Chapter II: Part 2

I saw the straight, fine figure draw back half haughtily into the carriage, and a half-protesting look flash for an instant over the pretty face, profiled through the open space. She threw back her head in the old tribute-demanding way, and her half-closed lids veiled her eyes under great curving, brown-red brows. I caught a gleam of the old daring fun in them, as she smiled and held out both her hands, taking mine.

"Awfully glad to see you, Jack--welcome home."

My heart betrayed itself in the quick glance I gave her. She had developed so wonderfully in those four years. And how I had longed to see her!

She sat smiling kindly into my eyes; I stood looking sillily into hers, holding both of her hands in mine, forgetful of Aunt Lucretia, and with no word that I could say to Eloise.

"Eloise," I began haltingly at last, "is it--have you--is it really you?"

I bent down to kiss her, but she fenced away and drew back smiling.

I dropped her hand, hurt.

"Jack," and her tone tried to compensate me, "behave now--everybody is looking." Then she added louder, "Have you really grown into this handsome chap--and no lameness any more?"

"Tut--tut," broke in Aunt Lucretia, half irritated, "you two make me tired. Of course he has--you have both grown wonderfully up to your pedigree--I always said so--nothing strange in that. And as you are both grown now," she added patronizingly and with the old return of authority, "I intend to marry you to each other before Christmas--see if I don't."

I blushed and Eloise smiled--a trace of the old fun-loving tease breaking across the corners of her mouth. Her beautiful clear blue-hazel eyes smiled up into mine, full of the old fun and daring.

I bent over her. "Eloise, aren't you really going to kiss me?"

"It is unsanitary, Jack,--and--" she glanced at Aunt Lucretia--"bad form and--"

I turned, hurt, and shook hands with old Thomas, the driver.

"Mighty glad to see you back home, Marse Jack, mighty glad!" said he.

I looked closely at his horses, with that pretended admiration that I knew would please him, in order to hide my chagrin. There was embarrassment in it too, for I knew I was under inspection from the eyes of Eloise.

"I declare, Marse Jack," he went on, "dis sho'ly ain't you, is it? I declar to goodness if you ain't biggern yo' daddy wuz, and yo' gran'pa--the ole Jineral." He grew easily loquacious. "When I fust seed you a-comin' out dat cyar dore, I didn't know you, and yit I sed to myself, _sholy I've seed dat face--hit 'pears mighty complicated to me somehow_."

A smothered laugh from Eloise. "That is what I've been trying to say, Thomas, but couldn't, to save me, think of the right word. Thank you so much--'_complicated,_' Jack--that's too good!"

I showed plainly that I did not like this from Eloise. Ridicule we may bear, but not from our beloved. And I had loved Eloise always, but never so much as now. Then she suddenly broke into a smile, and said in her sweet sisterly way of old: "Forgive me, Jack--I haven't lost my old teasing way with you, have I?"

"I don't want you to," I said quietly.

"Well, what do you think of her?" broke in Aunt Lucretia.

"I can't tell you how beautiful I think she is, Aunt Lucretia," said I.

Eloise laughed, and looked dreamily up. How quickly her eyes had changed from daring to dreams. In her low, even laugh lay four years of fashionable Washington schooling. In the soft tones of her voice were a thousand music lessons. In the well-gowned girl before me was training, the spirit of gentlefolk, centuries of correct pedigrees. She had always been strong, and with a form as lithe as a young frost-pinched hickory. How she could ride a horse and handle a gun! Her hair had been yellowish and flossy, now it was like the distant flush of a red-top meadow, mower-ripe. I had left her an over-long school girl, thin and callow, daring, caring for nothing so much as running a risk of her neck and limbs in trees, and bare-back gallops on any half-broken colt on the farm. But now--

Aunt Lucretia, watching me, guessed.

"Oh, well, she'll pass, won't she?" she said rather braggartly for her, I thought. "You'll believe what I kept writing you now, eh? Though you never referred to it once, not once."

"Oh! Aunt Lucretia," began Eloise protestingly. Even her voice had changed. It was not the imperative, rollicking, colt-breaking voice of the school girl I had known four years ago. It was now like a fall of soft, freestone water over a moss-lined rock bed, purling into a deep pool below, sand-bordered and waveless.

"Please don't tease him," she began again.

Aunt Lucretia laughed triumphantly: "Oh, never mind. I want to rub it in on Jack. He needs it curried into him. He hasn't written me a line to show that he intended to carry out my wishes until I grew positively uneasy, for fear he'd marry one of those Hessians, whose ancestors Washington crossed the Delaware to whip that night."

(Hadn't written, I thought. But no one shall ever know what I had dreamed and hoped in those four years.)

I was looking into Eloise's eyes; she flushed, for I saw she knew my thoughts.

"You shan't be hard on Jack," she said, taking my part as it seemed to save herself. "Jack, dear," and she took my hand in hers, her eyes for the first time flashed with sympathy, "we must do as of old, we must pool interests, when she is against us we must combine to beat her. And to prove it I am going to defy her and kiss you, for you've heard her say that we are betrothed, and this is always the first thing after a betrothal," and with the old daring in her eyes she looked up at me.

I remember into what a perfect Cupid's bow her hitherto straight lips curved, and I flushed crimson as my lips met hers. Aunt Lucretia, seeing this, said with emphatic shame, "Tut--tut, unsanitary and silly! Get into the surrey, Jack. Thomas, drive these two fools home!"

