Part 7

Eloise laughed behind me. "I knew he'd love you, Jack."

Satan came out playing. Rearing, he stood on two legs like a great boy, showing off before another. Then he came up, rubbing his nose on my shoulder and reaching for the apple Eloise had for him. Meanwhile Aunt Lucretia sat smiling doubtfully.

I saddled him, and when Eloise sprang up they looked superbly splendid, the horse proud of his rider.

"Well, we'll go," said Aunt Lucretia, starting off.

We turned to go to the left. Satan made two quick leaps, playfully, as if to follow, and then, taking the bit he wheeled to the right despite Eloise's protest. He saw Jim holding the gate open for us. He wheeled and refused to go through it; he laid back his ears and quivered with rage at the sight of the negro.

Aunt Lucretia stopped. I pulled up sharply. Eloise sat white with anger on her uncontrollable mount.

"Oh, don't be angry with him," said Aunt Lucretia. "You will have to go as he says."

Eloise touched him with her whip and he reared, leaping high into the air. I caught my breath when she came down firmly with him. He stood backing his ears at Jim. Again she urged him, again he refused. She brought her whip down sharply.

"Don't, Eloise," I cried, "he's dangerous."

Again he leaped high in the air, tossing his head.

Eloise slid down, white with anger. "Jack, put your saddle on him," she said quietly.

"I think we'd better," I said. "I'll ride him for you for a while. It's Jim. He'll never forget him."

"You have a sharp knife?" asked Eloise, after I had put my saddle on the horse. She took the reins in her hands. "No, no, I'll hold him. Don't put my saddle on your mare. Wait."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Eloise," said Aunt Lucretia, "you shan't get up on that horse again."

But Eloise did not notice her; her lips were set; her face white. I knew the meaning of old.

"Jack," she said quietly, "grasp my skirt at the hem, petticoat and all, and cut it clean down from above my knees. Don't listen to Aunt Lucretia. Please, Jack, it is life and death with the horse and me. I'd rather die than have him conquer me."

I knew from her voice that she meant it.

Grasping her skirts at the hem in an instant I had ripped them through.

"Now behind," she said; "it's my old riding skirt, Jack."

In an instant it, too, was split.

She smiled, a flash of her old humor behind her sternness. "Now, turn, Jack."

When I turned back again she had slipped both her garters over her divided skirts, so that they were held firmly to her ankles. The next instant she was in my saddle, astride.

"You, dear, sweet, old, stubborn Satan," she said softly, "I am sorry I must punish you. Shut the gate, Jim; I am going to make him do his best stunt to pay for this."

At the first blow from her whip he sprang up in anger, but the whip fell fast and with fury. Her lithe body sat him easily, like a part of him, her two heels buried in his flanks. He made leap after leap, but still she sat him, cutting his sides into whelks. He leaped high to dismount her; he wheeled suddenly, but never caught her off her guard. The whip never let up. Frighted, angry, he bolted for the plank fence. The gate was shut, but Eloise gave him the whip at every jump.

"Stop her--he'll kill her!" I cried, as I saw him rise for the leap.

I expected to see him strike the fence midway, and come back on her in a heap. Instead I saw Eloise lift him, with a quick firm hand, straight up towards the sky and I saw the horse land on the other side clean, and clear, without losing a stride. Then they vanished in a whirl of dust up the pike.

"I'll ride after her," I cried to Aunt Lucretia. "He'll kill her yet."

"Don't worry," she smiled, "she's more apt to kill him. But that jump, Jack, that jump--did you see it?"

My Aunt's eyes were ablaze with a kindled fire. I had seen it often when a race was on. She rode up to the fence. "Five feet six, Jack," she said laughing; "why, the record cross-country is five feet six--that's the record held by Colonel Goff's horse--" and she laughed again meaningly.

It was fifteen minutes before we saw Satan coming back! He came in a gentle canter, his great head held high in pride, because Eloise was laughing and joking with him, patting his mane and calling him sweet names. "You darling Satan," she cried, as she leaped down, "I did so hate to punish you!"

They say horses do not weep, but there were tears in the eyes of Satan as he rubbed his head against her breast, and nibbled the apple she held out to him.

