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.