In my heart I thanked Aunt Lucretia for that tirade. I knew Eloise of old. She was always on the side of the under dog. For that reason she had kissed me. Still, with all her pretense I noticed that Aunt Lucretia had arranged that we should sit together, and had seated herself in front with Thomas, where she could watch her roan span trot off.

"Eloise," I whispered, dropping my hand on hers, "is it really you? I never dreamed you would be so beautiful. I have loved you always, Little Sister. Don't you love me a little?"

She laughed at my low voice. Then she suddenly grew serious, and said in a tone that hurt me, "Of course I do, Jack, as your adopted sister. But don't!" she protested, as I tried to kiss her cheek. "You are acting so queerly; as if we were really in love!"

I drew back, very much hurt. "Eloise!"

"Don't be silly, Jack, or you'll spoil it all. Haven't I always been your little sister?"

"But surely, Eloise," I said, my heart in my throat, "after all these years--you don't know how I've loved you always, and lately yearned for home and you."

She gave me a startled look. "Jack, we must stop this. I have something to tell you."

The hills swayed as the surrey rushed by. I saw the old field mistily, the distant trees and the white lime roads. I was almost reeling in the fear which her tone had brought.

"What do you think of them?" asked Aunt Lucretia proudly.

I looked at the handsome pair, stepping like one, at a good three minutes' gait.

"Splendid," I said. "I should guess they were Young Hickory's, and their dam, Nuthunter."

Uncle Thomas could not restrain a laugh. These horses were his pride. "Ain't los' none of yo' hoss sense hobnobbin' with them furrin' folks, Marse Jack. You sho' hit it 'zactly!"

"I was afraid," went on Aunt Lucretia, "that I might not be successful in straightening out the Nuthunter legs; he hasn't the best of hocks, you know. But did you ever see anything more beautiful?" she added.

"I never," I answered, looking steadily into Eloise's eyes.

"Jack," laughed Eloise, "I must discipline you."

For answer I caught up her hand behind Aunt Lucretia's back and kissed it.

"I'm sorry for you, Jack," she said with her old quietness, "but--but--well, I'll see you to-night and explain." Then she looked out and exclaimed, "The Home Stretch, Jack! Isn't it beautiful? Has it changed any?"

*CHAPTER III*

*THE HICKORIES*

We drove up to the great mansion built of home-baked bricks. It sat on a blue grass slope, and before it lay twenty acres of blue grass lawn, tree-peopled: oaks, ash, poplars; and elms, red and white; and a great broad-topped gum. Eloise and I remembered this last best of all, for in the fall it early turned into a great, flaming brushheap of red, crimson streaked with black. Scattered about on the lawn, filling the gaps, were single trees of dogwood. In the dusk they shone like silver nosegays in dark vases.

The evening dank was in the air as we drove up; that rare odor, which is really no odor, but only a memory of one; and as we whirled up the drive there came a whisp of perfume, blue grass cut before its time, fresh spring hay, for a sick brood mare, in the meadow beyond.

The night sounds made me homesick, even though I was at home; a whippoorwill, a whinnying mare, the lowing of a lonesome calf in the barn. Far off, in the faint purple twilight, stood the hills; and nearer was the black fringe of trees which moated Stone's River. Here was home and April, and my heart was eager for them.

This was The Home Stretch, the home of my grandsire, General John Rutherford. His daughter, my Aunt Lucretia, ran the farm for him, as she did everything else within ten miles of her, for my grandsire was old, and had lost a leg while fighting with Stonewall Jackson in the Valley.

Eloise guessed my thoughts. Her voice was quiet and tender as she said, "You should see our hickories, Jack!"

I jumped from the surrey at the door, and drew her with me. "Let us look at them first of all," I said, "because there was our playhouse, there were our dreams."

She smiled as she pointed to the walks still lined with sunken ale bottles, their mouths projecting upward as borders for our flower beds.

Aunt Lucretia had gone into the house. Thomas had wheeled the surrey and team to the barn.

The land we stood on had once belonged to Andrew Jackson. Here he had lived before he had moved to the farm four miles away known as the Hermitage. Clover Bottom had been the pride of a great, strong heart. In the field beyond had stood the pioneer store where Jackson and Coffee had traded, with Indians. Beyond that was the far-famed circular field, in the great bend of Stone's River, and level as a floor, where Truxton and Plowboy and the unbeaten Maria had once raced. Still farther beyond Stone's River circled like a tube of quicksilver through the green of the wooded hills.

Never before was honesty put to such a test as when Andrew Jackson gave up this home to pay an unjust debt. Without complaint he moved further into the wilderness, and built his great double log-cabin home. That cabin is now a shrine!

Here stood the giant hickories in a group, the rugged, stately trees. Why did he plant them here? Or had the old hero, with that love of his for the unbending tree for which he was named, let them stand unscathed, as Nature had placed them? They stood in a great group, cathedral-like, one taller and more stately than his fellows, like a spire.

Of all the trees the hickory is the conqueror. Its purpose in life is to withstand. It is a fighting tree, rough of dress, careless of manner, rude in its unpolished bark. To be frightened by the hails of heaven is not for it. The hurricane cannot quell it. From its youth it has fought the storm, and when the storm has tired it has still stood, tattered but glorious.

Every fall in one great flaming pyre as of a burning bush wherein there is Divinity, they have blazed and burned before our wondering eyes. A warrior tree, and yet, withal, what no warrior ever was: a giver of gifts, not a wrecker of those already garnered; not bullets, not shells, not grape shot dropped on the land; but nuts. Some day, truly, the real conqueror of the world will conquer like this tree--overcoming in a hail of kindness flung from loving hands.

