Part 12

"Good-by, you'll not see me again, Jack, so good-by, Jack, forever. And in time, though you'll never forget me nor cease to love me, you will do as I said; for yours is youth and love and strength, and they must be mated. When you can think of me without tears, without sorrow or pity, but as one who has lived and is gone--only as the memory of a sweet dream that might have been--then, dear, dear Jack, remember the last request I made of you, remember to make Elsie happy; and in time--in time, Jack, oh, what a love-maker he is! be happy yourself. Hold me a moment, just a moment to your heart--then--kiss me again and say with me the little prayer Aunt Lucretia used to make us say, holding hands in the long ago."

Holding her face against mine, and with clasped hands as of old, we said:

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

Although the words of Eloise came to me again and again as I rode home that night, I was never so happy, nor so hopeful. Yet she had said, "Good-by, good-by, Jack, I shall never see you again."

"I shall see her to-morrow night," my heart kept saying over and over. "I will not give her up; I will marry her, if I have to carry her in my arms through life!"

But the next night when I rode over my grandfather met me at the door. He greeted me with petulant indifference. Both Eloise and Aunt Lucretia had left that morning--where, he did not know. She was a hopeless cripple with a broken spine, and was carried away in a cot to some institution where she might be cared for properly for the balance of her life. I forgave the old man because he was old--the reiterated statement that he had made allowance for her care himself, for although she was no blood kin, and had no claim upon him, she had been with him all her life, and was a ward of his daughter.

I could learn nothing from the servants. Aunt Lucretia, Eloise, and the nurse had gone. They had carried Eloise in a cot to the train and boarded it. It was Thomas, the driver, who gave me Aunt Lucretia's letter. She wrote, "I have thought it all over, Jack, and this is the only thing to do. All of them are agreed, that she can never walk again. To keep her at home will only make life a tragedy to you both. It is best that you never see her again, nor she you. Sentiment is one thing, and life another. Sometimes they go together, and it is well. But when they cannot, when sentiment lives and that love of nature which reproduces life is dead, it is folly to quibble, for the loss of being is the loss of life. Be sensible, brave, and manly as you have always been and forget Eloise. Changed conditions change one's life. You must change yours. I have a request to make. I shall be at home in a month, but I do not want you ever to mention Eloise to me, for I shall not tell you where she is. This is hard, but I am doing it for your good, as I have always done, my dear boy. When I return if she is alive you may write to her, since she has begged me so, and this is the only one happiness the poor child will have in her stunted life, and I will see that she gets the letters, though she can never reply. It is best to forget."

The little note Eloise sent brought tears. It was a heart's-ease that Aunt Lucretia had evidently gathered for her, and under it was written, "_I am widowed of love but I am wedded. Forgive me, forget me, but love me always, Jack, as I shall you--Eloise._"

*CHAPTER II*

*A DREAM AND ITS ENDING*

In my grief at the going of Eloise I remember little of what I did in the next few days. Then I received a note from Colonel Goff asking me to ride over to The Manor, as both he and Elsie wanted to see me.

On the way I stopped to see Tammas and Marget. In their worship of Elsie I believe they thought only of her and her happiness. They had certainly not understood about my relations with Eloise. Their happiness was plain to be seen, the very laughter which at times broke over their honest faces told me clearly their pride and happiness in the turn affairs had taken with Elsie and me.

But despite my efforts not to show what was crushing my heart, they perceived that something was very seriously wrong with me.

"Ay, Jackie, 'tis a hard time you have been having, my lad," said Tammas, "and it's unreasonable to think the old General would turn you out of home like this; but the final word in the book of every honest man's life is the word good, and you'll not be losing out in the end--na, na."

"I think you are going now to see our lassie," said Marget, smiling slyly, "and sure, Jackie, if ever man had recompense in the sweetness of love 'tis you. Never have I seen anything sae near an angel of light in spirit and sae beautiful in body, since she came up the hill to us that evening with her doubts all gone; ay, it is Tammas and I who are as happy as you, Jackie!"

