Chapter V: Part 5

It was Clay and Crawford who let the British make that treaty of December twenty-fourth in which they said that they would not be bound by Bonaparte's constructions. At that time Lord Castlereagh had every reason to believe that Packenham, sent out November twenty-fourth, with the best army and navy that ever left Portsmouth for a foreign shore, had taken the 'crown colony of Louisiana,' as they called it. And under that treaty they would have held it. It was Jackson who stopped them, just one day before that treaty was signed.

"Yes, Clay is dead," she said laconically; "he ought to be.

"They wanted New Orleans, and they wanted it bad. 'Booty and Beauty' was the word they passed down the line when they landed and started across the Chalmette plain, to take the fair Creole City. They were going to take her and then rape her as they did the cities of Spain, and they would if Jackson had not gaffed their very vitals out in that night attack of December twenty-third."

She turned suddenly on me, her eyes ablaze. "Do you think, Jack, if he had loved a girl and an Englishman wanted her bad enough to take her right out of his arms that he would have given her up?"

I looked up quickly and her face flushed with fighting fire.

"And he was the tenderest, Jack," she went on calmly. "Old Parton tells a pretty story about him. One bitter, sleeting March day, an early lamb had all but died in the field here, and his little adopted grandchild, a tot of four, found the lamb and cried for it; and so Jackson brought them both to the house, and by the fire; and to comfort the child he took them both into his arms and so sat here, before this great hearth, holding them both in his arms.

"He, who had killed bad men as he had dogs, who had cut to death the pick of the army that later won Waterloo, he sat coddling a lamb and a child and thinking of his dead wife, and she,--oh, Jack, I all but shed tears when I think of it! The night she died, and he would not have it so, but lay all night beside her, holding her in his arms, and trying to get her warm again, with the great love of his own great heart."

There were tears in Aunt Lucretia's eyes. Oh, the depths of her stern heart! It is like the mountain capped with snow. But when the snow melts and the flowers come up among the crannied rocks there are no flowers in the valleys below that equal them.

The other recollection was of Eloise. It was the night before she left for Washington. Colonel Goff, who had spent the evening with her, had ridden off. I, pretending to work, was really listening for her footstep, as she came back to her room up the great steps.

"Jack," she said, standing just outside the window, "come." And she beckoned to me.

We sat down under the wisteria vine, which grew over the porch.

"Jack," she said, "I want you to do me one favor. No one loves Satan here but you and me. Won't you take care of him while I am gone? Ride him whenever you can, the harder the better, for he is made of iron and needs it."

"He and I are good friends," I said. "I have ridden him daily. We understand each other," I added softly; "we both love you."

"And Jack," her hand was instantly in mine in the old way, "in after years you won't think evil of me for selling myself this way, will you?"

"Why, no," I said seriously. "I have been thinking of it, and all life is just a barter and trade."

I saw her face in the starlight.

"I've no right to make you wretched like this, Jack," she said, rising. "I am going in; and when I return do you be gone Jack, somewhere--anywhere." Her voice trembled. She stood quiet, and I by her, dazed and helpless.

"There is one thing I am going to take to England with me, Jack," and she pulled out from beneath her gown yoke, a little token I had forgotten. I recognized the locket and the chain I had given her years ago. "And this little picture in it is you, Jack. You gave them both to me the day I helped you lick Braxton Bragg."

Then she turned quickly and left me.

"Jack," said my Aunt, as we parted the next day at the station, "I am afraid things are all against us. Father, I see, is going to will The Home Stretch to Braxton Bragg. If I were you--"

"I have already done it," I said. "I am going to move to-day to Dr. Gottlieb's; there I shall work out my plans."

My Aunt smiled grimly. "I want you to remember one thing when I am gone. Don't give up--remember Old Hickory."

I looked up at her quickly. I saw something in her eye that gave me heart again. I bade her good-by. I dared not say it to Eloise. I slipped away, but I watched the train of cars die away behind the trail of smoke in the distance as I rode back home, and it seemed as if my whole afterlife lay clouded in that path of smoke. It was hard to give up my home, the old home, every tree I knew, and with them Eloise and my life-dream....

One's dream and one's home--what else is there which grips so the very tendrils of one's soul. To give up one cuts deeply into the roots of the heart, but when the blow is doubled, there is only one thing that can make one stand upright and not fall, and that is the Spirit Within. People have different ideas of God as their souls reveal. It runs all the way from the pitiable, crude, faint conception which comes to the savage in cloud, a sun, or star or image of stone, to the higher mind which perceives Him in the Great Spirit of the Universe. None of these is my idea of God. I have never been able to dissociate God from my own self. I have never been able to conceive of Him as apart from me.... And not always the same, but always there.... In my meaner self so little of Him is there, so tiny a spot of the divine light ... so faint, so seemingly nothing. And this is the greatest of it--this is the test--the very divinest evidence. _He is always there_; and when a blow comes, humbling the material, the meaner of me, then He claims His own--my nobler self--taking it unto His care, flooding it with His presence. It is then, searching yourself and your own heart that you find Him--that you know that you are a part of God because He is there!

