Andrew the Glad
By MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
Author of Miss Selina Lue, Rose of Old Harpeth The Melting of Molly, etc.
1913
TO LIBBIE LUTTRELL MORROW
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE HEART TRAP
II THE RITUAL
III TWO LITTLE CRIMES
IV ACCORDING TO SOLOMON
V DAVID'S ROSE AND SOME THORNS
VI THE BRIDGE OF DREAMS
VII STRANGE WILD THINGS
VIII THE SPELL AND ITS WEAVING
IX PURSUING THE POSSUM
X LOVE'S HOME AND ANDREW SEVIER
XI ACROSS THE MANY WATERS
ANDREW THE GLAD
CHAPTER I
THE HEART TRAP
"There are some women who will brew mystery from the decoction of
even a very simple life. Matilda is one of them," remarked the major to
himself as he filled his pipe and settled himself before his high-piled,
violet-flamed logs. "It was waxing strong in her this morning and an
excitement will arrive shortly. Now I wonder--"
"Howdy, Major," came in a mockingly lugubrious voice from the hall, and
David Kildare blew into the room. He looked disappointedly around,
dropped into a chair and lowered his voice another note.
"Seen Phoebe?" he demanded.
"No, haven't you?" answered the major as he lighted his pipe and regarded
the man opposite him with a large smile of welcome.
"Not for three days, hand-running. She's been over to see Andy with Mrs.
Matilda twice, and I've missed her both times. Now, how's that for luck?"
"Well," said the major reflectively, "in the terms of modern parlance,
you certainly are up against it. And did it ever occur to you that a man
with three ribs broken and a dislocated collar-bone, who has written a
play and a sprinkle of poems, is likely to interest Phoebe Donelson
enormously? There is nothing like poetry to implant a divine passion, and
Andrew is undoubtedly of poetic stamp."
"Oh, poetry--hang! It's more Andy's three ribs than anything else. He
just looks pale and smiles at all of 'em. He always did have yellow dog
eyes, the sad kind. I'd like to smash all two dozen of his ribs," and
Kildare slashed at his own sturdy legs with his crop. He had dropped in
with his usual morning's tale of woe to confide to Major Buchanan, and he
had found him, as always, ready to hand out an incendiary brand of
sympathy.
"He ought not to have more than twenty-three; one on the right side
should be missing. Some woman's got it--maybe Phoebe," said the major
with deadly intent.
"Nothing of the kind. I'm shy a rib myself and Phoebe is _it_. Don't I
get a pain in my side every time I see her? It's the real psychic thing,
only she doesn't seem to get hold of her end of the wire like she might."
"Don't trust her, David, don't trust her! You see his being injured in
Panama, building bridges for his country, while you sat here idly reading
the newspapers about it, has had its appeal. I know it's dangerous, but
you ought to want Phoebe to soothe his fevered brow. Nothing is too good
for a hero this side of Mason and Dixon's, my son." The major eyed his
victim with calculating coolness, gaging just how much more of the
baiting he would stand. He was disappointed to see that the train of
explosives he had laid failed to take fire.
"Well, he's being handed out a choice bunch of Mason-Dixon attentions.
They are giving him the cheer-up all day long. When I left, Mrs. Shelby
was up there talking to him, and Mrs. Cherry Lawrence and Tom had just
come in. Mrs. Cherry had brought him several fresh eggs. She had got them
from Phoebe! I sent them to her from the farm this morning. Rode out and
coaxed the hens for them myself. Now, isn't a brainstorm up to me?"
"Well, I don't know," answered the major in a judicial tone of voice.
"You wouldn't have them neglect him, would you?"
"Well, what about me?" demanded David dolefully. "I haven't any green
eyes, 'cause I'm trusting Andy, _not_ Phoebe; but neglect is just
withering my leaves. I haven't seen her alone for two weeks. She is
always over there with Mrs. Matilda and the rest 'soothing the fevered
brow.' Say, Major, give Mrs. Matilda the hint. The chump isn't really
sick any more. Hint that a little less--"
"David, sir," interrupted the major, "it takes more than a hint to stop a
woman when she takes a notion to nurse an attractive man, a sick lion one
at that. And depend upon it, it is the poetry that makes them hover him,
not the ribs."
