The Heart's Kingdom

Father stood with a bowl of ice in his hand and his fingers were just

closing around a squat, black bottle that I knew contained the rarest

and choicest whiskey ever run from a distillery. His iron-gray hair was

rampant, his dressing gown fell away from his throat and showed the

knotting of the great cords that ran down into his shoulders, and his

dark eyes glittered under their heavy, black brows, while his mouth was

twisted and white. Then, as I looked, something happened. A stealthy

padding of feet came around the house from the garden and up the back

steps, under the budding rose vine that was climbing through the trellis

as if to clutch at the light, and a huge figure loomed up from out the

shadow.

It was the powerful Harpeth Jaguar out hunting, and his weapon was a

hoe, while under his arm he carried a roll that looked like a

contribution to a rag man of bedding and old clothes.

"I tell you, Mr. Powers, there is frost in the air and I have collected

everything in the parsonage that would cover those late anemones. I saw

your light and I thought you might add to the collection. Now what would

we do if they should be wilted by the frost just as they are ready to

burst bud? Our honor is involved with Graveson, who brought the seeds

all the way from Guernsey through the trenches of France and trusted

them to me for propagation. Why, they represent a man's life work, and

that life may be put out by a bullet any moment! We'll have to rescue

them." As he spoke, the great jeweled eyes shone with excitement under

the dull gold brows and he seemed not to see at all the incriminating

ice and bottle.

"Could you get into Mrs. Dabney's linen closet? We've got to have

something." He shivered in a little wind that blew under the rose vine

with a frosty gust. I was just observing that he was attired in his

pajama jacket and gray flannel trousers, and that his bare heels and

ankles declared themselves above and at the back of his slippers, when

my eyes were drawn to my father's face and rested there. My heart stood

still while I watched it change. All the pain and appetite, straining as

a beast strains at a leash, faded from his face. The deathly pallor

vanished and the color of human blood returned. The glitter in his deep

old eyes changed in a second from that of ferocity to that of anxious

excitement.

"I do not know where the household linen is kept and I hesitate to

disturb Dabney, as he retired with an aching tooth; but I observed a box

of my daughter's apparel beside a trunk in the back hall which Dabney

had not carried up on account of its weight and which he was requiring

his wife to unpack piece by piece. I'll raid it for enough to save our

treasures and accept whatever is my just chastisement in the morning,"

he said in a voice of guilty stealth.