"He could save himself that trouble," laughed Phoebe, "for somebody has already written that; did it some time ago. Run stop him, David."

"No," answered David with recovered spirit, "I'd flag a train for you, Phoebe, but I don't intend to side-track a poem for anybody. Besides, I'm hungry and I see Jeff with a tray. Mrs. Matilda, please put Caroline Darrah by me. She's attentive and Phoebe just diets—me."

And while they laughed and chatted and feasted the hour away, across the street Andrew sat with his eyes looking over on to the major's red roof which was shrouded in a mist of yesterdays through which he was watching a slender boy toil his way. When he was eight he had carried a long route of the daily paper and he could feel now the chill dark air out into which he had slipped as his mother stood at the door and watched him down the street with sad and hungry eyes, the gaunt mother who had never smiled. He had fought and punched and scuffled in the dawn for his bundle of papers; and he had fought and scuffled for all he had got of life for many years. But a result had come—and it was rich. How he had managed an education he could hardly see himself; only the major had helped. Not much, but just enough to make it possible. And David had always stood by.

Kildare's fortune had come from some almost forgotten lumber lands that his father had failed to heave into the Confederate maelstrom. Perhaps it had come a little soon for the very best upbuilding of the character of David Kildare, but he had stood shoulder to shoulder with them all in the fight for the establishment of the new order of things and his generosity with himself and his wealth had been superb. The delight with which he made a gift of himself to any cause whatsoever, rather tended to blight the prospects of what might have been a brilliant career at law. With his backing Hobson Capers had opened the cotton mills on a margin of no capital and much grit. Then Tom Cantrell had begun stock manipulations on a few blocks of gas and water, which his mother and Andrew had put up the money to buy—and nerve.

It was good to think of them all now in the perspective of the then. Were there any people on earth who could swing the pendulum like those scions of the wilderness cavaliers and do it with such dignity? He was tasting an aftermath and he found it sweet—only the bitterness that had killed his mother before he was ten. And across the street sat the daughter of the man who had pressed the cup to her lips—with her father's millions and her mother's purple eyes.

He dropped his hand on his manuscript and began to write feverishly. Then in a moment he paused. The Panama campfire, beside which he had written his first play, that was running in New York now, rose in a vision. Was it any wonder that the managers had jumped at the chance to produce the first drama from the country's newly acquired jungle? The lines had been rife with the struggle and intrigue of the great canal cutting. It really was a ripping play he told himself with a smile—and this other? He looked at it a moment in a detached way. This other throbbed.

He gathered the papers together in his hand and walked to the window. The sun was now aslant through the trees. It was late and they must have all gone their ways from across the street; only the major would be alone and appreciative. Andrew smiled quizzically as he regarded the pages in his hand—but it was all so to the good to read the stuff to the old fellow with his Immortals ranged round!

"Great company that," he mused to himself as he let himself out of the apartment. And as he walked slowly across the street and into the Buchanan house, Fate took up the hand of Andrew Sevier and ranged his trumps for a new game.

In the moment he parted the curtains and stepped into the library the old dame played a small signal, for there, in the major's wide chair, sat Caroline Darrah Brown with her head bent over a large volume spread open upon the table.

"Oh," she said with a quick smile and a rose signal in her cheeks, "the major isn't here! They came for him to go out to the farm to see about—about grinding something up to feed to—to—something or sheep—or—," she paused in distress as if it were of the utmost importance that she should inform him of the major's absence.

"Silo for the cows," he prompted in a practical voice. It was well a practical remark fitted the occasion for the line from old Ben Jonson, which David had only a few hours ago accused him of plagiarizing, rose to the surface of his mind. Such deep wells of eyes he had never looked into in all his life before, and they were as ever, filled to the brim with reverence, even awe of him. It was a heady draught he quaffed before she looked down and answered his laconic remark.

"Yes," she said, "that was it. And Mrs. Matilda and Phoebe motored out with him and David went on his horse. I am making calls, only I didn't. I stopped to—" and she glanced down with wild confusion, for the book spread out before her was the major's old family Bible, and the type was too bold to fail to declare its identity to his quick glance.

"Don't worry," he hastened to say, "I don't mind. I read it myself sometimes, when I'm in a certain mood."

"It was for David—he wanted to read something to Phoebe," she answered in ravishing confusion, and pointed to the open page.

Thus Andrew Sevier was forced by old Fate to come near her and bend with her over the book. The tip of her exquisite finger ran along the lines that have figured in the woman question for many an age.

"'For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her'"—and so on down the page she led him.

"And that was what the trouble was about," she said when they had read the last word in the last line. She raised her eyes to his with laughter in their depths. "It was a very dreadful battle and Phoebe won. The major found this for him to read to her and she said she did not intend to go into the real estate business for her husband or to rise while it was yet night to give him his breakfast. Aren't they funny, funny?" and she fairly rippled with delight at her recollection of the vanquishing of the intrepid David.

"The standards for a wife were a bit strenuous in those days," he answered, smiling down on her. "I'm afraid Dave will have trouble finding one on those terms. And yet—" he paused and there was a touch of mockery in his tone.

"I think that a woman could be very, very happy fulfilling every one of those conditions if she were woman enough," answered Caroline Darrah Brown, looking straight into his eyes with her beautiful, disconcerting, dangerous young seriousness.

Andrew picked up his manuscript with the mental attitude of catching at a straw.

"Oh," she said quickly, "you were going to read to the major, weren't you?" And the entreaty in her eyes was as young as her seriousness; as young as that of a very little girl begging for a wonder tale. The heart of a man may be of stone but even flint flies a spark.

Andrew Sevier flushed under his pallor and ruffled his pages back to a serenade he had written, with which the star for whom the play was being made expected to exploit a deep-timbred voice in a recitative vocalization. And while he read it to her slowly, Fate finessed on the third round.

And so the major found them an hour or more later, he standing in the failing light turning the pages and she looking up at him, listening, with her cheek upon her interlaced fingers and her elbows resting on the old book. The old gentleman stood at the door a long time before he interrupted them and after Andrew had gone down to put Caroline into her motorcar, which had been waiting for hours, he lingered at the window looking out into the dusk.

"'For love is as strong as death,'" he quoted to himself as he turned to the table and slowly closed the book and returned it to its place. "'And many waters can not quench love, neither can the floods drown it.'" "Solomon was very great—and human," he further observed.

Then after absorbing an hour or two of communion with some musty old papers and a tattered volume of uncertain age, the major was interrupted by Mrs. Matilda as she came in from her drive. She was a vision in her soft gray reception gown, and her gray hat, with its white velvet rose, was tipped over her face at an angle that denoted the spirit of adventure.

"I'm so glad to get back, Major," she said as she stood and regarded him with affection beaming in her bright eyes. "Sometimes I hurry home to be sure you are safe here. I don't see you as much as I do out at Seven Oaks and I'm lonely going places away from you."

"Don't you know it isn't the style any longer for a woman to carry her husband in her pocket, Matilda," he answered. "What would Mrs. Cherry Lawrence think of you?"

Mrs. Buchanan laughed as she seated herself by him for the moment. "I've just come from Milly's," she said. "I left Caroline there. And Hobson was with her; they had been out motoring on the River Road. Do you suppose—it looks as if perhaps—?"

"My dear Matilda," answered the major, "I never give or take a tip on a love race. The Almighty endows women with inscrutable eyes and the smile of the Sphynx for purposes of self-preservation, I take it, so a man wastes time trying to solve a woman-riddle. However, Hobson Capers is running a risk of losing much valuable time is the guess I chance on the issue in question."