"Well, you just stop her and that'll stop them," said David wrathfully.
"David Kildare," answered the major dryly, "I've been married to her
nearly forty years and I've never stopped her doing anything yet.
Stopping a wife is one of the bride-notions a man had better give up
early in the matrimonial state--if he expects to hold the bride. And
bride-holding ought to be the life-job of a man who is rash enough to
undertake one."
"Do you think Phoebe and bride will ever rhyme together, Major?" asked
David in a tone of deepest depression. "I can't seem to hear them ever
jingle."
"Yes, Dave, the Almighty will meter it out to her some day, and I hope He
will help you when He does. I can't manage my wife. She's a modern woman.
Now, what are we going to do about them?" and the major smiled
quizzically at the perturbed young man standing on the rug in front of
the fire.
"Well," answered Kildare with a spark in his eyes, as he flecked a bit of
mud from his boots which were splashed from his morning ride, "when I get
Phoebe Donelson, I'm going to whip her!" And very broad and tall and
strong was young David but not in the least formidable as to expression.
"Dave, my boy," answered the major in a tone of the deepest respect, "I
hope you will do it, if you get the chance; but you won't! Thirty-eight
years ago last summer I felt the same way, but I've had a long time to
make up my mind to it; and I haven't done it yet."
"Anyway," rejoined his victim, "there's just this to it; she has got to
accept me kindly, affectionately and in a ladylike manner or I'm going to
be the villain and make some sort of a rough house to frighten her into
it."
"David," said the major with emphasis, "don't count on frightening a
woman into a compliance in an affair of the affections. Don't you know
they will risk having their hearts suspended on a hair-line between
heaven and hell and enjoy it? Now, my wife--"
"Oh, Mrs. Matilda never could have been like that," interrupted David
miserably.
"Boy," answered the major solemnly, "if I were to give you a succinct
account of the writhings of my soul one summer over a California man, the
agony you are enduring would seem the extremity of insignificance."
"Heavenly hope, Major, did you have to go up against the other man
game, too? I seem to have been standing by with a basket picking up
chips of Phoebe's lovers for a long lifetime; Tom, Hob, Payt, widowers
and flocks of new fledges. But I had an idea that you must have been a
first-and-only with Mrs. Matilda."
"Well, it sometimes happens, David, that the individuality of all of a
woman's first loves get so merged into that of the last that it would be
difficult for her to differentiate them herself; and it is best
to keep her happily employed so she doesn't try."
"Well, all I can say for you, Major," interrupted Kildare with a laugh,
"is that your forty years' work shows some. Your Mrs. Buchanan is what I
call a finished product of a wife. I'll never do it in the world. I can
get up and talk a jury into seeing things my way, but I get cross-brained
when I go to put things to Phoebe. That reminds me, that case on old Jim
Cross for getting tangled up with some fussy hens in Latimer's hen-house
week before last is called for to-day at twelve sharp. I'm due to put the
old body through and pay the fine and costs; only the third time this
year. I'm thinking of buying him a hen farm to save myself trouble.
Good-by, sir!"
"David, David," laughed the major, "beware of your growing
responsibilities! Cap Hobson reported that sensation of yours before
the grand jury over that negro and policeman trouble. The darkies will
put up your portrait beside that of Father Abe on Emancipation Day
and you will be in danger of passing down to posterity by the
public-spirit-fame chute. Your record will be in the annals of the
city if you don't mind!"
"Not much danger, Major," answered David with a smile. "I'm just a glad
man with not balance enough to run the rail of any kind of heavy track
affairs."
"David," said the major with a sudden sadness coming into his voice and
eyes, "one of the greatest men I ever knew we called the glad man--the
boy's father, Andrew Sevier. We called him Andrew, the Glad. Something
has brought it all back to me to-day and with your laugh you reminded me
of him. The tragedy of it all!"
"I've always known what a sorrow it was to you, Major, and it is the
bitterness that is eating the heart out of Andy. What was it all about
exactly, sir? I have always wanted to ask you." David looked into
the major's stern old eyes with such a depth of sympathy in his young
ones that a barrier suddenly melted and with the tone of bestowing an
honor the old fire-eater told the tale of the sorrow of his youth.
