The Heart's Kingdom Part 11

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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 l.u.s.t 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 b.a.l.l.s that we don't hit. She gets b.a.l.l.s 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 cla.s.s 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, n.o.body 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 La.s.siter'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 a.s.serted 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 b.u.t.toned 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.