"Of course, Greg, old fellow, you are going to marry us next Tuesday, aren't you?" asked Nickols, as we stood on the steps of the Poplars after dinner, chatting with him as he was leaving to go over to the chapel while we went out to the dance. "I suppose there is some sort of formal way to make the request, but I don't know it."

"If there is I don't know it, either," was the kindly answer, which both Nickols and I took for a.s.sent.

"Thank you, sir," said Nickols, as he turned away towards father and Mr.

c.o.c.krell and Mr. Jeffries, who had come out on the porch with their cigars, and left him and me standing alone in the starlight.

"G.o.d guard you!" he said to me without taking the hand I held out to him in the darkness with a kind of desperation that seemed that of a drowning woman. "Good-bye!" and he was gone out into the night, leaving me, I knew, forever outside of his life.

"Wait, Oh wait!" I pleaded, but he was gone and I didn't even know if he heard the cry out into the velvet darkness.

That night was the most brilliant night that Goodloets had ever known.

The Town was full of guests who had motored over from all the towns around in the Harpeth Valley. The Governor had come down from the capital in his huge touring car to congratulate father on his appointment and to meet Mr. Jeffries. His adjutant-general and several of his aids were with him in their showy State Guard uniforms and all of the girls were rosy with excitement at the presence of so many rows of bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. Mr. Jeffries opened the ball, and to the delight and amus.e.m.e.nt of us all, he succeeded in leading out with him Mrs. Sproul, who turned the opening dance into a stately old Virginia reel, which so delighted the tango dancers with its novelty that the dance was repeated several times during the evening by enthusiastic requests.

And while the Town reveled in celebration of the new Goodloets, down in the Settlement like rejoicings were being held at the dance hall of the Last Chance. In fact, the whole small city was in the throes of a great rejoicing. Why shouldn't all Goodloets revel when it was enjoying a prosperity beyond anybody's dreams of two years before? Everybody had been generous to the old town with the money that had come so easily from other suffering people's necessities, and security and good fellowship and prosperity reigned supreme. In each heart there was the feeling that now the old town and their personal lives were founded on solid rocks of peace and plenty and it was the time to eat, drink and be merry.

At supper the Governor's first toast, after that to the town itself, was to father and his distinctions. Then Mr. Jeffries toasted Nickols and me. He called Nickols the "American Wizard of Habitations," and, amid cheering and clapping hands, announced his intention to have Nickols build the American town on the Hudson. He called me the "Heart of the Achievement," and father's pride as he looked down the long table at Nickols and me was very wonderful and beautiful; and as great a pride rose in my heart as I saw him lift his gla.s.s of water to pledge me, leaving the bubbles breaking in his champagne.

It was very near dawn when we all motored home and it was upon the verge of the crack of day by the time Dabney and Nickols had got the Governor and Mr. Jeffries and the other guests settled under the wide roof of the Poplars, which had never hovered a more distinguished or brilliant house party.

For a few quiet minutes after they had all gone to their rooms Nickols and I stood alone on the front porch in the cool darkness with its hint of the dawn, while old Dabney shut up the back part of the house.

"The school festival will be over to-morrow, sweetheart, and the next day they will all be gone. The photographers are all through with the photographing and to-morrow night all the extra workmen go back to the city. There'll be three whole quiet days for you to get ready to give me that kiss, which I won't take when you are as tired as you are now,"

said Nickols, as he put a limp arm around me and leaned against the tall door post.

"To-morrow the old makes way for the new. Goodloets is dead! Long live Goodloets!" I answered, as I in turn leaned against Nickols' jaded arm for only a second before we preceded Dabney up the stairs to our rooms.

In my room I went immediately to the window and opened wide the heavy shutters. I found myself looking down on Goodloets, which lay below the darkness of the Poplars like a long glowworm, brilliant with the lights from the homes of the revelers who were going to bed with a sense of perfect security. Still farther down the hill the lights from the Settlement glowed with scarcely less brilliancy and I felt sure that the Last Chance was still harboring a last fling of joy.

Suddenly over my spirit came a deep wave of depression that amounted to a great fear and then as I stood trembling in the darkness, a broad ray of morning light shot up over Paradise Ridge and spread rapidly into a crimson glow that was reflected against a black cloud hanging low over the head of Old Harpeth. A flash of lightning darted from the cloud and spread its gold fire through the crimson of the coming day, and then the sullen-pointed cloud sank rapidly below Paradise Ridge, over which it had risen, as if reconnoitering. Positively shuddering, I knelt against the window seat and watched the day come with a hitherto unknown terror.

Then as I watched the dawn begin to drive away the sullen clouds a rich voice began to sing out beyond the old poplars as a window of the gray chapel was thrown open:

"Arise, my soul, arise, Shake off thy guilty fears; ... ... ... ...