She sighed. "I dinna ken that it's a' gladness," she went on; "for the Earl is preparing to leave soon for his estate in the auld country, and he wants us to gang wi' him--of course--but--" and she looked at me gravely as if seeking answer.

But I only shook my head sadly. "I do not know, Marget--I do not know. My plans--you see--Aunt Lucretia and Eloise--that awful accident!"

Marget started to speak, but Tammas stopped her quickly, whispering to her, "Wheest, wumman, dinna ye see, dinna ye understaun--she was as his ain sister. It's that that's saddening him." And then he added louder, "Eh, but it was a terrible thing--she that was sae young an' daring and sae bonnie--to be an invalid a' her days--the bold beautiful thing that loved life sae weel! An' it's a' but upset the Earl. I hae never kent him to be sae troubled, for he was unco fond o' her, an' a grand Countess she wad hae made him. An' to think it was his ain horse! The puir man is nearly daft!"

I was silent. I could not speak. For once the kindly talk of these two good folks annoyed me. Marget saw this, and with a motherly tenderness that touched me deeply, said, "Weel--weel, Jackie, dinna take it sae to heart. When you go to her ain land an' see what you have won in oor lassie, ye'll be sayin' with Rabbie Burns that 'tis the only place to live and love in. But awa' ye gang," she said, giving me a gentle push; "it's near supper time a' ready an' fine I ken that she an' the Earl are wanting ye at The Manor. For three days she has come ower here, wondering whit wey ye had na come; she kens aboot the accident an' is sorrowfu', tae, but she's sae keen to see ye, Jackie, an' she'll be a bit o' comfort till ye if ye will."

Colonel Goff was already making preparations for his going. I found him more quiet and serious than I had ever seen him. I understood that he would give anything in the world to undo the accident, and that he now found that he cared more for Eloise since she was lost to us than he had himself known, and that, like me, he was in total ignorance as to where Aunt Lucretia had taken her.

"Jack, Jack!" he kept repeating as he walked the floor, "I can never forgive myself! That beastly, beastly ride! To have loved horses as I have all my life, to have done so much for them and their sport and to have my pride in them all thrown away and the whole of my life changed like that! ... There is Elsie--go with her, Jack--the child wants you!" he added as he headed towards his stable.

I pitied him, but I pitied myself more. For, looking at him, hearing him talk, I saw that he did not know and would never know. God had not made him to know as Eloise and I knew, not even as Elsie would know. In spite of all that had passed before him, and all that he had seen, he did not know that as he talked of Eloise it was I who was suffering most. He did not even see remotely that it was I who loved her, not he.... There are fish in the deep sea which carry their own electric light.... There are others there which have not even eyes! ...

Elsie was openly happy all the afternoon with me. Such dreams as she had dreamt of our future! Such dreams as had come true even in her own castle!

I let her talk and plan for our future. I did not know what it all meant, whither Fate was hurrying me. I could not see the end, but I knew that the end would be well. For the real architect of our lives is God. The very shadow of our doubt becomes pictures done in beauty.

It takes shadows to make pictures. In the foreground of every shadow already stands the picture from His hand. And as for the sorrows sent of Him, they are not sorrows; rather are they crowns of Great Joy for brows chosen of Martyrdom.... So I let her dream and love and plan, knowing that whatever was coming to me would be good, that behind the Wish of our own little dreams lay the larger Will of the Great Dreamer....

In the afternoon I had slipped away to a place where two great maples threw their shadows across the lawn. I was tired, and my heart was full of conflicts. I wanted to think of Eloise.

It was a quiet, sweet place. Then I heard Elsie coming, full of happiness, to judge from the very tread of her feet on the grass.

I was lying half propped against a tree. Looking up I saw she was kneeling above me, her eyes laughing as she shyly peeped from behind the trunk. There was a sofa pillow in her hands and she was trying to place it under my head. "You must sleep, now," she said softly. "You are so tired and hollow-cheeked, Jack, my bonnie Jack. I am going to begin to learn now to take care of you. I will come to waken you in an hour, then we are going to drive into town, father and you and me!"

