The Heart's Kingdom Part 7

"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, Let.i.tia, and let me take you home," she called over her shoulder, and Let.i.tia followed to secure the short spin around the corner to the old c.o.c.krell 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 b.u.mbled 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.ses the collection plate up the aisle on Sunday and plays poker all Sat.u.r.day 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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d! 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 c.o.c.krell 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 d.a.m.ned 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 gra.s.s 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 ap.r.o.n helping his wife bring the dinner to a serving head.

"Praise G.o.d, 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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.