The Heart's Kingdom

"Go take them clothes off, nigger, and put 'em along of my black silk

shroud in the bottom drawer of the chist," she commanded, as she put her

hands on her sixty-inch waist and stood before him with arms akimbo.

"Folks is got no business to dress in life so fine that they shames they

burying clothes."

"Shoo fly, I'm jest going to Washington, not to Heaven, in this here

rig. When I git into Heaven it'll be 'cause I'm hiding behind that

black silk skirt of your shroud, honey, if I'm as naked as borned," was

the admiring, wily and also wholly sincere answer to Mammy's fling at

the gorgeous raiment.

And while the Poplars teemed with wedding plans Nickols kept the whole

village steamed up to be in readiness for the visit of Mr. Jeffries,

which was dated for just a week before the wedding, and the village

festival at the opening of the new school was to be the most important

ceremonial of the whole visit. Father was to give him a dinner at which

all of the Solons of the Harpeth Valley were to be present, and a ball

at the Country Club was being planned by Billy with all enthusiasm. But

the center of the buzz was down at Mother Spurlock's Little House, where

Mr. Goodloe daily, and it seemed almost hourly, drilled the children for

the ceremonial of the opening of their house of learning across the way

from the Little House by the Road. Only echoes of the orgies reached the

outside, and gossip ran high in the Settlement as well as the Town at

the fragments that the delighted scions brought home, of curious folk

dances mixed with fragments of weird tunes.

"Sure, a minister of the gospel to teach me Mikey to stand on one leg

and spin around on the other with his hands over his head is a quare

thing, but the Riverend Goodloe is no ordinary man," said Mrs. Burns to

Mother Spurlock, who answered: "You can trust him, Mrs. Burns, even with Mikey's legs."

And during all the long weeks of activity not once did I have a word

alone with the Harpeth Jaguar. We met constantly at dinner at the tables

of our friends and he came and went at the Poplars with the same freedom

that Nickols enjoyed. He was long hours in the library with father, and

somehow I felt that he was strengthening the structure that he had

builded on the ruined foundation and something passionate rose in my

heart and filled it with pain every time I heard his ringing laugh come

from the library table, accompanied by father's booming chuckle. Also,

he worked early and late in the garden with Nickols and the young man

from White Plains, and I saw that Nickols' artistic ideas flowed at top

speed when Gregory Goodloe was standing by.