"Gaming was in his blood, David, and we all knew it and protected him
from high play always. We were impoverished gentlemen, who were building
fences and restoring war-devastated lands, and we played in our shabby
club with a minimum stake and a maximum zest for the sport. But that
night we had no control over him. He had been playing in secret with
Peters Brown for weeks and had lost heavily. When we had closed up the
game, he called for the dice and challenged Brown to square their
account. They threw again and again with luck on the same grim side. I
saw him stake first his horses, then his bank account, and lose.
"Hayes Donelson and I started to remonstrate but he silenced us with a
look. Then he drew a hurried transference of his Upper Cumberland
property and put it on the table. They threw again and he lost! Then he
smiled and with a steady hand wrote a conveyance of his home and
plantation, the last things he had, as we knew, and laid that on the
table."
"No, Major," exclaimed David with positive horror in his voice.
"Yes, it was madness, boy," answered the major. "Brown turned his ivories
and we all held our breath as we read his four-three. A mad joy flamed in
Andrew's face and he turned his cup with a steady wrist--and rolled
threes. We none of us looked at Brown, a man who had led another man in
whose veins ran a madness, where in his ran ice, on to his ruin. We
followed Andrew to the street to see him ride away in a gray drizzle to a
gambled home--and a wife and son.
"That morning deeds were drawn, signed, witnessed and delivered to Brown
in his office. Then--then"--the major's thin, powerful old hands grasped
the arm of his chair--"we found him in the twilight under the clump of
cedars that crowned the hill which overlooked Deep-mead Farm--broad acres
of land that the Seviers had had granted them from Virginia--_dead_,
his pistol under his shoulder and a smile on his face. Just so he had
looked as he rode at the head of our crack gray regiment in that
hell-reeking charge at Perryville, and it was such a smile we had
followed into the trenches at Franklin. Stalwart, dashing, joyous Andrew,
how we had all loved him, our man-of-smiles!"
"Can anything ever make it up to you, Major?" asked David softly. As he
spoke he refilled the major's pipe and handed it to him, not appearing to
notice how the lean old hand shook.
"You do, sir," answered the major with a spark coming back into his eyes,
"you and your gladness and the boy and his--sadness--and Phoebe most of
all. But don't let me keep you from your hen-roost defense--I agree with
you that a hen farm will be the cheapest course for you to take with old
Cross. Give him my respects, and good-by to you." The major's dismissal
was gallant, and David went his way with sympathy and admiration in his
gay heart for the old fire-eater whose ashes had been so stirred.
The major resumed his contemplation of the fire. Hearty burning logs make
good companions for a philosopher like the major, and such times when his
depths were troubled he was wont to trust to them for companionship.
But into any mood of absorption, no matter how deep, the major was always
ready to welcome Mrs. Matilda, and his expectations on the subject of her
adventures had been fully realized. As usual she had begun her tale in
the exact center of the adventure with full liberty left herself to work
back to the beginning or forward to the close.
"And the mystery of it all, Matilda, is the mystery of love--warm,
contradictory, cruel, human love that the Almighty puts in the heart of a
man to draw the unreasoning heart of a woman; sometimes to bruise and
crush it, seldom to kill it outright. Mary Caroline only followed her
call," answered the major, responding to her random lead patiently.
"I know, Major; yes, I know," answered his wife as she laid her hand on
the arm of his chair. "Mary Caroline struggled against it but it was
stronger than she was. It wasn't the loving and marrying a man who had
been on the other side--so many girls did marry Union officers as soon as
they could come back down to get them--but the _kind_ of enemy he was!"
"Yes," said the major thoughtfully, "it would take a wider garment of
love to cover a man with a carpetbag in his hand than a soldier in a
Yankee uniform. A conqueror who looked around as he was fighting and then
came back to trade on the necessities of the conquered cuts but a sorry
figure, Matilda, but a sorry figure!"
"And Mary Caroline felt it too, Major--but she couldn't help it,"
said Mrs. Buchanan with a catch in her voice. "The night before she
ran away to marry him she spent with me, for you were away across the
river, and all night we talked. She told me--not that she was going--but
how she cared. She said it bitterly over and over, 'Peters Brown, the
carpetbagger--and I love him!' I tried to comfort her as best I could
but it was useless. He was a thief to steal her--just a child!" There was
a bitterness and contempt in Mrs. Matilda's usually tender voice. She
sat up very straight and there was a sparkle in her bright eyes.
