+hurrying to our rescue or comforting.
+
+The dawn of the beautiful new day found Nickols still alive, stretched
+on his bed in his own wing of the Poplars, which alone of all the homes
+in the Town had not been touched by the storm monster. The old house
+stood unharmed in all its beauty in its garden which had hardly a leaf
+or a branch broken, and hovered under its roof the last of the name of
+its builders. He lay quiet and unconscious while his life jetted itself
+away from a great hole in his lung made by a splinter from the beam he
+had held up until old Goodloet's children had been given back to its
+future. The great surgeon who had come down with the Governor, watched,
+shook his head and went at his task again and again with a dogged
+courage. For an hour he would leave him to go and help Dr. Harding with
+some of the other injured, but back he would come to his fight for
+Nickols' life.
+
+And all over the stricken town there were similar tragedies being
+enacted. Over at the Morgans Mark lay cold and still in the long parlor,
+which was almost the only part of the handsome old house left intact by
+the tornado, and Harriet sat beside him while Nell nursed maimed wee
+Susan and torn Jimmy, and restrained Charlotte from injuring her sorely
+twisted ankle.
+
+Down at the Last Chance, Jacob Ensley was stretched upon a bed in the
+bar with a sheet drawn straight and decorously over his bruised white
+head. He had been killed by a blow from a roof timber, while from right
+beside him young George Spain had been rescued unharmed. When he had
+crawled from the ruins he had held in his hand a bottle of whiskey which
+he had just uncorked for his own and Jacob's refreshment when the
+tornado tore at the East Chance, and scarcely a drop had been spilt. And
+the tornado had displayed the vagaries of its kind.
+
+Old Granny Todd had been lifted in her rocking chair and carried halfway
+over the Town and left beside the Spain cottage with her feeble life
+intact, while Mrs. Spain, upon whose shoulders the burden of mothering
+all seven of the Spains rested heavily, had had one of those valuable
+shoulders broken and was left crushed and bleeding beside the rocking
+chair in which the helpless old dame arrived for her enforced visit. The
+household goods of one family had been torn from them and thrown into
+the melee of another, and the Jamison clock was found ticking busily
+away over on the roof of the Todd's chicken house. A girl mother in a
+little cottage on the edge of the river bank was found floating against
+the shore in her wooden bedstead, drowned, while near her the little two
+days' old life had been perfectly preserved upon the pillow in the
+rocking chair where it had been sleeping when the great storm beast had
+made its raid.
+
+And all Goodloets mourned, crying for her children, and would not be
+comforted. The second day after the storm the dead were buried. Mr.
+Goodloe, with old Mr. Stokes, the Presbyterian minister, on one hand,
+and the Baptist student preacher on the other, stood in the center of
+the beautiful city of the dead, over which the storm had passed
+unheeding, and had services for the rich and the poor alike. With the
+same ceremonial were buried Mark Morgan and Jacob Ensley, and the girl
+mother, Ted Montgomery, who had been struck down by the falling sign of
+the Bank and Trust Company on Main Street, and a score of others.
+
+Then after all the tears had been shed and the sobs had ceased, all the
+flowers strewn and the reluctant feet had left the silent city, I went
+over behind the tall cedars into a corner and knelt beside Martha
+Ensley, who had flung herself down across the new-made grave that held
+all that was left of Jacob Ensley, the man who had bulwarked sin in his
+Settlement and menaced all of Goodloets for many a year. The wide-eyed
+boy crouched beside her and I took his hand in mine.
+
+"Martha," I said, as I bent beside her in the twilight. "I want you to
+come home with me, you and Sonny. Your place is there now and you must
+bring him." All day I had thought and I had prayed to be aided in doing
+what I knew was best.
+
+"Oh, no, Miss Charlotte, no," she said, and shrank from my arms.
+
+"Yes, Martha," I said, and drew her closer.
+
+"It happened the summer we were all first grown and you were in Europe.
+I couldn't fight him off. I knew he belonged to you and I loved you,
+but I couldn't fight him off," she sobbed and the Stray's little arms
+went around her neck.
+
+"I'll fight fer you--I'll fight," he said, with brave, wonderment in his
+eyes and voice.
+
+"I went away this summer and I wanted to stay. Mr. Goodloe tried to help
+me, but Nickols found where I was and made me come back. It was wrong to
+you and I knew it. I stayed shut up in my room, but he would come. And I
+sent him to his death. He was yours and I killed him for you! Please go
+away and leave me!" And again Martha cowered away from me.
+
+"Nobody need know you are in the house, Martha, but you must come with
+me," I said, and I spoke with such quiet authority that she rose and
+followed me out of the shadows into the starlit night which had come
+down over stricken Goodloets. I found Billy waiting for me in his car
+and he spoke gently to Martha and settled her and the boy on the back
+seat with never a question in his kind eyes.
+
+"God, you women!" he said to me under his breath, but I avoided his eye
+and he drove us silently to the Poplars. The long halls were quiet and
+empty in the anxious hush of the whole house which was keeping its
+life--or death watch. I led Martha to the room that opened into mine, in
+which all of the girl guests of the Poplars always slept, and made her
+take off her hat and make the boy comfortable. Then I went for Dabney
+and asked him to take food to them.
+
+"Yes'm, I will. God love my little miss," was his answer, and I knew
+that I could trust his kindness to Martha and the boy.
+
+Then I went into the library to father. I found Mr. Goodloe with him and
+father's calm under his anxious suffering gave me a thrill at the
+thought of the regained strength it implied. The parson's face was
+grave, but full of a white light from the fire burning back under the
+dull gold brows. His warm hands took my cold ones in them and pressed
+them palm to palm in the attitude of prayer and very tenderly, from his
+soul to mine, he said:
+
+"'The Lord is good, for his mercy endureth forever.'"
+
+"Forever?" I asked him, looking up with the child's faith that had been
+born in my heart shining in the confidence in my eyes.
+
+"Forever," he answered me with quiet authority.
+
+"Yes," said father solemnly, as if himself reassured after doubts. Then,
+after a second's pause: "Daughter, Nickols is conscious and is asking
+for you. Will you go to him?"