Up the road cantered a horseman in haste, riding an English hunter. Eloise looked up and smiled. "I can't go with you to-day, Jack. Here comes Colonel Goff. I wanted you to see that jump. Isn't he great? He's done it a dozen times, and yet Colonel Goff really thinks he owns the champion." She laughed, her eyes shining. "I must run in and change my habit for the scolding I know is coming."

I turned sullenly in my saddle and rode off. I did not wish to see Goff take her away from us.

I did not enjoy the ride over the farm. The sick brood mare, with the young colt, which nickered so distressingly for Aunt Lucretia, alone excited my sympathy. I was heartsick myself. I did not even enjoy seeing Tammas and Marget.

As we rode away from the dairy we met Elsie coming down the wooded path, a smile on her pretty lips.

"That girl," said my Aunt, "is a fine creature, and do you know, Jack, if I know anything of breeding, she's got rare blood in her. It shows in a hundred ways. Now, watch her."

She was dressed in white, her hair hanging in two plaits down her back. "I am playing at being in Scotland," she said as we came up, "and I have gathered these Scotch wild flowers for Mr. Jack." She handed them up to me, and when my eyes met hers in thanks Aunt Lucretia saw the blush that flushed her face. She looked sharply at me a moment and then smiled. I walked to the barn gate, Elsie going with us, and telling me of the Scotch flowers and trees. "I would be quite happy here," she said, "if we only had the heather on these hills."

Aunt Lucretia turned at the gate. "You must come up to the house some night this week, and we'll have a Bobbie Burns evening," said she.

"Oh, thank you," Elsie answered, smiling at me instead of at Aunt Lucretia.

"Who was that you were talking to before we met you?" I asked. "The gentleman who rode off when he saw us coming?"

"That was Captain Braxton. He has asked my hand in marriage, but I dinna think I shall," she added, with a little sigh. "I dinna like him as I should, but I dinna say yet, for I shall think it over. He's noo like Mr. Jack." Her little Scotch words would slip in now and then.

I flushed and looked at Aunt Lucretia, who sat biting her lips as if in anger. Elsie was all frankness. She put her hand in mine trustingly, and instantly I knew why she had told me.

"No brother could love you more than I do," I said. "Tammas and Marget raised me, too, so I'm really your brother." I laughed to hide my anger at Braxton Bragg and the turn affairs had taken.

She had lifted my hand with a loyal little gesture and pressed it to her cheek before I could withdraw it. "You'll come to see me, often, won't you, Mr. Jack? I need you to help me."

"Jack," I said, smiling at her, "just Jack from now on."

"Oh, but that's not respectful, and I'd not be wanting in respect for you for the world."

"I'll not call you Elsie then, any more," I answered, "nor make the request of you I'm going to make."

"Jack, then," she said. "And your request--it is already granted."

"That you'll not see Braxton Bragg alone until--well, until I have talked with you," I said earnestly.

"O--h," and her eyes opened wide. "Jack, why, of course. If he writes to me again I'll send the letter to you before I answer it."

"Bring it," I said; "I want to see it right away."

We rode back to the house.

"Jack," said my aunt, "he is the most contemptible reversion to a scrub that ever came from a good pedigree! But if he tries that game on that child--he has played it recklessly since you left--I'll kill him myself--damn him!"

I soon forgot Elsie. I caught sight of Eloise entertaining Goff in our old bower, and I could see that as he sat there, smoking and watching her, he already thought she was the Countess of Carfax.

*CHAPTER XI*

*TWO WAYS OF LOVE*

I knew that Colonel Goff would not only stay the afternoon but the evening also. He had been doing it ever since the war, for he regarded his General's home as his also. The assurance of the man incensed me. The divine right of his old kings seemed to have been born in him; and now that he had won Eloise, she and The Home Stretch and all that it contained were his whenever he chose to have them.

Eloise would tease him in pure wantonness, and scorn him, and even ridicule him; for all of which he worshipped her, as is apt to be the way with men. Yet I very quickly noticed the little touch of sadness, which, despite her efforts, fell over her so suddenly. To her wit and repartee, her fun and humor, his only answer would be flashes of his fine teeth, and his favorite exclamation, "Fawncy now, but isn't that a blooming good one?" I was convinced that he loved Eloise and was proud of her; but I thought it was such a feeling as he might have for any beautiful animal, the same worship he might easily have bestowed upon an Arab mare of the desert.