Riding home it all swept over me so. In my innermost soul I knew it: like a flash came the inspiration of it, the old Prophet of Deuteronomy: "_As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings._" Did God mean in this, the wrecking of my nest, that I should fly--even as a young eagle?

"And remember Satan, Jack, to keep him fit," I heard Eloise's voice say.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*HEART'S-EASE*

Never was there a quieter, better place to work than at Dr. Gottlieb's, whither I had gone after Aunt Lucretia and Eloise had left. In a short while I had become reconciled, in my hard work, to my lot; for to live with Dr. Gottlieb meant to work, to classify, to probe into things, and this meant to put aside all else, even for awhile one's heart's trouble for the hard mental strain of it. I remember those study nights well and with such pleasure. I can recall the little quiet man with his books, his abstraction, his quaint comments, the learned deductions that fell now and then from his lips as if he were unconscious that he was speaking. From studying the pollen of a flower he would look up abstractedly and drawl, "_Ah, Jack; and Miss Lucretia--that most beautiful and charming of women! Did I ever tell you that each of us has our prototype in a plant? And how much to my mind--ah, Jack, and to my heart, how much she resembles the beautiful red wood lily!_"

He would put down his book, and look longingly out over the hills. It was the only foolish thing he ever did, I thought, and so I forgave him, knowing that each of us has at least one foolish thought within us.

He always had a smile for me; often he would walk around all the evening thinking abstractedly, or puttering among his books and plants and geographical specimens, and then start into real work at midnight. And I would work with him; for, besides studying my forestry, I was carrying on some experiments, testing the various effects of fertilizers on the soil of The Home Stretch. Dr. Gottlieb would say: "It is not the time, it is the inspiration, Jack; catch it when it comes."

Exercising Satan daily as I did, I became as attached to the great game fellow as did he to me. He was a singular horse, of a type entirely his own. The harder the ride, the more difficult the feat, the stubborner, gamer he grew. Not every horse is an individual, in fact few are; they are horses merely. But Satan was one, almost human in his idiosyncrasies. If he had been a man he would have been one of the world's leaders. There was nothing he would not do for me after he learned to love me.

Even in my heartache, in my despair at giving up Eloise, I thought often of Elsie; for, having known her since she was a tot of three years, when she came to live with Tammas and Marget, riding her, a wee girl in front of me on my pony, going with her, a little maid, over the hills to hunt for some Scotch flowers, I had that attachment for her that one has for a little sister. She had developed far more beautifully than I had dreamed of, both spiritually and in body; for the connection between them at last is the same. I had never thought before that there was any mystery about Elsie. Tammas and Marget, with all their apparent frankness, had the greatest inherited trait of their race, a shrewd secretiveness when it was best. Heretofore I had thought of Elsie only as their orphaned grandchild. I supposed her father was some sturdy Scotchman of their own class, who, perhaps, died after his wife, or, if alive, had given her to her grandparents. But now I saw differently; perhaps her beauty, and the romantic turn events had taken; the Juliet outpouring of her own exquisite nature had touched in me some subtle instinct.

It was this affair of Braxton Bragg which worried me most of all. I had not seen him since I returned. I did not want to. There are those born into our lives who seem always to oppose, thwart, counteract what we do. Braxton Bragg had played this part in my life. I could not escape him, try as I would. Even when I was in Germany, with an ocean between us, had he not cheated me of my own birthright? He was with his company in the city of Nashville, where the Tennessee troops were mobilized for the war. They expected orders to sail for the Philippines any day. All his life Braxton Bragg, weak as he was in character and mind, with that conceit which often goes with weakness, had really believed that, after he had acquired The Home Stretch, or a greater military reputation in the army, he would marry Eloise. All his life he had openly proclaimed it. His mentality was not great, and he had not yet learned that in real love monies, farms, reputation, fame, are the least that count.

Goff had won her. Braxton Bragg now knew that. Goff had always befriended him, and bore with him more than anyone else. Goff had confided in him and trusted him. Braxton Bragg was as immoral as he was weak. Therefore I reasoned this matter lay in one of two ways. Either he was recklessly scheming to deceive and ruin Elsie, or else he had found out something that none of us knew and was scheming to marry her on account of it. Besides deceiving my grandsire, as he had all his life, I now learned that he had further deceived him:--that, graduating from West Point, he had been appointed to the army, but even before he went on duty, he had been caught in an act unbecoming a soldier and gentleman, and to escape courtmartial had resigned. My grandfather's influence had saved him and got him elected captain of a company which my grandsire had himself raised and equipped for the war.

Absorbed in my own affairs, numbed by the wreckage which had come to my soul's dream, I had neglected Elsie of late. When I realized it, and what it meant to a sensitive nature such as hers, I went over at once, fearing that, since our last meeting she might have misunderstood my absence, and brooded over imaginary wrongs to her own hurt. I found it was high time when I learned the real situation.

Tammas met me, his face weary; for the first time in all our greetings with no broad smile.

"Tammas," I said, "where is Elsie? I want to see her."

"Come, Mr. Jack," said he, taking off his big butter apron; "we'll gang ben into Marget's room, for we baith want to talk to you."