She lingered a moment slyly; then stooped to kiss my forehead and was gone.

I had not come to sleep, I had come to think of Eloise, to dream of her once more. I took her note from my pocket; I kissed it and with tears I read it. "_I was widowed of love but I am wedded. Forgive me, forget me, but love me always, Jack, as I shall you,--Eloise._" How strange it is, this joy-sorrow! There can be but one explanation of it: down the endless chain of our ancestry so much sorrow has come that the taint of it lies sweetly in the pedigree of our own breast.

I kissed the withered heart's-ease. Later I must have fallen asleep...

It was Colonel Goff who wakened me, coming on a run.

"Quick, Jack!" he cried.

I was up in an instant. He stood beside me panting, almost faint. He held a little slip in his hand. His face was white, his lips drawn, but a battle coolness that went like cold steel into my own soul was in his voice.

"Elsie, Jack! Stone's River bridge--you may save her yet! She is drowning herself! Your horse, quick! I'll follow as best I can!"

Instantly I understood. I glanced down. Eloise's note was gone. Elsie's hat lay on the grass instead.

Satan had been saddled for my ride to town and stood at the rack. In two quick leaps I was by his side. The next minute I held the reins.

"If you ever rode in your life," I heard her father saying behind me, "if you ever rode in your life, Jack! You may save her yet--straight down the pike to the bridge!"

The horse seemed to know. He wheeled as the reins went over his head, pivoted, as I'd seen him so often do, on two legs, for quickness, up into the air, wheeling.

I held a good clutch on the pommel and as I rose his own great bound jerked me like a bolt into the saddle. I saw the old butler, bare-headed, running to open the gate, and Colonel Goff panting, helpless, crossing the grass. But even Satan knew we'd lose if we waited. It was only a four-foot rock wall; it was play for him to clear it. He landed squarely and already in a full run.

The bridge was a mile away. It was made of iron and its sides were protected by a railing. It was high where the pike reached it, spanning a gorge cut through the hills.

A rock fence ran along the pike up to the bridge on each side. There the bluff was sheer twenty feet straight down to the river. Satan ran like a tube of quick-silver down the long white pathway of the pike. As we flashed up the slope leading to it, I caught just a glimpse of a white gown going over the bridge from the middle railing. I had to throw all my weight on his left rein to send him over the rock fence at the foot of the bridge and I knew when he felt my heel go into his flank and my pull that shot his great game head into the fence, that he thought I was crazy, was sending us both to death!

But he never faltered. It all depended on how he cleared that four-foot fence and the twenty feet down to the river. I knew when he rose for the leap that he expected firm ground on the other side. Would he balk, falter and fail me when he saw?

I drove my heel into him. I felt him quiver just a moment beneath me. Then I held my breath. A white figure floated midway of the river before me. Up went his head, the water only flashed beneath him twenty full feet below. I watched the play of his ears for his thoughts. If they fluttered, wavered, showed fright, I knew he would balk and quit. For an instant I saw them flutter back and forth, little tell-tales of surprise, then down they came angrily, glued to his neck as one grits one's teeth in a crisis, and he shot over the wall, balanced squarely, holding himself superbly, down!

I clutched the pommel with both hands, locking my legs under his chest as we struck the stinging, biting waters and went under. It seemed long before we came up and I could see the white gown going down again. I clutched it with one hand, drawing her head clear of the water against my breast. I felt the horse moving easily beneath me. Would he see the great bluffs and understand, or would he strike straight across for them and drown us all, whirling round and round, trying to find a passway up straight walls of rock? It all lay with him. It was correct instinct now or death.

I threw the reins over his head, crying, "_Go out--your way, Satan!_"

It was his good sense that saved us, his instinct rather, that is greater than sense. He lost no strength in useless floundering against steep walls for a landing. He seemed to know instantly. I felt him moving beneath me down stream while I held Elsie safe. Two, three, four hundred feet he swam, the great game chap, till we passed the bluff; then he floundered up and out on the bank like a great dog, shaking himself.

