The Heart's Kingdom Part 12

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_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 gla.s.ses 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?"

"n.o.body 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 gla.s.s 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 Let.i.tia c.o.c.krell, 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 Let.i.tia, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 d.a.m.n 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.ses 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.

CHAPTER XI

A BIT OF RAW LIFE

I don't know by what means of personal transportation my body was carried down the street to the public square and to the pavement in front of the courthouse, but I found myself standing there over a woman who had raised Gregory Goodloe's head on her arm and was drawing deep, hard sobs as she held a handkerchief to stanch a flow of blood that showed crimson in the flash from Nickols' electric cigar lighter.

"'When men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake--'" I quoted to myself softly as I stood and looked down on the prostrate figure of the big lithe Harpeth Jaguar while Billy struggled with a man a little way off in the darkness and Nickols shut off the light and went to his aid. I didn't know exactly where the words that rose so suddenly from my heart to my lips had come from, and I only vaguely understood them, but I seemed to be saying them without my own volition.

"Yes, my G.o.d, yes, that's what they've done to him," sobbed Martha as she looked up, peering at me through the darkness. "Pa is drunk, Miss Charlotte; and the rest egged him on. This is the only friend I've got and they've killed him."

"Not by a good deal, Martha," came in a hearty grand opera voice just as I dropped on my knee, and in time to stop me from taking that bleeding gold head on my own breast and--"Jacob's bullet just clipped me but its impact was as good as his fist would have been, which I wish he had used." And as he spoke the wounded parson sprang lithely to his feet and left us two women kneeling before him. In an instant a thought of Mary and the Magdalen flashed through my brain as he bent to raise me to my feet, while Martha crouched away from us in the dark.

"Charlotte?" he questioned softly, as if not willing to believe the witness of his hands and eyes, m.u.f.fled by the starry darkness.

"Young Charlotte stones you and Jacob shoots you, and I--" I both sobbed and laughed as I clung to his hand just as I heard Billy and Nickols throw the cursing, panting man to the ground not ten feet away.