INTO BRAMBLES
The next morning I awoke with the same resolve in my heart, to be happy
if wicked, and proceeded to execute it with a great vigor. And in the
execution of that resolve dear old Goodloets almost had some of the moss
of its century's repose scraped off of its back.
First and foremost, we all danced, day and night. We had really begun
the giddy whirl the summer before when we had built the little clubhouse
over in the oak grove by the river's edge, just between the Town and the
Settlement, so that we would no longer feel the limit and limitations to
our gliding of anybody's double parlors, and conservative Goodloets had
been duly shocked thereat.
"Ladies did not dance outside of their own and their friends' private
homes in my day," Mrs. Cockrell had sighed, as she finished the petal
of the rose she was embroidering upon some of Letitia's lingerie.
"I'd rather they danced in their den of iniquity than to execute these
modern gyrations in my home," had responded Harriet's mother, Mrs.
Sproul, as she finished the hundredth round on the shawl she was
knitting. Harriet's report of the conversation had been received with
great hilarity that evening at dinner at the Club.
But Goodloets had had a year in which to recover from the shock of the
institution of the Country Club when I started in to enjoy myself.
Having church services there on Sundays and Wednesdays during the winter
had done much to remove the prejudice in the minds of the conservative.
I suspected the Reverend Mr. Goodloe of a great deal of worldly wisdom
when I saw how he had been able to persuade the directors, Hampton
Dibrell and Mark and Cliff, to let him do such a weird thing. Mrs.
Sproul and Mrs. Cockrell and their friends had first been tolled out to
prayer meeting and then had come to witness a tennis match. Billy, in
great glee, recounted to me the first time they had stayed to dinner
with him and father and Mr. Cockrell. They had been enjoying the prayer
meetings to the utmost and had come out with Mother Spurlock by mistake
on a Tuesday night, which was the regular dinner dance night. It was
some time before they discovered their mistake, for they were immensely
enjoying their visit with Mother Spurlock, and when the dancing began
Billy had seized Mother Elsie in his arms and danced her the whole
length of the room. The music had been too much for her feet in their
sensible shoes, and very suddenly they had unfolded their wings after
thirty long years of rest and had fairly flown up and down and backwards
and forwards with Billy's in a sedate version of one of the phases of
the tango. Mrs. George Spurlock had been the best dancer in Goodloets
when time was young.
"Do you think that it was the devil that tempted you, Mother Elsie?" I
asked her about it one day when she had a leisure moment for teasing.
"Effie Burns' youngest baby was born exactly while I was dancing, and we
will have six months' trouble with her because her band was not put on
properly," was her answer, as she took up her parcel of five pairs of
only slightly worn stockings that five girls in the Settlement needed
worse than I needed darns, and departed in a great hurry. "Oh, but you
should have seen Hattie Sproul's eyes while I danced," she called back
over her shoulder as she went through the gate.
And so in the second summer of the Club's existence there had been no
bridle upon its gayeties--I had almost used the word license, and I
suppose it would have been a just one under the circumstances. Billy
called it "The Bucket of the Lost Lid," and every individual member did
exactly as he or she chose. The sideboard out on the back porch made as
good a bar as any in the state with old Uncle Wilks to officiate, and in
the wing in one of the private dining rooms a huge wheel stood with its
face to the wall during the day, but came complacently out of its corner
when night descended. On the porch could always be found either Mrs.
James Knight or Mrs. Buford Cunningham. They neither of them had
children, hated home and were serenely happy sitting on the front porch
knitting silk scarfs and gossiping with all comers, while James and
Buford hung around the sideboard at the back. They were institutions and
all of the unmarried boys and girls, men and women, widowed and
widowered, came and went at will, with the liberty that the chaperonage
of their certain presence allowed.
"Suppose one of 'em should fall dead and the other have to attend her
funeral," Nickols remarked one Saturday night at a dinner table not more
than twelve feet away from the two couples. "The scandal that would soon
disrupt this town for lack of their free chaperonage would be like an
earthquake. None of you would have a shred of respectability with which
to drape yourselves to appear in public."
"They don't wear much respectability anyway in the eyes of the
Settlement," said Billy, as he mixed the champagne cup with old Wilks
standing admiringly by. "The floor manager ordered Luella May Spain off
the floor at the dance they had in the lodge room over the Last Chance
last Saturday night for appearing in one of Harriet's last year dancing
frocks Mother Spurlock had collected for her, though they do say that
Luella May had sewed in two inches of tucker and put in sleeves. How's
that for an opinion passed upon the high and mighty from the meek and
lowly?"
"I'd been in mourning a year. That was my coming out gown and I felt--"
Harriet was saying when Billy laughed and interrupted her.