"And Peyton Kendrick and that nice Yankee boy and—"

"All bunched, all bunched at the second post! There's a dark horse running and he doesn't know it himself. God help him!" he added under his breath as she turned to speak to Tempie.

"If you don't want her to marry Hobson whom do you choose?" she said returning to the subject. "I wish—I wish—but of course it is impossible, and I'm glad, as it is, that Andrew is indifferent."

"Yes," answered the major, "and you'll find that indifference is a hall mark stamped on most modern emotions."



CHAPTER V

DAVID'S ROSE AND SOME THORNS

"Now," said David, "if you'll just put away a few of those ancient pipes and puddle your papers a bit in your own cozy corner we can call these quarters ready to receive the ladies, God bless 'em! Does it look kinder bare to you? We might borrow a few drapes from the madam, or would you trust to the flowers? I'll send them up for you to fix around tasty. A blasted poet ought to know how to bunch spinach to look well."

As he spoke David Kildare stood in the middle of the living-room in his bachelor quarters, which were in the Colonial, a tall pillared, wide windowed, white brick apartment-house that stood across the street from the home of Major Buchanan, and surveyed the long rooms upon which he and his man Eph had been expending their energies for more than an hour.

Andrew Sevier sank down upon the arm of a chair and lighted a long and villainous pipe. "Trust to the flowers," he answered. "I think Phoebe doesn't care for the drapes of this life so much as some women do and as this is for her birthday let's have the flowers, sturdy ones with stiff stems and good head pieces."

"That's right, Phoebe's nobody's clinging vine," answered David moodily. "She doesn't want any trellis either—wish something would wilt her! Look here, Andrew, on the square, what's the matter that I can't get Phoebe? You're a regular love pilot on paper, point me another course; this one is no good; I've run into a sand bank." The dark red forelock on David's brow was ruffled and his keen eyes were troubled, while his large sweet mouth was set in a straight firm line. He looked very strong, forceful and determined as he stopped in front of his friend and squared himself as if for a blow.

Andrew Sevier looked at him thoughtfully for a few seconds straight between the eyes, then his mouth widened into an affectionate smile as he laid his hand on the sturdy shoulder and said:

"Not a thing on God's green earth the matter with you, Davie; it's the modernism of the situation that you seem unable to handle. May I use your flower simile? Once they grew in gardens and were drooping and sweet and overran trellises, to say nothing of clinging to oak trees, but we've developed the American Beauty, old man! It stands stiff and glossy and holds its head up on its own stem, the pride of the nation! We can get them, though they come high. Ah, but they are sweet! Phoebe is one of the most gorgeous to be found—it will be a price to pay, but you'll pay it, David, you'll pay."

"God knows I'm paying it all day long every day and have been paying it for ten years. Never at peace about her for an instant. Protection at long distance is no joke. I can't sleep at night until she telephones me she is at home from the office on her duty nights and then I have to beg like a dog for the wire, just the word or two. She will overwork and undereat and—"

"David," interrupted Sevier thoughtfully, "what do you really think is the matter? Let's get down to facts while we are about it."

"Do you know, Andy, lately it has dawned upon me that Phoebe would like to dictate a life policy to me; hand me out a good, stiff life job. I believe she would marry me to-morrow if she could see me permanently installed on the front seat of a grocery wagon—permanently. And I'll come to it yet."

"I believe you are right," laughed Andrew. "She really glories in her wage earning; it's a phase of them these days. She would actually hate living on your income."

"Don't I know it? I suppose she would be content if she sewed on buttons and did the family wash to conserve the delivery wagon income. I wish she'd marry me for love and then I'd hire her at hundreds per week to dust around the house and cook pies for me, gladly, gladly."

"We've developed thorns with our new rose, Dave," chuckled Andrew as he relighted his pipe.

"Sweet hope of heaven, yes," groaned David. "My gore drips all the time from the gashes. I suppose it is a killing grief to her that I haven't a star corporation practise instead of fooling around the criminal court fighting old Taylor to get a square deal for the darky rag-tag most of my time. But, Andy, it makes me blaze house-high to see the way he hands the law out to 'em. They can cut and fight as long as it is in a whisky dive and no indictment returned; but let one of 'em sidestep an inch in any other ignorant pitiful way and it's the workhouse and the county road for theirs.

"And the number of ways that the coons can get up to call on me to square the deal, is amazing. Just look at the week I've had! All Monday and Tuesday I spent on the Darky Country Club affair; the poor nigs just hungering for some place to go off and act white in for a few hours. Nobody would sell them an acre of ground near a car line and the dusky smart set was about to get its light put out. Jeff and Tempie told me about it. What did little Dave do but run around to persuade old man Elton to sell them that little point that juts out into the river two miles from town and just across from the rock quarry. No neighbors to kick and the interurban runs through the field. It really is a choice spot and I started their subscription with a hundred or two and got Williams to draw them some plans to fix up an old house that stands on the bank for a club-house. They are wide-mouthed with joy; but it sliced two days to do it, which I might have spent on the grocery wagon."

"You always did have the making of a philanthropist in you, Dave," said Andrew thoughtfully. "You're a near-one at present speaking."

"Philanthropist go hang—the rest of the week I have spent getting the old Confeds together and having everything in shape for the unveiling of the statue out at the Temple of Arts. I tell you we are going to have a turn-out. General Clopton is coming all the way to make the dedication speech. Caroline is about to bolt and I have to steady her at off times. I've promised to hold her hand through it all. Major is getting up the notes for General Clopton and he's touching on Peters Brown only in high places. It'll be mostly a show-down of old General Darrah and the three governors I'm thinking.

"The Dames of the Confederacy and the Art League are going to have entries on the program without number. I have been interviewed and interviewed. Why, even the august Susie Carrie Snow sent for me and talked high art and city beautiful to me until I could taste it.

"And all that sopped up the rest of the week when I ought to have been delivering pork steaks and string-beans at people's back doors to please Phoebe. Money grubbing doesn't appeal to me and I don't need it, but from now on I'm the busy grub—until after the 'no man put asunder' proclamation."

"How you can manage to do one really public-spirited job after another, 'things that count,' and then elude all the credit for them is more than I can understand, Dave," said Andrew as he smiled through a blue ring of smoke. "Some day, if you don't look out, you'll be a leading citizen. In the meantime hustle about those flowers. Time flies."

"I'll send them right up," said David as he donned his coat and hat and took up his crop. The hours David spent out of the saddle were those of his indoors occupations. "I'll be back soon. Just fix the flowers; Eph and the cook will do all the rest. And put the cards on the table any old way. I want to sit between Phoebe and Caroline Darrah Brown—well, whose party is it? You can sit next on either side."

"Wait a minute, are—"

"No, I must hurry and go brace up Milly for a pair of minutes. She wouldn't promise to come until I insisted on sending a trained nurse to sit with old Mammy Betty and the babies until she got back to 'em. Billy Bob is as wild as a kid about coming, he hasn't been anywhere for so long. I talked a week before I could persuade Milly, but she's got her glad rags and is as excited as Billy Bob. I tried to buy that boy twin for Phoebe's present but Milly said I had better get an old silver and amethyst bracelet. It's on my table in the white box. Bye!" and Kildare departed as far as the front door, but returned to stick his head in the door and say:

"You'd better put Hob by Caroline Darrah on the other side; he's savage when he's crossed. And tack in Payt opposite her. I invited Polly the Fluff for you—she is a dbutante and such a coo-child that she'll just suit a poet."

He dodged just in time to escape the lighted pipe that was hurled upon him, and he couldn't have suspected that a hastily-formed plan to place himself opposite Caroline Darrah had gone up in the smoke that followed the death of life in Andrew's pipe.