+
+I took my hands out of those which had given to mine the strength of
+prayer and went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SPARK AND THE BLAZE
+
+
+I found Nickols lying in his own dim and high bedroom, perfectly
+motionless under the white sheet, as he had been for two days, the only
+difference that now his great dark eyes burned into mine and on his
+mouth there rested a faint trace of the old mocking smile. I sat down
+close beside his pillow on a low chair which the nurse placed for me as
+she gave me a warning look and left us alone.
+
+"This is your wedding day, Charlotte, and the license is over on the
+desk to destroy," he said, with the mocking light in his eyes flaring up
+into greater strength. "I suppose you are duly grateful for the merciful
+escape accorded you."
+
+"Please don't, dear," I said, and I reached out and took his burning
+hand in mine.
+
+"You never really cared, Charlotte. You cold women make havoc in a man's
+life. I've no excuses to make, but I wish I could hear you say that you
+forgive me. I'd go out more contentedly." And the light that sprang up
+into his face showed me just what a hold I had on his loyalty and the
+thing a man calls his honor. And it came to me on the wings of a quick,
+silent prayer, prayed in a heart unlearned in the forms of petitions,
+that I must make a fight to give him the peace of his heritage of
+immortality before he entered it.
+
+"I do forgive you, Nick dear, as I hope to be forgiven by the Master for
+the wrongs I have done others--the wrong of accepting your life--in
+coldness," I answered, looking him steadily in the eye as I made my
+simple declaration of my new-found faith to him.
+
+"You?" he faltered. "Do I behold you entered into the creed?"
+
+"Listen to me, Nick, for the time is short," I said, as I held his hand
+close in mine. "We were blind--blind. When you and the children were in
+that death house I found that I must ask help. I cried out in my
+blindness and was answered, as Christ gave his promise that the eyes of
+those who ask should be opened. And you must ask so that you will have
+a vision to help--help you go to the blessed immortality that awaits
+you. Ask, Oh, Nick, ask with me. Please, Lord Jesus, help us!" And as I
+uttered my few faltering words of petition I fell on my knees beside the
+bed.
+
+"It's too late now," he answered, but a helplessness came into his
+bitterness. "I've done all the damage I could and I'm not going to
+whimper. You'll help poor Martha?" he questioned softly, and I could
+have cried out in thankfulness for the ray of tenderness that came
+across his white face.
+
+"God has given you time to right the worst wrong, Nick," I said, as a
+sudden thought came to me that gave to me a healing which I knew I must
+pour out upon his wounds. "Marry Martha and give the boy your name and
+your money to grow good and great with. Jacob is dead. They are alone in
+the world. Give them to me that way, Nick, give them to me to care for
+for you until we are all together where everything is made right."
+
+For a long moment he lay perfectly still and looked into my eyes and I
+saw a wonder grow in his that spread all over his whole face.
+
+"Some kind of a God must have created a woman like that in you. Almost
+I believe. Call Goodloe quick, and your father." And then he closed his
+eyes and I could see a deathly weakness stealing over him. I called the
+nurse and sent her for father and Gregory Goodloe, and to old Dabney who
+had come to wait by the door I whispered to bring Martha and the boy and
+keep them in the room beyond. Then I went back and knelt by the pillow
+and took the hand which was beginning to grow cold in mine.
+
+"Could it be possible?" the white lips muttered.
+
+"Say it, Nickols; say, 'Lord, help thou my unbelief,'" I begged him.
+
+"Amen," he whispered with a quick smile just as father and Gregory
+Goodloe came into the room.
+
+"Goodloe, what was the exact story about that skulker of a thief on the
+cross?" Nickols asked with a sudden strength in his voice as he opened
+his eyes and looked straight at the parson.
+
+"'The thief said unto Jesus, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into
+thy kingdom." And Jesus said unto him, "Verily I say unto thee, to-day
+shalt thou be with me in Paradise,"' are the exact words, Nickols," the
+parson answered him.
+
+"Charlotte, ask the judge if he is willing that I should wipe the slate
+clean as you propose in case there really is a door and an old Peter to
+present a purified passport to," the dying man said to me with a touch
+of his old whimsicality. "I give up, Greg; the soul that Charlotte
+possesses can't be put out into nothingness; and if she's got one I have
+too," he said, after a moment's fight for breath. "Hurry, all of you, to
+get my passport made out and bring the girl here to me. Quick, get her.
+There is very little time."
+
+"She's here, Nick," I answered, and after a few words to father and the
+parson, to which they both gave assent, I called Martha and the boy into
+the room.
+
+Straight as a bird to its nest Martha flew to the bedside and the dying
+arms found strength to lift themselves and take her and the child into
+their embrace.
+
+"Will you forgive me and let me make it as right with the world for you
+and him as I can, Martha?" he asked. "I love you, but I'd have drawn us
+all down into hell."
+
+"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed Martha, looking up at me with positive fear of
+me and of father and of our world in her wild face.
+
+"Yes, Martha," I said, as I knelt beside her and took the Stray in my
+arms, toward which he in his terror at the scene strained. "Father is a
+justice and he'll make the license over there in the desk right. You
+must, Martha, you must! It gives you and the boy to me to care for."
+
+"Yes, Martha," echoed Nickols' voice, out of which the strength was
+quickly going. "Help me wipe off as much of the slate as you can," and
+the wandering hand suddenly encountered the boy's wee paddie resting on
+the edge of the bed and clasped it close.
+
+And with the three of us crouched there beside him, father and Mr.
+Goodloe bound them legally and in the name of God, just as the last
+flicker of strength flared up in Nickols' body. Immediately I rose with
+the child in my arms and Martha took Nickols' head on her faithful
+breast while the life ebbed away.
+
+"Amen, Charlotte, amen," were his last whispered words and I understood
+that he was ratifying again my prayer for light to lead the way of his
+faltering steps.
+
+And then came a stillness in which we all stood with bowed heads while
+Martha sobbed.
