Andrew the Glad Part 10

"You took an awful risk then, Major," said Phoebe with a twinkle in her eyes.

"I know it," answered the major. "I've been taking them for nearly forty years. It's added much to this affair between Mrs. Buchanan and me. Small excitements are all that are necessary to fan the true connubial flame. I didn't tell her about all this because I really hadn't the time. Tell her on the way out, for I expect there will be a rattle of musketry as soon as the dimity brigade hears the circ.u.mstances."

Then for a half-hour Phoebe and the major wrote rapidly until she gathered her sheets together and left them under his paper-weight to be delivered to the devil from the office.

She departed quietly, taking Mrs. Matilda and Caroline with her.

And for still another hour the major continued to push his pen rapidly across the paper, then he settled down to the business of reading and annotating his work.

For years Major Buchanan had been the editor of the _Gray Picket_, which went its way weekly into almost every home in the South. It was a quaint, bright little folio full of articles of interest to the old Johnnie Rebs scattered south of Mason and Dixon. As a general thing it radiated good cheer and a most patriotic spirit, but at times something would occur to stir the gray ashes from which would fly a crash of sparks. Then again the spirit of peace unutterable would reign in its columns. It was published for the most part to keep up the desire for the yearly Confederate reunions--those bivouacs of chosen spirits, the like of which could never have been before and can never be after. The major's pen was a trenchant one but reconstructed--in the main.

But the scene at the Country Club in the early afternoon was, according to the major's prediction, far from peaceful in tone; it was confusion confounded. Mrs. Peyton Kendrick was there and the card-tables were deserted as the players, matrons and maids, gathered around her and discussed excitedly the result of her "ways and means for the reunion"

mission to the city council, the judge's insult and David Kildare's reply. They were every mother's daughter of them Dames of the Confederacy and their very lovely gowns were none the less their fighting clothes.

"And then," said Mrs. Payt, her cheeks pink with indignation, and the essence of belligerency in her excited eyes, "for a moment I sat petrified, _petrified_ with cold rage, until David Kildare's speech began--there had never been a greater one delivered in the United States of America! He said--he said--oh, I don't know what he did say, but it was--"

"I just feel--" gasped Polly Farrell with a sob, "that I ought to get down on my knees to him. He's a hero--he's a--"

"Of course for a second I was surprised. I had never heard David Kildare speak about a--a serious matter before, but I could have expected it, for his father was a most brilliant lawyer, and his mother's father was our senator for twenty years and his uncle our amba.s.sador to the court of--" and Mrs. Peyton's voice trailed off in the clamor.

"Well, I've always known that Cousin Dave was a great man. He ought to be the president or governor--or _something_. I would vote for him to-morrow--or that is, I would make some man--I don't know just who--do it!" And Polly's treble voice again took up the theme of David's praises.

"And think of the old soldiers," said Mrs. Buchanan with a catch in her breath. "It will hurt them so when they read it. They will think people are tired of them and that we don't want them to come here in the spring for the reunion. They are old and feeble and they have had so much to bear. It was cruel, _cruel_."

"And to think of not wanting the children to see them and know them and love them--and understand!" Milly's soft voice both broke and blazed.

"I'm going to cry--I'm doing it," sobbed Polly with her head on Phoebe's shoulder. "I wasn't but twelve when they met here last time and I followed all the parades and cried for three solid days. It was delicious. I'm not mad at any Yankee--I'm in love with a man from Boston and I'm--oh, please, don't anybody tell I said that! I may not be, I just think so because he is so good-looking and--"

"We must all go out to the Soldier's Home to-morrow, a large committee, and take every good thing we can think up and make. We must pay them so much attention that they will let us make a joke of it," said Mrs.

Matilda thinking immediately of the old fellows who "sat in the sun"--waiting.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Peyton, "and we must go oftener. We want some more committees. It won't be many years--two were buried last week from the Home." There was a moment's silence and the sun streamed in across the deserted tables.