Then following the urgent instructions of David, Andrew began to right up the papers in his den which opened off the living-room. His desk was littered with manuscript, for the three days past had been golden ones and he had written under a strong impetus. The thought suddenly shot through him that he had been writing as he had once read, to eyes whose "depths on depths of luster" had misted and glowed and answered as he turned his pages in the twilight. Can ice in a man's breast burn like fire? Andrew crushed the sheets and thrust them into a drawer.

Then came Eph and the cook to lay the cloth in the dining-room, and a man brought up the flowers. For a time he worked away with a strange excitement in his veins.

When they had finished and he was alone in the apartment he walked slowly through the rooms. Where David happened to keep his household gods had been home to Andrew for many years. His books were in the dark Flemish oak cases and some of the prints on the walls were his. Most of the rugs he had picked up in his travels upon which his commissions led him, and some interesting skins had been added since his jungle experiences. It was all dark and rich and right-toned—the home of a gentleman. And David was like the rooms, right-toned and clean.

Andrew found himself wondering if there would be men like David in the next generation, happy David with his cavalier nature and modern wit. The steady stream of wealth that was pouring into the South, down her mountain sides and welling up under her pasture lands, would it bring in its train death to the purity and sanity of her social institutions? Would swollen fortunes bring congestion of standards and grossness of morals? Suddenly he smiled for Billy Bob and Milly and a lot of the industrious young folks seemed to answer him. He had found eleven little new cousins on the scene of action when he had returned after five years—clear-eyed young Anglo-Americans, ready to take charge of the future.

And he, what was his place in the building of his native city? His trained intelligence, his wide experience, his genius were being given to cutting a canal thousands of miles away while the streets of his own home were being cut up and undermined by half-trained bunglers. The beautiful forest suburbs were being planned and plotted by money-mad schemers who neither pre-visioned, nor cared to, the city of the future which was to be a great gateway of the nation to its Panama world-artery. He knew how to value the force of a man of his kind, with his reputation and influence, and he would gage just what he would be able to do for the city with the municipal backing he could command if he set his shoulder to the wheel.

A talk he had had with the major a day or two ago came back to him. The old fellow's eyes had glowed as he told him the plan they had been obliged to abandon in the early seventies for a boulevard from the capitol to the river because of the lack of city construction funds. Andrew's own father had formulated the plan and gone before the city fathers with it, and for a time there had been hope of its accomplishment. And the major had declared emphatically that a time was coming when the city would want and ask for it again. That other Andrew Sevier of the major's youth had conceived the scheme; the major had repeated the fact slowly. Did he mean it as a call to him?

Andrew's eyes glowed. He could see it all, with its difficulties and its possibilities. He rested his clenched hand on the table and the artist in him had the run of his pulses. He could see it all and he knew in all humbleness that he could construct the town as no other man of his generation would be able to do; the beautiful hill-rimmed city!

And just as potent he felt the call of the half-awakened spirit of art and letters that had lain among them poverty-bound for forty reconstructive years. For what had he been so richly dowered? To sing his songs from the camp of a wanderer and write his plays with a foreign flavor, when he might voice his own people in the world of letters, his own with their background of traditions and tragedy and their foreground of rough-hewn possibilities? Was not the meed of his fame, small or large, theirs?

Suddenly the tension snapped and sadness chilled through his veins. Here there would always be that memory which brought its influences of bitterness and depression to kill the creative in him. The old mad desire to be gone and away from it beat up into his blood, then stilled on the instant. What was it that caught his breath in his breast at the thought of exile? Could he go now, could—

Just at this moment he was interrupted by Mrs. Matilda who came hurrying into the room with ribbons and veil aflutter. She evidently had only the moment to stay and she took in his decorative schemes with the utmost delight.

"Andrew," she said with enthusiasm in every tone, "it is all lovely, lovely. You boys are wonders! These bachelor establishments are threatening to make women wonder what they were born for. And what do you think? The major is coming! The first place he has gone this winter—and he wants to sit between Phoebe and Caroline Darrah. I just ran over to tell you. Good-by! We must both dress."

And Andrew smiled as he rearranged the place-cards.

And it happened that in more ways than one David Kildare found himself the perturbed host. He rushed home and dressed with lightning-like rapidity and whirled away in the limousine for Milly and Billy Bob. He went for them early, for he had bargained to come for Phoebe as late as possible so as to give her time to reckon with her six-thirty freckled-faced devil at the office. But at the Overtons he found confusion confounded.

"I'm so sorry, David," Milly almost sobbed, "but Mammy Betty's daughter has run away and got married and she has gone to see about it, and the trained nurse can't come. There has been an awful wreck up the road and all the doctors in town have gone and taken all the nurses with them. She didn't consider the babies serious, so she just had some one telephone at the last minute that she had gone. I can't go; but please make Billy go with you! There is no use—" and she turned to Billy Bob who stood by in pathetically gorgeous array, but firm in his intention not to desert the home craft.

"We just can't make it, Dave, old man," he said manfully, as he caught his tearful wife's outstretched hand in his. "Go on before we both cry!"

"Go on, nothing—with Milly looking like a lovely pink apple-blossom! You've got to come. I wouldn't dare face Phoebe without you. It's the whole thing to her to have you there. It's been so long since you've gladded with the crowd once and it's her birthday and—" David's voice trailed off into a perfect wail.

"But what can we do?" faltered Milly, dissolved at the mention of the new frock. "We certainly can't leave them and we can't take them and—"

"Glory, that's the idea, let's take the whole bunch!" exclaimed David with radiant countenance. "I ought to have invited them in the first place. Come on and let's begin to bundle!" and he made a dive in the direction of the door of the nursery.

"Oh, no, indeed we can't!" gasped Milly while Billy Bob stood stricken, unable to utter a word.

"I'll show you whether we will or not," answered David. "Catch me losing a chance like this to ring one on Phoebe for several reasons. Hurry up!" and as he spoke he had lifted little Mistake from his cot and was dextrously winding him in his blanket. The youngster opened his big dewy eyes and chuckled at the sight of his side partner, David Kildare.

"That's all right, he's all for his Uncle Davie. Here, you take him Billy Bob and I'll help Milly roll up the twins. She can bring down Crimie while I bring them," and as he spoke he began a rapid swathing of the two limp little bodies from the white crib.

"But, David," gasped Milly, "it is impossible! They are not dressed—they will take cold—"

"The limousine is as hot as smoke—can't hurt 'em—plenty of blankets," with which he thrust the nodding young Crimie into her arms and lifted carefully the large bundle which contained both twins in his own. "Go on!" he commanded the paralyzed pair. "I will pull the door to with my free foot." And he actually forced the helpless parents of the four to embark with him on this most unusual of adventures.

When they were all seated in the car Milly looked at Billy Bob and burst into a gale of hysterical laughter. But Billy Bob's spunk was up by this time and he was all on the side of the resourceful David.

"Why not?" he asked brazenly. "Nine-tenths of the people in the world take the kids with them on all the frolics they get, why not we? They know it's all right, they haven't objected." And indeed there had not been a single chirp from any of the swathings. Big Brother was the only one awake and he was, as usual, entranced at the very sight of his Uncle David, who held the twins with practised skill on his knees.

"Now," he said jubilantly, "don't anybody warn Phoebe and I'm going to put them on the big divan with her presents. You'll see something crash, I'm thinking."

