"I want to thank somebody and there is nobody to thank," I whispered,
with a great emptiness within me. That was the bitterest cry of need my
heart had ever given forth, and I went swiftly down to Nickols in the
garden and told him what I had seen and heard.
"It really is a remarkable come-back, sweetheart," he said, with the
most exquisite sympathy in his voice and face. "Mark Morgan told me just
an hour ago that they want to have him appointed back to his old place
on the bench and Mr. Cockrell answered the President's inquiry for a man
from this section for the Commerce Commission with the judge's name.
It'll be great to see the old boy on one of the seats of the mighty
again, thanks to the sweat of his brow and mind in this village
manifestation of American nationalism which has grown out of our little
old garden plan."
"What can a man or woman do to render gratitude if there seems to be
nobody to take it, Nickols?" I asked him, not expecting, as usual, that
he would understand me. For once he did.
"The philosophies all teach 'hand it on' in that case," he answered me.
"I'll hand it on to Martha Ensley and help her and her child to their
place under the sun," I said slowly, thus by having a reason and an
obligation back of it, ratifying the vow I had already taken.
"That is an impossibility," answered Nickols with easy coolness. "The
one 'come-back' that is impossible is the woman in that kind of a
situation."
"I'll never admit such an injustice as that," I said, and I had a queer
premonition that I would be held to that declaration.
The very next morning after my declaration of purpose to "hand on" my
father's "come-back" I went down into the Settlement to hunt for Martha
Ensley, not that I was really suffering about her, but because I felt a
kind of obligation to begin at once a thing that it appealed to my sense
of justice to accomplish.
Sometimes in mid-August there comes down a night over the hot, lush,
maturing Harpeth Valley which is like a benediction that sprinkles cool
dew on a thirsting heart. And now the morning was cool and brilliant,
with the sun evaporating the heavy dew in soft clouds of perfume from
the grain fields, the meadows and the upturned soil out where the
farmers were breaking ground after the first harvests. I felt strong and
calm and full of an electric energy, which I found I needed before I had
more than started my quest.
I put on my tennis clothes, snowy from collar to shoe tips, like the
trappings of the White Knight, and started to walk down into the
Settlement to find Martha. I intended to stop at Mother Spurlock's
"Little House Beside the Road," and some vague idea was in my mind of
having her dispatch a messenger to summons Martha to the interview I was
about to bestow upon her. That is not the way it all happened and I was
hot and dusty and sweat-drenched before I had been on my quest more than
a few hours.