"It was these trees," I said, turning to Eloise, "that sent me to Germany to study forestry; these trees and Dr. Gottlieb. How is he? I can hardly wait till morning to run over to his cabin."

Eloise laughed. "Oh! you were always a poet, Jack. Dr. Gottlieb is the same, and he is famous now; such books he has written of flowers and trees!"

"Do you know they use his text-books in Germany?" I asked proudly; "and that last work of his, 'Tree Influence on Precipitation,' was talked about in all the universities. Look," I said, pointing to a scarred and gullied hillside across the road, showing bare even in the twilight, "there is the great work to be done in our land, there is the coming field for the young brains of our country--that, and better farming, and the watering of our great barren spots in the West. We've cut down our trees wantonly--our pioneer sires did so before us,--for the land had to be cleared or they would have died. But now if I can only get them to change! You should see the German and French system. When I came through France, along their coasts, both on the Mediterranean and the Channel, were great forests planted to break the winds and storms. I was told that a century ago the winds began to make deserts of their coasts, encroaching mile after mile into the land. Now, with the trees planted, it is a garden again."

Eloise was listening silently. Then she said, "Jack, that is all very fine, and it took courage in you to do it, to go over there. It was not Aunt Lucretia's idea; hers was a horse-farm for you; and the General's was West Point and war. He has never been the same toward you, Jack--I can see it--since you would not go to West Point."

"He never cared for me as he did for Braxton," I said. I winced, for I loved my old grandsire.

"He has not written me a line since I have been gone," I went on.

"Poor Jack," and she took my hand in hers in the old way, "and I have always teased you cruelly, Jack."

"And Eloise," I said, "I have always loved you."

"Jack," she said, "Little Brother,"--those words I knew of old meant condescension--"I knew it would not do. I wanted you to love someone else. You know Aunt Lucretia's silly conditions." She flushed in the twilight. "I hoped while you were away," she went on, "if we didn't write you'd forget me."

"And instead," I said, bringing her hand to my lips, "I thought of no one else but you. I came back loving you, Eloise, more than ever; as a man's love is greater than a boy's."

She grew suddenly stern. "Jack, Jack, haven't I told you not to?"

"Not?" I cried. "Did any real lover ever have a choice? It's not his part to decide--"

"Listen, Jack; you know I would not lie to you, but you must understand how foolish--how useless--"

"Come to supper, Jack--Eloise." It was Aunt Lucretia calling. "Here is father and Colonel Goff," she added as we walked up the steps. "Father has grown quite deaf, Jack, since you saw him."

Colonel Goff, handsome, alert, and quick even to bluntness, came forward, and shook my hand.

"Glad to see you back again, Jack--welcome home."

My grandfather sat in his great chair, facing the lawn. His wooden leg rested on the railing. Great curls of tobacco smoke rose from his corner of the porch.

There was the old nervous, staccato clatter of wood and cane meeting on the floor as he arose to greet me. I saw the stern, unyielding face give back no smile of pleasure as he took my hand. He stood looking at me doubtfully, his mind evidently weakening with old age. The sadness of it flashed over me, for his mind had been the mind of a strong man in his day. My Aunt Lucretia promptly screamed in his ear, "This is Jack, Father; he has come home."

"Jack, ah--ah--Jack, glad to see you, suh; and who did you say it was, Lucretia?"

"Your grandson, Jack Ballington. He has been away studying in Germany," she screamed again.

"Aha," said the old man, "aha--of course--wouldn't go to West Point, though the President himself gave him the appointment in my behalf. Aha--Jack--a brooding, dreaming sort of a feller--always mooning around trees and writing poetry. Won't fight--not a damn one of 'em will. And what a chance to fight you would have now! What a bully scrap we are going to have! Have you heard, suh," he turned, and spoke sharply to me, "have you heard that the Spaniards blew up our battleship the other month, and that we are going to blow hell out of 'em? And they've been needing it for two centuries. Ah! If I were only younger, wouldn't I be in! Imagine it, Goff," he said, turning to him, "imagine me fighting under the old flag again! Didn't think I'd ever live to see that day when we were charging Banks in the Valley. Ah, 'twas a family scrap--only a family fight--like old man Tully and wife--have to fight a little at home now and then, so they'd love each other more when they made up. Ah, suh, I'd give this farm to be your age again, and a chance to fight under the old flag once more. Joe Wheeler wrote me the other day that President McKinley would make me a Brigadier, if I'd go in. By gad, suh, I sat down, and shed tears to think I was too old!"

He was silent awhile; then, "Ha, ha, but I read in the paper to-day that the Spanish Prime Minister is out in a statement saying it'll be easy to whip us, because we're divided North and South, and that the Southern Confederacy will arise again! He is right. We have already arisen. I see in every Southern State ten times more have volunteered than their quota calls for. Yes, we'll arise, and will help McKinley whip hell out of them!" He stamped his wooden leg on the floor.

"Now, Braxton Bragg--ah, he's in it. Do you know, suh, that he's a Captain in the First Tennessee, and they are preparing now to go to the Philippines? Ah, what a chance, what a chance you had, suh! And what do you say you did in Germany?"

"I studied forestry and farming, sir," I said, flushing hot under his words, "and with it I took two years' training in the military school at Berlin, taking instructions up to the rank of captain in the Emperor's Guards."

