WATER AND OIL
I turned from Nickols' raillery and surveyed the great American garden.
The weeks had flown from May to late July and father's plans were
beginning to be materialized. Where the sunken garden had been filled in
a wide stone well house, the like of which can be found at many of the
farmhouses in the Harpeth Valley, had been built and a chain wheel and
bucket drew up the water from the deep cistern, which was supplied with
underground pipes from the south wing of the Poplars.
"There is no water as soft as open-top cistern water, aerated by a chain
and bucket," father had informed me, and he and Dabney consumed buckets
of it, while Mammy refused anything else for cooking purposes and
insisted on a nightly bath of it for my face. A white clematis in full
bloom clambered over the eaves of the low stone house and a blush rose
nodded at its door, beside which was placed a rough bench made of square
stones and two large slabs, equally moss-covered and worn.
"It is growing to be perfectly wonderful, Nickols," I said, as if I had
seen it for the first time, while my eyes followed the sweep of the
flagstone walk from the well house beneath the old graybeard poplars out
past stretches of velvety lawn, with groups of shrubs and trees casting
deep shadows even to the kitchen garden, whose long rows of vegetables,
bordered with old-fashioned blooming herbs and savories, led the
observer out into the meadows to the Home Farm and beyond to the dim
line of Paradise Ridge. "It is different and distinctive and--and
American," I added.
"After this garden and the school are finished and a few of the
unfortunate restorations taken away from some of the old houses, like
the porch at Mrs. Sproul's and that bathroom addition of Morgan's, I am
going to bring Jeffries down in his private car and it will be difficult
to keep him from offering to buy Goodloets and have it all shipped up
the Hudson. Really, Charlotte, we have seen a vision of the future
materialize here and we ought to stand with hats off."
"Whose vision?" I asked, as I stood and let the truth of his statement
sink in.
"The parson's spiritual vision perhaps filtering through your father's
mentality, which has welded past, present and future. At least, that is
the way I see it with the material eye, which is all I have to view it
with--if we can call the recognition of beauty and completeness
material."
"Now Mikey is nice and clean and we can go to Minister to play, thank
you, Aunt Charlotte," at this point young Charlotte broke in to say,
thus flinging us a line to haul us out of depths that were slightly over
our heads. "Isn't he lovely?" And she gazed upon her new-found comrade
with open admiration and self-congratulation.
And small Mikey was indeed a bonny kiddie attired in the very stylish
trousers and blouse of small James and shining with Dabney's valeting.
His nicely plastered red mop to some extent mitigated the effect of the
bare and scratched feet and his rollicking blue eyes over a nose as
tip-tilted as Charlotte's own bespoke his delight.
"Anyway, me mother made the togs fer Jim," he asserted with great
independence, as he rammed his hands into the diminutive pockets in the
trousers.
"Yes, she did, and Auntie Harriet paid her for a present to Jimmy. She
sews for us and not for Mikey and her other children, because her
husband drinks up his money and our husband don't. Come on, let's go
help Minister!" was the shot that Charlotte fired, as she departed down
the garden path with her cohorts.
"What about that for democracy?" demanded Nickols, as he and father and
I all laughed together.
That night at a dinner party Nell was giving I sat next to the Harpeth
Jaguar and talked to him for the first time in many weeks. I had been
avoiding him and I didn't mind admitting it to myself. There was
something disturbing and puzzling in his serene eyes and free, strong,
beautiful body that gave me a queer haunting pain back of my breast.
Into my scheme of doing those things in life that give pleasure and not
doing those things that give pain he somehow would not fit. He had
become as much a part of the social fabric of Goodloets as was I, and
he came to our dinner parties, motored with us in his long, gray car and
was as happy with us seemingly as he was with that same gray car full of
small fry from the Settlement or going about the business of the chapel.
The car had always reminded me of his evening clothes, which were
straight and simple in line with the black silk vest cut up around the
collar buttoned in the back, but which were so fine in texture and
perfect in cut and fit that they seemed to be some kind of super clothes
that ought to be called by a name of their own, just as the people in
the Settlement had decided to call the car the "Chariot" as soon as they
had stopped resenting a parson's having it, from finding out how easy
were its cushions and how swift its ministrations in time of need.
"Parson's Chariot, quick!" had moaned poor old Mrs. Kelly, when she had
slipped on Mrs. Burns' wet doorstep and dislocated her hip. Little Katie
Moore had been driven home as swiftly as if on wings after old Dr.
