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.
One day she had picked up his heavy gray gloves from the table and tightened the buttons, listening all the while to an absorbing account of a counter-move he was planning for the next day's editorial, and then had been delightfully confused and distressed by his gratitude. The little scene had sent him to the bare fields to fight for hours.
The major fairly gloried in her knowledge of the arrangement of his library and delighted her with quick requests for his books during the most absorbing moments of their discussions.
And again the observation that the spell was not being woven for him alone went far to the undoing of Andrew Sevier. Her interest in the affairs of David Kildare disturbed him not at all, but her sympathetic and absorbed attention to a bad-luck tale with which Hobson Capers reported to the major one morning when she sat with them, had sent him home in a most depressed state of mind, and the picture of her troubled eyes raised to Hobson's as he recounted the details of the wrenched shoulder of his favorite horse, followed him through the day with tormenting displeasure, though the offer of a cut-glass bottle full of a delightfully scented lotion for the amelioration of the suffering animal brought the semblance of a grin. And Hob, the brute, had gone away with it in his pocket, accompanied by explicit directions as to its application by means of a soft bit of flannel the size of a pocket handkerchief, also provided. Andrew Sevier had a vision of the bottle and the rag being installed in the most holy of holies in the apartments of Hobson Capers and experienced a sweeping smashing rage thereat.
A day or two later a scene he had witnessed in the kitchen, in which Caroline and Tempie hung anxiously over a simmering pan of lemon juice, sugar, rye whisky and peppermint which, when it arrived at the proper sirupy condition, was to be administered as a soothing potion to the hoarse throat of Peyton Kendrick, who perched croaking on a chair close by, drove him to seeking comfort from Phoebe much to her apparent amusement but secret perturbation, for Phoebe both comprehended and feared the situation.
And thus there is also much of the primitive left in the heart of the modern man on which the elemental forces work.
Then the day for the election came nearer and nearer by what seemed fleeting hours. The whole city was thoroughly aroused and fighting hard under one banner or the other. As the last week drew to a close and left only the few days of the following week for a round-up of the forces before the Wednesday election, the men all became absorbed to the point of oblivion to everything save the speculation as to how the race would go. But it was not in the nature of David Kildare to be held against the grindstone of serious endeavor too long at a time, and in the midst of the turmoil he proceeded to plot for a brief and exciting relaxation for himself and his strenuous friends, and he chose Saturday for the accomplishment thereof.
The morning dawned in a fluff of gray fog that hung low down over the avenue, though the sun showed signs of soon piercing the gloom. The clash and clatter of the city was fast approaching a noonday roar but still Phoebe slept in the room which adjoined that of Caroline Darrah Brown.
Caroline cautiously opened the door and stole in gently to the side of the bed, then paused and looked down with delight. Phoebe, asleep, was a thing calculated to bring delight to any beholder. The brilliant, casual, insouciant, worldly Phoebe had gone out on a dream-hunt and a delicious curled-up flower lay in her place, with turned lashes dipping against soft tinted cheeks. Her head rested on one bare white arm and one hand curled under her daintily molded chin. Caroline caught her breath—this was a pathetic Phoebe when one thought of the most times Phoebe, cool, self-reliant—perforce!
"The darling," she whispered to herself as she slipped to her knees by the low bed, "I can't bear to wake her, but I'm afraid not to; it's an hour late already. Dear!" She slipped her arm under the glossy head and pressed a little kiss on the dimple over the northeast corner of the warm lips.
Phoebe's gray eyes smiled themselves open for a fraction of a second, then she nestled to Caroline's shoulder and calmly drifted off again in pursuit of the dream.
"Dearie," Caroline begged, "it's after ten!"
Phoebe sighed, nestled closer and drifted again. Caroline settled herself against the pillows and pressed her cheek against the thick black braid that curled across the sleeper's bare shoulder. She was incapable of another combat with the sleep-god and decided to wait. Besides, the awake Phoebe was busy—and elusive—not given to bestowing or receiving aught save the most fleeting caresses. So for a few moments Caroline Darrah's arms held her hungrily.
"Be-autiful," came in a sleepy voice from against her arm, "is the water cold?"
"Awful this morning," answered Caroline tightening her arms. "Just a little hot, Phoebe, please! I'll tell Annette."