"The hell you did!" he shouted excitedly. "Did you have sense enough to do that? Those soldiers are the best drilled soldiers in the world, Goff. Your damned English to the contrary notwithstanding," he added, smiling at the Colonel. "In the Emperor's Guards! Strike a match, Lucretia, and let me see him." In the light of the match he stood up I stood above him six good inches. That and my shoulders breadth surprised him, for he went on: "You left here a crippled stripling, mooning all the time over flowers and such cat-hair, and crying if anybody cut down a tree. But you'll never fight, none of you ever have! Sissy is the word for the whole kit of the world's mooners. Still, you do surprise me, suh, now and then; I'll be honest about it; like this studying military in Germany. Ha--ha--think of it!"

"And beating you and your whole bragging bunch with Little Sister--have you forgotten that, sir?" asked Eloise, nervily thrusting her intense face into his, her eyes flashing, ready as she always had been to fight my battles for me.

My grandsire laughed good-naturedly. He had always had respect for Eloise in her fighting moods, as had everybody else on the farm. His voice was decidedly conciliatory as he said, "There, dear,--maybe I am too hard on Jack--ha--ha--guess that was neatly turned, and we took our medicine like men and soldiers. Eh, Goff?" He turned to me suddenly. "If you'd only quit this tree foolishness and fight; but you won't do it, suh--not a damned one of you ever did! And your lameness?"

"It was a cartilage in my knee, sir; Dr. Hoffman, the famous surgeon, took it out soon after I went over. I am not lame now, sir, at all."

"Glad to hear it, suh, glad to hear it."

He was silent for a moment, looking out into the dusk. "And you know all about trees--aha--well, there's only one tree in the world I care a damn for; there it is, and it is dying. My mother loved it. She used to nurse me there," he added tenderly, his voice dropping low.

"It's that beautiful elm at the dining-room window, Jack," explained my Aunt.

"The most perfect tree I ever saw," went on my grandsire, reminiscently. "The others just grew up any way, but that one stood like the great feathered eagle plume in the hair of the Comanche chief, Setting Sun. He was the first Indian I killed on the plains--in a hand to hand fight--and that eagle feather in his hair--I'll never forget it. And that elm was like it--and--and my mother loved it," he said, his voice muffled up in huskiness. He blew his nose vigorously, and went on more cheerily, "Make yourself at home, suh--do what you please. I wanted you to be a soldier, suh, like Braxton Bragg, ah, what a man that boy has developed into at West Point! But it isn't born in you--can't make a fighter out of a dreamer."

He sat down, and Aunt Lucretia, taking my hand, led me in. "Goff," I heard him say, "that fight at Winchester when we charged into the town--you led me a little you know, and--"

I felt Eloise's hand in mine as we went down the hall. "I hate him," she said, tossing her head back toward the old man. "It's mean and sinful; but I hate him! After all these years to greet you in that way. And Braxton Bragg--you should see what a fool he is, Jack, in his captain's straps, and living hourly up to his name!"

*CHAPTER IV*

*COLONEL GOFF*

Colonel Goff followed us shortly afterwards into the hall. He had ridden over on his English hunter while Eloise and I had been on the lawn greeting our tree friends. He was immaculately groomed, in polished boots, puttees and cap, an English crop in his hands. Fifty years old, his black hair slightly streaked with gray, he was handsome, and there was a masterful air about him that even an enemy must have admired. A younger son of the Earl of Carfax, he had come to America when my grandsire was fighting with Stonewall Jackson in Virginia. He had volunteered for service, and had been placed in Jackson's corps, and on my grandsire's staff. Here his real, sterling qualities found birth and he proved to be a brilliant soldier. It was he who charged ahead of the rebel yell and led the advance that scattered Banks. It was he who led again at Cedar Creek, caught the brilliant Sheridan napping, and sent his command reeling back in a retreat which would have meant demoralization for anyone but Sheridan. His fondness for my grandsire was no less than the old man's for him, and after the war Colonel Goff, being in disgrace, it was said, with his father at home, moved to Tennessee to be near his old commander. He had bought a fine place near ours, and here he had lived the life of an English gentleman, with his hounds, his horses, and his utter disregard of all the local and established ideas of country temperance or morals. He was not a man who asked for things, he took them.

Even before I left home I had secretly rebelled at his admiration for Eloise. In all her masterful ways, her riding, her fox chasing, her hunting with the men, following Goff or the General all day on her pony, and killing quail dead-straight, in the flush of the covey, he had openly admired her. Afterwards I heard him say that she was a duchess born, and the only one he had seen in America. He had humored, petted and helped to spoil her as a child. As a girl, there never was a costly thing she wanted but he gave it to her.

In the dining-room, when supper had been announced, I noticed the flushed pleasure in Eloise's eyes at sight of him. It was half a daring look, as of the hunted defying the hunter, that I saw in her eyes, but I could not rightly decipher it, or tell whether it meant she was conquered or as yet unconquered.

My heart burned with jealousy at the sight of it. The great joy of my home-coming was gone! I knew his way, and that he would stay for supper.

"I had thought," I whispered sourly to Eloise, "that I would at least have this first evening alone with you."

Eloise laughed. "Oh, he comes when he pleases, and I--I send him home when I please."

He had greeted me pleasantly, but during supper he paid little attention to me. Once he laughed at my study of forestry, and added, "And to go to Germany for it, when you might have gone to England!"

After supper, when I had gone with Aunt Lucretia to the barn to help her with a sick colt, I smelt the odor of his cigar coming up from our old seat under the elm. I grew bitter at the thought that anyone but I should sit there with Eloise. My Aunt must have noticed this, for she called: "Come in here--both of you. This isn't fair to Jack."

