"Why won't you let me help you to—to begin over again?" I asked her, this time with less patience. "Why have you—you locked yourself away from me?"
"I can't—I won't ever tell you. I must go back, now I've seen you in—in your happiness. But I don't hate you—I never have." And as she spoke Martha rose and began to walk rapidly away from me.
"Oh, please don't go, Martha," I said. "In just three days I'll be going away for a long time, you know, and I want to help you in some way before I go. You ought to let me, and it worries me that you don't, now of all times," and as I put my selfish plea for ease to my conscience, something that was hot and rebellious made me want to stop the woman who was hurrying away from me.
"I won't, I won't make you unhappy—but I must go. I must! I'll—I'll be happy—and good now—if you'll only be happy. Good-bye!" And as she called back at me over her shoulder, Martha ran from me down through the hedge and into the door of the chapel, which always, night and day, rain and storm, stood slightly ajar. A queer pain smote me to see that she had run from me into the only place in all the broad, smiling Harpeth Valley where I could not—or would not, follow her. And the sanctuary that she sought was for every man, woman or child who wanted it—only I could not and would not seek it.
"'The covert of wings,'" I whispered to myself, as I went down the street to Mrs. Sproul's as rapidly as possible to be rid of my own company. As I repeated the words that the parson had used to Mr. Jeffries I noticed one great white cloud with a dark center flash fire into another, to a great crashing and rumbling. "I wonder if it is really going to storm," I speculated gloomily, as I turned into the Sproul gate, but the brilliant sunshine seemed to fling me a dazzling denial from every petal of the white clematis that wreathed itself across the front porch, under which Mrs. Sproul, arrayed in all the midday magnificence of good form, sat and waited for her guests. Mrs. Cockrell sat beside her and they were delighted to see me and demanded happiness from me which it was hard for me to give from the depths that had been stirred by my strange interview with Martha, to which I felt I ought to have a key, but could not find it anywhere.
CHAPTER XVII
THE PAGEANT
"We were just saying, Charlotte dear, that this absurd school affair has completely overshadowed your wedding day," said Mrs. Cockrell, as she rocked back and forth in tune with her Irish point rose she was constructing. "It seems to me a wedding ought to come before a school festivity."