And it was worth it all when Phoebe did see her unexpected guests. Big Brother, divested of his blanket and clad in a pink Teddy Bear garment, sat bolt upright in the center of the divan, and Crimie lay snuggled against him with his thumb in his mouth and entranced eyes on the brilliant chandelier. The twins were nestled contentedly down in the corner together like two little kittens in a basket. Before them knelt Polly with one finger clasped by the one whose golden fuzz declared her to be Little Sister, while Caroline Darrah leaned over Big Brother who was fingering a string of sapphires that fell from her neck, with obvious delight. The rest of the party stood in an admiring and uproarious circle.

"Why," exclaimed Phoebe in blank astonishment, "why David Kildare!"

"You said you wanted your most intimate friends to-night, Phoebe, and here they are," he answered with pride in every tone of his voice.

"Oh, dearie," said Milly as she clasped Phoebe's hand, "we couldn't come without them—everything happened wrong. I know it's awful and I ought to take them right back now and—"

"David Kildare," said Phoebe as she divined in an instant the whole situation, "I love—I love you for doing it," and she sank on her knees by Caroline. Mistake let go the chain and bobbed forward to bestow a moist kiss on this, his friend of long standing; and as he chuckled and snuggled his little nose under her white chin Phoebe's echo was a sigh of such absolute rapture that the whole circle shouted with glee.

And late as it was dinner was announced three times before the host or the guests could be persuaded to think of food. And not until David's bed was made ready for the little guests did they begin to make their way into the dining-room. It was Andrew who finally insisted on carrying the babes away and tucking them in—only Caroline went with him with Little Sister in her arms and laid her gently on the pillow. She refused to lift her eyes to him for so much as a half-second until he drew her chair from the table for her; but then her shy glance was deep with innocent tenderness.

"Now," said the major as they settled laughingly into their places, "everybody's glass high to the silent guests!" And they drank his toast with enthusiasm.

"And," added David Kildare as he set down his glass, "they needn't be 'silent guests' unless it suits them. When they want to rough-house they know Uncle David's is the place to come to do it in."

"But let's hope they won't want to, David," laughed Milly, radiant with excitement.

"I tell you what let's do," said the enlivened Hobson from the coveted seat next Caroline Darrah Brown, "let's all give them hard sleeping suggestions, all at the same time.... Maybe they won't wake up for a week."

"Andrew," said Mrs. Buchanan as she looked with delight in his direction, "these are delicious things you and David have to eat. I am so glad you are well again and can enjoy them."

"Better go slow, Andy," called David from down the table. "Sure you don't need a raw egg? Phoebe has a couple up her sleeve here she can lend you. The major has persuaded her to take a bit of duck and some asparagus and a brandied peach and—"

"David Kildare," said Phoebe in a coolly dangerous voice, "I will get even with you for that if it takes me a week. This is the first thing I have had to eat since meal before last and I lost two and a half pounds last week. So I'll see that you—"

"Please, please, Phoebe, I'll be good! Just let me off this time. I'm giddy from looking at you!" And before a delighted audience David Kildare abased himself.

"Anyway, I've got news to relate," he hastened to offer by way of propitiation. "What do you think has happened to Andrew? I didn't promise not to tell," he drawled, prolonging the agony to its limit.

"Hurry, David, do!" exclaimed Phoebe with suspended fork. Caroline leaned forward eagerly, while Andrew began a laughing protest.

"It's only that Hetherton is going to put the great Mainwright on in Andy's new play in the fall—letter came to-day. Now, doesn't he shove his pen to some form—some?" he demanded as he beamed upon his friend with the greatest pride.

"Oh," said Caroline Darrah, "Mainwright is great enough to do it—almost!"

A pulse of joy shot through Andrew as her excited eyes gleamed into his. Of them all she and the major only had read his play and could congratulate him really. He had turned to her instantly when David had made his announcement, and she had answered him as instantly with her delight.

"And Cousin Andy," asked Polly who sat next to him, "will I have to cry at the third act? Please don't make me, it's so unbecoming. Why can't people do all the wonderful things they do in plays without being so mussy?"

"Child," jeered David Kildare as they all laughed, "don't you know a heart-throb when you're up against it—er—beg pardon—I mean to say that plays are sold at so much a sob. Seems to me you get wise very slowly." Polly pouted and young Boston who sat next her went red up to his hair.

"Better let me look over the contracts for you, Andrew," said Tom Cantrell with friendly interest in his shrewd eyes. If the material was all Tom had to offer his friends he did that with generosity and sincerity.

So until the roses fell into softly wilting heaps and the champagne broke in the glasses they sat and talked and laughed. Pitched battles raged up and down the table and there were perfect whirlpools of argument and protestation. Phoebe was her most brilliant self and her laughter rang out rich and joyous at the slightest provocation. The major delighted in a give and take encounter with her and their wit drew sparks from every direction.

"No, Major," she said as the girls rose with Mrs. Buchanan after the last toast had been drunk, "toast my wit, toast my courage, toast my loyalty, but my beauty—ah, aren't women learning not to use it as an asset?"

As she spoke she stretched out one white hand and bare rounded arm to him in entreaty. Phoebe was more lovely than she knew as she flung her challenge into the camp of her friends and they all felt the call in her dauntless dawn-gray eyes. Her unconsciousness amounted to a positive audacity.

"Phoebe," answered the major as he rose and stood beside her chair, "all those things stir at times our cosmic consciousness, but beauty is the bouquet to the woman-wine—and you can't help it!"

"How do you old fellows down at the bivouac really feel about this conduit business, Major," said Tom Cantrell as he moved his chair close around by the major's after the last swish and rustle had left the men alone in the dining-room for a few moments. "Just a question starts father fire-eating, so I thought I would ask you to put me next. It's up in the city council."

"Tom," answered the major as he blew a ring of smoke between himself and the shrewd eyes, "what on earth have a lot of broken-down old Confederate soldiers got to do with the management of the affairs of the city? You young men are to attend to that—give us a seat in the sun and our pipes—of peace."

"Oh, hang, Major! Look at the way you old fellows swung that gas contract in the council. You 'sit in the sun' all right but they all know that the bivouac pulls the plurality vote in this city when it chooses—and they jump when you speak. What are you going to do about this conduit?"

"Is it pressing? Not much being said about it."

"That's it—they want to make it a sneak in. Mayor Potts is pushing hard and we know he's just the judge's catspaw. Judge Taylor owns the city council since that last election and I believe he has bought the board of public works outright. The conduit is just a whisky ring scheme to hand out jobs before the judge's election. They have got to keep the criminal court fixed, Major, for this town is running wide open day and night—with prohibition voted six months ago. They've got to keep Taylor on the bench. What do you say?"

"Well," answered the major, beetling his brows over his keen eyes, "I suppose there is no doubt that Taylor is machine-made. He's the real blind tiger, and Potts is his striped kitten. I understand he 'lost' four-fifths of the 'open' indictments that the grand jury 'found' on their last sitting. The whisky men are going to sell as long as the criminal court protects them, of course. Let's let them cut that conduit deeper into the public mind before they begin on the streets."

"I'm looking for a nasty show-down for this town before long, Major, if there are men enough in it to call the machine."

"Tom," answered the major as he blew a last ring from his cigar, "a town is in a rotten fix when the criminal court is a mockery. Let's go interrupt the women's dimity talk."

And it was quite an hour later that Milly decided in an alarmed hurry that she and the babies must take their immediate departure. David maneuvered manfully to send them home in his car and to have Phoebe wait and let him take her home later—alone. But Phoebe insisted upon going with Milly and Billy Bob and the youngsters, and the reflection that the distance from the unfashionable quarter inhabited by the little family, back to Phoebe's down-town apartment was very short, depressed him to the point of defiance—almost.