Harding had been overtaken, ten miles out on Providence Road, and had
used the back seat for an operating table while he put her small
splintered ankle in place between splints improvised by a long knife
from the car's kit.
And from a distance I had wondered at the Reverend Gregory Goodloe,
wondered at his freedom from all resentment because of his ministerial
and spiritual failures and at his loving serenity and enjoyment of us
all. He partook of the joy in almost all of our adventures in pleasure,
and when we did things that in the nature of the case would seem to
merit his disapproval, he never administered it; he simply was not with
us, but was serenely about his business at the other end of the town
from the Country Club or the Last Chance, at whichever resort the
entertainment that did not interest him was in progress. He seemed
especially to enjoy coming to our dinner parties and he was such a
delight with his keen-bladed wit, his flow of joyous laughter and high
spirits and the music that bubbled up without accompaniment or denial
whenever we asked for it, that not a woman in town would invite the rest
to dine until she was sure of securing him first.
[Illustration: "_I been upsot by my young mistis comin' home._"]
"He's so economical," said Nell Morgan, as I helped her arrange her
guests for Mark's birthday dinner. While she talked I paused to consider
where to put Harriet Henderson and then dropped her card beside Mark's
with a little ache in my heart as I tucked Cliff Gray in by Jessie
Litton and left the place next Nell vacant for Billy. "People never
empty their champagne glasses when Mr. Goodloe gets to talking, and you
can put the extra bottles back in the cellar for next time. Do you
suppose he does it on purpose?"
"Nobody could be as completely happy as he was at Jessie's Friday night
_on purpose_," I answered, as I laid the last card and went with Nell to
greet her first guests.
After the soup I turned toward the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, whose card I
had placed next my own, and found him looking at me with a particular
softness in his eyes under the dull gold.
"Charlotte's and Mikey's nine won twenty-eight to eighteen against Tommy
Braidy and Maudie Burns. Thank you for getting the pitcher into his
togs," he said, as he squared his shoulders slightly against the rest of
the world, the rest of the diners in particular, and bent toward me in
just that deferential angle that a man uses when he wants to signal to
the others that for a limited time he desires sole possession of the
woman dining next to him.
"Your mixing of water and oil in the educational scheme is interesting
me greatly," I answered him with a laugh. "Do you really think it will
succeed?"
"Any kind of kingdom can be built in the heart of a child, an oligarchy,
a democracy or a republic," he answered quickly. "Your name-daughter is
a born socialist."
"She and James are murderers and liars and thieves and are wholly
engaging. Sue is fast learning from them the habits of their underworld
and is asleep upstairs now with Harriet's silver and jade chain, which
she brought home with her without the knowledge of the owner this
afternoon. What are you going to do about them? I take it you intend to
build a kingdom in and of their hearts."
"Weed 'em, like Dabney and I did your dahlia bank ten times at least
this spring. You didn't help with the dahlias, but maybe you will with
the young Tenderloiners." His eyes entreated mine with a soft radiance
that almost made me dizzy.
"I wouldn't know weeds from flowers, 'Minister,'" I answered with
prompt denial of his plea, but with a soft use of the children's name
for him.
"I don't always know. Let's study botany--together," he again hazarded
daringly, and from the tenderness that suddenly curved his strong mouth
I knew my soft answer had hit its mark. "Are you coming to the
dedication of the chapel a week from Sunday?" He asked me the question
directly and with all his softness gone and a commanding note in his
voice and direct look. His jeweled eyes were so deep back under their
dull gold brows that between the bars of black lashes they looked like
stars shining down through a radiant night. They threw their rays
directly down into my heart and I could see that their owner was reading
the hieroglyphics of my uncertainties and that I could not hide them
from him.
"I am not," I answered him with the frankness that his gaze compelled.
"I'll not dedicate it until you help me do it and--" he was saying
quietly and positively, when Billy broke in over the excluding shoulder.
Billy really adores Gregory Goodloe, but he enjoys going to the limit of
his ministerial endurance. Over that limit he has never stepped and he
never will; none of them ever will, for there is that in the Harpeth
Jaguar which commands the very essence of respect for himself as well as
his cloth.
