CHAPTER IV
ACCORDING TO SOLOMON
"And it was by this very pattern, Caroline, I made the dozen I sent MaryCaroline for you. See the little slips fold over and hold up thepetticoats," and Mrs. Buchanan held up a tiny garment for Caroline Darrahto admire. They sat by the sunny window in her living-room and both weresewing on dainty cambric and lace. Caroline Darrah's head bent over thepiece of ruffling in her hand with flower-like grace and the long linesfrom her throat suggested decidedly a very lovely Preraphaelite angel.Her needle moved slowly and unaccustomedly but she had the air of doingthe hemming bravely if fearfully.
"Isn't it darling?" she said as she raised her head for a half-second,then immediately dropped her eyes and went on printing her stitchescarefully. "What else was in that box, I feel I need to know?" she asked.
"Let me see! The dozen little shirts, they were made out of some ofmy own trousseau things because of a scarcity of linen in those days,and two little embroidered caps and a blue cashmere sack and a set ofcrocheted socks and--and the major sent brandy, he always does. Ihave the letter she wrote me about it all. And to think she had toleave--" Mrs. Matilda's eyes misted as she paused to thread her needle.
"She didn't realize--that, and think of what she felt when she opened thebox," said Caroline as she raised her eyes that smiled through athreatened shower. "Oh, I mustn't let the tears fall on Little Sister'sruffle!" she added quickly as she took up her work.
"That reminds me of an accident to the shirts I made for Phoebe. Theywere being bleached in the sun when a calf took a fancy to them andchewed two of them entirely up before we discovered him. I was soprovoked, for I had no more linen as fine as I wanted."
"Of course the calf ate up my shirts," came in Phoebe's laughing voicefrom the doorway where she had been standing unobserved for severalminutes, watching Mrs. Buchanan and Caroline. "Something is alwayschewing at my affairs but Mrs. Matilda shoos them away for me sometimesstill--even _calves_ when it is positively necessary. How veryindustrious you do look! At times even I sigh for a needle, though Iwouldn't know what to do with it. There seems to be something in awoman's soul that nothing but a needle satisfies; morbid craving, that!"
"Phoebe, I want to make something for you. I feel I must as soon as thesepetticoats for Little Sister are done. What shall it be?" and CarolineDarrah beamed upon Phoebe with the warmest of inter-woman glances. Theaffection for Phoebe which had possessed the heart of Caroline Darrah haddeepened daily and to its demands, Phoebe, for her, had been mostunusually responsive.
"At your present rate of stitching I will have a year or two to decide,beautiful," she answered as she settled down on the broad window-seatnear them. "David Kildare and I have come to lunch, Mrs. Matilda, and themajor has sent him over for Andrew. I hope he brings him, but I doubt it.I have told Tempie and she says she is glad to have us," she added asMrs. Buchanan turned and looked in the direction of the kitchen regions.They all smiled, for the understanding that existed between Phoebe andTempie was the subject of continual jest.
"Have you seen the babies to-day?" asked Caroline as she drew a long newthread through the needle. "Isn't it lovely the way people are makingthem presents? Mr. Capers says the men at the mills are going to givethem each a thousand dollar mill bond."
"Well, I doubt seriously if they will live to use the bonds if some onedoes not stop David from trying experiments with them," answered Phoebewith a laugh. "After dinner last night he came in with two littlesleeping hammock machines which he insisted in putting up on the wall forthem. If the pulley catches you have to stand on a chair to extract them;and if it slips, down they come. Milly was so grateful and let him playwith them for an hour; she's a sweet soul."
"Has he sent any more food?" asked Mrs. Matilda as they all laughed.
"Two more cases of a new kind he saw advertised in a magazine. Somebodymust tell him that--Milly is equal to the situation. Billy Bob _won't_;and so the cases continue to arrive. The pantry is crowded with them andthey have sent a lot to the Day Nursery," and Phoebe slipped from thewindow-seat down on to the rug at Caroline's feet in a perfect ecstasyof mirth.
"But he is just the dearest boy, Phoebe," said Caroline Darrah as shepaused in her sewing to caress the sleek, black, braided head tipped backagainst her knee. There was the shadow of reproach in her voice as shesmiled down into the gray eyes upturned to hers.
"Yes," answered Phoebe, instantly on the defensive, "he is just exactlythat, Caroline Darrah Brown--and he doesn't seem to be able to get overit. I'm afraid it's chronic with him."
"He's young yet," Mrs. Buchanan remarked as she clipped a thread with herbright scissors.