I found Marget quite as troubled as Tammas.

"I feel that I've been neglecting you," I said, trying to talk cheerfully, "but--I have--there have been great changes in my life--I have gone to live with--"

"Ay, we ken aboot it," said Marget, "and though we didna understand, we thocht ye'd come ower in your ain guid time to tell us."

"If we can help you, Mr. Jack," began Tammas quietly, "we will be glad to do it."

"Thank you, good friends," I said, taking his hand. "I can't explain it all now; only this," I went on, forcing a smile that I did not feel, "there has been scheming against me all around, everywhere, since I left home, and--well," I smiled, "I've been turned out of home, and--and--everything."

Marget's eyes flashed: "They'll no' turn ye oot o' onything," she cried hotly, "no' as long as we're here, Tammas an' me. Ye'll jist come ower and bide wi' us. Here's your room, Mr. Jack. An' Tammas an' me--we love ye as much as we dae oor ain bairn. I ken fine wha it is. Tammas, didna I tell ye? It's juist that Braxton Bragg! He's been plotting against ye ever since he was a wee bairn, an' ye're no' the only one that he's mistreating; an' it breaks ma heart to think that ony man in this country whaur we and oor lassie hae lived so correctly, should be sae bold as to write this, an' it's been wanting to see ye we have, an' to show it to ye. Ye are a' we hae to protect her, Jack; we are truthful folks, an' oor lassie is a sweet and pure lass, that has been a' her life here in this valley, like as to ony lily in it, an' we dinna think she should be insulted by the like o' that."

She had taken a note from her bosom and handed it to me.

"Haud on a wee, afore ye read it," said Tammas. "Afore ye cam' hame," he went on, "I didna like his attention to oor lassie, an' the untoward way he had o' trying to meet her secretly gin she but gaed oot o' oor sicht, an' ye ken Mr. Jack, hoo fond she was since a bairn, to hunt flo'ers an' birds on the hills aroun'. Sae very frankly I gaed to him, as I thocht it my duty to do, an I tell't him we had oor ain plans for the lassie, an that he was in anither class frae her, an' any attention he showed her wad be to the hurt o' the lassie, an' it wad be maist unbecoming in him as a gentleman to persist. Eh, but it maddened me to hear him explain and pass it a' aff as a joke, an' the flattery o' him fair scunnert me, it did. But for a' I said till him he didna stop it, but kept dogging the steps o' the lassie an' writing her love notes. Sae I gaed till him again an' maist pintedly I made him understaun', that I wad appeal to his grandfaither for protection. I am a man of peace, but this maitter has reached its leemit, an' noo we're gaun to turn it ower to you. Marget an' masel' hae thocht it a' oot, because if ever Elsie had a brither it's oor Jack," he added. "There's only ae thing mair I'll be asking ye afore ye act, an' it's jist this, that seeing the matter's sae delicate an' talking aboot it micht injure oor lassie, I'll jist ask ye to consult wi' Colonel Goff in the maitter."

"Ay, an' ae day ye'll ken the reason," said Marget very quietly, nodding approval to Tammas's remarks.

I never was so angry as when I read the letter. I was fighting mad, no other word will do.

"Where is Elsie?" I asked, controlling myself. "I must talk with our little lassie."

"Weel, ye see," said Marget, "Jack, I dinna ken. The puir bairn is a' but crushed--she's just like a lily that has grown a' simmer in the valley, an' opens for the first time ae morning to find there's such a thing in God's worl' as rain an' hail."

Tammas came up to me whispering quietly. "We maun tell ye this, Mr. Jack, it's only fair that ye should ken. We hae keepit' oor ain counsel a' these years about oor lassie, an' that which we wad like ye to ken aboot her Colonel Goff will tell ye. But this ye maun ken, there is behind her on her faither's side that verra intensity of nature so highly keyed for joy or sorrow, that it has sent mony o' her forbears amang the gentle leddies o' her hoose to early deaths, even to taking their ain lives. Ay, Elsie is jist sae like her faither's sister, the bonnie ane that suicided for love. Eh, but oor hearts are wae aboot oor bairn. She's shut hersel' in her room a' day, but jist afore ye cam' she gaed off to the wood ower yonder."

"Ay, ay, if there's ony ane in this worl' that can help us it's you, as I said to Tammas afore ye cam'. The Lord be thankit for your coming!"

"Ay, but the lassie;--Mr. Jack, would you let them that raised you be plain to your face as becomes honest folks with those they love?"

I nodded. "Then Elsie cares na' a bawbee for this bold rascallion--it's you she loves, Mr. Jack, an' wi' a' respect and deference for so delicate a thing, you'll sune ken that ye hae the love o' a lassie wham the highest in England and Scotland wad be prood to mate wi'."

At first I could not find her. She was hidden in her favorite place, a natural arbor of low dogwoods overgrown with a beautiful root of tangled wild-grape.

I was never before more calm, for the seriousness of it all was on me. Not only was her own reputation, her future happiness and life at stake, but that of others also. The hint given me by Marget made things clear. If I ever needed tact I needed it now. I was ready for any concession to save her from the position she was in, even to forget Eloise, if I could.

