Part 10

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--"