Before the throne my Surety stands My name is written on His hands."

The calmness that came into my frightened heart was like the peace of a deep sleep, and with its strength I faced the day that was to be that of my humiliation and which was to be the crest of the wave of the high tide of Goodloets.

CHAPTER XVI

THE JEWEL IN THE MATRIX

When I awoke from a few hours of deep and exhausted sleep I found my room fast filling with the strenuosities of the day. In fact, I opened them upon Harriet Henderson, up, dressed and briskly doing. She had a large pasteboard box with her and the minute I brushed repose from my eyes she opened it and held up for my inspection a very short tulle garment besprinkled with tiny silk rosebuds, along with a bonnet and other wee but distinctly feminine paraphernalia to match. A basket adorned with a huge bow of tulle came from another box and I was forced to voice my admiration with the greatest vigor.

"How I'll ever keep from eating Sue up before she gets to the altar, I can't see," said Harriet, as she held the wee frock for a second against her breast. It hurts me to the quick of my own breast to see Harriet's eyes when she broods over Sue. I don't see how she is going to live life always as hungry as she is now.

"I suppose I might just as well wear my tennis things, because the guests will be already as completely enraptured as is humanly possible before my entry upon the scene of action of my own wedding," I said, as I sat up and took the small bonnet in my own hand. "It is too bad that Jessie and Let.i.tia should worry themselves over my own wedding frock, if Susan is--" I was just saying when Nell arrived beside my bed with the Suckling in the very act of obtaining her early luncheon from the maternal fount. The nurse has always had to follow Nell about with her successive hungry offspring.

"Girls, I really don't know what to do, but young Charlotte has given every single presentable garment that Jimmy possessed to different unclothed children in the Settlement, who were needed in the pageant, and Mark and Billy are laughing at her, while Jimmy is howling. I just ran in to see Harriet a minute and ask her if she--"

"Yes, Jimmie's wedding garments came home from Mrs. Burns' yesterday and I'll lend them to you just to spite those men, who are simply ruining Charlotte by the day," said Harriet, as Nell handed her the replete Suckling wrong end foremost and picked up the small tulle bonnet with a gurgle of maternal rapture that was in some ways as young as the happy gurgle that the Suckling gave as she settled into Harriet's dependable arms for her morning nap. Harriet cradled her against her own round, firm breast and for a second brooded then joined in Nell's rapture over the garments for the bedizening of wee Susan.

"If Harriet didn't dress and discipline my children I feel sure they would be found naked in a reform school," Nell said, with a happy and careless grat.i.tude. There are some women to whom life is incidental and maternity the most casual adventure of all. The happy-go-lucky variety are apt to produce just such children as Charlotte or young James or Susan, and it is well if into their young lives there comes the hungry woman with a brooding mission.

"Young Charlotte will probably be the first woman governor of the state and--" Harriet was saying with a laugh when Let.i.tia and Jessie arrived precipitately. Let.i.tia had a parcel which contained a lingerie garment of mine, whose lace and embroidery and ribbon combined would have enraptured most women, and Jessie carried in her hand a package of belated wedding cards. They were followed closely by Mammy, who was in turn followed by the meek Sally. Mammy's address was delivered to me first.

"Git up quick, honey; the men folks has begun on the second round of waffles and they'll be calling for you. The day is on its shanks and a-going," she admonished, while Sallie turned on my bath.

"They are having breakfast out in the garden and the day is perfect. Do you want blue or pink ribbons in this Valenciennes set, Charlotte?" said Let.i.tia, as she seated herself on the foot of my bed and drew out a ribbon bag whose contents were of many colors.

"A fashionable wedding is a white lie; you invite all the people you especially want to stay away," sighed Jessie, as she seated herself at my desk and lighted a cigarette, at which Mammy rolled her black eyes and departed with her nose in the air.

And while they all chatted over the sealing of my fate I arose and had my toilet made in my dressing room, in full hearing of the discussions about the best groupings of bridesmaids and the horror at the count of the cases of wine Billy had ordered from the city for the dinner to the groomsmen the night before the wedding.

"I adore Mark seven-tenths full, but I don't like to endure the end of the jag next morning," laughed Nell, as she began to put ribbons into the bodkins for Let.i.tia. I saw Harriet give her a long look from under her half-lowered eyelashes as she hugged the Suckling closer to her breast. Billy had told Harriet and me casually a few nights before that "old Mark's drinking to a double-decker liver and a sidestep in his heart."

"Oh, gentlemen always drink in moderation. I never worry over Cliff,"

said Let.i.tia complacently, as she tied a decorative shoulder knot.