+
+The death of Nickols Morris Powers was an event of national interest and
+telegrams and letters and representatives of the press poured into
+Goodloets from all parts of the country. Mr. Jeffries and the Governor
+stayed with us until it was all over, and when Mr. Jeffries left he
+pressed into father's hand a large check of five figures.
+
+"To help them build again, those who need it, in memory of him," he
+said.
+
+The Governor and his staff spent time and effort in helping to
+reorganize Goodloets, but through it all it was the powerful Harpeth
+Jaguar on whom we all leaned. He came and went day and night, tireless,
+quiet, commanding, and with that great light shining from back of his
+eyes upon us all. And in his ministrations down in the Settlement he
+took Martha with him day after day. He forced her to use up all of the
+strength that she possessed each day so that she would drop with
+exhaustion at night. To me he left most of the comforting of Nell--and
+Harriet. Like all women of buoyant and shallow nature, Nell soon began
+to rebound from her tragedy and it was hard to keep Billy within
+decorous bounds in his comforting of her. It would have been impossible
+to have done it at all with the former Billy, but the quiet, steady
+light that shone in his honest eyes whenever he helped with Nell and the
+children spoke well for a reformed and perfectly satisfactory future for
+them all.
+
+"Billy," I said to him one afternoon when he had taken all four of the
+kiddies out in his car to get wild grapes, when Harriet had counted on
+having wee Susan to herself for the afternoon, while Nell was
+interestedly busy over somber but much needed winter clothes for
+herself. "You have just got to make up your mind that Harriet is going
+to absolutely possess Sue for the future. I don't know about any
+legalities but I am going to see that Harriet gets Susan."
+
+"What you say goes, Charlotte, as it always has," he answered me, with
+honest adoring in his young eyes that had lost their reckless hunger.
+"And if you aren't careful you'll lead us all into Kingdom Come in blind
+bridles. Be careful not to over-fill Goodloe's fold. I don't want to
+crowd you. I'll take my turn when it comes." He was laughing as he
+spoke but there was a depth to the laughter that I understood.
+
+"Thank you, Billy, for your consideration," I answered him, as I took
+small Sue's hand and turned in at the Sproul gate.
+
+Harriet sat on the steps in the fading sunlight and the small music box
+flung herself into the outstretched arms with a force that was alarming.
+It was easy to see that Susan was most temperamental and would be a
+handful of anxieties in the years to come, anxieties that Harriet
+needed.
+
+"Of course, she doesn't belong to me and I'm a fool," Harriet muttered
+as Susan darted away to see what treasure for her lurked in the pocket
+of Mrs. Sproul's beflowered silk skirt.
+
+"I started plans to get her for you, just five minutes ago, dear," I
+said, as I sat down beside her. "I laid down the law to Billy on the
+subject."
+
+"Charlotte," answered Harriet, as she looked with brooding into my eyes,
+"do you really believe that--that we will find them again and--and--_do_
+you really believe?" And the question was so hungry and haunted and so
+like what had driven me for years that my heart ached in my breast for
+her, but I knew that I could only stand fast and pray that she be
+comforted. I couldn't make her see.
+
+"Yes, dear, I _know_--but I can't make you know. Just go on--on
+_hungering_ like you are and you'll be fed," I answered.
+
+"You've always understood, Charlotte, and if you say that the pain will
+some day be eased I'll--I'll believe it. Yes, I'll make a start by
+believing in you and there's no telling where it will land me."
+
+The confidence with which she raised her comforted eyes to mine made a
+stab of pain hit me full in the breast. Words that Gregory Goodloe had
+spoken to me out under the old graybeards were the weapon used. "With
+your hand in mine I can make this whole community see and know;
+separated from you--" In all humility I now understood what he meant.
+
+And in all the weeks in which he and I had worked together Gregory
+Goodloe had given me not one single personal word or look. The priest
+had comforted and strengthened me but the man had forever shut me out of
+his heart. My suffering was intense, and yet, and yet I knew that in my
+heart there was strength to endure the want of him with all
+cheerfulness even to the end. At last I had found the key to my own
+hieroglyphics and I could be honest with myself. I knew that I loved
+Gregory Goodloe as it is seldom given to a woman to love a man, but I
+also knew that the awakening of spirit I had found was not in any way
+connected with my woman's love for him, but had come to me from the
+years of suffering I had had while I sought it. I refused to acknowledge
+that a sex spark had in any way set off the blaze; the fire had been
+laid in my soul and it would burn on without any of his tending. But
+even in that honest surety Nickols' mocking words "religion is
+suppressed sex" haunted me. I knew it could not be true, so I put it all
+out of my mind as I left Harriet and walked down the street towards the
+Poplars.
+
+I was due in the library to help father in the packing of some of his
+papers, for I had insisted that he go on to Washington to fulfill his
+appointment. Martha and the boy would be with me and if he only left me
+Dabney I could be safe and busy for the winter. Strange to say, Mammy's
+disappointment at Dabney's loss of a sojourn in a strange clime was
+greater than his own.
+
+"I don't believe in glorifying men by needing of them to any great
+measure," she declared. "With me in the house and the preacher across
+the fence it don't make no difference how good looking you are, Miss
+Charlotte, you won't be too much for our protection. Dabney can jest go
+on with the jedge."
+
+"Of course, little miss, you don't need me, but I sorter got rheumatics
+in my homesick and I begged off from Mas' Nickols," Dabney replied with
+the wily soothing that had made his conjugal life both pleasant and
+possible.
+
+I was thinking of the argument and smiled with tenderness as I saw the
+old grizzled white head bent over a hoe down in the dahlias, which he
+was bedding. The young man from White Plains had stayed to put the
+garden to bed as far as possible, and had left with perfect confidence
+in Dabney and the likely yellow boy he had found.
+
+And now in late October the garden was in a conflagration of blossoming
+glory. The borders of the walks blazed with the red and blue and gold
+and purple of chrysanthemums and asters and zinnias and dahlias, while
+long tendrils of russet autumn vines trailed in and over and around the
+flowers and shrubs and hedges. The tang of ripening and falling seed was
+mixed in all the perfume, and gorgeous leaves were beginning to rustle
+on the green grass. It was Nickols' first harvest of beauty, and somehow
+I felt that there was no need to regret that his eyes were not mortally
+there to gather the fruits.