It was not long before Colonel Goff and Aunt Lucretia were in their usual dispute about horses and he was scolding her for letting Eloise ride Satan: "Ah, that unregistered fool! Really, my dear madam, you should not let her go near him, he'll be the death of her yet. Now, there is my imported Irish hunter; he's got a head as well as legs; say now--suppose I just send him over for her," and he looked at Eloise to see what she would say.

Eloise threw up her fine head significantly.

"The idea, Colonel Goff! Why, I wouldn't be caught riding him! That big thing better than Satan! Why His Satanic Majesty can gallop rings all around him."

Colonel Goff laughed. "Fawncy!"

"Yes, fawncy!" said Eloise, mimicking him, which made him flush again and then look at her admiringly.

Aunt Lucretia broke in. "He can," she said very firmly. "I wonder, Colonel Goff, why you should send to England for a horse when you have better ones at home?"

Colonel Goff laughed loudly.

"Why you even think that bang-tailed son of Nestor can jump," went on Aunt Lucretia, laying her trap quietly for him.

This was the one strong point of the son of Nestor, and the one thing about him that his owner had published on his arrival.

"Madam," he said with great seriousness, a bit offended, "madam, I think I told you before that he held the championship for cross-country at Melton-Mowbry."

"Oh, so you did," said my Aunt Lucretia, ever so sweetly, "and yet I believe Satan can beat him both at the distance and over the hurdles."

Goff laughed, but not as though pleased. He was too well-bred to reply to Aunt Lucretia in her kind. So he only tapped his boot, and looked at Eloise, who smiled sweetly at him, as if urging him on.

"I was talking the other day to Secretary Roswick of our State Fair," went on Aunt Lucretia calmly, "and was entering some of my own things. Now, Roswick, you know, makes me put up about half of his programmes. He has asked me to get up some novelties on the side. We'll just have a hurdle race if you say so."

"Capital, capital!" said Goff, for the first time showing excitement. Then he quieted down suddenly. "What am I thinking about? What, in this unregistered country, could go against Nestor, champion hurdler of his class?"

"Satan," said Aunt Lucretia, smiling sweetly.

"Fawncy!" shouted the Colonel decisively.

"I'll lay you five hundred that he can," said my Aunt, "and I don't know a thing in the world about your game."

"Madam," said Goff, quietly, "I have never taken an unfair advantage of a woman."

"Colonel Goff," said my Aunt very seriously, "you know as well as you know anything, that if I know anything it is horses, that I am of age, and that I am good for all my obligations. I'll bet you five hundred dollars that Satan will beat your horse at his own game."

"Do you know, madam," said Goff, "that a jumping horse is born to jump? Not one in a thousand can go over a three-foot hurdle, and this brute of yours--"

"Brute?" said Eloise, icily. "Brute, Colonel Goff, he is an angel! He can do anything."

"And you will ride him?" he asked.

"Nobody else can," said my Aunt. "Yes, she'll ride him and beat you, too."

"I'll take your bet," said he. "I'd give five hundred dollars to ride once in a race with the only girl in America who is really English. How she ever got into this blooming country I can't see!"

I left my Aunt and the Colonel arranging their new game for the Cumberland meeting. I did not take much interest in Eloise riding against him!

I had ordered my horse, intending to ride over to Ned's; I wanted to see my pets there, Little Sister, and Captain Skipper and the new arrival. Eloise followed me through the wood lot. She came up and slipped her arm through mine, and its very touch carried a sadness, it seemed as if the quick electric pulse was gone. In her eyes there was a weariness, an indefinable longing. It touched me to see her so, my live, light-hearted, foster sister of old.

"Jack," she sighed, "I am--I am--" She stopped and looked up into my face.

"What?" I asked. "I should think you would be happy, so soon to marry an Earl."

