"Let"s begin to-night," I a.s.sented 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,"
Let.i.tia 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 Let.i.tia meekly, as if she felt sure of a storm of remonstrance.
"People don"t dress to dance these days, Let.i.tia," said Billy, with the greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in speaking to Let.i.tia"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," Let.i.tia answered him with gentle firmness.
"That was just what I remarked, Let.i.tia 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. Let.i.tia 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. "h.e.l.lo, 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 G.o.d 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 b.u.t.toned 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," Let.i.tia 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 pa.s.s the m.u.f.fins, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 grat.i.tude. "The rest of you hurry over those m.u.f.fins, 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 pa.s.s.
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 h.e.l.l. 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 h.e.l.l again. G.o.d won"t clean me twice."