I decided that it was best that she should not know that I knew anything. My first glance showed me how seriously she was taking her trouble. I had never seen such sorrow in her eyes, eyes which now fought defiantly the gloom that was settling in them, as a child's when it knows for the first time its mother has died.

I sat down beside her, and without speaking drew her to me. "My little Heart's-Ease," I said, "you'll let your prince help you?" I let her cry on my shoulder until she cared to talk--stroking her hair.

"I thought you had forgotten me," she said. "Where have you been so long?"

"Oh, I had much to do--to think about--that needed doing quickly. First I had to move and get settled. I live with Dr. Gottlieb now--well--it is a long story, but I'm--I have no home now, Heart's-Ease."

"You shall live with us if you wish--if you will--Tammas and Marget and me."

I laughed boyishly. "I will if it comes to a rub."

"I am so glad you've come. I have been so troubled, Jack. Just before you came I was sitting here, and I thought I saw Ophelia in that pool down there where the spring branch goes into the deep hole under the willows, like my picture in Shakespeare."

"Nonsense," I said, drawing her to me. "Tell me what you ate for supper last night? I believe you are in love."

She turned white, and her lips were drawn.

"No one loves me," she said, and she blushed crimson, "no one in the right way. It is just like Ophelia, and so I was thinking--"

"No one shall love you any other way," I said, "unless they first reckon with me, for I love you," I added tenderly, for I pitied her so much.

She looked up, smiling through her tears.

Then both of her arms were around my neck. "Jack, Jack!"

Her hands were in mine: her eyes, looking up to mine, had tears in them. I saw that she had misunderstood, but I saw that if I were to save her I must save her through love. I felt the hot blood rush, for very shame, into my face, stinging it red for punishment.

"Forgive me, Elsie," I began, my throat choked with shame, "I can't explain, I didn't--"

For answer she kissed me, both arms around my neck, as she said, "Oh, I am so happy."

She was silent, her hands in mine. They burned me, yet to turn them loose, to tell her truthfully, and she keyed so to the sensitiveness and unthinking romance--I thought of the pool and Ophelia.... She laughed happily: "Tell me, Jack, your Elsie, when did you find that you loved me so? Was it because of my thoughts of you in the horror and folly of my flirtation with Braxton Bragg?"

"Never mind," I said; "you are never to mention that name to me."

"Oh, Jack," she hid her face on my bosom.

"You are not to speak of anything disagreeable. Only we'll just love each other, Elsie."

"Oh, please, please, just let me tell you a little, so that you will always understand me--your silly Heart's-Ease. It was this way, Jack: suppose now, suppose you were placed this way--that you were very lonely--always had lived in a cabin, and so much you wished to see the world--that in you was a strange, queer longing, a feeling that you had been born for higher things--and--all at once right out of the sky--that which you longed for came--the star of your soul."

She hid her head on my arm. She was weeping.

"Go on, child," I said; "I am listening.

"And he--he would not tell you he was your prince; then you felt that strange feeling again, only worse--to go away--to leave yourself--well, then another comes--I do not know, only he did--I had only seen him twice, and each time he was very kind, but so fulsome and so bold, that well--I would not meet him again and so he wrote...."

She was silent for a moment and then she spoke suddenly. "Oh, I fear I did wrong to see the other--to answer his note. I was so unhappy then--so wretched then, for I did not know that--that--you loved me--then!"

"Elsie, promise me--" I began.

"Please don't, Jack, dear Jack, it is all right now. I have written him already. I wrote him I'd never see him again and never to write me."

"And if he does, will you tell me, turn his note over to me?"

She laughed. "Why, Jack, of course I will."

The setting sunlight streamed on her hair till it looked like banked western clouds. The very skies of Heaven were in her eyes, and her dignity and poise were like a queen's.

She took off the heart's-ease she had pinned on my coat.

"You don't need this now, my sweet prince."

"Don't, Elsie," I said; "my God, I can't explain, but, child--I need it now more than I ever did in my life."

For a moment she looked at me with pretended offended eyes.

"Ay, ay, I see; but you shall have me when you will, and you will need it, my bonny prince, until I am there," and she pinned it back between hot flushes and tears. "And you will see me soon, Jack, right here in our sweet trysting place?

"Good-by," she said in time. "You will see me soon, Jack?" Then taking my hand before I could prevent, she pressed it to her bosom, kissing it.

"Elsie, Elsie, don't--I would die to save you pain! I would die to save you pain! Don't!"

"I am so happy. Good-by, Jack."

"Elsie!" I called. "Oh, you misunderstood me--you don't understand."

But she only laughed back gladly as a child would, throwing kisses to me as she ran like the doe of her own heather up the hill.

I saw Marget and Tammas at the door, smiling; and I knew that they saw Elsie's happiness.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*"LADY CARFAX"*

I knew that I must save Elsie from the false, unthinking fate her own romantic nature and Braxton Bragg's infamy might thrust upon her. I loved Elsie as my own sister and knew that now I stood in a false position toward her. Once as I strode home in the gathering darkness I was tempted to turn back. I would right myself. I could not stand my false position even until to-morrow. I had but a few days to act. Elsie had gone home happy--I, miserable--hating myself. Always before me was the glad smile I saw on Tammas' and Marget's faces as Elsie went up the path--the smile of hopes fulfilled, of Elsie safe, of a great wish come to pass.... How they stabbed me now--Elsie's words: "You shall have me when you will, your Heart's-Ease."