+
+I went from the front porch up to my room to take off my hat and see if
+Martha had come from a day with Mother Spurlock down in the Settlement.
+I found instead of Martha or the boy or Mother Elsie, Jessie Litton
+seated at my desk and looking out the window across to Paradise Ridge.
+
+"I came up to wait, Charlotte, because--because I'm in deep water and
+need a hand out. You have always helped and somehow I feel that you have
+so much more to give me now than you ever had. Clifton Gray told me last
+night that he loved me and is going to break his engagement with Letitia
+Cockrell. He had heard Letitia and Nell talk over Nell's mourning
+trousseau for the winter and he was disgusted--that, and--and I think it
+has been coming some time. He is with Mr. Goodloe a lot lately in
+getting things about the town started to going again and he is--is
+thinking. I don't know how to help him think; it's a thing I've never
+done. I am at sea myself but I know that he must not throw Letitia over.
+Will you talk to him?"
+
+"I couldn't help him if--if Mr. Goodloe can't," I faltered, simply sick
+with distress.
+
+"Cliff said not a week ago that your eyes made him feel like a light he
+saw ahead on a wooded island after he had drifted without a paddle two
+days in a canoe one time in Canada. You'll have to talk to him. Give him
+a little life kernel; I've only got shells for myself. I'm going down to
+Florida suddenly next week and when I come back I--I, well, I'll either
+go into the movies or study with Mother Spurlock to get a deaconess'
+cap." As she spoke I saw that the fight was on in Jessie's soul, and it
+would be to a finish.
+
+"God bless and keep you, dear," I held her back long enough to say as
+she picked up her sweater and left me. Hampton Dibrell has been
+constantly with Bessie Thornton since Ted Montgomery's death, and I knew
+that Jessie's time of trial had come, for her love for him had grown
+through her denial because of the taint of her mad mother. And somehow I
+felt sure of the outcome, that she would find strength to let him go. I
+didn't know why I felt so sure; but I did, and I went down to the
+library with a great peace in my heart that I knew later would be in
+hers.
+
+And I made my entry into father's den in the midst of a scene of great
+moment. I paused and listened with profound respect. Tradition was on
+trial and the result I felt would be momentous. Father sat in his huge
+chair before a small crackling fire in the wide chimney, and Martha's
+boy stood before him with a large, profusely illustrated volume of Hans
+Christian Andersen clasped passionately to his little breast. He had the
+floor.
+
+"And Charlotte said they is no fairies anywhere and I say they is," he
+declaimed, while father listened attentively. Suddenly I saw what I had
+never seen before, that father's white hair rose in a crest on one side
+and descended in a cascade on the other at exactly the same angle as the
+black locks of the young arguer before him, and as they calmly regarded
+each other I thought I had never seen such a likeness in personality as
+well as form of feature. Love flooded all over me and I wanted to hug
+them both but was restrained to silence by the gravity of the
+situation.
+
+"And why did you argue that there are fairies?" father interrogated
+calmly and judicially.
+
+"Charlotte said they ain't here 'cause she and me had never saw one, and
+I said, 'How could a book and pictures be about nothing at all?' I
+showed her this book that Lady gaved me and she said, 'Maybe, but ask
+Minister.' I said, no, I'd ask you 'cause you are older and mighter saw
+one onct. Did you?"
+
+"Well, sir, you argued from a positive, about ten pounds of positive, I
+should judge from the size of that volume, while Charlotte certainly
+argued from a negative viewpoint," said father, and his eyes twinkled as
+he gave me an almost imperceptible wink. By his answer he also avoided
+answering the question of faith put to him.
+
+"Did you see one?" came back the question in a tone that demanded an
+answer.
+
+"Here comes Minister now and you can ask him," father said in all
+cravenness as Mr. Goodloe came in the door behind me and came and stood
+at my side. He had a huge yellow plume of goldenrod which he handed me
+without looking at me directly. I buried my nose in its crispness and
+watched to see him meet the issue.
+
+The boy put the question carefully just as he had put it to father, but
+there was a quaver in his voice as he ended with his plea.
+
+"Is they no fairies, 'cause you can't see 'em?"
+
+"Do you feel them in your heart?" was the counter question that came
+gravely from the lips of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe.
+
+"Yes, here," answered the pleader as he laid his hand carefully on the
+pit of his stomach, which is nearer the seat of heartache than many a
+perturbed older person has come.
+
+"Then for you there are fairies, right there in your heart, even if
+Charlotte has lost them out of hers," was the answer, with a theology
+that staggered me and set father smiling back into his youth.
+
+"I'll go tell her and maybe give her some of mine," exclaimed the boy as
+he ran from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE COVERT OF WINGS
+
+
+"Oh, the faith of youth, the faith that reaches out to give itself,"
+sighed father as he turned to his papers.
+
+"Can faith give itself?" I asked, as I raised my eyes to the stars under
+dull gold through which Gregory Goodloe was pouring a great smile down
+into my depths.
+
+"Sometimes--just sometimes I think that perhaps it can--it does," he
+answered me slowly and took my hands in his and held them with their
+palms together prayerwise, a thing he had done several times in the
+weeks past. Then he turned and walked over to father's desk and stood
+looking down at him.
+
+"I want to dedicate the chapel on Sunday, Mr. Powers, as that is your
+last Sunday before you go to Washington," he said, and as he spoke he
+smiled first down into father's eyes raised to his and then into
+mine--impersonally. I couldn't trust myself to speak but turned and went
+up to my room to weep with a hurt that soon sent me to my knees, blind
+for the comfort that came--that I knew always would come now, no matter
+what the hurt.
+
+"He knows it has come to me, and he's thankful--but he doesn't care," I
+sobbed and then laughed at my own contradictions.
+
+Martha found me kneeling beside my window seat when she came in with
+Mother Spurlock and she shielded me until I could wipe away the tears
+and be as glad to see them both as I really was.
+
+They were full of the plans for the dedication, which it gave me another
+stab to find they had been discussing with Mr. Goodloe for several days.