*CHAPTER III*

*THE AWAKENING*

It was Colonel Goff who met me at the door of The Manor when I called the next night. Marget and Tammas were both there, silent, and with awed, sorrowful faces. Two doctors were in the house, for Elsie's life and mind lay in the balance, and it seemed that a straw would turn them either way.

It was Marget who spoke first. "Ay, Jackie--Jackie--'tis as I hinted to you, lad," said she, "it was in the blood of the Carfaxes, and but for your ride and leap, lad, our lassie had done what two of her grandames, two of the ladies of Carfax, did before her."

Tammas, tears standing in his eyes, could only hold my hand.

Colonel Goff led me into the library. For a while he was silent, his stolid face expressionless. Then he said very quietly, "Jack, the chances are all against her, one way or the other; it looks as if my little lassie is doomed to go the way of her house. If she survives the shock I am afraid her mind will not; that is what is hinging now, that is why we have sent for you again. It is only a chance--one chance in ten--but the doctors thought--as the shock that unminded her came through you, that you might--"

I nodded. "I understand. I would give my life for her."

He pressed my hand, his voice choking. "You proved that, my boy, you proved that. How you escaped, how that horse ever cleared that fence and cliff--

"Jack," he went on, turning impulsively, "I am a blunt man, plain and not farseeing in things like all of these, that have come to me so swift and fast. I don't mean these accidents--I'm used to them--life and the whole little game of it is all a blind chance. I have taken mine all my life--and--and--well, they've always been against me, Jack--always, even now. I've lost--always--even as I shall lose now--Elsie. The great hand of Fate that flings the dice for us has always thrown them loaded for me--Jack."

He was silent. I thought of God and the Butterfly. I pitied him, seeing nothing as he did.

"No, I am not farseeing--not farseeing--in things like the other side of all this--not the blind chance side which has always been mine--but the side you make yourself, someway, somehow, like this."

He drew a blurred and crumpled note from his pocket. It was Eloise's. I had seen it last when, holding it to my breast, I had fallen asleep that afternoon under the trees.

"This kind of a little thing, Jack," he said, handing me the little relic. "I am a blundering fool--and I have to tell you so--to tell you what an unseeing fool I have been. I see it all now--and yet I'd never have seen. I found this clutched in Elsie's hand. This was her shock--this was my folly--my unseeing folly. No, no," he cried quickly, seeing I was about to say something. "No, no, Jack, I see it all--don't say a word. You've been a man all through it--a white man, Jack. I am not talking to put you on trial. I'm passing judgment on myself for your sake, my boy; that you may understand what a selfish, unseeing fool I have been.

"Well, it's down to this--it's all past--let it go," he added. "But Elsie--she is of the living present. You must help me, help me a little yet awhile Jack--till--till the crisis is past."

I pressed his hand silently. "Thank you," he said simply, "and now just a word of explanation. This trouble of hers runs in the blood of the Carfaxes. My grandmother, my own sister, went this way. They are keyed high, and if a shock like this comes, it's death or an unbalancing. When she read that," he said, "which unseeing one that I have been, was all my fault, when she read it, Jack, she lost her reason, she was temporarily insane when she made that leap. She is conscious now and stronger; but still she remembers nothing up to that mental shock, the shock of that note, that showed her all, and--oh well, I'm only a blunt kind of a man--I can't tell it--you alone could do that. But it's this now, Jack, you go in and talk to her. You stay with her--till we get her right--and we've a chance to yet--Jack, until we get her right--just let her believe--believe-- Oh, you know, Jack!"

The tears were in his eyes as he led me into Elsie's room.

Tammas and Marget were by the bed. Elsie lay amid her pillows, a strange startled look in her eyes.

"You and the old people, Jack," whispered the doctor, rising and taking Goff by the arm, "you all just talk to her, get her back to the dairy and the old ways again, if you can. If she can be quieted and her mind bridged over the shock, she'll be all right again. And to-night will tell," he added quietly, "so be very calm. I have given her all the morphine she'll stand, tried everything, but if she can't be made to sleep she'll lose her mind and if she doesn't sleep to-night her mind is doomed."