"No," said Phoebe slowly, "he is six years older than I am and that makeshim thirty-two. I have earned my living for ten years and a man fiveyears younger who sits at a desk next to mine at the office is takingcare of his mother and educating two younger brothers on a salary that isless than mine--but _David_ is a dear! Did you see the little coats Pollysent the babies?" she asked quickly to close the subject and to cover anote of pain she had discovered in her own voice.
"They were lovely," answered Mrs. Buchanan. "Now let me show you how toroll and whip your ruffle, Caroline dear," she added as she bent overCaroline's completed hem. In a moment they were both immersed in ascientific discussion of under-and-over stitch.
Phoebe clasped her knees in her arms and gazed into the fire. Her owninvoluntary summing up of David Kildare had struck into her innerconsciousness like a blow. And Phoebe could not have explained to evenherself what it was in her that demanded the hewer of wood and drawer ofwater in a man--in David. Decidedly Phoebe's demands were for elementalsand she questioned Kildare's right to his leisurely life based on theJeffersonian ideals of his forefathers.
And while they sewed and chatted the hour away, over in the library themajor and David were in interested conclave.
"Now, I leave it to you, Major, if he isn't just the limit," said Davidon his return from his mission for the purpose of drawing Andrew from hislair. "I couldn't budge him. He is writing away like all possessed with atwo-apple-and-a-cracker lunch on the table beside him. He seems to enjoya death-starve."
"David," said the major as he laid aside the book he had been buried inand began to polish his glasses, "you make no allowances whatever for theartistic temperament. When a man is making connection with his solarplexus he doesn't consider the consumption of food of paramountimportance. Now in this treatise of Aristotle--"
"Well, anyway, I've made up my mind to fix up something between him andCaroline Darrah. He's got to get a heart interest of his own and letmine alone. The child is daffy about his poetry and moons at him all thetime out of the corners of her eyes, dandy eyes at that; but the oldink-swiller acts as if she wasn't there at all. What'll I do to make himjust see her? Just see her--_see her_--that'll be enough!"
"David," said the major quietly as he looked into the fire with hisshaggy brows bent over his keen eyes, "the combination of a man heart anda woman heart makes a dangerous explosive at the best, but here arethings that make it fatal. The one you are planning would be deadly."
"Why, why in the world shouldn't I touch them off? Perfectly nice girl,all right man and--"
"Boy, have you forgotten that I told you of the night Andrew Sevier'sfather killed himself; yes, that he had sat the night through at thepoker table with Peters Brown? Brown offered some restoration compromiseto the widow but she refused--you know the struggle that she made andthat it killed her. We both know the grit it took for Andrew to chiselhimself into what he is. The first afternoon he met the girl in here,right by this table, for an instant I was frightened--only _she_ didn'tknow, thank God! The Almighty gardens His women-things well and fends offinfluences that shrivel; it behooves men to do the same."
"So that's it," exclaimed Kildare, serious in his dismay. "Of course Iremember it, but I had forgotten to connect up the circumstances. It's amine all right, Major--and the poor little girl! She reads his poetrywith Phoebe and to me
and she admires him and is deferential and--thatgirl--the sweetest thing that ever happened! I don't know whether to goover and smash him or to cry on his collar."
"Dave," answered the major as he folded his hands and looked off acrossthe housetops glowing in the winter sun, "some snarls in our life-linesonly the Almighty can unravel; He just depends on us to keep hands off.Andrew is a fine product of disastrous circumstances. A man who can builda bridge, tunnel a mountain and then sit down by a construction camp-fireat night and write a poem and a play, must cut deep lines in life andhe'll not cut them in a woman's heart--if he can help it."
"And she must never know, Major, _never_," said David with distress inhis happy eyes; "we must see to that. It ought to be easy to keep. It wasso long ago that nobody remembers it. But wait--that is what Mrs. CherryLawrence meant when she said to Phoebe in Caroline's presence that it wasjust as well under the circumstances that the committee had not askedAndrew to write the poem for the unveiling of the statue. I wondered atthe time why Phoebe dealt her such a knock-out glance that even Istaggered. And she's given her cold-storage attentions ever since. Mrs.Cherry rather fancies Andy, I gather. Would she dare, do you think?"
"Women," remarked the major dryly, "when man-stalking make very cruelenemies for the weaker of their kind. Let's be thankful that pursuit is aperverted instinct in them that happens seldom. We can trust much toPhoebe. The Almighty puts the instinct for mother guarding all younger orlesser women into the heart of superbly sexed women like Phoebe Donelson,and with her aroused we may be able to keep it from the child."
"Ah, but it is sad, Major," said David in a low voice deeply moved withemotion. "Sad for her who does not know--and for him who does."