And yet if I did? Great God! I might be a murderer! I saw how much Elsie was like Ophelia. I saw it all: the pale, conscience-stricken, helpless little soul, the proud spirit scorned, the unthinking creature, of romance and of hopes destroyed. The deep pool in the valley might hide her in its waters before another day. So I went on, choosing what seemed to be the lesser of two wrongs.

As I rode Satan over to The Manor after supper I thought of all my past life in which Braxton Bragg had figured. I remembered him first as a large, bullying, overgrown boy, three years older and much larger than I. I remembered his small, bullet-shaped head, the fat, heavy jowls, the short neck, and the loud laugh. From the first he had teased and derided me. I did not understand it then, but it was plain now. Young as he was, he had set his plans to work to discredit me with my grandsire; to own The Home Stretch himself, and to win Eloise. The conceit of him! Only one great thing Braxton Bragg had in him, his aim. That was something to his credit: but without brain and heart behind it, of what availed the aim? He was like a wharf-rat, stealing on board a man-of-war, to shoot a thirteen-inch gun at the moon! He had never been a boy, a real playmate to me. He had always been cruel to the little negroes around us, and to dumb animals, and in everything he had been a coward and a bully. I had never taken his designs on Eloise seriously, nor had she. Yet his persistency was notable, even up to now, when her engagement to Colonel Goff had been announced.

Braxton Bragg, I decided, meant to deceive Elsie, to play with her, this little creature of fun and love, this pure little flower that was as much of The Home Stretch as the flowers on the hills, the locust blossoms that perfumed all the air in spring.

He had beaten me out of my birthright by deceit and make-believe. I could stand that. I could make my own Home Stretch, as every man must make his, whether he will it or not, if he and his home shall ever become two halves that make one. And he must make it by work of heart as well as of brain and of body if he hold it truly: for God is inexorable, and His law of possession is: _if you have not earned it, you shall not hold it_! In vain do men subterfuge with that law, by gifts, inheritance, entail, by trustees and trusts; shambling along they may go a generation: then God and His Higher Court decrees, and the little tenants by courtesy pass out. The little mice who have not the love of it, which has been born of labor, the pride of it begot of sacrifices given, find themselves food in the claws of the great eagles which work and dare.

This last act of Braxton Bragg roused me to an anger I had never felt before in all my life. I had always been for quietness and peace. I did not know it then, but I know now that there are Three of me--Me, Myself, and my Soul--which are almost as distinct one from another as three separate personalities.

In grief and despair, in times of crisis only, do we see them most distinctly; or, after a sweet sleep at night you do not quite waken in the morning, they are then all so plainly distinct: there is Me--the carnal one, selfish one, the animal one: the lowest: and there is Myself, that is part of both, that would be spiritual, would be good, only that not always may it be. And highest and loftiest, and altogether greatest, and incomprehensible, and exclusive, standing alone, and aloof above Me and Myself, the Supreme Judge of the others, and the final arbiter of all their little efforts and aims is I, the Spiritual, God-given small, silent-voiced I.

It governs, controls, is king.

Me--is a man merely: given to eating and drinking, to stomach troubles and pills; to subterfuges and make-believes; to vacillations--changes: to thinking this one day and that another--full of policies and conceits and deceits; of whims and caprices: changeable; consistent only in one thing that it is always animal, deceiving its own self all the time, and Myself half the time, but deceiving _I--never_!

I only smiles, and lets the other two go on till they need the judgment and the whip--then they get them.

ME--a miserable, little animal that came from the fishes, or perhaps what is left of my anthropoid ancestors, full of fun one day and to-morrow a lion full of fight, always an animal, sensual; money-getting, love-getting, land-getting, place-getting, fame-getting--always and forever, with an eye out for ME and My Chance.

ME--a thing with a liver and two legs--Me! And above that is the second Me, Myself--half spirit and half flesh.

It is this that weeps, laughs or curses the acts of the First, yet has no power to change them; it can arrest him somewhat, haul him up a little while before the court--a kind of a police officer for a brief trial--but only the Supreme Judge--only _I_ may pass the act that stops him. When the First has groveled in the dust of things, it is This that fights back with the spirit's disgust, giving due notice to the flesh that it is not all supreme, not all in all, that there is really something else, somewhere, somehow, or else we would not have sorrow after sin, penitence after pain, fear after a fall.

MYSELF, my little soul--a half-bred mongrel Compromising Thing it is--a bird with gills and a bladder, a chrysalis that has yet to burst and be a butterfly; a tadpole with a tail unshed, which one day may be dropped in that metamorphosis to a higher state and yet more likely to die a tadpole!

And then there is I, the still, small, silent I. ME, it talks, and struts and brags; and MYSELF and its little soul is full of whines and little pretenses, of platitudes to Men and Things. But I--it never speaks, never sleeps, never compromises, but always commands.