"It is sooner than you suppose," she said seriously. "He does not wish it known yet because the proper notification has not come from his attorneys in England, but--but--Jack--Jack, his brother is already dead and he wants me to marry him. I have already promised to marry him next month."

I knew she saw me pale. I could have cursed myself for the weakness.

She went on. "When I promised him six months ago it was all so vague, so far off, and I was so miserable, Jack--so homeless and badgered, and dependent, it was all so far off, I thought--waiting for his brother to die, and now! You know how these English are, they take these things so seriously, their marriages and promises, they are so matter-of-fact about it, and so consistent: why, Jack, he looks on me already as his bride. He is just as busy planning for our future, arranging how the estate is to be remodeled, what home we are to have, I couldn't get out of it honorably even--Jack, even if--"

"Even if you should happen to love me?" I said, looking very earnestly into her eyes.

She nodded, her head dropped low. For the first time in her life I saw tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Jack, I am miserable! It was all so far off once,--now--only next month,--and you know I'd die before I'd deceive him--big boy that he is, and trusting and worshipping me, Jack. Yes, that is what hurts me--worshipping me as he does--I couldn't. I couldn't, Jack! If I have any one strong thing in me, you know it is--"

"Keeping your faith with your friends," said I. She nodded. "Do you think I am wicked to marry him this way? Won't you come, in after years, to despise me?"

For answer I stooped and kissed her. She put both her arms around my neck. "Please stay with me," she cried, "I do so need you. I just heard it to-day. It was why he came and stayed so long. Please stay and be with me till he leaves. Just stay with me, Little Brother, this time."

"Why," I said, "this time? Surely he will resent it. Any man would want this night of all others to be with you."

"Jack, you don't understand. I am miserable. That is why I rode Satan as I did. When I put him at that fence I hoped--it is wicked I know--but I hoped that he would kill me."

She was sobbing in my arms.

"Eloise, don't," I said; "let me go. Don't you know that it is harder on me than it is on you? Do you think I am made of stone--of wood--to come home expecting sweetness and find it all rue--my dreams about you--"

"Just to-night, Jack. You'll--you'll laugh at me when I say why, but, but, you know how punctilious these Englishmen are, and he thinks I must kiss him to-night when he goes."

I felt the hot blood rush to my heart. It was instinct, the reversion of a past ancestor who fought another man for kissing his wilderness bride.

"Eloise, you wouldn't?"

"If you'll kiss me again, Jack, as you did just now. I never felt so before--until--but it you'll kiss me again--that way, I'll never kiss him--never!"

I held her in my arms. I kissed her eyes, which were moist. I kissed her mouth, and it seemed as though my soul went into hers; for when, in desperation, in an exhilaration which was all but madness I broke away I heard her cry faintly, "_Jack, Jack!_" ...

I saw her arms around the great fatherly tree, her head against it.

*CHAPTER XII*

*WORK AND MINE ACRE*

There is but one balm for a heartache, and that is work.

Nothing in all my life had left me so stranded; had killed so utterly the sweetness of all my dreams as this giving up of Eloise. And with no dream there is no life.

I felt that she was lost to me now: if she were not engaged to Colonel Goff, there was nothing in me now, I thought bitterly, that could awaken in her the real love she had never felt for anyone. Yet with all her spirit, her apparent indifference, and even recklessness, I knew she had a throne in her heart of hearts for love on a higher plane than those who love easily. I knew that only one side of her had ever been revealed, either to herself or to the world; that beautiful as she was there was a yet more beautiful side to her; and that brave as she was there were yet deeper depths of bravery within her, a moral bravery which under the spur of her soul would take another leap, as far greater than that she took on Satan as the brave leap of Pegasus over the clouds. I had known her always. I knew what she did not know: that I was loving an Eloise that was yet, and forever would be, an unseen star in an unknown heaven, above the head of the man who had never yet learned to look up. Should I sit still and let him take her, let him do this irreparable wrong both to himself, and to her and to me? My heart cowered a moment at the thought of its hopelessness. Then--how wonderful is the word of the soul unto the soul, the passed soul to the passing soul, the absent soul to the present soul,--I thought of the words of Aunt Lucretia: "What would Andrew Jackson do, Jack?" Into my soul came the steel of Andrew Jackson. With the quickness of the thought came the change. "_Aye, my unseeing old grandsire," I said, "you shall see whether I am a fighter or not! ... For Eloise._"

From that moment I resolved to fight. God's blessings on the memory of Andrew Jackson!

