Eloise laughed. "Like a sister. Aunt Lucretia says we've got to marry
each other, so what's the use of my kicking? But listen--now--say,
Jack--you've played right into my hand. I'll need that Whiteman saddle
for this beautiful thing. So hold up a while till I ride over and close
that bet with the General. Now is my time! He's crazy about that great
lobster of his and I could win The Home Stretch on this bet if I had
anything to put up."
She wheeled her horse, threw a kiss down at Jack, and galloped off to
find the General.
When Little Sister got back from her cry the General was gone. He was
over at the table talking to Uncle Jack.
"Now, Jack," said he, "don't disgrace old Betty any more. Why, I rode
her fifteen years. I rode her--"
Uncle Jack had always been so quiet that it was a distinct surprise to
the old General when he showed an unsuspected grit and gameness.
"Hang her old dam, Grandfather, and your cursed old war in Virginia!
Drop dead, will she? Well, sir, you are likely to see something drop
yourself before this heat is over." And he turned on his heels and
walked off.
The old General looked at him astounded, and with positive admiration.
"By gad," he said to himself, "he's either crazy or got more sense than
us all. By gad, to think of him getting mad and having grit like that!
He may make a soldier yet," and he chuckled with pride.
Now Uncle Jack meant business. He changed his cart for a sulky. Again
they got the word. Princewood, having the pole and all advantage,
flashed ahead in his big lumbering pace, Little Sister in the very rear,
struggling for her head. Slowly, gradually, Uncle Jack let her have it.
Steadily, like moving machinery set in grooves of steel, she came up on
them, relentlessly, mercilessly cutting them down, one after another.
At the half there was nothing but Princewood ahead and no one even saw
her yet, for the shout was: "Princewood! Princewood!" This heat would
make the race his.
"Princewood's got 'em, General!" yelled a countryman, his mouth so wide
open from excitement that tobacco juice ran down his chin whiskers and
into his shirt collar. "Princewood's got 'em! There's nothin' that kin
head 'im!"
"He's got 'em!" yelled the partisans of the old General, packed solidly
around him and cackling with half crazy joy. "Now jes watch sum'thin'
drop."
But a girl sitting on her horse and looking over the crowd saw it
differently. A daring, knowing, triumphant smile lingered around her
mouth. And not in heaven, nor in the star-lighted lake below, ever shone
two stars rippling into little wavelets of glint and glory like those in
the eyes of her.
The General, seeing her, shouted: "Yes, watch it drop! No saddle for
you, young lady!"
Down went her keen, fun-loving eyes to those of the old soldier. "It's
dropped already, General--see! I own that saddle now!"
Something had happened. The little filly felt the reins relax and a
kindly chirrup come from her driver. In a twinkling, in the whir of a
spinning wheel, she was up with the big fellow, half frightened at her
own speed, half doubting that it was really she who did it, half sobbing
with the keen thrill of it, like a great singer who for the first time
hears her own voice filling a great hall.
"_Princewood! Princewood!_" shouted the crowd around their idol, the
General, "_Princewood's broke the record!_"
The old General rose in happy anticipation: "Yes, boys, it looks like
the record is busted by--"
Here his jaw dropped as if paralyzed; for his trained eye took in the
situation and the word died in his mouth. What was that little bay
thing that had so gamely collared his big horse? Who is that
quiet-looking fellow in the soft hat handling the reins like a veteran
and leading the march like Stonewall's Foot-Cavalry in the Valley? His
grandson, Jack, was in a cart; this man sat in a sulky. And Jack was
driving a little limp-waisted, hollow-flanked--
"Who the devil--" he began, when someone clinging to his middle finger
looked up, great smiles chasing tears down her cheeks and so excited she
could scarcely breathe.
"Why, it's Little Sister, Grandpa! Now isn't she just too sweet for
anything?"
The next instant the little filly laughed in the big pacer's face, who
had quit in a tangled break, as much as to say: "_You big braggart
duffer, have you quit already?_" and then, like a homing pigeon loosed
for the first time, she sailed away from the field.