"No," answered Phoebe, as with a whirl of the covers she sat up and took her knees into her embrace. "No, sweetie, in I go! The colder the better after I'm in. How grand and Burne-Jonesy you look in that linen pinafore—indulging in the life domestic? I think I catch a whiff of your culinary atmosphere—and, oh, I—am so—hungry."
"Tempie has a dear little plump bird for you and some waffles and an omelet. Let me have Annette bring them to you here! Please, Phoebe, please!"
"Caroline Darrah Brown," said Phoebe in a tragic voice, "do you know I gained a pound and a quarter last week and that makes me three and a half pounds past the danger-mark? Two raw eggs and an orange is all I can have this morning. I'm going to cry, I think!"
"No," answered Caroline Darrah positively, "you are going to eat that bird and the omelet. You may substitute dry toast for the waffle if Tempie will let you. She's angry, and I'm in trouble. She won't use that recipe I got from your Mammy Kitty to make the cake I promised David Kildare for tea. She says she and her family have been making Buchanan cake ever since there was any cake and she is not going to begin now making Donelson mixtures. I think I hurt her feelings. What must I do?"
"Let her alone, she has the right of it and the cake is sure to be just as good," laughed Phoebe.
"But I promised him it should be just like the one you gave us the other afternoon, only with the icing and nuts thicker than the cake," answered Caroline in real distress. "He says that Mr. Sevier likes it that way, too," she added ingenuously.
"Caroline Darrah, you spoil those men to the most outrageous extent. It's like David to want his icing and nuts thicker than the cake; he always does—and gets it, but it isn't good for him." As Phoebe spoke she smiled at Caroline Darrah indulgently.
"I can't help it, Phoebe," she answered with the rose wave mounting under her eyes. "I'm stupid—I don't know how to manage them. I'm just—fond of them."
For a second Phoebe regarded her from under veiled eyes, then said guardedly, "Doesn't that give them rather the advantage to start with—if you let them find it out?"
"Yes," answered Caroline as she pressed her cheek against Phoebe's arm, "I know it does but I can't help it. I have to trust to them to understand."
For a moment Phoebe was silent and across her mind there flashed David's description of a man who sat into the gray dawn fighting his battle—his own and hers—a man who wouldn't run!
"Perhaps that's the best way after all, dearie," she said as she prepared to slip out of bed. "Only it takes the exceptional woman to get results from your method. It ought to work with David; others don't seem to!"
"Phoebe, Phoebe—why—why?" and Caroline caught and held Phoebe for a few seconds. "Don't you care at all?"
"Yes, child—a lot! Having admitted which I will betake myself to the plunge—leaving you to finish the cake for the precious thing." In a second Phoebe smiled back from the door:
"Just one little waffle, tell Tempie," she said. "And I'm due to make a lightning toilet if I get to that Woman's Guild meeting at eleven-thirty. Call the office for me and tell them not to send Freckles until one-thirty to-day. And, dearie, please call Polly and tell her to be sure and go to that meeting of the Daughters of the Colonies so she can tell me what happens. Tell her to get it all straight—names and all and I will phone her. And not to let them office or committee me just because I'm not there! You are a dear!"
Caroline smiled happily as she went back to the mixing of the confection of affection to be administered to David with his tea as by request, and she laughed as she heard Phoebe's mighty splash.
And a half-hour later, during the discussion of the plump bird and the one crisp waffle, David Kildare whirled in, beaming with joy over his plans. In fact he failed to manage anything in the way of a formal greeting.
"Girls!" he exclaimed from the doorway, "the hunt is on for to-night! Everybody hurry up! Caroline, Mrs. Matilda wants you to motor out with her to the Forks to see about having Jeff and Tempie get ready for the supper cooking—barbecue, birdies and the hot potato! Milly and Billy Bob are going and Polly and that Boston lad of yours, Caroline—yours if you can hold him, which I don't think you can. And Mrs. Matilda says—"
"Stop," demanded Phoebe, "and tell us what you are talking about, David."
"I'm surprised at you, Phoebe, for being so dense," answered David with a delighted grin at having created a flurry. "Didn't you hear me tell Caroline Darrah Brown at least a week ago that possums and persimmons are ripe and that the first night after a rain and a fog we would all turn out and show her how to shake down a few? The whole glad push is going. Mrs. Matilda and I decided it an hour ago while you were still asleep. I've telephoned everybody—possums and persimmons wait for no man."