+In the hard weeks that had passed I had been their confidant, adviser
+and many times their helper in the reconstructing around the tragedies
+in the Settlement, but in this matter I had not been consulted. In fact,
+Mother Spurlock showed an embarrassed hesitation as she talked of it
+that still further hurt me and made me unenthusiastic and cold to their
+plans.
+
+And why should I have been hurt that the surety in my heart had not
+declared itself to them without words? So wonderful did it seem to me
+that I thought it must be in my every word and deed and look and I was
+confounded that as yet I was considered to be an outsider and not
+entitled to plan for the ceremonial of the dedication of the material
+fold for the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's flock. And then suddenly my hurt was
+swept away by my sense of humor and I laughed to myself when I saw that
+to Mother Spurlock, who had hungered and thirsted for my conversion, I
+would have to prove it, tell it and repeat it.
+
+"Instead of the festal ceremonies in the dedication Mr. Goodloe is going
+to have the simplest dedication ritual and then immediately hold the
+memorial services for our--our dead," said Mother Spurlock, as she took
+Martha's hand in hers and stroked it. "We want everybody to be there and
+I could use a few more of those trunks full of colored new clothes,
+Charlotte. The people down in the Settlement can use and wear after a
+dye pot when you can't, bless your sweet heart," and as she made her
+ruling request, which was still strong in death, she stroked the fold of
+dull black silk over my knee which was cut from the same material as
+the straight black widow's gown which Martha wore.
+
+"Make Martha buy you some things for some of them," I said lightly and
+watched Martha as I spoke. She had never by word or deed showed that she
+felt anything but adoringly dependent on me and my bounty, and had put
+the check book I had given her from Mr. Cockrell away in my desk without
+looking at it. I could see that my words both hurt and shocked her.
+
+"No, Oh, no," she faltered and turned away toward the window.
+
+"But, Martha," I was beginning to say, when an interruption burst into
+the room. Young Charlotte stood before us and at her side the boy stood
+his ground with the huge book still in what must have been very tired
+arms. Their faces were belligerent and small James had upon his
+countenance the alarm he always shows during Charlotte's most serious
+and dangerous outbursts. Mikey was along, with his mischievous eyes
+dancing with delight at the fray.
+
+"Auntie Charlotte, I think somebody ought to whip Stranger for saying
+that Minister said he had fairies in his stomach. It is a lie."
+
+"I'll lick him fer you, Miss Charlotte," offered Mikey, with a pass at
+the boy that I knew was only an affectionate threat.
+
+"I'll knock a stuffing out of you if you touch him," answered Charlotte,
+taking Mikey's offer with her usual literal directness. "When he's
+whipped, nobody but Auntie Charlotte can do it. Are you going to do it
+now, Auntie Charlotte? We don't want the devil to get him for badness."
+And as she spoke she took the boy's hand and held it tightly as if
+willing to defend him from the flesh, the devil and the world, only
+excepting myself.
+
+"But he did say that I had them here when I put my hand on it, didn't
+he, Lady?" demanded the accused, with more courage than I would have
+felt at meeting the accusation for him. I simply couldn't face the
+explanation and I became craven.
+
+"Mr. Goodloe is down in the library. Go ask him what he did say," I
+suggested hopefully.
+
+"We looked everywhere for him and that is the place we skipped. I felt
+sure you wouldn't know anything at all about it, Auntie Charlotte, but
+Stranger said you know just as much as Minister, which is another thing
+I am going to ask him about. Come on, Stranger." And with her usual
+lightning rapidity, Charlotte began to marshal her forces out of the
+room.
+
+"Please don't!" were the words I sent faltering after her determination
+to question Mr. Goodloe about his and my relative erudition, but I felt
+that they made no impression.
+
+"Sonny thinks about you just as Charlotte does about Mr. Goodloe, and
+he'll say so to everybody," said Martha, with a sad smile after the door
+had closed with vigor enough to startle the household.
+
+"He's a fine child," said Mother Spurlock, with a great tenderness in
+her smile at Martha. "Did you ask Mrs. Todd if that big hulk of a Jones
+boy could get into the coat that Dabney got me from the judge's closet?"
+she said, continuing the subject in hand, which lasted her for another
+hour. When she went she took Martha with her to carry half the bundles
+down to the Little House, the roof of which was the first thing to be
+patched in stricken Goodloets.
+
+That night I felt the hands of the Stray on my face in the darkness and
+his soft cheek cuddle to mine.
+
+"_You_ say they _is_ fairies, Lady," he coaxed.
+
+"There are fairies and there always will be for you," I answered, as I
+drew him close and kissed the fragrant mouth so near mine. "Go back to
+mother now," I added, as I felt the sleepy huddle of his little shoulder
+against mine. He went and I promised myself that no matter how lonely I
+was to be I would always send him back to his mother and not ever forget
+that her claim was first. Tears were in my eyes as I turned my face into
+the pillow, but suddenly the refrain of the song I had once heard in the
+night, "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," sung itself in my heart
+until I again fell to sleep.
+
+The dedication day for Goodloe Chapel arrived upon Goodloets just one
+month from the day upon which the beast of storm had ravaged it, and as
+that fateful morning dawned with an extraordinary grandeur, so that
+Sunday in mid-October came up from behind Paradise Ridge with unusual
+beauty, only with the difference of calmness instead of splendor and
+peace instead of tumult. The sun was warm and benignant, with not a
+cloud in the deep blue sky to obscure its blessing. A gentle breeze blew
+in from the fields and meadows laden with rich harvest odors and every
+shrub and flower and vine which had been hiding back a few late buds let
+them burst forth in honor of the day, and in many instances they bloomed
+from a new growth thrown over the scars in the sides of the old town. In
+one short month most of the ruins had been reduced to orderly piles of
+material to be used in rebuilding, and a great many of the deepest
+gashes had been healed completely and covered with merciful vine and
+blossom. And it had also been like that with most of the scars in the
+lives of the bereaved; they ached, but they had been covered with a
+courage to go on building again until the new structure could be
+complete.