Aunt Lucretia and Colonel Goff could never meet ten minutes in their lives without a heated argument over American and English horses. She generally worsted him, because she had all the records at her tongue's end, and because in any kind of controversy she was fearless. For an hour to-night, and until he left, she scored him fearlessly. "Take that nick-tailed horse of yours," said Aunt Lucretia, "Colonel Goff, couldn't you do better than that in England?" There were two things which always especially incensed her; one was to cut off a horse's tail and the other to import an animal from England, when a better one might be had here.

Colonel Goff explained that there were no such horses in America. "He is a four-mile hurdler," said he. "You've nothing of the kind in this blooming country."

"Why, madam, he holds the record jump behind the Quoin hounds at Melton-Mowbry. The kill was in the main driveway of a manor and his rider cleared the picket fence to be in first. That fence measured five and a half feet and to this day it is the record at Melton-Mowbry."

"A four-miler, that means a running horse," said my Aunt. "Of course we have them. And a hurdler--that's only a jumping horse. Now, we've never cared much for jumpers. Why, I've a mule in my barn that can go over a ten rail fence any day. Uncle Ned says she just climbs it; anyway, I've never been able to build one high enough to keep her out of the cornfield on the other side. But there's Eloise's Satan, son of Young Hickory, scion of General Jackson's Truxton. The man his sire is named for used to beat your English at any kind of a game at New Orleans, and I'll wager that Satan would be a mighty hurdler and high jumper if he only had a chawnce," she said, smiling, in funny mimicry of Goff.

"Fawncy!" laughed Goff, twisting his mustache. "Why, he couldn't jump over a chalk line! It's all in the training and pedigree! My Nestor colt holds the record for the Melton-Mowbry meet, and his high jump was five feet six."

My Aunt turned the subject as if it were forgotten. But I knew she never forgot, and that she had something up her sleeve.

I was worried that Goff should linger so on my first night, for I saw plainly that he hoped we would retire and that he wanted to get Eloise off for a _tete-a-tete_. Aunt Lucretia saw this also, and whispered to me when she got the chance, "Freeze him out, Jack; he shan't have her to-night!"

"Why, Major Hawthorn," she said presently, turning and rising abruptly.

The major came in on us silently, in his soft, well-bred way. I rose instantly to greet him.

"Jack, my boy!" said he, throwing one arm around me, and drawing me to him. "How you have grown! I heard you had come home, and I had to see you to-night."

"And you didn't want to see _me_?" said Eloise, coming up, and kissing him; for the Major was her ideal, and she was always his pet. "Now, Major, you always said that you loved me as much as you did Jack," she teased, winding an arm into his.

"Just the same as ever, my dear; you are both my two children always," he laughed. "Why, good evening, Goff--and the General, where is he?" he asked my Aunt Lucretia. "I have news that will please him."

My Aunt went after my grandfather.

"Jack," he turned to me, "what a man you have grown into! I'm hungry for a long talk with you."

The Major sat down, and Colonel Goff offered him a cigar. He struck a match, but before using it, held it a moment to my face. "Inspection, Jack," said he, smiling; "you know how hard it is to break an old soldier of his habits."

I saw his finely-cut, sensitive face light up. I noticed the familiar turn of his mustache, his kindly mouth, the correct dress, the straight, martial bearing, and the courtesy, that seemed a gift of his own.

"And it looks as if I might die in harness," he went on. "Ah, here's the General."

He rose and shook hands with my grandsire. "I have come over to tell you, General, of a telegram I received this afternoon from the President, and I should so like to have your advice before answering--the advice of all of you," he said kindly, turning and bowing our way.

"Ah, Hawthorne," said my grandsire, "I know what it is--I knew it was coming--I wrote Joe Wheeler--"

"I thought you had something to do with it," said the Major, "and I shall abide by your decision, my General," he added softly.

"McKinley has appointed you Brigadier-General," went on my grandsire quietly. "The First Tennessee will be in your brigade. I can't talk of it, Hawthorne--I want to go to the Philippines with you so bad, and give the damned Yankees--ah, pardon--pardon me--I mean the damned Spaniards another good drubbing!"

There was a burst of laughter from us all. My grandsire sat down confused.

"It is as you said," Major Hawthorne replied, "and I am going to do as you say, General. I have taken your orders in Virginia too often to refuse now."

"Hawthorne, I envy you; by gad, I envy you," said the old man.

"General, do you know that I never was so happy before? I have so wanted to fight under the old flag. Jack," he turned to me, his face smiling, "Jack, I have come to see you for this purpose--I want you on my staff--I know the training you have had, I know the stuff that is in you. I want you, my boy. I've ridden ten miles to-night to tell you."

"Tut--tut--Hawthorne--nonsense!" broke in the General. "Don't start out making breaks like that. Jack is a good boy, but he is not a fighter--now, there's Braxton Bragg--"

"My grandfather is doubtless right, General Hawthorne," I said quietly. "I thank you from my heart for your kindness--but--"

Eloise arose flushing, indignant. "Jack _is_ a fighter; a better fighter than some people who strut around in khaki, and make great pretense, but amount to nothing," she said deliberately and with emphasis.

Then she came over and put one arm affectionately on my shoulder. "And General Rutherford," she went on, her voice trembling with anger, "I mean this for you, and I mean no disrespect; but it is cruel of you the way you have slurred Jack, and I almost doubt that you ever made the good fighting record you have, when I think how easily you can be fooled into taking a tin soldier for the real thing! I do, and now you know what _I_ think."