"And you came out, Harriet dear," he assured her, as he poured her
champagne cup and his and signaled Wilks to serve the rest of us.
On the surface all of the joy that most of Goodloets was having was real
and brilliant and spontaneous, all the dancing and drinking and high
playing, but under the surface there were dark currents that ran in many
directions. Young Ted Montgomery and Billy played poker one Saturday
night until daylight out at the Club, and Bessie Thornton and Grace
Payne had "staid by" and were having bacon and eggs with them when the
sun rose. Judge Payne, Grace's father, has been a widower ten years and
Grace, with the four younger "pains," as Billy calls them, has run wild
away from him and her grandmother, old Madam Payne, who lives in a world
of crochet needles and silk thread with Mrs. Cockrell and Mrs. Sproul.
One night I went with Billy in his car to take Grace home and he had to
wait until I tiptoed to her room with my arm around her and put her to
bed, while Harriet was doing the same thing with Bessie Thornton. Those
girls are not much over twenty and they are only a little more
"liberated," as they call it, than the rest of their friends. Ted
Montgomery loves Grace, when he is himself and not at the card table,
but what chance have they to form a union of any solidity and
permanence? Billy's nephew, Clive Harvey, has always loved Bessie
Thornton, but he is teller in the Goodloets bank and almost never sees
her. He is one of the stewards in the Harpeth Jaguar's church, and the
suffering on his slim young face hurts me like a blow every time I meet
him. What's going to satisfy him, no matter what pace he should choose
to go or how many things he is driven by unhappiness to indulge himself
in?
And it was true that everything done up in the town had its effect down
in the Settlement. The lodge hall over the Last Chance was the only hall
available for the young people in the Settlement to dance, and the bar
of the East Chance, at which old Jacob Ensley officiated, was no better
stocked than the lockers at the Country Club. And all of us knew that
very frequently Billy and Nickols and the rest of our friends went down
to dance and drink with the girls from the mills and the shops. Billy
had told me once that Milly Burt, who stays at the cigar stand in the
Goodloe Hotel in Goodloets, dances so much like me and is so perfumed
with my especial sachet from France, Mother Spurlock having collected
the chiffon blouse from me for her to wear at the entertainment of the
Epworth League, that he came very near addressing her by my name in
giving her the invitation to the dance.
"Settlement or Town, they all add up to the sum of girl," he laughed, as
he told me about that Saturday night frolic in the Last Chance.
It was the day after Billy's account of the ball at the Last Chance, in
which Luella May and Milly and the rest had frolicked in what ought to
have been a perfectly harmless way, that Mother Spurlock came to spend
the afternoon with me and in which we wrestled until I was almost on the
mat--not quite.
"Goodloets has always been the gayest town in the state, but it has now
reached the place of the most wicked," she said, after a few preliminary
shots had been exchanged. "Every dignity of tradition seems to have been
dropped and everybody is dance or play or drink or speed mad. You are
the most influential personality in the whole town and I want you to
call a halt."
"But aren't they all happy? Isn't everybody getting the most out of
life? The men are all working to their capacity and making more money
than they ever have before. Why shouldn't they play hard?" I answered
her, as I seated myself in the broad window seat of my room opposite the
wide maternal ancestral rocker she had chosen.
"Are they happy?" she asked, with her keen eyes on my face.
"They seem to be," I parried.
"Well, as far as personal happiness is concerned I think it is not worth
talking about. It is the good of the whole for which I am working, for
which I am contending to-day. What you women do, who are not obliged to
add to the work of the world that you may live in it, is not of any
great importance; it is for the toilers in the vineyard that I plead.
The girls and young men in this town cannot dance and drink and play all
night and do the constructive work of the community in the daytime. If
Luella May Spain falls asleep or nods at her typewriter and fails to get
out the telegram to you or Nickols which Mr. Tate has shouted to her
off the keys, do you excuse her because she has been fatiguing herself
until midnight trying to learn some new dance that Billy Harvey has
brought down to the Last Chance from your Country Club? You would not!
She would be fired on your complaint."
"But are we responsible for how the girls and men in the Settlement
spend their evenings?" I demanded with a fine show of indignation, but
with a thrill of fear in my heart. There has always been something in
Luella May Spain's shy and admiring glances that drew me and I have
always lingered to chat with her a few minutes if business called me
into the station. The last time I had spoken to her, not a week before,
she had seemed pale and listless and had answered me with indifference.
"You and your class are the ones in power and what you do and what you
think is a moral influence that reaches and permeates every soul in this
town. You are not about your Father's business; and those less powerful
of brain and character follow you in by-paths from the straight road.
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
God'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 God 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 lust 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 balls
that we don't hit. She gets balls 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 class 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, nobody
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 Lassiter'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.