+
+I think something of this feeling was in the minds of most of the people
+as they began to assemble around Goodloe Chapel long before the time for
+its opening. And as had happened once before, the procession from the
+Town met the procession from the Settlement, only this time they were
+not divided so completely from the right to the left. A tall mill woman,
+whose husband had gone down in the crash at the saddlery, came and took
+Nell's hand in hers and laid a strong arm around her shoulders, while
+Harriet went over and took from the arms of the young father the little
+motherless mite who had been rescued from the pillow floating on the
+river. Billy shook hands with a young tanner in tight but wholly new
+clothes, to whom Luella May Spain introduced him as her imminent
+husband.
+
+In times of stress women are apt to seize and cling to the arm of
+masculine protection, and Luella May had chosen to forget the
+fascination of Billy's hesitation and two-steps and secure for herself a
+life of thorough normality. She would probably never forget those dances
+with Billy, and they would lend a kind of reminiscent glow of pleasure
+over her boiling cabbage pots, but it would be no worse than that.
+
+Mr. Todd was shaven and habitated in the neat black coat he had thrown
+off as he went at the ruin of the schoolhouse a month before, and with a
+tender smile on his lean old face he came over and stood beside Martha,
+as if to be watchful of her in the new order of her life.
+
+And it was for quite a half hour that most of the inhabitants of
+Goodloets stood around in the yard of the chapel and waited for the
+formal opening of the doors. We all knew that the chapel would not hold
+the half of us, for the small Presbyterian congregation had been
+dismissed by Mr. Farraday to come over and join us in the dedication,
+and after a short service the boy Baptist divine had brought his flock
+to do honor to the opening of the new fold. In fact, by count almost
+every citizen in Goodloets stood before the chapel doors and waited for
+them to be thrown open. And in the crowd who waited there was this
+difference from the last time we had been together: All the children
+were with us and not separated from us by walls that crash. I think that
+the second meeting of Town and Settlement would have been impossible if
+each parent had not had the confidence inspired by the small hands in
+theirs.
+
+And for still more minutes we were patient while the delicious autumn
+sun beamed upon us with Indian summer warmth and Old Harpeth looked down
+on us from out on Paradise Ridge with its crown wreathed with purple and
+gold and russet, all veiled in a tender haze.
+
+Then as the old clock on the courthouse up on the square boomed the hour
+of eleven, Dabney with ceremony opened wide the tall doors and stepped
+back into the shadow, Jefferson bowing and smiling behind him. With one
+accord the people started toward the door, and then everybody again
+stood still and seemed to be waiting for something.
+
+I knew for what they waited and I took Martha's hand in mine, with the
+boy's in hers on the other side, and slowly we walked through the path
+made for us between our friends and neighbors and in at the chapel door.
+As I passed Harriet I motioned to her and she put her arm around Nell
+and followed us, while Billy came behind them with father and the
+children. And behind them walked all of those who had been bereaved by
+the storm, and those who had been lamed and were suffering came with
+them.
+
+My entry into the chapel had been accomplished and I felt like a
+storm-torn bird who finds its sanctuary among the green leaves of a
+great tree, while with Martha and the boy I went up to the very chancel
+rail itself.
+
+Then I lifted my eyes and looked up into Gregory Goodloe's face, from
+which the white light of a great joy tinged with a great sorrow, looked
+down upon us. And as had been the case for all the long weeks stretched
+out behind me there was in his eyes no glance to me of a personal
+understanding; all the passion was that of a shepherd for his flock, and
+in its greatness I humbly acquiesced as I fell upon my knees in the
+front pew with Martha beside me, while he lifted his hands for the
+opening prayer of his service.
+
+And in his short prayer he made the dedication of the pile of stone and
+mortar which had stood before the face of the wind as sturdily as old
+Harpeth itself. His words held the simplicity of those of a great poet
+and each was a separate jewel that could be imbedded in the hearts of
+his people to last for the span of their lives. He made a grateful
+acknowledgment of the safety of the chapel and of the spared lives of
+those before him, and in a few ringing sentences he prayed that we all
+be delivered from the blindness of the prosperity which was upon us when
+the disaster had made us halt in our rush and give time for brother to
+face and call upon brother in affliction. So ringing and vivid was the
+self-accusation of heedlessness in the few sentences when he dealt with
+the condition of all of us when sorrow had come upon us, that we all
+held our breath with almost a groan of conviction, and his promise of
+our humbled and contrite hearts was ratified with a breath of relief.
+
+Then we rose from our knees and sat once more facing him while he stood
+before us and began to read the memorial services for our dead. And
+through the whole beautiful ritual he led us to the very words of
+triumph:
+
+     "Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written;
+     Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting?
+     O grave, where is thy victory?"
+
+The warmth in his beautiful voice and the light upon his face poured
+over us all with a healing that we knew would endure.
+
+After the dedication prayer and the memorial service the old
+Presbyterian minister, whom we had all known and loved since infancy,
+talked tenderly and with great sympathy to us for a few minutes and the
+stammering young Baptist divine gave us an insight into a heart of
+youthful devoutness.
+
+And then came my hour.
+
+"And now that we have given to the Lord formally this sanctuary we have
+builded for him, I want to open its spiritual doors to any of you who
+feel in your hearts the desire to unite with us in our worship of Him,"
+were the words of invitation that I suddenly felt beat themselves, in
+the rich voice of the man in the pulpit, upon my heart. "I am going to
+baptize the children, but are there any of you of 'riper years' who
+desire to unite with us to 'constantly believe God's holy word, and
+obediently keep his commandments'?" And as he spoke he came down from
+the pulpit, stood at the chancel rail and stretched out his hands to all
+of us. Without a second's delay I rose and went and knelt before him and
+bowed my head in my hands. On my right knelt the young tanner and on my
+left I felt rather than saw Clifton Gray.
+
+"The Ministration of Baptism to such as are of Riper Years" is long and
+full of holy austerity. Word for word, response for question, I followed
+the rich voice leading me, but not until it asked concerning our faith
+in the "life everlasting" did I raise my eyes to those glowing above me
+as I made answer:
+
+"All this I steadfastly believe."