Colonel Goff laughed, pleased. "You pinked him just right, Eloise. Been thinking I'd tell the General that myself--eh, General?" and he slapped the old man familiarly on the back.

The old General answered testily, "Tut--tut--madam;" and then he laughed. "Gad, but I wish you were a man! Damned if _you_ wouldn't fight!"

*CHAPTER V*

*PEDIGREES AND PRINCIPLES*

My Aunt Lucretia undoubtedly was the real master of The Home Stretch. She ruled its thousand acres of low, rolling, blue grass land, which bore in pioneer days the canebrake and the poplar, and for a century had been the nursery of thoroughbreds.

My Aunt lived and dreamed in pedigrees. Heaven, according to her, was a blue-grass meadow filled with pedigreed people, and hell--I remember how I had laughed when she said, "Why, Jack, if there is such a place, it's a low jockey-yard filled with scrubs!"

Pedigrees, I am certain, was her gauge of life. She was more man than woman, handsome though she was. She should have been a bewigged, knee-breeched, ruffle-shirted, horse-racing Virginia gentleman of the old school, as many of her ancestors had been. She still clung to a few blooded horses, though her immaculate dairy of Jersey cows was her greatest pride. When my parents died, even before I could remember, she had adopted me. She intended that I should inherit The Home Stretch. Then, true to her ideas, she had planned a proper mate for me. She had been a success in mating everything but herself. Her ribbons won at State Fairs and in Horse Shows proved it; for her Merino sheep she held a great cup from the International Exhibit in Paris. The wool of her Tennessee sheep had gone back across the ocean, and beaten the parent wool on its own soil. This great, heavy, solid silver cup sat on the mantel in the library, and every spring, when I had a cold, she had given me punch cobbler out of it.

She had early paired me off with Eloise Ward, who was an orphan, and a distant relative of her mother. My Aunt had adopted her, as she had me, and given her every grace of a fashionable education. At ten she had, as she expressed it, engaged us. I remember it was Eloise's tenth birthday and my twelfth. She bought a little turquoise ring and made me give it to Eloise.

"Now, Jack, Eloise is yours! Eloise, you will marry him when you are grown. Now kiss each other as sensibly engaged people do, to seal it. After this no more kissing."

The last advice was unneeded. Up to then we had never kissed, but had fought continually. Knowing Aunt Lucretia, and that if we did not do as she said, something uncomfortable would happen to us, we screwed up our mouths, each trying to outdo the other in mock martyrdom, and complied.

After that Aunt Lucretia was very gracious. I think we showed remarkable horse-sense, young as we were, in carrying out her wishes, inasmuch as we expected some day to own the great farm and house.

To comfort me she used to say--for she knew my love of blooded stock: "She is beautiful, Jack, well built and coupled just right in the back. One link more of vertebrae would have spoiled her, turned her up too sloping between the shoulders, and made her gangling in the hips. If there's too many links in a filly's back, when the pinch of contest comes, you know, Jack, as well as I do, there will be a crumpling--and it is generally in their legs. And Eloise's, Jack--well, you should see it--thoroughbred--taut as a bow string--holding hip and head together. And not too short, either, Jack; the little dicky, short-backed ones, with schooner hips, are a sure sign of several vertebrae being lost by sitting on them for too many generations at the loom or the wheel, or carrying home the week's washing on their heads! It's the scrub sign, my boy. And Eloise is clean-limbed with good flat bones. Jack, as you love me and your God, never marry a woman that can't span her ankle with her thumb and forefinger--that kind of a fetlock is a scrub of the most pronounced type! It came from ancestors before them for a thousand years, who had all their weight on their ankles--just hauling plows like beasts of burden. And Eloise has great style with a fine sweep and action. Look how boldly she steps and clean and true! No loblolling, lazy ambling there--hitting even on the ground--and her hair, Jack--red-chestnut--it is beautiful and not too much. Shun the brood-mare with mane thick and heavy. It is pretty but comes from the scrub Shetlands or Andalusian jennets. Look--look, Jack--isn't she beautiful?"

I watched her myself, tall, her scornful, daring head thrown back, her fine braids of sorrel, silken hair flying out, as in a long-limbed, leaping sweep, she chased the collie across the yard.

The comparison was fitting--as a thoroughbred, Eloise was superb. My Aunt had copied it all by herself, tabulating for me, most elaborately and artistically, on a great sheet of parchment, Eloise's pedigree. It was such a tabulation as I had seen her work over night after night, often for months, handing down volume after volume of the English and Bruce's Stud Book and the Trotting and Pacing Register. In bold, block, decorated letters, she gradually evolved Eloise's sire and dam, as she grimly called them, and thence on to granddams and g. g. dams (every g. as I learned standing for another generation) until it looked, when finished, like a great river, with a hundred branching streams flowing in, and an endless row of g. g. g. g. g.'s

Under each sire and dam, and in red ink, in contrast to the black of their names, she had written their records, short and pointed, and often with astonishing frankness. I remember that under her grandsire--a Governor of Virginia--the red ink ran: _Died of a wetting, while drunk at a horse race! Watch your children for too much crude liquor!_

Under one of her dams, daughter of a Carolina judge, she had: _She had a streak of common, for she ate onions. If you have daughters, don't plant the things in your garden!_

Another of her great Virginia ancestors was a preacher, noted for his zeal in proselyting; under him was: _Too religious--the reaction may come in your grandson, who is likely to be an infidel, Nature maintaining her balance in morals as in matter_.