However, he packed them all in and then as skilfully unpacked them at the door of their little home. He carried up the twins and even remained a moment to help in their unswathing before he descended to the waiting car and Phoebe. As he gave the word and swung in beside her, David Kildare heaved a deep and rapturous sigh. It was so much to the good to have her to himself for the short whirl through the desolated winter streets. It was a situation to be made the most of for it came very seldom.

He turned to speak to her in the half light and found her curled up in the corner with her soft cheek resting against the cushions. Her attitude was one of utter weariness, but she smiled without opening her eyes as she nestled closer against the rough leather.

"Tired, peach-bud?" he asked softly. One of the gifts of the high gods to David Kildare was a voice with a timbre suitable to the utmost tenderness, when the occasion required.

"Yes," answered Phoebe drowsily, "but so happy! It was all lovely, David." Her pink-palmed hand lay relaxed on her knee. David lifted it cautiously in both his strong warm ones and bent over it, his heart ahammer with trepidation. For as a general thing neither the environment nor his mood had much influence in the softening way on Phoebe's cool aloofness, but this once some sympathetic chord must have vibrated in her heart for she clasped her fingers around his and received the caress on their pink tips with opening eyes that smiled with a hint of tenderness.

"David," she said with a low laugh, "I'm too tired to be stern with you tonight, but I'll hold you responsible to-morrow—for everything. Here we are; do see if that red-headed devil is sitting on the door-step and tell him that there is—no—more copy—if I am a half-column short. And, David," she drew their clasped hands nearer and laid her free one over both his as the car drew up to the curb, "you—are—a—dear! Here's my key in my muff. To-morrow at five? I don't know—you will have to phone me. Good night, and thank you—dear. Yes—good night again!"



CHAPTER VI

THE BRIDGE OF DREAMS

"And then, Major, hell broke loose! Dave stood up and—" Tom Cantrell's eyes snapped and he slashed with his crop at the bright andirons that held the flamed logs.

"No, Major, it wasn't hell that broke up, it was something inside me. I felt it smash. For a moment I didn't grasp what Taylor was saying. It sounded so like the ravings of an insane phonograph that I was for being amused, but when I found that he was actually advising the mayor to refuse our committee the use of the hay market for a bivouac during the Confederate reunion, I just got up and took his speech and fed it to him raw. I saw red with a touch of purple and I didn't know I was on my feet and—"

"Major," interrupted Andrew Sevier, his eyes bright as those of Kildare and his quiet voice under perfect control, "Judge Taylor's exact words were that it seemed inadvisable to turn over property belonging to the city for the use of parties that could in no way be held responsible. He elucidated his excuse by saying that the Confederate soldiers were so old now that they were better off at home than parading the streets and inciting rebellious feelings in the children, throwing the city into confusion by their disorderly conduct and—"

"That's all he said, Major, that's all. I was on my feet then and all that needs to be said and done to him was said and done right there. I said it and Phoebe and Mrs. Peyton Kendrick did it as they walked right past him and out of the chamber of commerce hall of committees while he was trying to answer me. That broke up the meeting and he can't be found this morning. Cap has had Tom looking for him. I think when we find him we will have a few more words of remonstrance with him!" said Dave quietly. And he stood straight and tall before the major, and as he threw back his head he was most commanding. There was an expression of power in the face of David Kildare that the major had never seen there before.

He balanced his glasses in his hands a moment and looked keenly at the four young men lined up before him. They made a very forceful typification of the new order of things and were rather magnificent in their defense of the old. The major's voice tightened in his throat before he could say what they were waiting to hear.

"Boys," he said, and his old face lit with one of its rare smiles, "there were live sparks in these gray ashes—or we could not have bred you. I'm thinking you, yourselves, justify the existence of us old Johnnies and give us a clear title to live a little while longer, reunite once a year, sing the old songs, speechify, parade, bivouac a few more times together—and be as disorderly as we damn please, in this or any other city's hay market. Tom, telephone Cap to go straight to the bivouac headquarters and have them get ready to get out a special edition of the Gray Picket. If reports of this matter are sent out over the South without immediate and drastic refutations there will be a conflagration of thousands of old fire-eaters. They will never live through the strain. Andrew, take David up to your rooms, send for a stenographer and get together as much of that David Kildare speech as you can. Hobson, get hold of the stenographer of the city council and get his report of both Taylor's and Potts' speeches. Choke it out of him for I suspect they have both attempted to have them destroyed."

"Don't you see, Major, don't you see, he tried to make a play to the masses of protecting the city's property and the city's law and order, but he jumped into a hornet's nest? We managed to keep it all out of the morning paper but something is sure to creep in. Hadn't we better have a conference with the editors?" Tom was a solid quantity to be reckoned with in a stress that called for keenness of judgment rather than emotion.

"Ask them for a conference in the editorial rooms of the Gray Picket at two-thirty, Tom," answered the major. "In the meantime I'll draft an editorial for the special edition. We must come out with it in the morning at all odds."

In a few moments the echo of their steps over the polished floors and the ring of their voices had died away and the major was once more alone in his quiet library. He laid aside his books and drew his chair up to the table and began to make preparations for his editorial utterances. His rampant grizzled forelock stood straight up and his jaws were squared and grim. He paused and was in the act of calling Jeff to summon Phoebe over the wire when the curtains parted and she stood on the threshold. The major never failed to experience a glow of pride when Phoebe appeared before him suddenly. She was a very clear-eyed, alert, poised individuality, with the freshness of the early morning breezes about her.

"My dear," he said without any kind of preliminary greeting, "what do you make of the encounter between David Kildare and Julge Taylor? The boys have been here, but I want your account of it before I begin to take action in the matter."

"It was the most dastardly thing I ever heard, Major," said Phoebe quietly with a deep note in her voice. "For one moment I sat stunned. The long line of veterans as I saw them last year at the reunion, old and gray, limping some of them, but glory in their bright faces, some of them singing and laughing, came back to me. I thought my heart would burst at the insult to them and to—us, their children. But when David rose from his chair beside me I drew a long breath. I wish you could have heard him and seen him. He was stately and courteous—and he said it all. He voiced the love and the reverence that is in all our hearts for them. It was a very dignified forceful speech—and David made it!" Phoebe stood close against the table and for a moment veiled her tear-starred eyes from the major's keen glance.

"Phoebe," he said after a moment's silence, "I sometimes think the world lacks a standard by which to measure some of her vaster products. Perhaps you and I have just explored the heart of David Kildare so far. But a heart as fine as his isn't going to pump fool blood into any man's brain—eh?"

"Sometimes and about some things, you do me a great injustice, Major," answered Phoebe slowly, with a serious look into the keen eyes bent upon hers. "Of all the 'glad crowd', as David calls us, I am the only woman who comes directly in contact with the struggling, working, hand-to-hand fight of life, and I can't help letting it affect me in my judgment of—of us. I can't forget it when—when I amuse myself or let David amuse me. I seem to belong with them and not in the life he would make for me; yet you know I care—but if you are going to get out that extra edition you must get to work. I will sit here and get up my one o'clock notes for the imp, and if you need me, tell me so."

The major bestowed a slow quizzical smile upon her and took up his pen. For an hour they both wrote rapidly with now a quick question from the major and a concise answer from Phoebe, or a short debate over the wording of one of his sentences or paragraphs. The editorial minds of the graybeard and the girl were of much the same quality and they had written together for many years. The major had gone far in the molding of Phoebe's keen wit.