It exercises its authority as it is needed in great sorrows, or the great crises of the other little lives. And it comes sweetest and clearest (which is proof positive that it exists) before even the others are awake, in the first dawn of day, or in the still night watches of dreams; and it fairly crushes you with the sweetness of its presence, in that quiet kingdom through which you loiter, and then pass through--that Kingdom between the Dawn and the Daylight. Suddenly we awake enough to know that we are there--_It_ is there--in another world--painfully, awfully, preciously there. Then we see how truly Me and Myself--my little body of ME may die and pass away, and be as naught--but that _I_, the still, small, silent I of Me has come from AEons to go on to Eternities; and after all the little plans of me, and the braggart, _this I will do and that I will not do of Me, this I will be and that I will not be of Me_, and after all my resolves and final decisions, and my well-laid plans of Me--_I_, the kingly _I of Me_ has only to appear, sitting silent as a burning flame in the throne room of my soul, and all My's plans both of doing and being, and all of my soul's resolve of purpose--the great decisions of my very soul--become as slaves to fall down before and crawl to do its bidding! ...

Braxton Bragg's perfidy had aroused me to an anger that I had never known before: I had been a quiet boy, I loved not strife, "_Oh, he won't fight, not one of them will,_" I caught myself mimicking my grandsire, and in hot forgetfulness, I struck the big horse I was riding with a quick touch of my heel--I was almost unseated with the leap he made.

"Steady, quiet, forgive me, old boy!" I cried, stroking his crest to calmness--"that only means I see things differently; that in this little world our ethics is one thing, our little religions, laws, our civilization is one thing, and God and His laws are another. One says if he smite you, turn your other cheek; the other says, if he strike you, strike back harder. One says peace--the other says it is war, even in the name of peace; one says Justice and her scales, the other says the Eagle and the Battleship. There is a time in every honest man's life when he must fight or die. Satan, old boy, I am going to fight awhile!"

I was lusty and twenty--ME.

So I pondered as I rode over to see Colonel Goff. I found him in the library of The Manor, and was soon seated with him. I noticed the sterling beauty of the furniture, the trophies of the chase, both in India and America, and a full portrait of Eloise over the mantel. I had been a boy to Colonel Goff until my return. Now I imagined that my sudden change into a full-grown man had never quite come home to him, remembering me only as he had known me last.

"You have given me an unexpected pleasure, my boy," he said with a touch of cordiality in his voice. "I have been beastly lonely since Eloise left." He eyed me through his half-closed lids as he lighted a cigar and watched me light mine.

I flushed, and I fear he noticed it. Then I broke abruptly into my subject. "It is your help and advice I want to-night, sir. I have come to talk of Elsie."

He looked at me surprised, holding a half-lit match in his finger. Instantly the match was snuffed out with a sudden twist and a smile broke over his face.

"It's all right, Jack," he said warmly; "I think I can guess--I have seen for a month that you have cut me out--all of us--why--"

"I fear you are mistaken, Colonel Goff," I said quietly. "I know how much you think of her, that you are her friend, and I thought the two of us together might help her out of an unfortunate affair."

He turned on me quickly.

"Why, what has happened? I saw her to-day; she was all right."

"Nothing has happened yet," I said; "nor is it likely to now, since I am going to do some acting myself, with your help."

I handed him the note. I had heard my old grandsire say that in critical places Goff was always coolest. He smoked while he read, not a muscle moving.

"This thing is so out of all our English ideas of sense and decency, and so unusual, that I'm lost in it," he said quietly at last. "It seems that he has actually induced my romantic little girl to agree to a secret clandestine marriage with him, and his regiment leaves for the Philippines to-morrow, marry her secretly, and claim her when he comes back!"

Instead of being angry Goff laughed, half ironically but with intent behind it. He rose and walked to the door, calling his butler. "Tell James to saddle my horse at once," I heard him say. Then he closed the door and came up to me. "Jack, this is the damnedest piece of blackguardism I ever had to kick out of my mind; we'll settle it in a jiffy with him,--just as I'd kick a little cur out of my pack of running hounds. You'll ride with me, of course, and witness it."

"I will, Colonel Goff," I said sullenly, "if you'll let me do it in my own way. It is I who want you to witness it."

He slapped me on the shoulder.

"You're all right, Jack, I've always known that: and if it is nothing rash--you see if it were, why, the child would be talked about. Oh, yes, damn him, if it wasn't for her I'd kill him myself."

"Colonel Goff," I said rising, "I'm going to thrash him to-night before I go to bed. I'm going to do it in my own way."

He laughed outright and grasped my hand. "You must not," he said, "and I will tell you why; you've earned it. This is my great secret. I've seen all along that you have loved her--and, well, it's plain she loves you. But I see through this affair much further than you because you don't know. I'll tell you, you have earned both my friendship and my gratitude. First, there is no insult here, in this note. I've been the scoundrel's friend all his life. He had so few, and I told him in confidence what I've never told anyone--did not intend to tell till the announcement of my marriage next month--Elsie is my daughter--she is Lady Carfax by birthright and by title, and this little scoundrel has taken advantage of my confidence. He has always had a sneaking idea that he would marry Eloise, and now that he can't, he loves me so much he'd like to be my son-in-law, though he ruined my daughter's chances in life to do it, with his fool secret marriage."