"How perfectly delightful," said Caroline with eyes agleam with enthusiasm. "Can everybody go?" David had failed to mention Andrew Sevier in his enumeration, an omission that she had instantly caught.
"Yes," answered David, "everybody that had engagements we asked the engagement to go, too. Even Andy is going to cut the poems for the lark! Thuse up a little, Phoebe, please—give us the smile! I'm backing you to shake down ten possums against anybody's possible five."
"I don't think that I can go," answered Phoebe quietly. "Mrs. Cherry has the president of the Federation of Women's Clubs staying with her and I'm going to dine there to-night to discuss the suffrage platform." There was a cool note in Phoebe's voice and a sudden seriousness had come into her expression.
"Now, Phoebe," answered David, looking down at her with the quickly concealed tenderness that always flashed up in his eyes when he spoke directly to her, "do you suppose for one minute that I hadn't fixed all that the first thing? Mrs. Cherry held back a bit but I rabbit-footed the old lady into being wild to go and then wheedled the correct hostess some; and there you are! Caroline is to send them out in her motor and I'm going to make Hob and Tom chase the possum in company of the merry widow and Mrs. Big Bug. Now give me a glad word!"
"I'll see," answered Phoebe. "I can let you know by two o'clock whether I can go," and as she spoke she gathered up her gloves and bag and settled her trim hat by a glance at the long mirror across the room.
"What—what did you say?" demanded David aghast in a second. "If you think for one minute that I'm going to stand for—"
"But you must remember that my business engagements must always be settled before I can make social ones—at two o'clock then! Good-by, Caroline, dear, such a comfy night under your care! I'm going to stop in the library to speak to the major and then on to the guild if any one calls. Here's to you both!" and she coolly tipped them a kiss from the ends of her fingers.
"Caroline," remarked David, "I reckon I must have giggled too loud in my cradle, and the Lord turned around and made Phoebe to settle my glee, don't you think?"
And as Caroline saw him depart with his usual smile and jest she little realized that a jagged wound ran across his blithe heart.
The David within was awakening and developing a highly sensitized nature, which caught Phoebe's note of disapproval, divined its reason and winced under the humiliation of its distrust. The old David would have laughed, chaffed her and gone his way rejoicing—the new David suffered, for a deeply-loved woman can inflict a wound on the inner man that throbs to the depths.
Across the hall Phoebe found the major at his table and, as usual, buried in his books. He was reading one and holding another open in his hand while his pen balanced itself over a page for a note. Phoebe hesitated on the threshold, loath to disturb his feast. But before she could retreat he glanced up and his smile flashed a welcome and an invitation to her, while his books fell together as he rose and held out his hands.
"My dear," he said, "I was just reading what Bob Browning says about a 'pearl and a girl'—and thinking of you when up I look to behold you."
"Thank you, and good morning, Major," returned Phoebe as a slow smile spread over her grave face. "I won't disturb you, for I've only a moment! This hunt to-night—it—it troubles me. Has David forgotten that he is to make a speech on the cutting of the conduit over in the sixteenth ward at half-past seven o'clock? It is one of his most important appointments and—"
"Phoebe," answered the major as he balanced his pen on one long lean finger, "do you suppose that women will ever learn that men could dispense with them entirely after their second year—if it wasn't for the loneliness? I see David Kildare failed to make a sufficiently full apron-string report to you this morning of his intentions for the day."
"Sometimes, Major, you are completely horrid," answered Phoebe with both a smile and a spark in her eyes, "but I do care—that is, I'm interested, and—"
"It seems to me," the major filled in the pause, "that you are a trifle short on a woman's long suit—patience. Now in the case of David Kildare, you don't want to give him one moment of tortoise speed but must keep him pacing with the hare entirely. Remember the result of that race?"
"But I want him to win—he must! I think—"
"Did you hear that speech he made to the motley and their friends last Monday night? That was as fine an interpretation of the ethics involved in the enforcement of law as I have ever heard or read—delivered to simple minds unversed in the science ethical. He landed hot shot into the very stronghold of the enemy and his audience saw his points. I find the mind of David Kildare rather well provisioned with the diverse ammunition needed in political warfare. The whisky ring is making a stand and fighting the inches of retreat. I believe it to be retreat!"