I was not certain, but I had always suspected that I possessed the power of suggestion. I had felt it in dealing with dumb animals and weaker people.

I sat by her, talking to her in the old way. "It is Jack, Elsie," I said, "your own Jack. We've met in our old trysting place. We are under our old trees, and Tammas and Marget are here and you are tired and are going to sleep while your head is on my lap. I'll watch you sleep--sleep now," I said softly, stroking her forehead.

There was a deep sigh, then the frightened wild look died out of her eyes and with a smile like her old one she slept.

The doctor beckoned me. "That's good," he said in the hallway. "Just let the nurse and Marget stay with her, let her sleep all night if she will."

"But I will have to waken her," I said.

He smiled. "Oh no; she'll waken herself."

"I'll stay here all night, Colonel Goff," I assured her father.

"Thank you, Jack," he said, his face brightening for the first time. "Of course you will stay with her."

"The crisis will come with her awakening," said the doctor. "She will awaken sound of mind and at death's door, or she will awaken to live, her mind gone. It is all in her sleeping, and to-night will decide it. I will retire, waken me if I am needed."

All night Colonel Goff and I sat up. Every little while we went into her room to see Elsie sleeping, Marget by her side, the nurse asleep on the cot.

Twice the doctor came in. "Her pulse and temperature are normal," he would say. "That's good. Let her sleep."

But Colonel Goff and I could not sleep. All night he smoked, talked and walked the floor. He told me his life's story, and in the hopefulness of Elsie's sleeping he seemed to have taken a new hold of things. "If the hand that has flung the loaded dice for me all my life will only give me one clean deal now," he cried, as he paced the floor with his steady military stride.

"It will," I said, "Colonel Goff. It gives a clean deal to a clean heart always, and yours is a different heart now. I see it; you are a different man now. Now, I would give my very life for you and my poor little Elsie."

There was deep emotion in the man before me, his eyes were moist. "Great God, Jack, do you mean that, man? Do you know you have said it? It is even so--I see it--have seen it all night--wondering, how--

"God help me," he went on, "and save Elsie as He has saved me--from myself--through it all. I see it now--through all my life--my own fool will, my obstinacy, madness, sin--unseeingness: brought me through it all, back to my own, my family name, my earldom--my own--Great God, think of it--what has been done to unseeing, uncaring me! How much I have received--how little I have earned!"

I left him a strong man pacing the floor, his face aglow with a new life.

Elsie had slept twelve hours.

"We can't awaken her," said the doctor as I went in after a short sleep. "I suspect you possess unconsciously hypnotic power, Jack. It all looks like it. You must awaken her if you can. I don't wish to use heroic means."

"If I have," I said, "I am not aware of it. But let me talk to her. And if you please I would rather only Marget stayed."

"Surely," he said nodding. "If she wakens we want no one with her but you. And you'll just keep her thinking she's at her old place by the dairy."

I sat down by her, taking her hand in the old way. She was smiling in her sleep. Then I said laughingly in her ear, slapping her cheek with the back of my hand, "Wake up, little Heart's Ease; we are going to the spring. It's Jack. I will not go unless you go with me, to gather the Bluebells of Scotland on the hills--come--wake up!"

Instantly she sat up, her blue eyes resting calmly on me.

"Jack," she said, putting her arms about my neck, "I had wondered--I have worried because--for so long a time I seem not to be able to remember--where you were."

I laughed. "Nonsense; you have only dreamed a bad dream last night," said I.

Marget was bustling around the room pretending to clean up. Her voice choked so that she could scarcely speak and yet she said bravely, "Surely, Elsie. It is as Mr. Jack says. You've been sick a little and had bad dreams."

Elsie clung to me sobbing. "Jack, my bonny Jack," she said, "it's good of you, but I am all right now; I am strong again, so much stronger than you would ever believe."

"You must not let yourself think of anything unpleasant," I said quietly, "for my sake now, Elsie, and daddy's."

"I couldn't, Jack," she said with all her old frank candor, "with you here. It all came because I thought you were gone. Call Daddy in," she said firmly, "I want to talk to you all."