Now that I had come home from Germany it was evidently my Aunt's intention that Eloise and I should marry.

"Come, Eloise," said she, after our guests had left, and my grandfather had retired, "we will light Jack to bed in the old way."

Eloise jumped up, slipping her arm into mine. Then she two-stepped with me up the hall, humming "A Hot Time In The Old Town To-night."

Aunt Lucretia looked on, her stern face relaxed into a satisfied smile.

I slipped my arm around Eloise's slim waist, and, bending over, tried to kiss her cheek. But she drew back laughing, and Aunt Lucretia's voice came sternly from behind. "Jack--Eloise!"

We stopped instantly under the chandelier. Aunt Lucretia shut the heavy doors, and came up with all the sternness of a Roman lictor in her face.

"Turn her loose, Jack. Listen, both of you: I had intended to inform you to-morrow finally, but this is as good a time as any."

We stood silent before her. Eloise's pretty mouth drooped in pretended humbleness.

"You know how I love you both, and--well, how you respect each other. You know that I have planned and dreamed for you both, ever since I brought you together here. Now let me see. This is April--well, I am going to marry you to each other in the fall, and until I marry you off," she went on sternly, "I have only one rule--no hugging--no kissing. It is bad before marriage, and after you are married," she added with becoming stiffness, "you will not want to."

"Don't you think your conditions are awfully severe for engaged people?" asked Eloise demurely.

"And I may seal it with a kiss surely, Aunt Lucretia," I said, "for once."

"No, not for once. That silly performance has caused more trouble in the world than all the sins of Satan combined. We will never have a decent race of people till kissing is cut out," she exclaimed. "There, no more at present--march!"

And she marched us into my room.

"Isn't this fine!" I said, looking around at the old room, glad to be home again.

It was twenty by twenty, the pioneer size, with a great fireplace, built of oak and ash. In a corner was my old mahogany tester bed, big posted and canopy-topped. The little cherry writing desk stood near, and so did the quaint mahogany bureau, resting on dragon claws, with great drawers for a base, and ending pyramid-like in a top of granite finish, set off by a little mirror, and with a tiny shaving drawer for my razors. Big windows looked out on all sides.

After Eloise had left Aunt Lucretia sat quietly thinking, looking now and then at a pedigree of Eloise which she had once made and hung over my mantel. It was framed in walnut and decorated with fancy letters. At last she smiled.

"Isn't she a thoroughbred, Jack?"

"I haven't really got my breath yet, Aunt Lucretia," I answered. "I never dreamed she would grow into a being so beautiful. Don't you really believe you might er--er--hurry up this--er--affair--" and I stopped, blushing.

Aunt Lucretia broke out in her rare, good-humored laugh.

"Poor boy! Jack, you must be careful. You talk as if you had a real case of the silly, unsensible thing."

"Always had it, Aunt Lucretia," I smiled weakly.

"Jack, that would be very unfortunate. I want you to marry on common sense--not love."

"You know how I have always loved her," I went on. Aunt Lucretia glanced sharply at me. "I mean how I've cared for her," I amended. "But do you--do you honestly believe, Aunt Lucretia, that she loves me--cares for me that way?"

"Tut--tut," she said sharply, "what nonsense you talk! What does it matter? This silly love business has spoiled more good pedigrees and brought more fools into the world, I tell you, than anything else under the sun. What a fine breed of folks we'd have had in the world by now if so many idiots had not fallen in love and married without a moment's thought of results. You ought to be grateful to me, Jack," she continued after a while; "you will be grateful, I am sure, some day, that you had me to select a wife for you and didn't just happen to fall in love. That's an accident often as fatal as happening to fall down the steps.

"It is awful, Jack, this haphazard of humanity!" she went on in a moment. "No wonder only one in a hundred is born who has got any brains in his head. Think of it, Jack, our race is so pig-headed from thoughtless marryings that it took them three hundred years after they invented a saddle before it dawned upon them that they needed stirrups to complete it. Rode three centuries on bare saddles for lack of sense enough to invent stirrups! Some day for the benefit of humanity I am going to open a human Registry. I want to do this because I think it is our duty to try to teach people to take as much interest in their own children's pedigree as they do in their horses' or dogs'. Many a man falls in love with and marries a woman whose qualities and character, and pedigree, if she were a horse, he wouldn't be caught trading a blind mule for! And many a woman, under the same divine influence, marries some vicious brute of a man for no other reason than because she has just fallen in love with him, or maybe wants to reform him, who, if he were turned into a buggy horse she wouldn't be caught risking her neck behind.

"And this is the way I'd go to registering my people," she continued. "In all registration there must be a foundation stock. For man, I'd let Truthfulness, Bravery, Honesty, Manliness, and Ability to Do Things, count as Foundations. This would change the present social system radically and let into good society and life a flood of good blood that is at present badly needed but is shut out, unless it suddenly happens to get rich and comes in under a dress suit. I would make accomplishments, the _Ability to Do Things_, from the Ability to do Poetry, Art, Drama, Music--everything that is worth while--to the ability to make two blades of grass grow, the greatest of them all, count as my classes, and it wouldn't take me long to straighten out Old Humanity and breed a race of people, who, in a few generations, as old Horace says, would strike the stars with their uplifted heads!"

She laughed. "Look, Jack, here it is. I have worked it all out, just for fun." She unrolled a parchment, as immaculately executed in decorated letters as Eloise's pedigree had been. Then she read, glancing over her glasses now and then to emphasize her remarks.