+
+There was an instant's hush in the church as I made my response and in
+all humility I seemed to feel that it reverberated in some of the
+others' depths until it waked a faint echo. They had seen me face my
+humiliation and had watched how I took it and it had had its effect. It
+was as if I publicly led them to the well-spring of my courage and
+offered it to them. Luella May stole forward and crowded in between the
+young tanner and me, and I saw great tears steal out of father's closed
+eyes and roll down his cheeks, as he came and knelt just behind me, with
+two mill hands and several women.
+
+And then, after our blessing, while we rose and stood on the right and
+the left of the chancel the parson asked that the children be brought
+forward for baptism.
+
+Without waiting for anybody to come with her, Charlotte rose, took a
+hand of Sue on one side and one of Jimmy on the other, and came and
+stood looking up into the beloved Minister's eyes with such a vision in
+her young face that I caught my breath. Then Nell came and with her came
+Harriet with the Suckling asleep in her arms. The bereaved young father
+held his baby in his arms alone and Mrs. Burns went and stood beside
+him with Mikey and Maudie and the other five toddlers in front of her.
+Other children were brought forward by parents from the Town and the
+Settlement and were ranged to the right and to the left, but still I saw
+that Martha cowered in her pew holding the hand of the Stray in hers as
+he knelt beside her. Then I knew what I must do and I went quietly and
+lifted her and led her to the chancel to a place just beside where
+Harriet stood with the Suckling in her arms. I held one of the Stray's
+little hands in mine, and young Charlotte dropped Jimmy's hand and
+reached out and took the other in hers. So we stood and waited while the
+beloved voice read through the beautiful ceremony with which children
+are taken into the arms of their faith before they are yet ready to
+understand what it is some day to mean to them.
+
+"It is your duty to teach him ... to obediently keep God's holy will and
+commandments all of his life," were the closing words of the address
+with which the parson looked us full in the eye and laid the vow upon
+our souls. Then he reached out his hands, drew the Stray to him first,
+encircled him with his strong arm, laid his hands on the bowed black
+head, and looking me straight in the eye asked the question of his
+ritual:
+
+"Name this child."
+
+For an instant I glanced at Martha and then at father standing beside
+me, and as he nodded I slightly bent my head and into a deathly
+stillness all over the chapel I let the name fall clear and distinct:
+
+"Nickols Morris Powers."
+
+A beautiful ray of light flooded from one of the tall windows over both
+of us as he ratified the name with a few drops of water upon the boy's
+brow, and then turned to Harriet and repeated his question while he took
+the Suckling into his arms with the greatest tenderness. Then through
+the group he went, naming his lambs as he held them against his heart or
+within the circle of his strong arm. It was all so tender and so
+beautiful that every eye in the chapel was wet with tears and sobs
+echoed softly through his last prayer.
+
+However, at one time in the ceremonial there was danger of a laugh from
+the aggregate, overwrought nerves when Charlotte promptly named herself
+without waiting for Nell's response which came late but in time to save
+embarrassment.
+
+Then it was all over and the whole congregation trooped but into the
+sunshine. Father walked home with young Nickols on one side and
+Charlotte on the other, Martha carrying the Suckling and walking beside
+Harriet, who led Sue past the destruction of her white dress which every
+mud puddle threatened. Cliff Gray came with me slowly up the street
+after all the others had gone ahead and most of them had turned into the
+gates of their respective homes.
+
+"Is everything all right now, Cliff?" I questioned him, as we walked
+slowly under the old elms of our ancestors' planting. "It is all right
+now?" I asked again, while Cliff looked off into the distance.
+
+"I have faith that I can make it that way now, Charlotte dear," he
+answered, as I paused to turn in at my gate. We clasped hands for a
+second and then he went on down the street toward the Cockrell gate; and
+Letitia's material point of view on existence I knew would have a fair
+chance at his hands.
+
+I felt that I had never loved my friends as I did that wonderful
+Sunday, and I hoped it would not bore them if I at times let some of it
+overflow into their well ordered lives.
+
+The rest of that long, hazy, dreamy, wonder day, in the morning of which
+our hearts had been poured so full, we all of us spent with father, as
+he was to leave us the next morning. Against the remonstrance of his
+maternal parent, the worthless Jefferson had been chosen to go along in
+the place of his father Dabney. The young negro's brisk packings filled
+the house with a joy note that was delightful and Mammy admonished him
+on subjects moral every time he came near the kitchen.
+
+Late in the afternoon I left father down in the garden with young
+Nickols, to whom he was confiding the care of some very choice hollyhock
+seeds that would need gathering in the next few weeks.
+
+"Your father got them from England," the judge said gravely, as he
+showed the small paddies how to roll out the thin seed without crushing
+them.
+
+"Have I got any father but the Lady?" asked the youngster with all
+seriousness, as he beamed up in my direction. Suddenly Martha turned
+and went indoors and up to her room. I followed her and sat down beside
+the bed on which she had flung herself.
+
+"You'll have to make him understand it all; I can't," she said, after I
+had tenderly hushed her weeping. "I give him to you. I--I won't be with
+him long." As she spoke I noticed how the light shone through her pale
+fingers as she held them up to clasp mine.
+
+"We'll go away to Florida for a rest, Martha," I said, with the
+reassurance I found I had constantly to use to her. There was a great
+and beautiful tenderness in the soul of Martha, but she was completely
+lacking in any of the worldly initiative that makes lives move on. She
+seemed to be standing still.
+
+"Yes, I'll go away," she answered softly, as she unclasped her hand from
+mine, nestled her face in the pillow and shut her eyes.
+
+I left her to sleep and a year from that hour I knew that I had not
+understood the measure of her exhaustion. She faded like a flower and
+drifted on into eternity like a gossamer thread in the breeze.