"And it was farther reaching than that, Dave," answered the major slowly,and the hand that held the dying pipe trembled against the table. "AndrewSevier was a loss to us all at the time and to you for whom we builded.The youngest and strongest and best of us had been mowed down before afour-years' rain of bullets and there were few enough of us left to buildagain. And of us all he had the most constructive power. With the samebuoyant courage that he had led our regiment in battle did he lead theremnant of us in reconstructing our lives. He was gay and optimistic,laughed at bitterness and worked with infectious spirits and superbforce. We all depended on him and followed him keenly. We loved him andlet ourselves be laughed into his schemes. It was his high spirits andtemperament that led to his gaming and tragedy. Nearly thirty years he'sbeen dead, the happy Andrew. This boy's like him, very like him."
"I see it--I see it," answered David slowly, "and all of that glad heartwas bred in Andy, Major, and it's there under his sadness. Heavens,haven't I seen it in the hunting field as he landed over six stiff barson a fast horse? It's in some of his writing and sometimes it flashes inhis eyes when he is excited. I've seen it there lately more often thanever before. God, Major, last night his eyes fairly danced when I plaguedCaroline into asking him to whom he wrote that serenade which I have setto music and sing for her so often. It hurts me all over--it makesme weak--"
"It's hunger, David, lunch is almost ready," said Phoebe who had comeinto the room in time to catch his last words. "Why, where is Andrew?Wouldn't he come?"
"No," answered Kildare quickly, covering his emotion with a laugh as herefused to meet Caroline Darrah's eyes which wistfully asked the samequestion that Phoebe had voiced, "he is writing a poem--about---about,"his eyes roamed the room wildly for he had got into it, and his stock oforiginal poem-subjects was very short. Finally his music lore yieldeda point, "It's about a girl drinking--only with her eyes youunderstand--and--"
"He could save himself that trouble," laughed Phoebe, "for somebody hasalready 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'mhungry and I see Jeff with a tray. Mrs. Matilda, please put CarolineDarrah by me. She's attentive and Phoebe just diets--me."
And while they laughed and chatted and feasted the hour away, across thestreet Andrew sat with his eyes looking over on to the major's red roofwhich was shrouded in a mist of yesterdays through which he was watchinga slender boy toil his way. When he was eight he had carried a long routeof the daily paper and he could feel now the chill dark air out intowhich he had slipped as his mother stood at the door and watched him downthe street with sad and hungry eyes, the gaunt mother who had neversmiled. He had fought and punched and scuffled in the dawn for his bundleof papers; and he had fought and scuffled for all he had got of life formany years. But a result had come--and it was rich. How he had managed aneducation he could hardly see himself; only the major had helped. Notmuch, but just enough to make it possible. And David had always stood by.
Kildare's fortune had come from some almost forgotten lumber lands thathis father had failed to heave into the Confederate maelstrom. Perhaps ithad come a little soon for the very best upbuilding of the character ofDavid Kildare, but he had stood shoulder to shoulder with them all in thefight for the establishment of the new order of things and his generositywith himself and his wealth had been superb. The delight with which hemade a gift of himself to any cause whatsoever, rather tended to blightthe prospects of what might have been a brilliant career at law. With hisbacking Hobson Capers had opened the cotton mills on a margin of nocapital and much grit. Then Tom Cantrell had begun stock manipulationson a few blocks of gas and water, which his mother and Andrew had put upthe money to buy--and nerve.
It was good to think of them all now in the perspective of the then. Werethere any people on earth who could swing the pendulum like those scionsof the wilderness cavaliers and do it with such dignity? He was tastingan aftermath and he found it sweet--only the bitterness that had killedhis mother before he was ten. And across the street sat the daughter ofthe man who had pressed the cup to her lips--with her father's millionsand her mother's purple eyes.
He dropped his hand on his manuscript and began to write feverishly. Thenin a moment he paused. The Panama campfire, beside which he had writtenhis first play, that was running in New York now, rose in a vision. Wasit any wonder that the managers had jumped at the chance to produce thefirst drama from the country's newly acquired jungle? The lines had beenrife with the struggle and intrigue of the great canal cutting. It reallywas a ripping play he told himself with a smile--and this other? Helooked at it a moment in a detached way. This other throbbed.
He gathered the papers together in his hand and walked to the window. Thesun was now aslant through the trees. It was late and they must have allgone their ways from across the street; only the major would be alone andappreciative. Andrew smiled quizzically as he regarded the pages in hishand--but it was all so to the good to read the stuff to the old fellowwith his Immortals ranged round!
"Great company that," he mused to himself as he let himself out of theapartment. And as he walked slowly across the street and into theBuchanan house, Fate took up the hand of Andrew Sevier and ranged histrumps for a new game.