"But can it be, Major? Andrew says that money is pouring into the city, even from other states. They intend to buy the election, come what will. How can a gentleman fight such a thing with 'not a dollar spent' announcement?"
"Phoebe," said the major with the quick illumination of one of his challenging smiles, "you can generally depend on the Almighty to back the right man when he's fighting the right fight. Suppose you put up a little faith on the event—be something of a sporting character and back David to win. Backing thoughts help in the winnings they tell us these days."
"I have, Major—I am—I do, but this hunt to-night positively—positively frightens me. It seemed so—so regardless of consequences—so trivial and—and inconsequent that—" Phoebe paused and the major was astonished to see that she was veiling tears with her thick black lashes.
"Phoebe, child," he said as he bent over quickly and laid his hand on hers, "I ought to have answered you sooner. He is prepared to make the speech of his life tonight at seven-thirty, but at ten he joins his friends to hunt. Didn't you draw your conclusions hurriedly—and against David?"
In a second the tightness in Phoebe's throat relaxed and the tears flowed back to their source, only one little splash jeweled her cheek that had flamed into a blush of joy and contrition.
"Ah," she said softly as she drew a deep breath, "I am so glad—glad!… I must hurry, for I'm an hour late already. Good-by!"
"Good-by, and remember that faith is one of the by-products of affection.
And I might add that the right kind of faith finds tactful ways of—of
admission. Do you see?" And the major held her hand long enough to make
Phoebe look into his kind eyes.
And from the ten minutes in the library of Major Buchanan the disciplining of the heart of Phoebe Donelson began and was carried on with utter relentlessness. The first castigation occurred when David failed to phone her at two o'clock, and a half-hour later Caroline Darrah called anxiously to know her decision and impart the information that David had arranged that she and Phoebe go out to the fork in her car with Mrs. Buchanan. Phoebe, to her own surprise, found that she intensely desired another arrangement that involved David and his small electric, but she received the blow with astonishing meekness and delighted Caroline with her enthusiastic acquiescence in the plans for the evening.
And so through the busy afternoon while David Kildare met committees, sent in reports and talked over plans, he also managed to sandwich in the settling of numerous little details that went to make good the night's sport. And it was all done in apparent high spirits but with an indignant pain in his usually glad heart.
Meanwhile Caroline Darrah, in a whirl of domestic excitement incident to the preparing of a hamper for the midnight lunch out on the ridge, which she had entreated Mrs. Matilda to leave entirely to her newly-acquired housewifery, stepped into the middle of the pool political and never knew it, in the innocence of her old-fashioned woman's heart.
"Miss Ca'line," ventured Jeff as he assisted her in packing the huge hamper that occupied the center of the dining-room table, "is Mister Dave sure 'pinted to be jedge of the criminal court—he ain't a-joking is he?"
"Why, no, indeed, Jeff," answered Caroline Darrah as she rolled sandwiches in oiled paper before putting them into a box. "What made you think that?"
"Well, it's a kinder poor white folksy job fer him, fooling with crap-shooting niggers and whisky soaks, but if he wants it he's got ter have it, hear me! And Miss Ca'line, some of us colored set has made up our minds that it's time fer us ter git out and dust ter help him. You see this here is a independent race and it's who gits the votes, no 'Publican er Dimocrat to it. That jest naterally turns the colored vote loose at the polls. And fer the most of the black fools it's who bids the mostes, I'm sorry ter say, as is the fact."
"But you know Mr. David has said from the first that he will not buy a vote. Will he have to lose—how many of the colored people are there—oh, Jeff, will he have to be beaten?" Caroline Darrah clasped a sandwich to the death in her hands and questioned the negro with the same faith that she would have used in questioning Major Buchanan.
"No, ma'am, he ain't going ter git nigger-beat if we can help it—us society colored set, you understand, Miss Ca'line." Jeff's manner was an interesting mixture of pomposity and deference.
"I don't quite understand, Jeff; you explain to me," answered Caroline Darrah in the kind and respectful voice that she always used to these family servants, which they understood perfectly and in which they took a huge delight.
"Well, it's jest this way, Miss Ca'line, they is sets in the colored folks jest like they is in the white folks. We is the it set, me and Tempie and Eph and all the fust family people. We's got our lawyers and dentists and a university and a ice-cream parlor with the swellest kinder soda fount in front. You heard how Mister David got that Country Club for us, didn't you? Well, he backed the rent notes of the soda fount, too—and he's jest naterly the fust set candidate fer anything he wants ter be."