"And the girl," continued the major thoughtfully, "was born as her mother
died. He'd never let the mother come back and he never brought the child.
Now he's dead. I wonder--I wonder. We've got a claim on that girl,
Matilda. We--"
"And, dear, that is just what I came back in such a hurry to tell you
about--I felt it so--I haven't been able to say it right away. I began by
talking about Mary Caroline and--I--I--"
"Why, Matilda!" said the major in vague alarm at the tremble in his
wife's voice. He laid his hand over hers on the arm of his chair with a
warm clasp.
"It's just this, Major. You know how happy I have been, we all have been,
over the wonderful statue that has been given in memory of the women of
the Confederacy who stayed at home and fed the children and slaves while
the men fought. As you advised them, they have decided to put it in the
park just to the left of the Temple of Arts, on the very spot where
General Darrah had his last gun fired and spiked just before he fell and
just as the surrender came. It's strange, isn't it, that nobody knows
who's giving it? Perhaps it was because you and David and I were talking
last night about what he should say about General Darrah when he made
the presentation of the sketches of the statue out at the opening of the
art exhibition in the Temple of Arts to-night, that made me dream about
Mary Caroline all night. It is all so strange." Again Mrs. Buchanan
paused with a half sob in her voice.
"Why, what is it, Matilda?" the major asked as he turned and looked at
her anxiously.
"It's a wonderful thing that has happened, Major. Something, I don't know
what, just made me go out to the Temple this morning to see the sketches
of the statue which came yesterday. I felt I couldn't wait until to-night
to see them. Oh, they are so lovely! Just a tall fearless woman with a
baby on her breast and a slave woman clinging to her skirts with her own
child in her arms!
"As I stood before the case and looked at them the tragedy of all the
long fight came back to me. I caught my breath and turned away--and there
stood a girl! I knew her instantly, for I was looking straight into Mary
Caroline's own purple eyes. Then I just opened my arms and held her
close, calling Mary Caroline's name over and over. There was no one
else in the great room and it was quiet and solemn and still. Then she
put her hand against my face and looked at me and said in the loveliest
tenderest voice:
"'It's my mother's Matilda, isn't it? I have the old daguerreotype!' And
I smiled back and we kissed each other and cried--and then cried some
more."
"I haven't a doubt of those tears," answered the major in a suspiciously
gruff voice. "But where's the girl? Why didn't you bring her right back
with you? She is ours, Matilda, that purple-eyed girl. When is she
coming? Call Tempie and tell her to have Jane get those two south-wing
rooms ready right away. I want Jeff to fill up the decanters with the
fifty-six claret, too, and to put--"
"But wait, Major, I couldn't get her to come home with me! We went out
into the sunshine and for a long drive into the country. We talked and
talked. It is the saddest thing in the world, but she is convinced that
her mother's people are not going to like her. She has been taught that
we are so prejudiced. I think she has found out about the carpetbagging.
She is so sensitive! She came because she couldn't help it; she wanted
just to see her mother's country. She's only been here two days. She
intends to steal away back now, over to Europe, I think. I tried to
make her see--"
"Matilda," said the major sternly, "go right back and tell that
child to pack her dimity and come straight here to me. Carpetbagging,
indeed!--Mary Caroline's girl with purple eyes! Did old Brown have any
purple eyes, I'd like to know?"
"I made her promise not to go until tomorrow. I think she would feel
differently if we could get her to stay a little while. I want her to
stay. She is so lonely. My little boy loved Mary Caroline and grieved for
her when she went away. I feel I must have this child to comfort for
a time at least."
"Of course she must stay. Did she promise she wouldn't slip away from
you?"
"Yes, but I'm uneasy. I think I will go down to her hotel right now. Do
you mind about being alone for lunch? Does Tempie get your coffee right?"
"She does pretty well considering that she hasn't been tasting it for
thirty years. But you go get that child, Matilda. Bring her right back
with you. Don't stop to argue with her, I'll attend to all that later;
just bring her home!"
And as Mrs. Buchanan departed the major rose and stood at the window
until he saw her get into her carriage and be driven out of sight.
