The Heart's Kingdom

And in all the weeks in which he and I had worked together Gregory

Goodloe had given me not one single personal word or look. The priest

had comforted and strengthened me but the man had forever shut me out of

his heart. My suffering was intense, and yet, and yet I knew that in my

heart there was strength to endure the want of him with all

cheerfulness even to the end. At last I had found the key to my own

hieroglyphics and I could be honest with myself. I knew that I loved

Gregory Goodloe as it is seldom given to a woman to love a man, but I

also knew that the awakening of spirit I had found was not in any way

connected with my woman's love for him, but had come to me from the

years of suffering I had had while I sought it. I refused to acknowledge

that a sex spark had in any way set off the blaze; the fire had been

laid in my soul and it would burn on without any of his tending. But

even in that honest surety Nickols' mocking words "religion is

suppressed sex" haunted me. I knew it could not be true, so I put it all

out of my mind as I left Harriet and walked down the street towards the

Poplars.

I was due in the library to help father in the packing of some of his

papers, for I had insisted that he go on to Washington to fulfill his

appointment. Martha and the boy would be with me and if he only left me

Dabney I could be safe and busy for the winter. Strange to say, Mammy's

disappointment at Dabney's loss of a sojourn in a strange clime was

greater than his own.

"I don't believe in glorifying men by needing of them to any great

measure," she declared. "With me in the house and the preacher across

the fence it don't make no difference how good looking you are, Miss

Charlotte, you won't be too much for our protection. Dabney can jest go

on with the jedge."

"Of course, little miss, you don't need me, but I sorter got rheumatics

in my homesick and I begged off from Mas' Nickols," Dabney replied with

the wily soothing that had made his conjugal life both pleasant and

possible.

I was thinking of the argument and smiled with tenderness as I saw the

old grizzled white head bent over a hoe down in the dahlias, which he

was bedding. The young man from White Plains had stayed to put the

garden to bed as far as possible, and had left with perfect confidence

in Dabney and the likely yellow boy he had found.

And now in late October the garden was in a conflagration of blossoming

glory. The borders of the walks blazed with the red and blue and gold

and purple of chrysanthemums and asters and zinnias and dahlias, while

long tendrils of russet autumn vines trailed in and over and around the

flowers and shrubs and hedges. The tang of ripening and falling seed was

mixed in all the perfume, and gorgeous leaves were beginning to rustle

on the green grass. It was Nickols' first harvest of beauty, and somehow

I felt that there was no need to regret that his eyes were not mortally

there to gather the fruits.