"Isn't he just the kindest best man, Jeff?" asked Caroline Darrah, in her enthusiasm sacrificing a frosted muffin cake between her clasped hands.
"Yes'm, he am that fer a fact, and they can't no low-down whisky bum beat him fer jedge, neither—'specially ef they count on using niggers to do it with. You see the race am so mighty close, that all the booze bosses is a telling the niggers that they is got the 'ballunce uf power' as they calls it and it's up ter them ter elect a jedge fer whisky, the friend 'at'll let 'em drink it down. Why, they's got out a bottle of whisky as has on the label 'Your Colored Friend', and it's put up in clear glass and at the bottom you can see five new dimes a-shining. A nigger gits the bottle and the fifty cents ef he votes with them. Old Booze is flinging money right and left, fer if Mister David gits in he'll shore have ter git out."
"That is perfectly awful, Jeff!" exclaimed Caroline with horror-stricken eyes. "The poor people made to sell themselves that way—and the whole city to lose David, a good judge, because they can't know what they do. It is horrible and nobody can help it!"
"I ain't so sure about that, Miss Ca'line! Me and Tempie and Doctor Pike Johnson and the dentist and Bud Simms, the man what runs the Palms, have thought up a scheme ef we kin work it. You see they ain't a nigger from Black Bottom to Mount Nebo as wouldn't sell his soul ter git ter the Country Club and say he's been invited there. Now, we thought as how it would be a good plan ter give it out that we was going to have er David Kildare jedge celebration out there and have invertation tickets printed. Then we could go ter the polls and fight down any dollar bottle of whisky ever put up with one of them invites—every man ter bring a lady, and dancing down in a corner of the card. We'd scotch them by saying no 'lection, no dance, so they'll vote straight. Ain't that the swell scheme? It'll work if we can make it go."
"Jeff," she exclaimed, "that is a perfectly splendid idea! You must do it, for offering them fun will be no bribery like whisky and money—it will do them good." Sometimes it is just as well that a woman be not too well versed in the science logical.
"Yes'm, and I believe it will work—ef we jest had a barbecue to put down in the other corner opposite the dancing I know it would draw 'em, but ice-cream will be about all we can git fer the subscription money, and cold as it is ice-cream won't be no drawing card."
And there was no doubt that Jeff unfolded his plan to Caroline Darrah from pure love of sympathy and excitement and for no ulterior purpose, although it served to further his schemes as well as if he had been of a most wily turn of mind.
"Jeff," exclaimed Caroline Darrah excitedly, "how much would it take to have a barbecue and ice-cream and everything good to go with it and a big band of music and fireworks and—"
"Golly, Miss Ca'line, they will be most five hundred of 'em and the 'scription ain't but a little over fifty dollars. I'm counting on the dancing and the gitting-there ter draw 'em."
"We can't risk it," said Caroline. "I will give you two hundred and fifty dollars and you can let it be known that no such celebration ever was as the one his colored friends are going to give in honor of the election of Judge David Kildare—his united colored friends, Jeff, high and low."
"Miss Ca'line, I'm a-skeered to take it! Mister David, he's jest naterly—"
"Mr. David need never know about it. It is a subscription and you have collected it—advertise that fact. I'm one of his friends and I can subscribe even if I am white. You must take it, and get to work about it. Only four more days, remember, and we all must work for Mr. David; and too, Jeff, for those poor ignorant people who would commit the crime of letting themselves sell their votes." There was real concern for the endangered souls of the coons in Caroline's voice, and Jeff was duly impressed.
They both fell to work on the packing of the basket as Temple's voice was heard in the distance, for they knew she would express herself in no uncertain terms if she found the amount of work done unsatisfactory.
But when he departed, Jeff carried in his pocket a slip of paper about which it nearly scared him to death to think, and one of the money-bags of the late Peters Brown was eased by the extraction of a quarter thousand. Caroline was happy from a clear conscience and a virtuous feeling of having saved a crisis for a dependent and ignorant people. Which goes to show that a woman can put her finger into a political pie and draw it out without even a stain, while to touch that same confection ever so lightly would dye a man's hand blood red.