The Hearts Kingdom | Page 5

I was glad I had tucked the note that came in the box under my pillow the night before. I trust Letitia and she is entirely sophisticated, but she has never had a lover who lives in Greenwich Village, New York, America.
"Is this the open season for two-day hangovers, in New York?" she demanded as she sniffed me suspiciously at the same time she dimpled and smiled at me.
"No, this is not a metropolitan hangover. It was acquired at breakfast, Letitia," I answered her as I sat up and stretched out my bare arms to give her a good shake and a hug. "'You may break, you may shatter the glass if you will, but the scent of the julep will hang 'round you still,'" I misquoted as I drew my knees up into my embrace and took the last remaining marron.
"Why, Mammy said Mr. Goodloe had breakfast with you. Did you sneak it from the judge's pitcher?" demanded Letitia, as she likewise drew her knees up into her arms and settled herself against one of the posts of my bed for the many hours' résumé of our individual existences in which we always indulged upon being reunited after separation.
"I did not," I answered. "I drank it before his eyes, and then I don't remember what happened and I don't care."
"What?"
"Just that. I never have been drunk because I never could drink enough. I've always felt that there isn't enough liquid in the world to faze me, and I don't like it anyway, but Dabney was so impressed by His Worship that he poured it double for me before I had had breakfast. I hope I staggered or swore but I don't think I did. The Reverend Goodloe can tell you better than I. Ask him."
"Gregory Goodloe? Oh, Charlotte!"
"That's the point I was coming to, Letitia: Just who is this Reverend Goodloe that I shouldn't drink a quart of mint julep before him if I want to? I had well over a pint of champagne with a Mr. Justice two nights before I left New York and I stopped then out of courtesy to one of the generals whom we expect to defend us from the Kaiser. Who is your Gregory Goodloe? Tell we all about him, unexpurgated and unafraid."
"Didn't you know about him--and the chapel before you came?" Letitia queried cautiously, as if fearing the explosion she felt was sure to result.
"I did not," I answered. "I met him and his chapel and the mint julep all in the same five minutes, and is it any wonder I went down? Go on. Tell me the worst or the best. I'm ready." And as I spoke I settled my pillows comfortably, getting a little thrill from the crumpled letter underneath the bottom one.
CHAPTER II
THE HARPETH JAGUAR
"It is beautifully romantic, but I don't know what we are going to do about it," answered Letitia with genuine trouble, puckering her brow under one of her smooth waves of seal-brown hair. Letitia is one of the wonderful variety of women who patch out life, piece by piece, in a beautiful symmetrical pattern and who do not have imagination enough to admire anything about a riotous crazy quilt. She is in love with Clifton Gray, has been since she wound her brown braids about her head, and is piecing strips of him into her life-fabric by the very sanest love--courtship--marriage design.
"We just can't go on as we have been doing lately," she continued. "We all decided that you would know what to do about him, and would do it when you came home. We suspected Judge Powers hadn't written you all the facts when you didn't come and the building went on up. You will be able to do something about him, won't you?"
"I think it is likely," I answered, with the brittle sugar in my voice that Letitia only half knows the flavor of. "But don't try to sketch things, Letitia. Begin at the beginning and go straight to the end; I'll pick up the pieces."
"Well, of course you remember the Bishop Goodloe romance, don't you?" asked Letitia, hopeful that she could get a small start ahead on her chronicle.
"I don't remember anything about any bishop, ever. I forget things about that kind of people. What did, or didn't he do?"
"Charlotte!" remonstrated Letitia. "He was the last of the Goodloes who built that old Goodloe home on exactly the place where the first Goodloe set the stakes of the first stockade put up in the Harpeth Valley, right here in Goodloets. It burned down the night he married that Miss Gregory in New York, before we were born. Don't you remember we used to play in the ruins, just over here beyond the garden where the chapel stands now? Your father bought the