In the moment he parted the curtains and stepped into the library the olddame played a small signal, for there, in the major's wide chair, satCaroline Darrah Brown with her head bent over a large volume spread openupon 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 seeabout--about grinding something up to feed to--to--something orsheep--or--," she paused in distress as if it were of the utmostimportance that she should inform him of the major's absence.
"Silo for the cows," he prompted in a practical voice. It was well apractical remark fitted the occasion for the line from old Ben Jonson,which David had only a few hours ago accused him of plagiarizing, rose tothe surface of his mind. Such deep wells of eyes he had never looked intoin all his life before, and they were as ever, filled to the brim withreverence, even awe of him. It was a heady draught he quaffed before shelooked down and answered hi
s laconic remark.
"Yes," she said, "that was it. And Mrs. Matilda and Phoebe motored outwith him and David went on his horse. I am making calls, only I didn't. Istopped to--" and she glanced down with wild confusion, for the bookspread out before her was the major's old family Bible, and the type wastoo 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 myselfsometimes, when I'm in a certain mood."
"It was for David--he wanted to read something to Phoebe," she answeredin ravishing confusion, and pointed to the open page.
Thus Andrew Sevier was forced by old Fate to come near her and bend withher over the book. The tip of her exquisite finger ran along the linesthat have figured in the woman question for many an age.
"'For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safelytrust in her'"--and so on down the page she led him.
"And that was what the trouble was about," she said when they had readthe last word in the last line. She raised her eyes to his with laughterin their depths. "It was a very dreadful battle and Phoebe won. The majorfound this for him to read to her and she said she did not intend to gointo the real estate business for her husband or to rise while it was yetnight to give him his breakfast. Aren't they funny, _funny_?" and shefairly rippled with delight at her recollection of the vanquishing of theintrepid David.
"The standards for a wife were a bit strenuous in those days," heanswered, smiling down on her. "I'm afraid Dave will have trouble findingone on those terms. And yet--" he paused and there was a touch of mockeryin his tone.
"I think that a woman could be very, very happy fulfilling every one ofthose conditions if she were woman enough," answered Caroline DarrahBrown, looking straight into his eyes with her beautiful, disconcerting,dangerous young seriousness.
Andrew picked up his manuscript with the mental attitude of catching at astraw.
"Oh," she said quickly, "you were going to read to the major, weren'tyou?" And the entreaty in her eyes was as young as her seriousness; asyoung as that of a very little girl begging for a wonder tale. The heartof a man may be of stone but even flint flies a spark.
Andrew Sevier flushed under his pallor and ruffled his pages back to aserenade he had written, with which the star for whom the play was beingmade expected to exploit a deep-timbred voice in a recitativevocalization. And while he read it to her slowly, Fate finessed on thethird round.
And so the major found them an hour or more later, he standing in thefailing light turning the pages and she looking up at him, listening,with her cheek upon her interlaced fingers and her elbows resting on theold book. The old gentleman stood at the door a long time before heinterrupted them and after Andrew had gone down to put Caroline into hermotorcar, which had been waiting for hours, he lingered at the windowlooking out into the dusk.
"'For love is as strong as death,'" he quoted to himself as he turned tothe table and slowly closed the book and returned it to its place. "'Andmany 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 oldpapers and a tattered volume of uncertain age, the major was interruptedby Mrs. Matilda as she came in from her drive. She was a vision in hersoft gray reception gown, and her gray hat, with its white velvet rose,was tipped over her face at an angle that denoted the spirit ofadventure.
"I'm so glad to get back, Major," she said as she stood and regarded himwith affection beaming in her bright eyes. "Sometimes I hurry home to besure you are safe here. I don't see you as much as I do out at Seven Oaksand I'm lonely going places away from you."
"Don't you know it isn't the style any longer for a woman to carry herhusband in her pocket, Matilda," he answered. "What would Mrs. CherryLawrence 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. AndHobson was with her; they had been out motoring on the River Road. Doyou suppose--it looks as if perhaps--?"
"My dear Matilda," answered the major, "I never give or take a tip on alove race. The Almighty endows women with inscrutable eyes and the smileof the Sphynx for purposes of self-preservation, I take it, so a manwastes time trying to solve a woman-riddle. However, Hobson Capers isrunning a risk of losing much valuable time is the guess I chance on theissue in question."
"And Peyton Kendrick and that nice Yankee boy and--"
"All bunched, all bunched at the second post! There's a dark horserunning and he doesn't know it himself. God help him!" he added under hisbreath as she turned to speak to Tempie.
"If you don't want her to marry Hobson whom do you choose?" she saidreturning to the subject. "I wish--I wish--but of course it isimpossible, and I'm glad, as it is, that Andrew is indifferent."
"Yes," answered the major, "and you'll find that indifference is a hallmark stamped on most modern emotions."
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