"_A STANDARD OF HUMAN REGISTRATION_.

When white men and women meet the following requirements and are duly registered, they shall be accepted as standard bred, and shall be permitted to marry:

FIRST: Any white man, who has a home of his own and is honest, industrious, and truthful, and sound in wind, limb and eye.

SECOND: Any white woman, who can cook a good meal, make her own clothes, keep a home clean, lives a pure life, and has some moral standard for herself and children, and will agree to raise them under it.

THIRD: Every man who is the father of a great man or woman.

FOURTH: Every woman who is the mother of a great man or woman.

_NON-STANDARD_:

The following shall be Non-Standard, and neither they nor their children shall be registered.

FIRST: Fools.

SECOND: Liars.

THIRD: Cranks.

FOURTH: Idiots.

FIFTH: Geniuses. They are freaks merely, and fools in another form.

SIXTH: Sissy men.

SEVENTH: Consumptives, the cancerous, the insane.

EIGHTH: Impure women.

NINTH: Society people wherever found, and their one child.

TENTH: Married men who lead Germans.

ELEVENTH: The children of women who play cards for money and prizes.

TWELFTH: Evangelists who preach slang from the pulpit.

THIRTEENTH: Praying lawyers.

FOURTEENTH: Trading preachers.

FIFTEENTH: Professional politicians.

SIXTEENTH: Bank cashiers who run Sunday Schools.

SEVENTEENTH: Doctors who cut open people quickly, or dope them with much medicine.

LUCRETIA RUTHERFORD,
Registrar."

I laughed. "It wouldn't do any harm to try it awhile, Aunt Lucretia; but--referring again to Eloise--"

"We'll not refer again to Eloise," she said, seeing what I was coming to; "this thing is settled. You two will marry this fall, and until then I want no foolishness around me."

"But, suppose she--" I began.

"She is not to suppose anything--nor you. Get her a beautiful ring the next time you go to town. I'll attend to the rest of it."

We talked for an hour or two. I could see how glad she was that I was at home again, for, with all of her stern ways, my Aunt Lucretia was very fond of me.

"And to think of your being the man you are, Jack," she said finally, "and that lameness all gone. Ah, but that is what I'm telling you--the Germans are the greatest thinkers in the world--because--well, because they have been bred to think. Yes, it is good to see you here again, Jack, and sound, and you will earn your oats from now on, young man, remember that."

*CHAPTER VI*

*THE MAKE-BELIEVE*

After Aunt Lucretia had gone there was a faint tap at my window, which I knew of old. When I raised the sash Eloise stood outside, smiling at me. On the veranda she slipped her arm through mine, and led the way to our old seat under the hickories.

"Jack," she began, and her serious tone seemed to bode no good, "I just couldn't go to sleep until I had talked with you. Aunt Lucretia thinks I'm in bed; just as she used to think we both were when we weren't, Little Brother." She smiled half tenderly. "I think I ought to speak to you. This thing is getting serious, don't you think?"

"It's been that way with me all the time," I said earnestly, "if I could only get you to look at it seriously--"

For reply she thumped my cheek with her thumb and forefinger. It was a trick Aunt Lucretia had used when I had been naughty as a boy, and Eloise knew that nothing made me madder.

"Now, Jack--no nonsense--listen. We must do something--about--"

"Our marriage this fall?" I interrupted.

Eloise laughed. "Isn't it nonsense?"

"Well, I don't know," I said. "She has always said so, and we have always done as she said. I have always found it was the best thing for me," I added.

Eloise pretended indignation. "Well, now, let me tell you, Jack, this is my funeral as well as yours, and for once this isn't the right idea!"

"Oh," said I, "maybe you've grown big enough since I saw you to defy Aunt Lucretia. Well, _I_ haven't; and dear, dear Little Sister," I went on, taking her slim hand in mine with more warmth than she seemed to like, "I have learned to hold my own among men, but Aunt Lucretia is a very different thing! I am not going to defy her, or go contrary to her wishes--I've tried it and know better! And you?"

"Of course I am," she said, moving a little away from me; "the idea! Why, Jack, it is absurd! Jack--" and instantly she stopped. Her voice dropped with a sad little wilt, and she laid her head upon my shoulder.

I knew that she was brave and never cried, or else I would have believed she was in tears.

"Dear Little Sister," I said consolingly, "why, what is it? What has happened since I left? This has been Aunt Lucretia's dream all her life, and mine too," I said, tenderly kissing her cheek.

Eloise sighed; then after a while she answered. "Of course, Jack, she has said that always, ever since we were children, and being children, why we couldn't say anything, for our very home and living depended on it. But Jack, I see it all now. I'm ashamed of it--though I couldn't help it--this--this awful buy-and-sell way, this bartering me because I am poor and an orphan, this closing the chance of the great dream of my life for me--that one dream which every woman loves more than life, Jack. It's--why, I've treated you so badly. I wonder that you care for me at all. But--oh, Jack, I had such ideas of love, and now to be mated off like her cattle!"

"I know it," I said, "only you were never as mean as you say. Young as we were I felt it, too, and that is why I didn't blame you. But it never made any difference with me, Eloise--I have loved you always, and I'm as proud of you now as anyone can be."

"Oh, you dear boy," said she. She laid her head upon my shoulder, then reached up and kissed me on the cheek. She was silent and I was never so happy, with her head lying there, and the perfume of her hair in my face.

At last she laughed. "Jack, you neglected me shamefully while you were away, studying."