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 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 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 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.