"Say, Parson, what's that about the dedication of the chapel?" he asked,
as he twirled his champagne glass to break a few bubbles. "Charlotte and
Nickols are going to give Harriet and me that tennis dressing down
Sunday week if you don't need us to dedicate with."
"No, I won't need you," answered the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, in an easy
agreeable voice, but that had in it the note that he always uses to make
Billy halt. "I'm not going to dedicate it yet."
"Why?" came in a perfect chorus.
"I've been working night and day on that altar cloth because I depended
on you to know the date of the dedication of your own church. I have
danced only once this week," said Letitia Cockrell, with her usual bland
directness.
"The communion service from Gorham's has been packed away unopened in my
office a week," Hampton added in an aggrieved voice. "They hurried it
for us and it has to be sent back, piece at a time, to be marked."
"The baptismal font is perfectly beautiful and I want the Suckling
sprinkled from it first. If you don't hurry she will get old enough to
misbehave herself. I know I promised, but I have decided that I can
never have the others baptized now, they are too bad," said Nell, as she
paused and listened for some sort of explosion from above as she did
every minute or two.
"I'll rope Charlotte and drag her to the altar for you, and Mark can sit
on her feet while the parson sprinkles," offered Billy, and they all
laughed at the picture that he conjured, which seemed to be in keeping
with many scenes we had witnessed in the life of small Charlotte.
"That won't be necessary. She will stand before me with folded hands
when her time comes," answered Mr. Goodloe, after he had laughed as
heartily as anybody else at Billy's threat. "The greatest difficulty
will be in persuading her to allow me to conduct my own services."
"But what did you put off the dedication date for?" demanded Letitia,
with the hurry over the altar cloth still rankling.
"I put off the dedication of the chapel until all of the people for whom
I cared deeply, whose cooperation with me is positively necessary,
should be ready to come and help me in the services. When that time
comes I will have the dedication. It may be a year and it may be
a--day," the parson answered with cool directness.
"If you mean Charlotte, the offer I made for young Charlotte holds
good," said Billy with positive glee. "If you want her I'll rope her and
drag her in and the rest of you can bid for who holds her down while
being branded."
"And my answer to your generous offer, Billy Harvey, is--" Mr. Goodloe
paused and looked at me, and Jessie giggled with nervousness--"the same
that I made to your offer about the constraining of young Charlotte."
"Still it would be great sport to see both the Charlottes--" Billy was
saying, when a servant brought a note on his tray and handed it to Mr.
Goodloe, who glanced at it and then hurriedly opened and read it.
"I am sorry, Mrs. Morgan, but will you let me answer this summons?" he
asked, and there was the regret in his rich voice of a great boy at
being snatched from a feast. "I am so hungry," he added with a laugh.
"Come back later. I'll save some of everything for you," said Nell
pleadingly.
"I will if I can," he answered. There was an excited smoulder in the
stars under the dull gold that made me restless and my eyes sought and
claimed his for a second in which a quick flash of the jeweled
tenderness of comprehension was flashed into my depths.
"Good-bye, everybody," he said, and in a second was out of the dining
room and we could hear him running down the steps.
"Oh, dear, if he just wasn't a preacher," sighed Harriet. "I suppose
somebody in the Settlement is dead or borned or drunk, and he has to go
and see about it. I wish--"
"Great Jehovah!" exclaimed Billy, as he suddenly jumped to his feet.
"Ensley is fighting drunk and has the gang around the Last Chance.
Parson's life isn't worth a tinker's damn if he runs foul of them with
all that talk about Martha Ensley and Jacob's threat. She came back last
night and Goodloe threatened to have Jacob arrested for beating her.
Come on, Nickols, and let's follow him. We'll be enough. The rest of you
go on eating, drinking and merrying because old Mark was born. We'll
come right back just as soon as we see that all is serene on the Potomac
of the Last Chance." And with a last hasty gulp at his wine glass Billy
followed Nickols out of the room. Nickols was both white and livid and
the expression of his face frightened me, for I knew that Billy would
minimize any kind of danger in the presence of a woman while Nickols
would not take that trouble.
It was with a queer breathlessness that we all sat before our wine
glasses in the midst of the perfume from the rich food and dying flowers
and waited--for what we didn't know.
Then it came!
A shot rang out clear and clean in the darkness and was quickly followed
by three barking echoes from a repeater.
And there seated in my chair in the brilliantly lighted room, blocks
away from the scene, I felt a bullet thud against dull gold.