Looking down the vista of the long street, his eyes had a faraway tender
light, and as he turned and took up his pipe from the table his
thoughts slipped back into the province of memory. He settled himself
in his chair before his fire to muse a bit between the whiffs of his
heart-leaf.
And Mary Caroline Darrah's girl had come home--home to her own, he mused.
There was mystery in it, the mystery that sometimes brands the unborn.
Brown had never let Mary Caroline come back and the few letters she had
written had told them little of the life she led. The constraint had
wrung his wife's yearning heart. Only a letter had come when somehow
the news had reached her of the death of Matilda's boy, and it had been
wild and sweet and athrob with her love of them. And in its pages her own
hopes for the spring were confessed in a passion of desire to give and
claim sympathy. Her baby had been born and she was dead and buried before
they had heard of it; twenty-three years ago! And Matilda's grief for her
own child had been always mingled with love and longing for the
motherless, unattainable young thing across the distance. Brown had kept
the girl to himself and had never brought her back--because he _dared_
not.
The major's powerful old hands writhed around the arms of his chair and
his eyes glowed into the embers like live sparks. It was years, nearly
thirty years ago--but, God, how the tragedy of it came back! The hot
blood beat into his veins and he could feel it and see it all. Would
the picture always burn in his brain? Nearly thirty years ago--
The logs crashed apart in the hearth and with a start the major rose to
his feet, a tear dashed aside under his shaggy old eyebrows. He would go
back to his Immortals--and forget. Perhaps Phoebe would come in for
lunch. That would make forgetting easier.
Where had the girl been for the last few days? He smiled as he found
himself in something of David's dismay at not having seen the busy young
woman for quite a time.
And it was perhaps an hour later that, as he sat in the breakfast room
partaking of his lunch in solitary comfort, lost to the world, his wish
for her brought its materialization. He had the morning's paper propped
up before him and an outspread book rested by his plate, while he
held a large volume balanced on his knee, which he paused occasionally to
consult.
Mrs. Buchanan had telephoned that she would be home with her guest at
five o'clock and his mind was filled with pleasant anticipation. But
there was never a time with the major, no matter how filled the life was
around him with the excitement of events, with the echo of joy or
woe, the clash of social strife or the turmoil of vaster interests, when
he failed to be able to plunge into his books and lose himself
completely.
He was in the act of consuming a remnant of a corn muffin and a draft
from his paper at the same time, when he heard a merry voice in laughing
greeting to Jeff, and the rose damask curtains that hung between the
breakfast room and the hall parted, and Phoebe stood framed against
their heavy folds. She was the freshest, most radiant, tailor-made vision
imaginable and the major smiled a large joyful smile at the sight of her.
"Come in, come in, my dear; you are just in time for a hot muffin and a
fried chicken wing!" he exclaimed as he rose and drew her to the table.
The old volume crashed to the floor unheeded.
"Oh, no, Major, thank you, I couldn't think of it," exclaimed Phoebe.
"I'm lunching on a glass of malted milk and a raw egg these days. I lost
a pound and three-quarters last week and I feel so slim and graceful." As
she spoke she ran her hands down the charming lines of her tall figure
and turned slowly around for him to get the full effect of her loss. She
was most beautifully set up and the long lines melted into curves where
gracious curves ought to be.
"Nonsense, nonsense, Phoebe Donelson!" exclaimed the major. "Every pound
is an added charm. Sit here beside me." And he drew her into a chair at
the corner of the table.
In a twinkling of her black eyes Tempie had served her with the golden
muffins and crisp chicken. With a long sigh of absolute rapture Phoebe
resigned herself to the inevitable crash of her resolutions.
"Ah, I never was so miserable and so happy in all my life before," she
said. "I'm so hungry--and I'm so stout--and these muffins are wickedly
delicious."
"Phoebe," said the major sternly, "instead of starving yourself to death
you need to lie awake at night with lovers' troubles. Why, the summer I
courted Matilda I could have wrapped my belt around me twice. I have
never been portly since. It's loving you need, good, hard, miserable
loving. Didn't you ever hear of a 'lean and hungry lover'? Your conduct
is positively--have another muffin and this little slice of upper
joint--I say positively, unwomanly inhuman. Are there no depths of pity
in your breast? Is your bosom of adamant? When did you see David Kildare?