He stopped and looked at me, thinking quietly for a moment.

"You'll excuse me, Jack, for plainness, but we've no time for anything else, and I mean it all kindly. But you, yourself, are mostly to blame for this. I have read it in Elsie, but I thought you'd never see it, never tell her of your love. Now, it's this way, my boy; and I'll be frank. I am going to take Lady Carfax home and finish her education, and give her the chance her place demands. You are always welcome to come and be with us at any time as long as you choose, and if, on her majority, she still loves you, and you her, why--" he stopped, smiling kindly.

"Colonel Goff," I said rising, "you certainly misunderstand me. All that I'll talk to you about later. I'm in a mood to-night I've never been in before. Get your horse and go with me. I want you to see that I have a fair fight."

"It won't do, Jack," he said. "I'll not even let you go with me. It's Elsie I'm thinking of, Elsie and you. The quieter this thing is settled, the better for all. I see through it--as I told you. I'll ride over to see him. I'll catch him to-night, and when I have finished with him, he'll never mention Elsie again, let alone try to marry her secretly. I saw her to-night just before you came. Jack, my little girl is happy. It pleases me--let her stay happy, and you shall be, some day, if you will--"

I did not reply. We rose to go. At the parting of the road I galloped home, he to the city.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*THE LAST DANCE*

It was a night in early June. The Home Stretch was all a-glitter, its porches and the great trees on the lawn lighted with rows of colored lanterns.

My Aunt and Eloise had returned; the Cumberland races, the social event of the year, began the next day, and in accordance with her custom my Aunt was giving her annual ball. This time it was to serve a two-fold purpose; for it was also in honor of Eloise and Colonel Goff and was to be the formal announcement of their coming marriage.

I rode over early. If I was needed I wanted to help as of old; and I had seen neither of them since they had returned a week ago, for I had been away for several weeks, in an adjoining county, earning my first fee in forestry. I had been employed by a corporation to pass upon a large tract of timber, to report its millage and availability, but best of all I was to put my plans into effect in its harvesting, cutting out only the ripe trees, and preserving the young ones beneath from death and mutilation.

I had spent two weeks among them. There were many different kinds, and they had become almost like children to me, and like children, they each had different temperaments--these trees--different forms, dispositions, dreams, and they always talked to me, through their little leaves, but sweetest of all in the night, even as children do, when, full of themselves and of life, they gossip so friendly in the balm of the June moon. They told me like village gossipers, of their every little affair, their little vexes, turmoils, the very little scandals of their wood. And in more stirring moods when the night winds would arise and sweep through them the writers, minstrels and poets, stirred to historic flights, quivered with their greater dreams, sang their tales of tree tragedies, of wars had, of fights for life and of martyr and hero deaths.

And I had lain and listened, and felt my heart grow big with throbbing even as when I first read of the wanderings of Ulysses.

I came from out among them older, braver, better. I came with higher motives for my own life and eyes which saw clearer into the future and read more kindly the lives of others.

And gladly would I have stayed in the wood among them, to go back--rather than to see what I must see--Eloise betrothed to another. No tree tragedy could be more cruel than that which had killed the love of my own life.

In withholdingness and sorrow I left them: "duty" not as someone has said, "is the sublimest word in the English language" because duty is often done in pleasure, but the real sublimity of duty is the duty done in pain. To fail to go were cowardice, and I was no coward even if my grandsire did think so.

But when I went into the great hall of The Home Stretch, filled with chattering guests, the contrast was poignant. It was as if deep in the sleeping and silent forces a cloud of chattering birds had landed suddenly among my trees.

"It is good to see you home again, Jack."

It was Eloise who spoke. Her eyes told me that she had been waiting, and a brave lingering smile went with her words. There were little tired, hard lines around her sweet mouth. She looked tired but game, as when, in a long day's hunt after quail and the route home was long, and our luck nil, it needed a good heart to smile.

She stood with Goff in the reception room, as though she were Countess of Carfax already. The hand I held trembled for the first time in mine.

"Glad to see you back, Jack," said Goff, his face aglow with the pride he felt.

"Where have you been, Jack? I thought you were never coming to see me again?" Eloise asked.

She gradually moved away with me from the crowd in the center of the room until we stood apart in the large bay window.

"Come," I said teasingly, "you have got away from your lord; he will miss you."

It was not fun to her. Her face flushed, then paled. "Jack, you must dance with me once to-night--our last dance. I have something to tell you then."

"I don't think you ought to punish me any more than you have already, Eloise," I said frankly.

"Maybe I am punishing myself more," she said softly.

"Eloise, Eloise--"

But she had turned and was receiving the newly arrived and merry crowd behind us.

My Aunt held to some customs which she permitted none of the innovations of society to alter. One was that her balls must open with the Virginia Reel. I saw her coming and understood.

