The Harpeth Jaguar

"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 property. Part of your garden is old Madam
Goodloe's garden and that's why it was so wonderful for Judge Powers to
give the lot and let Mr. Goodloe build the chapel there. We all felt
that, though some of us were scared when we thought about what you might
do when you came home. Still, after we saw that wonderful little stone
chapel that Mr. Goodloe had one of the greatest architects in New York
design, after he had sent him packages of sketches of your garden and
the Poplars, so it would only make it all the more beautiful, we felt
better. You don't really mind about it, do you, dear?" Letitia's voice
was beseechingly enthusiastic, though keyed down with a note of anxiety.

"Go on!" I commanded, packing down the rage in the dark corners of my
inmost heart.

"Nobody ever knew why Bishop Goodloe never came back after he married
while on a mission from the Southern Methodist Conference to the
Northern Methodist Conference. He severed his relations with his own
Conference, and he never preached again though he was one of the most
wonderful and eloquent preachers the South has ever known. He was the
youngest bishop the church had ever ordained. Nobody ever knew what
happened, and all we know now is that this perfectly beautiful man, who
is the bishop's son, came down to the General Conference in Nashville,
was examined and ordained, and the presiding bishop sent him out here to
Goodloets last November. We don't know anything about him except that he
has been fighting in the trenches in France for a year and has had a
bullet cut out of his left lung. Everybody adores him, and we all sit
spellbound listening to him preach, I think mostly on account of his
voice, because none of us ever seems to remember what he is preaching
about. He's been having services in the ballroom at the Country Club but
he is going to dedicate the chapel soon and we are all relieved. It has
been fun to go out to church at the Club twice every Sunday and to
prayer meeting on Wednesday night all winter, and we've danced in the
long parlor at home and in the double parlors at Jessie Litton's so as
not to disarrange the pews, I mean the chairs, in the ballroom, but now
that the spring has come we--we need the Club. I'm glad you will be here
for the dedication, and you will help us kind of--kind of--"