"Why, here you are, Phoebe," exclaimed Mrs. Buchanan as she hurried into the room just as Phoebe was finishing some of her last paragraphs, "Caroline and I have been telephoning everywhere for you. Do come and motor out to the Country Club with us for lunch. David and Andrew left some partridges there yesterday as they came from hunting on Old Harpeth, to be grilled for us to-day. You are going out there to play bridge with Mrs. Shelby's guest from Charleston at three, so please come with us now!"

She was all eagerness and she rested one plump, persuasive little hand on Phoebe's arm. To Mrs. Matilda, any time that Phoebe could be persuaded to frolic was one of undimmed joy.

"Now, Mrs. Matilda," said the major, as he smiled at her with the expression of delight that her presence always called forth even in times of extreme strenuosity, "do leave Phoebe with me—I'm really a very lorn old man."

"Why, are you really lonely dear? Then Caroline and I won't think of going. We'll stay right here to lunch with you. I will go tell her and you put up your books and papers and we will bring our sewing and chat with you and Phoebe. It will be lovely."

"Matilda," answered the major hastily with real alarm in his eyes, "I insist that you unroll my strings to your apron as far as the Country Club this once. I capitulate—no man in the world ever had more attention than I have. Why, Phoebe knows that—"

"Indeed, indeed, he really doesn't want us, Mrs. Matilda. Let's leave him to his Immortals. I will be ready in a half-hour if I can write fast here. Tell Caroline Darrah to hunt me up a fresh veil and phone Mammy Kitty not to expect me home until—until midnight. Now while you dress I will write."

"Very well," answered Mrs. Buchanan, "if you are sure you don't need us, Major," and with a caress on his rampant lock she hurried away.

"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 circumstances."

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 ambassador 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 muffled 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 breasts 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."



CHAPTER VII

STRANGE WILD THINGS

"Phoebe," said David Kildare as he seated himself on the corner of the table just across from where Phoebe sat in Major Buchanan's chair writing up her one o'clock notes, "what is there about me that makes people think they must make me judge of the criminal court of this county? Do I look job-hungry so as to notice it?"

"No," answered Phoebe as she folded her last sheet and laid down her pencil, "that is one thing no one can accuse you of, David. But your work down there has brought its results. They need you and are calling to you rather decisively I think. Any more delegations to-day?"

"Several. Susie Carrie Snow came with more Civic Improvements, rather short as to skirts and skimpy as to hats. They have fully decided that I am going to feed Mayor Potts out of my hand as Taylor does, and they want my influence to put up two more drinking fountains and three brass plates to mark the homes of the founders of the city, in return for their precious support. I promised; and they fell on my neck. That is, if you don't mind?" David edged a tentative inch or two nearer Phoebe who had rested her elbows on the table and her head on her hands as she looked up at him.

"I don't," she answered with a cruel smile. Then she asked, with an unconcerned glance over the top of his head, "Did you hear from the United Charities?"

"Well, yes, some," returned David with an open countenance, no suspicion of a trap in even the flicker of an eyelash. "They sent Mrs. Cherry. Blooming more every day isn't she, don't you think? She didn't fall on my neck worth a cent though I had braced myself for the shock. She managed to convey the fact that the whole organization is for me just the same. It's some pumpkins to be a candidate. I'm for all there is in it—if at all."

"You aren't hesitating, David?" asked Phoebe as she rose and stood straight and tall beside him, her eyes on a level with his as he sat on the table. "Ah, David, you can if you will—will you? I know what it means to you," and Phoebe laid one hand on his shoulder as she looked him straight in the eyes, "for it will be work, work and fight like mad to put out the fire. You will have to fight honest—and they won't. But, David"—a little catch in her voice betrayed her as she entreated.

"Yes, dear," answered David as he laid his hand over the one on his shoulder and pressed it closer, "I sent in the announcement of my candidacy to the afternoon papers just as I came around here to see the major—and you. The fight is on and it is going to be harder than you realize, for there is so little time. Are you for me, girl?"

"If I fall on your neck it will make seven this morning. Aren't you satisfied?" And Phoebe drew her hand away from his, allowing, however, a regretful squeeze as he let it go.

"No, six if you would do it," answered David disconsolately, "I told you that Mrs. Cherry failed me."

"Yes," answered Phoebe as she lowered her eyes, "I know you told me." David Kildare was keen of wit but it takes a most extraordinary wisdom to fathom such a woman as Phoebe chose to be—out of business hours.

"Isn't it time for you to go to dress for the parade?" she asked quickly with apparent anxiety.

"No," answered David as he filled his tooled leather case from the major's jar of choice Seven Oaks heart-leaf—he had seen Phoebe's white fingers roll it to the proper fineness just the night before, "I'm all ready! Did you think I was going to wear a lace collar and a sash? Everything is in order and I only have to be there at two to start them off. Everybody is placed on the platform and everybody is satisfied. The unveiling will be at three-thirty. You are going out with Mrs. Matilda early, aren't you? I want you to see me come prancing up at the head of the mounted police. Won't you be proud of me?"

"Sometimes, really, I think you are the missing twin to little Billy Bob," answered Phoebe with a laugh, but in an instant her face became grave again. "I'm worried about Caroline Darrah," she said softly. "I found her crying last night after I had finished work. I was staying here with Mrs. Matilda for the night and I went into her room for a moment on the chance that she would be awake. She said she had wakened from an ugly dream—but I know she dreads this presentation, and I don't blame her. It was lovely of her to want to give the statue and plucky of her to come and do it—but it's in every way trying for her."

"And isn't she the darling child?" answered David Kildare, a tender smile coming into his eyes. "Plucky! Well I should say so! To come dragging old Peters Brown's money-bags down here just as soon as he croaked, with the express intention of opening up and passing us all our wads back. Could anything as—as pathetic ever have happened before?"

"No," answered Phoebe. Then she said slowly, tentatively, as she looked into David's eyes that were warm with friendliness for the inherited friend who had preempted a place in both their hearts: "And the one awful thing for which she can offer no reparation she knows nothing of. I pray she never knows!"

"Yes, but it is about to do him to the death. I sometimes wake and find him sitting over his papers at daybreak with burned-out eyes and as pale as a white horse in a fog."

"But why does it have to be that way? Andrew isn't bitter and it isn't her fault—she wasn't even born then. She doesn't even know."

"I think it's mostly the money," said David slowly. "If she were poor it would be all right to forgive her and take her, but a man couldn't very well marry his father's blood money. And he's suffering God knows. Here I've been counting for years on his getting love-tied at home, and to think it should be like this! Sometimes I wish she did know—she offers herself to him like a little child; and thinks she is only doing reverence to the poet. It's driving him mad, but he won't cut and run."

"And yet," said Phoebe, "it would kill her to know. She is so sensitive and she has just begun to be herself with us. She has had so few friends and she isn't like we are. Why, Polly Farrell could manage such a situation better than Caroline Darrah. She is so elemental that she is positively—primitive. I am frightened about it sometimes—I can only trust Andrew." As Phoebe spoke her eyes grew sad and her lips quivered.

"Dear heart," said David as he took both her hands in his, "it's just one of those fatal things that no man can see through; he can just be thankful that there's a God to handle 'em." There were times when David Kildare's voice held more of tenderness than Phoebe was calculated to withstand without heroic effort. It behooved her to exert the utmost at this moment in order that she might hold her own.

"It's making me thin," she ventured as she shook a little shower of tears off her black lashes and again smilingly regained control of her own hands, but displaying a slender blue-veined wrist for his sympathetic inspection.

"Help!" exclaimed David, taking possession of the wrist and circling it with his thumb and forefinger. "Let me send for a crate of eggs and a case of the malt-milk! You poor starved peach-bud you, why won't you marry me and let me feed you? I'm going—"

"But you and the major both recommended 'lovers' troubles' to me, David," Phoebe hazarded.