But I would fight in my own way. For I knew that Eloise's idea of love was a love of life and death: she who would ride a mad horse over a five-foot fence for the conquering instinct of a mastering nature, what would she not do for love--_her love_--and she a woman? For let it be writ both of history and life, 'tis woman at last who loves. Man knows not love. Even as his own life came to him the babe of Love and Passion, so only can he give that unto another. But she who gave it being, _her name was Love_! Oh, to win such a love as I knew Eloise would bring to me; which she herself knew not was there.

I lost my bitterness of it all when it came clear to me. Before, I had been maddened to think she would barter this love of hers for title and wealth and the place it bought. But now I saw clearly, now I knew that she was blameless, because never having had that love, she knew not what she was giving away. Like an Indian princess, who owned an island of pearls, but did not know their value, she would give them to the first foreigner, coming down in ships, for the baubles of his forecastle.

But I would show my Princess what her pearls were worth. I would string them in globes of beauty around her neck, and brow, and belt, and I would put my crowning Great Pearl of Sacrifice into the diadem of her hair, and then I would lead her down to the sweet glassy sea of her own unbartered, unbought home, her own sweet kingdom of kindness and content, and by the still waters, in God's own groves, I would lead her until her feet dipped into the mirroring pools, and, kissing her, bid her look for the first time and behold Love crowned.

Would she barter herself for baubles then? Would she not know the difference between pearls and paste beads? I, yes, happy I, would show it to her; I would introduce Eloise to herself--Eloise loveless to Eloise in love.

I laughed now in the happiness of my little conceit. Very distinctly I could hear my Aunt Lucretia say: "_Sure, Jack, that is the way Andrew Jackson did--took her from the toad who had deceived her, right out of his arms, and then killed every other toad who croaked about it. Sure!_" ...

There was much for me to do, both of love and duty. My duty was work, and that came first. For I had faith both in God and myself, and if I did my duty and my work, God would give the rest to me.

Work--the glory and sweetness of it! And to find one's work in one's life--that One Work which fits the One Life: this to me has always been the greatest gift of the Giver.

There was so much for me to do. I was the pioneer of a great truth in the world's greatest country. In all great causes it is the pioneer who is the sacrifice, it is he who is held up to contempt and scorn. Strange that it should be so! That he who sees first the Great New Truth, the Blessing that has been withheld because of no one to see it, the Great Invention uplifting through one man all men into a new world, that it is he who must suffer....

The hurt does not matter from those who love us not. I was willing that the herd should think of me as it would, as its own little light permitted, but I had that pride of race which every honest man has, and I wanted the love of my fighting old grandsire. And he openly despised my profession, and he secretly despised me. "What's the use of worrying about making more on an acre of this rich soil?" he would say. "Ain't The Home Stretch rich enough? And fiddling about saving trees--why damn it, ain't there too many of them already? Didn't I have all the hard work of my life clearing some of the land, and my father before me, that it might make us a living!"

He would never understand me, of course. The discoverer is never understood, and the forester falls in the same class, more maligned than any of them. He would never understand that it was not a sentimental dream to save trees because they are trees, but to grow them and harvest them in the right way, even as wheat is harvested: that we did not want to see rich acres, the homes of unborn people, covered only with trees, when the land was needed for bread, but the unfertile hillside, and the heads of our water streams. There, we insisted, trees should remain because that was Nature's own way of protecting the land from droughts and floods. Nor could I hope to make him understand that rich as the land was--even as a man of genius--it should have a chance to bring forth all the fruit that was in it. That our waste was something appalling, our methods crude, and that our people, with all their plenty, were only half fed; that while we were rich and The Home Stretch was a garden, the poor farmers of the hills and less fertile places were living only half lives, they and their families, because there was no one to show them something better.

My Aunt I knew was sorry for me; but I could see she hoped and believed I would yet get over it. And in my own heart I felt that if I had chosen West Point, perhaps Eloise--