"Princewood--Princewood has broke the record--" shouted the farmer who
hadn't caught on and was shouting for Princewood, but was looking at the
champion pumpkin in the window of the Agricultural Hall.
And then the old General lost his head and what little religion he had
left. For he jumped on a bench, his wooden leg rattling as he danced up
and down, like a flock of goats in a barn loft, and this is what the
town crier in the courthouse window, a mile away, heard him yelling:
"_Damn Princewood! Damn the record! It's Little Sister--Little
Sister--my own mare--old Betty's filly. I rode her fifteen years! I
rode her dam--_"
"Oh--" sang out mockingly a beautiful girl, sitting her horse beside
him, with a laugh that sounded like a wood thrush's. "But I've won a
saddle and a seal-skin cloak and the sweetest mare in the world! Say,
Braggy," for Braxton Bragg just then drove in, the last of the whole
procession--"that engagement is all off, isn't it?"
Then Uncle Jack, who had stopped and got out of the sulky, came up, his
face aglow. And she, her eyes still fired to starry beauty, leaned from
the saddle and kissed him.
"You darling Jack, how can I ever get even for this?"
"I said he'd be telling about it first," said Uncle Jack, wagging his
head at the crowd, where the old General stood telling them that it was
_he_ who had bred the great little filly and that it was _his old mare_
who was the dam of her!
"And the little old no-count thing did play off on you sure enough,
didn't she, Grandpa?" came from the tear-eyed tot beside him, so naively
in earnest and telling such a plain unvarnished truth that even the old
General's partisans had to wink and nudge each other as they walked off.
The old General laughed as he picked her up and said: "And here's the
little girl that saved her, gentlemen, the smartest girl in Tennessee;
and she's got more horse sense than her old granddaddy!"
There was one more heat, of course; but it was only a procession, and
those behind--and that meant the field--cannot swear to this day which
way Little Sister went....
*II*
*"A TWILIGHT PIECE"*
... "And all that I was born to be
and do, a twilight piece."
--_Robert Browning_.
*CHAPTER I*
*THE FLAME IN THE WOOD*
Home again and Tennessee in April! When the train swept over the
Highland Rim, the woods, not yet in full leaf, seemed afire with the
clustering blooms of the pink azaleas. On both sides, in little sudden
and short valleys, and farther off on dwarf-oak hillsides, they blazed.
Far beyond their faint, mist-like flush mingled with the sky line in the
distant openings, and seemed an arc of soft sunset clouds.
Cream-white dogwoods rose up in open spaces against the blurred, pink
backgrounds, clustering like evening stars in rose cloud-banks. Anon
they grew in separate groups, down in little dells, and each of these
tiny bowls was full of them.
Their odor, soft and fragrant, swept through the train, dew-damp and
like old memories in sweetness.
This seems to me to be the main thought about all wild flowers, that
they alone are God's idea of beauty and not those that bloom in gardens
and hot houses through the skill of man. If, from any cause, such as
the gas from a comet's tail, men should vanish in a night, none of these
last would live to bloom again. Like their makers they would pass from
the earth. But like Nature's Maker the wild sweet things of the wood
and meadows and mountains would bloom again, although man were not,
mirroring God's idea of beauty even to the desert.
If it is Nature's great desire that that which is best shall live, the
wild flowers have Nature's underwriting of approval. Ancient Linnaeus
said of one unfolding: "I saw God in his glory passing near me and bowed
my head in worship."
Through all the ages those who see, whether poet or planter, think the
same great thoughts. Tennyson said of the flower plucked from the
crannied wall, that if he could know what it was he should know what God
and man were. They bring a larger thought even than that, for they
prove that God _is Beauty_.
Even as I was thinking this the train rushed through what had once been
a wood, but was now a burnt and scarred spot, bare of life. The azaleas
in their beauty, were the flame in the woods which Nature had kindled:
but this desolate spot was the flame which had come from the hand of
man...
When the train stopped for water at the little station I got out and
gathered a great bunch of flowers for Eloise....
Then as we dropped down into the Middle Basin, filled with the blue
grass in its spring glory, whole acres of hepaticas twinkled up at us
like fallen fireflies.
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?"