"Oh," murmured Caroline Darrah Brown with her eyes in a blaze, "I can't stand it, Phoebe. I never felt so before--I who have no right."

"Dear," said Phoebe with a quiet though intensely sad smile, "this is just an afterglow of what they must have felt in those awful times. Let's get them started at the game."

For just a moment longer Phoebe watched them in their heated discussion, then chose her time and her strong quiet voice commanded immediate attention.

"Girls," she said, and as she spoke she held out her hand to Mrs. Peyton Kendrick with an audacious little smile. Any woman from two to sixty likes to be called girl--audaciously as Phoebe did it. "Let's leave it all to the men. I think we can trust them to compel the judge to dine off his yesterday's remarks in tomorrow's papers. And then if we don't like the way they have settled with him we can have a gorgeous time telling them how much better they might have done it. Let's all play--everybody for the game!"

"And Phoebe!" called Mrs. Payt as she sat down at the table farthest in the corner. She spoke in a clear high-pitched voice that carried well over the rustle of settling gowns and shuffling cards: "We all intend after this to _see_ that David Kildare gets what he wants--you understand?" A laugh rippled from every table but Phoebe was equal to the occasion.

"Why not, Mrs. Payt," she answered with the utmost cordiality. "And let's be sure and find something he really wants to present to him as a testimony of our esteem."

"Oh, Phoebe," trilled Polly, her emotions getting the better of her as she stood with score-card in hand waiting for the game to begin, "_I_ can't keep from loving him myself and _you_ treat him so mean!"

But a gale of merriment interrupted her outburst and a flutter of cards on the felts marked the first rounds of the hands. In a few minutes they were as absorbed as if nothing had happened to ruffle the depths; but in the pool of every woman's nature the deepest spot shelters the lost causes of life, and from it wells a tidal wave if stirred.

After a little while Caroline Darrah rose from a dummy and spoke in a low pleading tone to Polly, who had been watching her game, standing ready to score. Polly demurred, then consented and sat down while Caroline Darrah took her departure, quietly but fleetly, down the side steps.

She was m.u.f.fled in her long furs and she swung her sable toque with its one drooping plume in her hand as she walked rapidly across the tennis-courts, cut through the beeches and came out on the bank of the brawling little Silver Fork Creek, that wound itself from over the ridge down through the club lands to the river. She stood by the sycamore for a moment listening delightedly to its chatter over the rocks, then climbed out on the huge old rock that jutted out from the bank and was entwined by the bleached roots of the tall tree. The strong winter sun had warmed the flat slab on the south side and, sinking down with a sigh of delight, she embraced her knees and bent over to gaze into the sparkling little waterfall that gushed across the foot of the boulder.

Then for a mystic half-hour she sat and let her eyes roam the blue Harpeth hills in the distance, that were naked and stark save for the lace traceries of their winter-robbed trees. As the sun sank a soft rose purple shot through the blue and the mists of the valley rose higher about the bared b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the old ridge.

And because of the stillness and beauty of the place and hour, Caroline Darrah began, as women will if the opportunity only so slightly invites them, to dream--until a crackle in a thicket opposite her perch distracted her attention and sent her head up with a little start. In a second she found herself looking across the chatty little stream straight into the eyes of Andrew Sevier, in which she found an expression of having come upon a treasure with distracting suddenness.

"Oh," she said to break the silence which seemed to be settling itself between them permanently, "I think I must have been dreaming and you crashed right in. I--I--"

"Are you sure you are not the dream itself--just come true?" demanded the poet in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he were asking the time of day or the trail home.

"I don't think I am, in fact I'm sure," she answered with a break in her curled lips. "The dream is a bridge, a beautiful bridge, and I've been seeing it grow for minutes and minutes. One end of it rests down there by that broken log--see where the little knoll swells up from the field?--and it stretches in a beautiful strong arch until it seems to cut across that broken-backed old hill in the distance. And then it falls across--but I don't know where to put the other end of it--the ground sinks so--it might wobble. I don't want my bridge to wobble."