"Jack," she nodded, commandingly, "we are ready, you and Eloise open it up."

Eloise stood behind her smiling. She placed both her hands in mine and together we glided to the head of the line. We stood holding hands and waiting for the music. Coming closer, my Aunt smiled and whispered, "I wish you two children could see what a fine pair you make. Pedigree counts even in a Virginia Reel, and you two were bred for it."

We both laughed.

"Look into that mirror across yonder," she laughed, "and see how much better I am at pairing off people than they are themselves."

We glanced across and saw Goff and a fat lady from town.

"They are matched perfectly," said my Aunt Lucretia, "both grass-fed."

"Please don't, Aunt Lucretia," said Eloise, "that isn't fair. You are trying your best to keep me from being a countess." Then she added suddenly, "Oh, Jack, tell me about Satan. You don't know how I've missed him. Where have you two been?"

"In the wood together. No--n-o--you shall never have him, such a horse--such a comrade."

Eloise pouted. "You'll see. Why Colonel Goff has promised I shall take him to England with me. And Jack--how about his exercise? My heart is set on beating him in that hurdle race, and Aunt Lucretia would have apoplexy if she lost that bet."

"Oh, he's hard enough. I rode him two hundred miles to Obion County and back. I honestly believe he could run across the county to-morrow; and jump! I am glad you mentioned it---it was wonderful--he is foolish about me. It is because he knows I love you, dear," I said, whispering in her ear.

"Please don't, Jack, you only hurt me."

"I was across a small ravine from him one day, had hitched him and was looking at some timber. He broke his halter and came to me. I heard his calling neigh and I answered him, and he came to me, clearing a ten-foot ravine in a jump."

Eloise clapped her hands, and my Aunt, who had come up and heard it, smiled. Then she said, with her usual red-tape accuracy, "I hope you took the measurements. Was it really ten feet, Jack?"

"I measured it," I said, "and it was nearly bottomless. If one foot had missed--"

My Aunt nodded to Eloise. "That little branch in Cumberland Park is only ten across from bank to bank. Oh, we'll play it on his lordship fine! Come!"

There was a crash of music. With radiant cheeks and eyes that I saw many a night afterwards in my dreams, and a proud smile she went with me down the line.

There was a pretty surprise for us at the supper. We had filed into the dining hall. My grandfather sat alone, his hair white under the candles. On the right of him stood Eloise and Colonel Goff, and the long line of expectant guests stood around down the long table.

My grandfather rapped, and, raising his glass, proposed a toast to the future Earl and Countess of Carfax. There was a burst of applause. The guests lifted their glasses.

"My friends," said Colonel Goff, bravely, when the room became quiet, "I came to you years ago, an exiled Englishman, and I found a home here, following my old commander from the war. I came lonely and alone. I go back with a sorrow in my heart at leaving many friends behind, but instead of going alone, I return taking with me one who will be the peer of any countess of the long line of Carfax."

He turned, bowing grandly to Eloise, who, pale, and with trembling lips listened. I could see her breast faltering with quickened breathing. Her parted lips panted for air, even though she stood beaming graciously to the greeting. "I have another announcement to make," he went on very quietly, "and I think it right that I do it now, that I may be just to myself, to the good people who have reared her, and to my child whom I love. My coming here was not altogether purposeless. You will understand when I introduce to you my daughter, Lady Elsie."

There was a stir at the lower end of the table, and I saw my Aunt Lucretia open the folding doors and Tammas followed by Marget enter. Elsie followed, her face ablaze with that beauty which was always hers when excited. She was more like an angel of light than a girl, and around her neck and in her hair were the jewels of the house of Carfax.

Goff met and kissed her, and very simply and sweetly she advanced and kissed Eloise, graciously, almost unconsciously, a kiss both of love and tribute. She stood between them, bowing and smiling so graciously down the table that her breeding was evident.

All who knew her loved her, and for the next ten minutes they thronged around her with kisses and congratulations.

I did not go, for there were tears in my eyes and a great choking in my throat. When I looked up Tammas and Marget were standing by me, Tammas making a bold effort at winking his tears away and smiling. He mopped his brow vigorously, and said mechanically, "'Tis a bonny night for us, a bonny night and a glorious for our lassie!"

"Ay, weel," said Marget between her sobs, "but dinna she look it--like her ain sweet mother? Oh, but she was that bonny, and 'tis she, our lassie, Tammas, can be looking down on her this blessed minute, her bairn who has come into her own."

Then Elsie saw us and came quietly forward. She clasped me impulsively around the neck and kissed me, whispering, "Oh, it is mine, Jack, that I felt but could not tell. 'Tis the unattainable come true, and now, Jack, dear Jack, that I am Lady Elsie, now that I am worthy of you--" she could not speak. Her lips were deadly white as if with faintness. I held her, stroking her hair.

"You were always worthy of anyone, sweet one. Be brave, be brave, now," I whispered, "and go back to your father's side."

I looked up to find Eloise's eyes upon me, and a strange understanding in their depths.

"I am staying with papa, at The Manor now," said Elsie as she left me and Marget. "You will not let it keep you from coming to see me often, will you, Jack?"