Part 3

At last I was home again, and home with a new mission, new ideas. For four years I had studied trees and flowers in a German university. I had prepared myself to be a forester. Now I was looking out of the car window at the wantonness that had turned hillsides into gullies and rich loam into beds of clay. The little streams that I had remembered running from a familiar wood, now crawled, winding amid sand dunes bare of trees. The folly of it hurt me. I saw that here was work for me to do.

*CHAPTER II*

*THE HOME-STRETCH*

How familiar were the hills around the little Hermitage Station! And how grateful was the sweet clear air of its dew-bathed meadows after the noise and smoke of the train!

My Aunt Lucretia imprinted two chilly kisses from tight-shut lips on each of my cheeks. She was a large, strong, stout woman, with a fine, high nose and full mouth, which, when it would, could settle quickly into close-shut lips of determination. Her eyes were hazel and keen: kindly when quiet; but quick to flash and far-seeing.

Without a word and very deliberately she looked me over through her gold nose glasses. I smiled as I remembered how often I had seen her pass on a horse she was purchasing in the same way. Down the six feet of my height her keen eyes went, dwelling, I imagine, a bit longer on my legs where the old lameness had been in my knee since my boyhood sickness from typhoid fever. Again I smiled, for in that same way I had seen her linger over the doubtful tendon of a horse. But the noted German surgeon, Hoffman, had, in my first year at Berlin, skillfully removed the floating cartilage, and I saw my Aunt Lucretia's face light up, satisfied with the straight limb, and my weight upon it. Then she looked lengthwise across my shoulders, and a surprised pleasure shone in her eyes. I had grown from a frail boy into an athlete.

We had not said a word. I stood smiling at her, and she, as was her custom, would not speak until her survey was done. Very deliberately she looked me over. I had seen her examine Young Hickory, lineal descendant of Andrew Jackson's famous Truxton in the same way.

I was eager to say something and get to Eloise. I had caught a glimpse of her face at the surrey's door.

"I thought you would grow into that," Aunt Lucretia remarked, as she readjusted her glasses. Then, as if to impress on me her long expressed thought, she added, "You have grown beautifully up to your pedigree, Jack."

I laughed. "Well, if you have passed on me, here goes," I said boisterously, as I seized her around the neck and gave her a kiss, which knocked off her glasses.

"Tut--tut, Jack, that will do! Kissing is silly and thoroughly unsanity. There is Eloise waiting for you--but no kissing--no hugging her--none of it," she added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I dropped her hand, hurt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aunt Lucretia, watching me, guessed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER III*

*THE HICKORIES*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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