+
+And it was with some of the depression that a kind of maternal brooding
+over her gave me that I went out into the garden that night after all
+the rest had gone to bed. A pale silver moon-crescent poised on the brow
+of Old Harpeth and a tingling little breeze was coming down from the
+north as if sent as a warning of the winter soon to be upon us. I went
+down to the old graybeard poplars and their leaves seemed to hiss
+together in the moonlight instead of rustling softly as they had been
+all summer. A great many of them were drifted in dry waves on the grass
+and their gold was turned to silver in the moonlight. Many of the tall
+shrubs were naked ghosts of their former selves and gnashed their bones
+drearily. I leaned against the tallest old poplar and looked out across
+the valley with a kind of stillness in my heart that seemed to be
+listening and then listening.
+
+"Oh, I'm thankful, thankful that strength has been given me to endure it
+all--life," I said to myself, almost under my breath. "And no matter
+what comes I can never lose it. I can go out into life now alone
+and--unafraid."
+
+"'And whither thou goest I too will go, and thy--'" came the Gregorian
+chant from close beside me, and I turned to find the Harpeth Jaguar
+stalking me in the night.
+
+Then for a long time we stood and looked at each other, he tearing away
+the veil from his man's heart and I laying aside that in my woman's
+breast.
+
+"Oh, I've needed you so," I finally said, with a catch in my breath as I
+put my hands in his which he put palm to palm, then raised to his lips.
+
+"You were in God's hands and I had to wait His time," he answered me.
+"And I would have waited until the stars burn dim. As near as loss came
+I never doubted. I had asked Him for you."
+
+"I didn't know I was going to join your church this morning," I
+faltered. "I never intended to join your church. I was going to be
+either a Baptist or a Presbyterian. I was afraid to mix--my faith
+with--with you."
+
+"Hasn't it been tried sufficiently to stand any test? I think so. Ah,
+dear, come to me--it's been long for me, too." His arms entreated me,
+but I held myself away with my praying hands pressed to his breast.
+
+"Are you sure that I'm not mixing you and--your faith?" I asked, looking
+him honestly in the face and giving voice to the thought that Nickols
+had put into my mind and which had tortured me all the weary months
+past.
+
+"Did any thought of me make you bring Martha Ensley to Nickols' death
+bed and take into your heart and home what the world calls dishonor?"
+
+"No," I answered with honesty to myself.
+
+"Have you once since you knew--_knew_--felt that you must turn to me for
+comfort and help in one of your dire hours?"
+
+"Not once," I answered again with honesty.
+
+"Have you not learned to turn to Him?"
+
+"I have!" I answered.
+
+"That's God's love. Then you can give me the love that belongs to me in
+your heart's kingdom, can't you?"
+
+"I'm afraid--I'm going to love you too much--I feel it coming. What'll
+you do with it? Stop me!" I said with both a sob and a laugh, as I began
+to let myself be drawn into the strong, hungry arms.
+
+"You great, big, splendid woman of God! You've got love enough in you to
+feed a multitude and you'll do it. Give me a part of my share now. It's
+mine. God sent you to me; I'm going to take you."
+
+And he did. His lips pressed mine until I gave back a betrothal kiss
+that was as complete as a great red flower. His arms held me so that
+they were a circle of pain, but all the while I kept my hands prayerwise
+between the clamor of our breasts.
+
+"Say it--'the covert of thy wings'--all that David said," I whispered.
+
+And he answered:
+
+"'I will abide in thy tabernacle forever: I will trust in the covert of
+thy wings.'"
+
+
+
+
+JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S STORIES OF ADVENTURE
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list.
+
+
+_KAZAN_
+
+The tale of a "quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky" torn
+between the call of the human and his wild mate.
+
+_BAREE, SON OF KAZAN_
+
+The story of the son of the blind Grey Wolf and the gallant part he
+played in the lives of a man and a woman.
+
+_THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM_
+
+The story of the King of Beaver Island, a Mormon colony, and his battle
+with Captain Plum.
+
+_THE DANGER TRAIL_
+
+A tale of snow, of love, of Indian vengeance, and a mystery of the
+North.
+
+_THE HUNTED WOMAN_
+
+A tale of the "end of the line," and of a great fight in the "valley of
+gold" for a woman.
+
+_THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH_
+
+The story of Fort o' God, where the wild flavor of the wilderness is
+blended with the courtly atmosphere of France.
+
+_THE GRIZZLY KING_
+
+The story of Thor, the big grizzly who lived in a valley where man had
+never come.
+
+_ISOBEL_
+
+A love story of the Far North.
+
+_THE WOLF HUNTERS_
+
+A thrilling tale of adventure in the Canadian wilderness.
+
+_THE GOLD HUNTERS_
+
+The story of adventure in the Hudson Bay wilds.
+
+_THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE_
+
+Filled with exciting incidents in the land of strong men and women.
+
+_BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY_
+
+A thrilling story of the Far North. The great Photoplay was made from
+this book.
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+THE NOVELS OF GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL LUTZ
+
+May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.
+
+
+_THE BEST MAN_
+
+Through a strange series of adventures a young man finds himself
+propelled up the aisle of a church and married to a strange girl.
+
+_A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS_
+
+On her way West the heroine steps off by mistake at a lonely watertank
+into a maze of thrilling events.
+
+_THE ENCHANTED BARN_
+
+Every member of the family will enjoy this spirited chronicle of a young
+girl's resourcefulness and pluck, and the secret of the "enchanted"
+barn.
+
+_THE WITNESS_
+
+The fascinating story of the enormous change an incident wrought in a
+man's life.
+
+_MARCIA SCHUYLER_
+
+A picture of ideal girlhood set in the time of full skirts and poke
+bonnets.
+
+_LO, MICHAEL!_
+
+A story of unfailing appeal to all who love and understand boys.
+
+_THE MAN OF THE DESERT_
+
+An intensely moving love story of a man of the desert and a girl of the
+East pictured against the background of the Far West.
+
+_PHOEBE DEANE_
+
+A tense and charming love story, told with a grace and a fervor with
+which only Mrs. Lutz could tell it.
+
+_DAWN OF THE MORNING_
+
+A romance of the last century with all of its old-fashioned charm. A
+companion volume to "Marcia Schuyler" and "Phoebe Deane."
+
+
+_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_
+
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART'S KINGDOM***
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