He is in a most pitiable condition. He left here not an hour ago and I
felt--"
"Don't worry over David, please, Major," said Phoebe as she paused with
a bit of buttered muffin suspended on the way to her white teeth. "He
is the most riotously--thank you, Tempie, just one more--happy individual
I know. What he wants he has, and he sees to it that he has what he
wants--to which add a most glorious leisure in which to want and have."
"Phoebe, David Kildare has an aching void in his heart that weighs
just one hundred and thirty-six pounds, lacking now I believe one and
three-quarters pounds plus three muffins and a half chicken. How can you
be so heartless?" The major bent a benignly stern glance upon her which
she returned with the utmost unconcern.
"He did not see you all of yesterday or the day before and only once on
Monday, and then you--"
"That sounds like one of those rhyming calendars, my dear Major.
"Monday I am going far away,
Tuesday I'll be busy all the day,
Wednesday is the day I study French,
Thursday is the--"
and Phoebe hummed the little nonsense jingle to him in a most beguiling
manner.
The major laughed delightedly. "Phoebe, some day you will be held
responsible for David Kildare's--"
"But, my dear Major," interrupted Phoebe, "how could I be expected to
work all day for raiment and food, with malted milk and eggs at the price
they are now, and then be responsible for such a perfectly irresponsible
person as David Kildare? Why, just yesterday, while I was writing up the
Farrell débutante tea with the devil waiting at my elbows for copy and
the composing room in a stew, he called me twice over the wire. He knew
better, but didn't care."
"Still, my dear, still it's love," said the major as he looked at her
thoughtfully and dropped the banter that had been in his voice since she
had come in. "A boy's? Perhaps, but I think not. You'll see! It's a call,
a call that must be answered some time, child--and a mystery." For a
moment the major sat and looked deep into the gray eyes raised to his in
quick responsiveness to the change in his mood. "Don't trifle with love,
girl, it's God Almighty's dower to a woman. It's hers; though she
pays a bitter price for it. It's a wonder and a worker of wonders. It has
all come home to me to-day and I think you will understand when I tell
you about--"
"Major," interrupted Tempie with a broad grin on her black face, "Mr.
Dave, he done telephoned fer you ter keep Miss Phoebe till he gits here.
He says he'll hold you and me 'sponsible, sir."
A quick flush rose to Phoebe's cheeks and she laughed as she collected
her notebook and pinned down her veil all at the same tune with a view to
instant flight. She gave neither the major nor Tempie time for
remonstrance.
"Good-by!" she called from the hall. "I only came in to tell Mrs. Matilda
that I would meet her at the Cantrell tea at five-fifteen and afterward
we could make that visit together. The muffins were divine!"
"Tempie," remarked the major as he looked up at her over the devastated
table with an imperturbable smile, "I have decided positively that women
are just half-breed angels with devil markings all over their
dispositions."
And having received which admonition with the deepest respect, Tempie
immediately fell into a perfect whirlwind of guest preparations which
involved the pompous Jefferson, her husband, and the meek Jane, her
daughter. The major issued her numberless, perfectly impossible but
solicitous orders and then retired to his library chair with his mind at
ease and his books at hand.
And it was in the violet flamed dusk as he sat with his immortal friends
ranged around that Mrs. Matilda brought the treasure home to him. She was
a very lovely thing, a fragrant flower of a woman with the tender shyness
of a child in her manner as she laid her hands in his outheld to her with
his courtly old-world grace.
"My dear, my dear," he said as he drew her near to him, "here's a welcome
that's been ready for you twenty years, you slip of a girl you, with your
mother's eyes. Did you think you could get away from Matilda and me when
we've been waiting for you all this time?"
"I may have thought so, but when I saw her I knew I couldn't; didn't want
to even," she answered him in a low voice that hinted of close-lying
tears.
"Child, Matilda has had a heart trap ready for you ever since you were
born, in case she sighted you in the open. It's baited with a silver
rattle, doll babies, sugar plums, the ashes of twenty years' roses, the
fragrance of every violet she has seen, and lately an aggregation of
every eligible masculine heart in this part of the country has been
added. She caught you fair--walk in and help yourself; it's all yours!"