Part 12 (2/2)

”I believe one of those 'strange wild things' has been flying around in the atmosphere and has taken possession of us again,” said Caroline Darrah slowly, never taking her eyes from his. ”I don't know why I know, but I do, that you came to comfort me. I was thinking about you and wis.h.i.+ng I could tell you. Now in just this minute you've made me see that I have a right to all of you. I'm never going to be unhappy about it any more. After this I'm going to belong as hard as ever I can.”

Something crashed in every vein in Andrew Sevier's body, lilted in his heart, beat in his throat and sparkled in his eyes. He sprang to his feet and held out his hand to her.

”Then come on and be adopted,” he said. ”I shall order the electric, and you get into your hat and coat. We can skirt the park and come in at the side of the Temple back of the platform so that you can slip into place before one-half of the sky-rockets of oratory have been exploded. Will you come?”

”Will you stay with me--right by me?” she asked, timidity and courage at war in her voice.

”Yes,” he answered slowly, ”I'll stay by you as long as you want me--if I can.”

”And that,” said Caroline Darrah Brown as she turned at the door and looked straight at him with a heavenly blush mounting in her cheeks, the tenderness of the ages curling her lips and the innocence of all of six years in her eyes, ”will be always!” With which she disappeared instantly beyond the rose damask hangings.

And so when the ceremonies in the park were over and Caroline stood to clasp hands with each of the clamorous gray squad, Andrew Sevier waited just behind her and he met one after another of the sharp glances shot at him from under grizzled brows with a dignity that quieted even the grimmest old fire-eater.

And there are strange wild things that take hold on the lives of men--vital forces against which one can but beat helpless wings of mortal spirit.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SPELL AND ITS WEAVING

And after the confusion, the distress and the joy of the afternoon out in the park when she and her gift had been accepted and acclaimed, there came days full of deep and perfect peace to Caroline Darrah Brown.

Long, strenuously delightful mornings she spent with Tempie in the excitements of completing her most comprehensive culinary education and the amount of badinage she exchanged upon the subject with David Kildare occupied many of his unemployed minutes. His demands for the most intricate and soul-trying concoctions she took a perfect joy in meeting and his enthusiasm stimulated her to the attempting of the most difficult feats.

His campaign was on with full force and his days were busy ones, but he managed to drop into the kitchen at any time when he deemed it at all certain that he would find her there and was always fully rewarded.

He often found Andrew Sevier in the library in consultation with the major over the management of the delicate points in the campaign and occasionally brought him into Tempie's kingdom with him. And Caroline laughed and blushed and explained it all to them with the most beautiful solicitude, Tempie looking on positively bridling with pride.

And there were other mornings when she took her sewing and crept in the library to work, while the major and Andrew held consultation over the affairs of the present or absent David.

The whisky ring had purchased one of the morning papers, which had hitherto borne a reputation for extreme conservatism, and had it appear each morning with brilliant, carefully modulated arguments for the machine; doctored statistics and brought allegations impossible to be investigated in so short a time.

And all of every afternoon and evening Andrew Sevier sat at an editorial desk down at the office of the reform journal and pumped hot shot through their flimsy though plausible arguments. His blood was up and his pen more than a match for any in the state, so he often sat most of the night writing, reviewing and meeting issue after issue. The editor-in-chief, whose heart was in making a success of the campaign by which his paper would easily become the leading morning paper, gave him full rein, aided and abetted him by his wide knowledge of all the conditions and pointed out with unerring judgment the sore spots on the hide of the enemy at which to send the gadfly of investigation.

So each day while Andrew and the major went carefully over possibilities to be developed by and against the enemy, Caroline listened with absorbed interest. Now and then she would ask a question which delighted them both with its ingenuousness, but for the most part she was busily silent.

And in the exquisiteness of her innocence she was weaving the spell of the centuries with the st.i.tches in her long seams. There are yet left in the world a few of the elemental women whose natures are what they were originally inst.i.tuted and Caroline Darrah was unfolding her predestinated self as naturally as a flower unfolds in the warmth of the spring suns.h.i.+ne. The cooking for David and Andrew, the sewing for busy Phoebe, the tactfully daughterly attentions to the major and Mrs. Matilda were all avenues for the outpouring of the maturing woman within, and powerless in his enchantment, Andrew Sevier was swept along on the tide of her tenderness.

One day she had picked up his heavy gray gloves from the table and tightened the b.u.t.tons, listening all the while to an absorbing account of a counter-move he was planning for the next day's editorial, and then had been delightfully confused and distressed by his grat.i.tude. The little scene had sent him to the bare fields to fight for hours.

The major fairly gloried in her knowledge of the arrangement of his library and delighted her with quick requests for his books during the most absorbing moments of their discussions.

And again the observation that the spell was not being woven for him alone went far to the undoing of Andrew Sevier. Her interest in the affairs of David Kildare disturbed him not at all, but her sympathetic and absorbed attention to a bad-luck tale with which Hobson Capers reported to the major one morning when she sat with them, had sent him home in a most depressed state of mind, and the picture of her troubled eyes raised to Hobson's as he recounted the details of the wrenched shoulder of his favorite horse, followed him through the day with tormenting displeasure, though the offer of a cut-gla.s.s bottle full of a delightfully scented lotion for the amelioration of the suffering animal brought the semblance of a grin. And Hob, the brute, had gone away with it in his pocket, accompanied by explicit directions as to its application by means of a soft bit of flannel the size of a pocket handkerchief, also provided. Andrew Sevier had a vision of the bottle and the rag being installed in the most holy of holies in the apartments of Hobson Capers and experienced a sweeping smas.h.i.+ng rage thereat.

A day or two later a scene he had witnessed in the kitchen, in which Caroline and Tempie hung anxiously over a simmering pan of lemon juice, sugar, rye whisky and peppermint which, when it arrived at the proper sirupy condition, was to be administered as a soothing potion to the hoa.r.s.e throat of Peyton Kendrick, who perched croaking on a chair close by, drove him to seeking comfort from Phoebe much to her apparent amus.e.m.e.nt but secret perturbation, for Phoebe both comprehended and feared the situation.

And thus there is also much of the primitive left in the heart of the modern man on which the elemental forces work.

<script>