Her tone was expressive of a real distress as she looked at him in appealing confusion. And in his eyes she found the dawn of an amused wonder, almost consternation. Slowly over his face there spread a deep flush and his lips were indrawn with a quick breath.

"Wait a minute, I'll show you," he said in almost an undertone. He swung himself across the creek on a couple of stones, climbed up the boulder and seated himself at her side. Then he drew a sketch-book from his pocket and spread it open on the slab before them.

There it was--the dream bridge! It rose in a fine strong curve from the little knoll, spanned across the distant ridge and fell to the opposite bank on to a broad support that braced itself against a rock ledge. It was as fine a perspective sketch as ever came from the pencil of an enthusiastic young Beaux Arts.

"Yes," she said with a delighted sigh that was like the slide of the water over smooth pebbles, "yes, that is what I want it to be, only I couldn't seem to see how it would rest right away. It is just as I dreamed it and,"--then she looked at him with startled jeweled eyes.

"Where did I see it--where did you--what does it mean?" she demanded, and the flush that rose up to the waves of her hair was the reflection of the one that had stained his face before he came across the stream. "I think I'm frightened," she added with a little nervous laugh.

"Please don't be--because I am, too," he answered. And instinctively, like two children, they drew close together. They both gazed at the specter sketch spread before them and drew still nearer to each other.

"I have been planning it for days," he said in almost a whisper. Her small pink ear was very near his lips and his breath agitated two little gold tendrils that blew across it. "I want to build it before I go away, it is needed here for the hunting. I came out and made the sketch from right here an hour ago. I came back--I must have come back to have it--verified." He laughed softly, and for just a second his fingers rested against hers on the edge of the sketch.

"I'm still frightened," she said, but a tippy little smile coaxed at the corners of her mouth. She turned her face away from his eyes that had grown--disturbing.

"I'm not," he announced boldly. "Beautiful wild things are flying loose all over the world and why shouldn't we capture one for ourselves. Do you mind--please don't!"

"I don't think I do," she answered, and her lashes swept her cheeks as she lifted the sketch-book to her knees. "Only suppose I was to dream--some of your--other work--some day? I don't want to build your bridges--but I might want to--write some of your poems. Hadn't you better do something to stop me right now?" The smile had come to stay and peeped roguishly out at him from beneath her lashes.

"No," he answered calmly, "if you want my dreams--they are yours."

"Oh," she said as she rose to her feet and looked down at him wistfully, "your beautiful, beautiful dreams! Ever since that afternoon I have gone over and over the lines you read me. The one about the 'brotherhood of our heart's desires' keeps me from being lonely. I think--I think I went to sleep saying it to myself last night and--"

It couldn't go on any longer--as Andrew rose to his feet he gathered together any stray wreckage of wits that was within his reach and managed, by not looking directly at her, to say in a rational, elderly, friendly tone, slightly tinged with the scientific:

"My dear child, and that's why you built my bridge for me to-day. You put yourself into mental accord with me by the use of my jingle last night and fell asleep having hypnotized yourself with it. Things wilder than fancies are facts these days, written in large volumes by extremely erudite old gentlemen and we believe them because we must. This is a simple case, with a well-known scientific name and--"

"But," interrupted Caroline Darrah, and as she stood away from him against the dim hills, her slender figure seemed poised as if for flight, and a hurt young seriousness was in her lifted purple eyes: "I don't want it to be a 'simple case' with any scientific--" and just here a merry call interrupted her from up-stream.

Phoebe and Polly had come to summon her back to the club; tea was on the brew. With the intensest hospitality they invited Andrew to come, too.

But he declined with what grace he could and made his way through the tangle down-stream as they walked back under the beeches.

Thus a very bitter thing had come to Andrew Sevier--and sweet as the pulse of heaven. In his hand he had seen a sensitive flower unfold to its very heart of flame.

"Never let her know," he prayed, "never let her know."