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 (http://www.pgdp.net/) The Heart's Kingdom "It's a mighty big turkle," he faltered, and snuggled closer. "It's a mighty big turkle," he faltered, and snuggled closer. THE HEART'S KINGDOM BY MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS AUTHOR OF THE MELTING OF MOLLY, Etc. ILLUSTRATED BY W. B. KING 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 [Pg 9] 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 [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] 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. [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] "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 [Pg 20] [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] 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 [Pg 25] [Pg 26] [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] 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 [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] [Pg 33] [Pg 34] [Pg 35] 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 [Pg 36] [Pg 37] [Pg 38] [Pg 39] [Pg 40] 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." [Pg 41] [Pg 42] [Pg 43] [Pg 44] [Pg 45] "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 [Pg 46] [Pg 47] [Pg 48] [Pg 49] [Pg 50] 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...