"I only recommended my own special brand, remember," retorted David. "I won't have you ill! I'm going to see that you do as I say about your—"

"David Kildare," remarked the major from the door into the hall, "if you use that tone to the grand jury they will shut up every saloon in Hell's Half Acre. Hail the judge! My boy, my boy, I knew you'd line up when the time came—and the line!"

"Can I count on the full artillery of the Gray Picket brigade, Major?" demanded David with delight in his eyes as he returned the major's vigorous hand-shake.

"Hot shot, grape, canister and shrapnel, sir! Horses in lather, guns on the wheel and bayonets set. We'll bivouac in the camp of the enemy on the night of the election! We'll—"

"I don't believe you will want to lie down in the lair of the blind tiger as soon as that, Major," laugher Phoebe.

"Phoebe," answered the major, "politics makes strange bed-fellows. Mike O'Rourke, the boss of the democratic Irish, was around this morning hunting for David Kildare with the entire green grocer's vote in his pocket. He spoke of the boy as his own son."

"Good for old Mike!" laughed David. "It's not every boy who can boast an intimate friendship with his corner grocer from childhood up. It means a certain kind of—-self-denial in the matter of apples and other temptations. I used to go to the point of an occasional errand for him. Those were the days, Phoebe, when you sat on the front steps and played hollyhock dolls. Wish I'd kidnapped you then—when I could!"

"It would have saved us both lots of time—and trouble," answered Phoebe daringly from the protection of the major's presence.

"David, sir," said the major who had been busy settling himself in his chair and lighting his pipe during this exchange of pleasantries between David and Phoebe, to the like of which he was thoroughly accustomed, "this is going to be a fight to the ditches. I believe the whisky ring that controls this city to be the worst machine south of Mason and Dixon's. State-wide prohibition voted six months ago and every saloon in the town going full tilt night and day! They own the city council, the board of public works and the mayor, but none of that compares in seriousness to the debauching of our criminal courts. The grand jury is helpless if the judge dismisses every true bill they return—and Taylor does it every time if it is a whisky law indictment or pertaining thereto, and most of the bills are at least distantly pertaining. So there you have us bound and helpless—a disgrace to the nation, sir, and a reproach to good government!"

"Yes, Major, they've got us tied up some—but they forgot to gag us," answered David with a smile. "Your editorial in the Gray Picket, calling on me to run for criminal court judge, has been copied in every paper in the state and some of the large northern sheets. I am willing to make the try, Major. I've practised down there more than you'd think and it's rotten from the cellar steps to the lightning-rod. Big black buck is sent up for rioting down at Hein's Bucket of Blood dive—stand aside and forget about it—while some poor old kink is sent out to the pen for running into a flock of sleepy hens in the dark, 'unbenkownst' entirely. I defended six poor pick-ups last week myself, and I guess Taylor saw my blood was on the boil at the way he's running things. I'm ready to take a hand with him, but it will take some pretty busy doing around to beat the booze gang. Am I the man—do you feel sure?"

As David questioned the major his jaw squared itself determinedly. There was a rather forceful sort of man appearing under the nonchalant David whom his friends had known for years. A wild pride stirred in Phoebe to such an extent that she caught her breath while she waited for the major's reply.

"Yes, David," answered the major as he looked up at him with his keen old eagle eyes, "I think you are. You've had everything this nation can give you in the way of fighting blood from Cowpens to Bull Run, and when you speak in a body legislative your voice can be but an echo of the men who sired you, statesmen, most of them; so it is to you and your class we must look for clean government. It is your arraignment of the mayor and the judge on the hay-market question that has made every decent organization in the city look to you to begin the fight for a clean-up reorganization. They have all rallied to your support. Show your colors, boy, and, God willing, we will smash this machine to the last cog and get on a basis of honest government."

"Then here goes the hottest fight Davie knows how to put to them! And it's going to be an honest one. I'll go before the people of this city and promise them to enforce law and order, but I'll not buy a vote of a man of them. That I mean, and I hereby hand it out to you two representatives of the press. From now on 'not a dollar spent' is the word and I'm back of it to make it go." As he spoke, Kildare turned to Phoebe and looked at her as man to man with nothing in his voice but the cool note of determination. It was a cold dash for Phoebe but the reaction brought hot pride to her eyes.

"Yes, David," she answered, "you can and you will."

The determination in her voice matched that in his, and her eyes met his with a glance in which lay a new expression—not the old tolerant affection nor the guarded defense, but one with a quality of comradeship that steadied every nerve in his body. Some men get the like from some women—but not often.

"They will empty their pockets to fight you," the major continued thoughtfully. "But there is a deal of latent honesty in human nature, after all, that will answer the right appeal by the right man. A man calls a man; and ask a crook to come in on the straight proposition, two to one he'll step over the line before he stops himself. This is an independent candidacy—let's ask them all in, without reference to age, color or 'previous condition of servitude'—in the broadest sense."

"Yes, and with the other construction, too, perhaps. We'll ask in the darks—but they won't come. They'll vote with the jug crowd every time. No nig votes for Dave without the dollar and the small bottle. How many do they poll, anyway, do you suppose?"

"Less than a thousand I think. Not overwhelming! But in an independent race it might hold the balance of power. We'll devise means to appeal to them; we must keep up all the fences, you see. A man who doesn't see to his fences is a mighty poor proposition as a farmer and—"

"Hicks was here this morning, Major dear, to talk about that very thing," said Mrs. Matilda as she came in just in time to catch the last of the major's remark. "He says that ten hogs got through into the north pasture and rooted up acres of grass and if you don't get the new posts to repair the fence he can't answer for the damage done. He told you about it more than a month ago and—"

"David Kildare," said the major with an enigmatical smile, "what you need to see you through life is a wife. When a man mounts a high-horse aeroplane and goes sailing off, dimity is the best possible ballast. Consider the matter I beg of you—don't be obdurate."

"Why, of course David is going to marry some day," answered Mrs. Matilda as she beamed upon them. "A woman gets along nicely unmarried but it is cruel to a man. Major, Jeff is waiting to help you into your uniform. Do be careful, for it is mended to the last stitch now and I don't see how it is going to hold together many more times."

"Gray uniforms have held together a long time, Matilda," answered the major softly as he took his departure.

"And we must all hurry and have lunch," said Mrs. Buchanan. "Phoebe and I want to be there in plenty of time to see the parade arrive. It always gives me a thrill to see the major ride up at the head of his company. I've never got over it all these years."

"How 'bout that, Phoebe?" asked David, once more his daring insistent self. "Seems it wasn't so young in me after all to think you might thrill a few glads to see me come prancing up. Now, will you be good?"

And it was only a little over two hours later that the parade moved on its way from the public square to the park. A goodly show they made and an interesting one, the grizzled old war-dogs in their faded uniforms with faces aglow under their tattered caps. They trudged along under their ragged banners in hearty good will, with now a limp and now a halt and all of them entirely out of step with the enthusiastic young band in its natty uniform. They called to one another, chaffed the mounted officers, sang when the spirit moved them and acted in every way like boys who were off on the great lark of their lives.

All along the line of march there were crowds to see them and cheer them, with here and there a white-haired woman who waved her handkerchief and smiled at them through a rain of tears.

The major rode at the head of a small and straggling division of cavalry whose men ambled along and guyed one another about the management of their green livery horses who were inclined to bunch and go wild with the music.