"You expect to give him a daily dose of three drops on a lump of sugar, Let.i.tia?" asked Harriet, as she exchanged glances with Jessie. One evening last week Jessie and Harriet had motored Cliff in from the Club just in time to save him from going over the riffles and Let.i.tia had been dancing with him without noticing his staggers.

"There, that is the very last st.i.tch to be taken on your trousseau, Charlotte," said Let.i.tia, as she laid down the filmy garment she had been adorning with blue bowknots. "Press it, Sallie, and lay it with the rest of the set in the second tray of the medium-sized trunk. You can lock it and give me the key."

"I just can't stand it, Charlotte," said Jessie to me in a low voice, as I came from the hands of the skillful Sallie and stood beside the window next to the desk. "You are all I have got and only you--you understand.

I can't give you up. I'm frightened."

"Hush--so am I," I answered her, as my hand gripped her shoulder under her heavy linen frock until I felt it must bruise it. Then I turned to the others, collected them and descended to finish breakfast with the Poplars' guests.

Never a more radiantly beautiful morning had spread its loveliness over the Harpeth Valley than the one I found out in the garden that twenty-seventh day of September, the gala day in the history of Goodloets. Huge white clouds drifted back and forth in a deep blue sky and they were rosy at times with the sunlight, but from some of the largest little tongues of lightning darted, while others were lit by what seemed to be an internal glow of fire. Cool winds, perfumed with the harvests and the ripening orchards and the vineyards out in the valley, rustled in the treetops and flaunted in the vines. The ardent sun seemed to be drawing from the bosom of the earth a hot mist which lay over the town like a filmy bridal veil, only stirred gently by the vagrant veering gusts of wind. Nature seemed to be holding herself in leash and only breathing upon the earth gently, as if to stir some latent lushness into autumnal activity.

"A perfect Harpeth day for Mr. Jeffries," said the Governor, as he came from his seat at the table to greet the girls and me. The rest of the masculine breakfasters followed and I could see from the devastation of the table that they had all breakfasted well and to repletion. I also detected the worthless Jefferson, whom Mr. Goodloe had evidently loaned to his parents for the occasion, lift father's full gla.s.s of julep and drain it with one gulp, grab the half gla.s.s that Nickols had left, gulp it and begin on the finger or so in Billy's tumbler before Dabney could forcibly but quietly restrain him. In fact, I felt there would have been a riot among my servitors if Mr. Goodloe had not stepped aside and spoken a low word to Jefferson, which sent him busily at the table with his tray.

And from that moment Nickols' triumphant procession of inspection of Goodloets began. Mr. Jeffries stood in the middle of the reincarnated old garden, looked for a long time at the Poplars, which was like a green encrusted gem with its old purple red brick under the vines, glanced again and again at the chapel with its weathered stone that stood beyond the silver-leafed graybeards, then let his eye wander down the broad elm-bordered main street past the courthouse and past the Settlement to the river bending around it all.

"Money couldn't build anything like it, Powers," he said to Nickols at his side. "Time and gentle living have formed it as a jewel is made in a matrix. I was born in a mining camp, but I want you to start something like it all for my great grandchildren to live in. How many generations will it take?"

"Give me five years, Mr. Jeffries," laughed Nickols in answer. "Greg Goodloe's great great grandfather and mine fought off the Indians from a stockade which stood where his chapel does now, but a year of modern life about represents a generation of pioneer endeavor."

"Not too fast, youngster, not too fast," said Mr. Jeffries, and I saw him exchange a grave glance with father. "What we Americans must have is stabilizers now that we have annihilated time. Without the discovery of something of that sort we will hurl along to destruction. What say you, Mr. Goodloe?"

"We have the same 'covert of wings' that David used when things spun too fast for him," answered Mr. Goodloe with the jeweled radiance that always came from his face when he spoke of his faith even casually.

"Only 'where there is no vision the people perish,' and a people who invent flying machines and hold international law to account have vision. We don't know how much we've got, but it'll save us."

"After the material gla.s.s through which we see darkly is completely smashed for us," said father, with a curious sternness coming into his face that made me wonder. "But we must take Mr. Jeffries for a nearer inspection of our metropolis, be with Mrs. Sproul in time for luncheon and then help Mr. Goodloe open the inst.i.tute of learning for young Goodloets."

In the motor cars parked before the tall gate of the Poplars all of the guests embarked for their review of the beauties of Goodloets. Nickols remained behind them while the half sober but skillful Jefferson wrestled with a slight tire trouble of his slim blue racer. For a few minutes we were alone in the center of the wonderful garden, which had never seemed so lovely as upon the day in which it had fulfilled its own and Nickols' destiny.