"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."