A few pieces of heavy artillery lumbered by next, and just behind them came three huge motor-cars packed and jammed with the old fellows who were too feeble to keep up with the procession. They were most of them from the Soldiers' Home and in spite of empty coat sleeves and crutches they bobbed up and down and waved their caps with enthusiasm as cheer after cheer rose whenever they came into sight.

Andrew Sevier stood at his study window and watched them go past, marching to the conflicting tunes of The Bonnie Blue Flag, played by the head band, and Dixie by the following one. It was great to see them again after five years; and in such spirits! He felt a cheer rise to his lips and he wanted to open the window and give lusty vent to it—but a keen pain caught it in his throat.

Always before he had ridden with David at the head of the division of the Confederacy's Sons, but to-day he stood behind the window and watched them go past him! There were men in those ranks who had slept in the ditches with his father, and to whom he had felt that his presence would be a reminder of an exceeding bitterness. The had quietly fought the acceptance of the statue offered by the daughter of Peters Brown from the beginning, but the granddaughter of General Darrah, who had led them at Chickamauga, must needs command their acceptance of a memorial to him and her mother.

And they would all do her honor after the unveiling. Andrew could almost see old General Clopton stand with bared head and feel the thrill with which the audience would listen to what would be a tender tribute to the war women. A wave of passionate joy swelled up in his heart—he wanted them to cheer her and love her and adopt her! It was her baptism into her heritage! And he gloried in it.

Then across his joy came a curious stifling depression—he found himself listening as if some one had called him, called for help. The music was dying away in the distance and the cheers became fainter and fainter until their echo seemed almost a sob. Before he had time to realize what he did he descended the stair, crossed the street and let himself into the Buchanan house.

He stood just within the library door and listened again. A profound stillness seemed to beat through the deserted rooms—then he saw her! She sat with her arms outspread across the table and her head bent upon a pile of papers. She was tensely still as if waiting for something to sound around her.

"Caroline!" It was the first time he had called her by her name and though the others had done it from the first, she had never seemed to notice his more formal address. It was beyond him to keep the tenderness that swept through every nerve out of his voice entirely.

"Yes," she answered as she raised her head and looked at him, her eyes shining dark in her white face, "I know I'm a coward—did you come back to make me go? I thought they might not miss me until it was too late to come for me. I didn't think—I—could stand it—please—please!"

"You needn't go at all, dear," he said as he took the cold hands in his and unclasped the wrung fingers. "Why didn't you tell them? They wouldn't have insisted on your going."

"I—I couldn't! I just could not say what I felt to—to—them. I wanted to come—the statue suggested itself—for her. I ought to have given it and gone back—back to my own life. I don't belong—there is something between them all and me. They love me and try to make me forget it and—"

"But, don't you see, child, that's just it? They love you so they hold you against all the other life you have had before. We're a strong love people down here—we claim our own!" A note in his voice brought Andrew to his senses. He let her hands slip from his and went around the table and sat down opposite to her. "And so you ran away and hid?" He smiled at her reassuringly.

"Yes. I knew I ought not to—then I heard the music and I couldn't look or listen. I—why, where did you come from? I thought you were in the parade with David. I felt—if you knew you would understand. I wished that I had asked you—had told you that I couldn't go. Did you come back for me?"

"No," answered Andrew with a prayer in his heart for words to cover facts from the clear eyes fixed on his—clear, comforted young eyes that looked right down to the rock bed of his soul. "You see the old boys rather upset me, too. I have been away so long—and so many of them are missing. I'm just a coward, too—'birds of a feather'—take me under your wing, will you?"

"I believe one of those 'strange wild things' has been flying around in the atmosphere and has taken possession of us again," said Caroline Darrah slowly, never taking her eyes from his. "I don't know why I know, but I do, that you came to comfort me. I was thinking about you and wishing I could tell you. Now in just this minute you've made me see that I have a right to all of you. I'm never going to be unhappy about it any more. After this I'm going to belong as hard as ever I can."

Something crashed in every vein in Andrew Sevier's body, lilted in his heart, beat in his throat and sparkled in his eyes. He sprang to his feet and held out his hand to her.

"Then come on and be adopted," he said. "I shall order the electric, and you get into your hat and coat. We can skirt the park and come in at the side of the Temple back of the platform so that you can slip into place before one-half of the sky-rockets of oratory have been exploded. Will you come?"

"Will you stay with me—right by me?" she asked, timidity and courage at war in her voice.

"Yes," he answered slowly, "I'll stay by you as long as you want me—if I can."

"And that," said Caroline Darrah Brown as she turned at the door and looked straight at him with a heavenly blush mounting in her cheeks, the tenderness of the ages curling her lips and the innocence of all of six years in her eyes, "will be always!" With which she disappeared instantly beyond the rose damask hangings.

And so when the ceremonies in the park were over and Caroline stood to clasp hands with each of the clamorous gray squad, Andrew Sevier waited just behind her and he met one after another of the sharp glances shot at him from under grizzled brows with a dignity that quieted even the grimmest old fire-eater.

And there are strange wild things that take hold on the lives of men—vital forces against which one can but beat helpless wings of mortal spirit.



CHAPTER VIII

THE SPELL AND ITS WEAVING

And after the confusion, the distress and the joy of the afternoon out in the park when she and her gift had been accepted and acclaimed, there came days full of deep and perfect peace to Caroline Darrah Brown.

Long, strenuously delightful mornings she spent with Tempie in the excitements of completing her most comprehensive culinary education and the amount of badinage she exchanged upon the subject with David Kildare occupied many of his unemployed minutes. His demands for the most intricate and soul-trying concoctions she took a perfect joy in meeting and his enthusiasm stimulated her to the attempting of the most difficult feats.

His campaign was on with full force and his days were busy ones, but he managed to drop into the kitchen at any time when he deemed it at all certain that he would find her there and was always fully rewarded.

He often found Andrew Sevier in the library in consultation with the major over the management of the delicate points in the campaign and occasionally brought him into Tempie's kingdom with him. And Caroline laughed and blushed and explained it all to them with the most beautiful solicitude, Tempie looking on positively bridling with pride.

And there were other mornings when she took her sewing and crept in the library to work, while the major and Andrew held consultation over the affairs of the present or absent David.

The whisky ring had purchased one of the morning papers, which had hitherto borne a reputation for extreme conservatism, and had it appear each morning with brilliant, carefully modulated arguments for the machine; doctored statistics and brought allegations impossible to be investigated in so short a time.

And all of every afternoon and evening Andrew Sevier sat at an editorial desk down at the office of the reform journal and pumped hot shot through their flimsy though plausible arguments. His blood was up and his pen more than a match for any in the state, so he often sat most of the night writing, reviewing and meeting issue after issue. The editor-in-chief, whose heart was in making a success of the campaign by which his paper would easily become the leading morning paper, gave him full rein, aided and abetted him by his wide knowledge of all the conditions and pointed out with unerring judgment the sore spots on the hide of the enemy at which to send the gadfly of investigation.

So each day while Andrew and the major went carefully over possibilities to be developed by and against the enemy, Caroline listened with absorbed interest. Now and then she would ask a question which delighted them both with its ingenuousness, but for the most part she was busily silent.

And in the exquisiteness of her innocence she was weaving the spell of the centuries with the stitches in her long seams. There are yet left in the world a few of the elemental women whose natures are what they were originally instituted and Caroline Darrah was unfolding her predestinated self as naturally as a flower unfolds in the warmth of the spring sunshine. The cooking for David and Andrew, the sewing for busy Phoebe, the tactfully daughterly attentions to the major and Mrs. Matilda were all avenues for the outpouring of the maturing woman within, and powerless in his enchantment, Andrew Sevier was swept along on the tide of her tenderness.