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 buttoned 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," Letitia 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 pass the muffins, 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 passionate 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 gratitude. "The rest of you hurry
over those muffins, 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 pass.
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 hell. 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 hell again. God
won't clean me twice."
"You shall go," came the calm answer in the apostle's beautiful voice,
"but I will have to have a few days to provide a place of safety for you
in the city, where the child can be cared for while you get suitable
work."
"I won't wait. He'll follow her and he'll look down on me and the child
and damn me again. I won't wait. I'm weak and I dasn't. Give me that
money to-night!" And the demand was passionate and savage.
"Then I'll meet you at the morning train with it and rush you to a place
of safety if there is no other way. You must go back home now, and it
will be best not to tell anyone where you are going until you no longer
fear your weakness, for they might betray your hiding place. Strength
will be given you, Martha, if you only ask."
"I'll pray, Parson, I'll pray, now that you are going to give me my
chance to get strong enough to be good. I'll work and I'll pray, but
hide me until I do get strong." And the hard, dry sobs melted as the
girl put her head down upon the gate a moment and then went out through
it.
"God bless you, child, and keep you ever in thought of Him," were the
words that she carried away with her as she hurried down the street
toward the Settlement.
Then for a second some awful fear came across my heart that I did not
understand. I now know that it was a premonition of what was to wring my
own heart and I cowered against the old tree in agony. Gregory Goodloe
was not more than six feet away from me on the other side of the
budding, fragrant hedge, and in the moonlight I could see the beautiful
strength of his golden head and strong placid face, on which lines of
pain were drawn, and I had to restrain myself from crying out to him in
my own pain. I wanted to go quickly and cling to his strength. Then I
stopped and listened.
He had raised his face to the stars and was praying.
"O Father," he asked, as if speaking to someone with whom he walked in
the cool of the midnight, "help the weak on whom the strong prey."
Then he went into the dark door of the little chapel and left me out in
the cold midnight alone. The fear was gone, and comforted I went back
through my budding garden and arrived at the front door just as old Mr.
Pate, the telegraph operator at the little station down the street,
turned in at the gate.
"Miss Charlotte," he puffed, as he fairly flung the telegram at me,
"this come fer you at ten o'clock and I risked it and run up here with
it after I heard them ottermobiles go by. I'm courting Mrs. Jennie Hicks
myself and I understands about courtings." And before I could speak he
had run on back down the street.
As I stood and looked at the yellow envelope fear again gripped my
heart, and without opening it I walked into the house, locking the great
door behind me with trembling fingers, and went toward a light I saw
shining from the trellised back porch and which I did not understand. I
have never in my life been the least bit afraid of anything, except
something within my own body, from the hideous pain of my green-apple
days to the pain I had felt as I talked beside the piano with Nickols in
New York, a thousand miles away; but something made me pause just for a
second in the pantry doorway before I stepped into the light upon the
porch. I shall never forget the scene that was enacted before my
wondering eyes in the dim light of a candle burning upon a table near
the refrigerator.
Father stood with a bowl of ice in his hand and his fingers were just
closing around a squat, black bottle that I knew contained the rarest
and choicest whiskey ever run from a distillery. His iron-gray hair was
rampant, his dressing gown fell away from his throat and showed the
knotting of the great cords that ran down into his shoulders, and his
dark eyes glittered under their heavy, black brows, while his mouth was
twisted and white. Then, as I looked, something happened. A stealthy
padding of feet came around the house from the garden and up the back
steps, under the budding rose vine that was climbing through the trellis
as if to clutch at the light, and a huge figure loomed up from out the
shadow.
It was the powerful Harpeth Jaguar out hunting, and his weapon was a
hoe, while under his arm he carried a roll that looked like a
contribution to a rag man of bedding and old clothes.
"I tell you, Mr. Powers, there is frost in the air and I have collected
everything in the parsonage that would cover those late anemones. I saw
your light and I thought you might add to the collection. Now what would
we do if they should be wilted by the frost just as they are ready to
burst bud? Our honor is involved with Graveson, who brought the seeds
all the way from Guernsey through the trenches of France and trusted
them to me for propagation. Why, they represent a man's life work, and
that life may be put out by a bullet any moment! We'll have to rescue
them." As he spoke, the great jeweled eyes shone with excitement under
the dull gold brows and he seemed not to see at all the incriminating
ice and bottle.
"Could you get into Mrs. Dabney's linen closet? We've got to have
something." He shivered in a little wind that blew under the rose vine
with a frosty gust. I was just observing that he was attired in his
pajama jacket and gray flannel trousers, and that his bare heels and
ankles declared themselves above and at the back of his slippers, when
my eyes were drawn to my father's face and rested there. My heart stood
still while I watched it change. All the pain and appetite, straining as
a beast strains at a leash, faded from his face. The deathly pallor
vanished and the color of human blood returned. The glitter in his deep
old eyes changed in a second from that of ferocity to that of anxious
excitement.
"I do not know where the household linen is kept and I hesitate to
disturb Dabney, as he retired with an aching tooth; but I observed a box
of my daughter's apparel beside a trunk in the back hall which Dabney
had not carried up on account of its weight and which he was requiring
his wife to unpack piece by piece. I'll raid it for enough to save our
treasures and accept whatever is my just chastisement in the morning,"
he said in a voice of guilty stealth.
And there I stood in the shadow of the pantry and saw my father take two
armfuls of my costly linen and lace out into the garden. Nothing was
spared me, for from the window I could see him and the marauding Jaguar
weight their perfumed whiteness down with sticks and stones and clods of
earth. I suffered, but silently.
"Good night, sir. God's blessing," I heard the rich voice calling as the
half-bare feet padded away as swiftly as they had come through the
garden, leaving father standing under the rose vine watching him go. And
I watched father--and for some reason my breath seemed suspended in my
lungs.
For a very long minute he stood looking at the ice bowl and the bottle;
then with a queer wry smile he walked over and put them both in the
refrigerator, though the bottle's place was in the sideboard, and closed
the door carefully. Then he paused again and said under his breath,
"_You_, Judge Nickols Morris Powers!" He smiled at himself with
humorous pity and tiptoed past me into the front hall and up the
stairway to his rooms above.
I seemed to feel strange padding footsteps down in my depths and I also
tiptoed up to my room after I had heard his door shut.
After I had switched on my light (for under the roof of the Poplars
electricity had come to aid the candles of hallowed tradition, and was
called by Mammy, in deep suspicion, "ha'nt light") I discovered clutched
in my cold fingers the yellow envelope the romantic Mr. Pate had brought
to me in the midnight. It read:
"Am coming down on Friday. Am afraid to trust the world and the
flesh and think the third member of the carnal firm ought to be
on the job. N."
"Now I am frightened really," I confided to myself as I slipped between
the scented sheets and drew a corner of the rose-colored blanket over my
head. "I don't know what to do."