"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."
He sat down, and Aunt Lucretia, taking my hand, led me in. "Goff," I
heard him say, "that fight at Winchester when we charged into the
town--you led me a little you know, and--"
I felt Eloise's hand in mine as we went down the hall. "I hate him,"
she said, tossing her head back toward the old man. "It's mean and
sinful; but I hate him! After all these years to greet you in that way.
And Braxton Bragg--you should see what a fool he is, Jack, in his
captain's straps, and living hourly up to his name!"
*CHAPTER IV*
*COLONEL GOFF*
Colonel Goff followed us shortly afterwards into the hall. He had
ridden over on his English hunter while Eloise and I had been on the
lawn greeting our tree friends. He was immaculately groomed, in
polished boots, puttees and cap, an English crop in his hands. Fifty
years old, his black hair slightly streaked with gray, he was handsome,
and there was a masterful air about him that even an enemy must have
admired. A younger son of the Earl of Carfax, he had come to America
when my grandsire was fighting with Stonewall Jackson in Virginia. He
had volunteered for service, and had been placed in Jackson's corps, and
on my grandsire's staff. Here his real, sterling qualities found birth
and he proved to be a brilliant soldier. It was he who charged ahead of
the rebel yell and led the advance that scattered Banks. It was he who
led again at Cedar Creek, caught the brilliant Sheridan napping, and
sent his command reeling back in a retreat which would have meant
demoralization for anyone but Sheridan. His fondness for my grandsire
was no less than the old man's for him, and after the war Colonel Goff,
being in disgrace, it was said, with his father at home, moved to
Tennessee to be near his old commander. He had bought a fine place near
ours, and here he had lived the life of an English gentleman, with his
hounds, his horses, and his utter disregard of all the local and
established ideas of country temperance or morals. He was not a man who
asked for things, he took them.
Even before I left home I had secretly rebelled at his admiration for
Eloise. In all her masterful ways, her riding, her fox chasing, her
hunting with the men, following Goff or the General all day on her pony,
and killing quail dead-straight, in the flush of the covey, he had
openly admired her. Afterwards I heard him say that she was a duchess
born, and the only one he had seen in America. He had humored, petted
and helped to spoil her as a child. As a girl, there never was a costly
thing she wanted but he gave it to her.
In the dining-room, when supper had been announced, I noticed the
flushed pleasure in Eloise's eyes at sight of him. It was half a daring
look, as of the hunted defying the hunter, that I saw in her eyes, but I
could not rightly decipher it, or tell whether it meant she was
conquered or as yet unconquered.
My heart burned with jealousy at the sight of it. The great joy of my
home-coming was gone! I knew his way, and that he would stay for
supper.
"I had thought," I whispered sourly to Eloise, "that I would at least
have this first evening alone with you."
Eloise laughed. "Oh, he comes when he pleases, and I--I send him home
when I please."
He had greeted me pleasantly, but during supper he paid little attention
to me. Once he laughed at my study of forestry, and added, "And to go
to Germany for it, when you might have gone to England!"
After supper, when I had gone with Aunt Lucretia to the barn to help her
with a sick colt, I smelt the odor of his cigar coming up from our old
seat under the elm. I grew bitter at the thought that anyone but I
should sit there with Eloise. My Aunt must have noticed this, for she
called: "Come in here--both of you. This isn't fair to Jack."
Aunt Lucretia and Colonel Goff could never meet ten minutes in their
lives without a heated argument over American and English horses. She
generally worsted him, because she had all the records at her tongue's
end, and because in any kind of controversy she was fearless. For an
hour to-night, and until he left, she scored him fearlessly. "Take that
nick-tailed horse of yours," said Aunt Lucretia, "Colonel Goff, couldn't
you do better than that in England?" There were two things which always
especially incensed her; one was to cut off a horse's tail and the other
to import an animal from England, when a better one might be had here.
Colonel Goff explained that there were no such horses in America. "He
is a four-mile hurdler," said he. "You've nothing of the kind in this
blooming country."
"Why, madam, he holds the record jump behind the Quoin hounds at
Melton-Mowbry. The kill was in the main driveway of a manor and his
rider cleared the picket fence to be in first. That fence measured five
and a half feet and to this day it is the record at Melton-Mowbry."
"A four-miler, that means a running horse," said my Aunt. "Of course we
have them. And a hurdler--that's only a jumping horse. Now, we've
never cared much for jumpers. Why, I've a mule in my barn that can go
over a ten rail fence any day. Uncle Ned says she just climbs it;
anyway, I've never been able to build one high enough to keep her out of
the cornfield on the other side. But there's Eloise's Satan, son of
Young Hickory, scion of General Jackson's Truxton. The man his sire is
named for used to beat your English at any kind of a game at New
Orleans, and I'll wager that Satan would be a mighty hurdler and high
jumper if he only had a chawnce," she said, smiling, in funny mimicry of
Goff.
"Fawncy!" laughed Goff, twisting his mustache. "Why, he couldn't jump
over a chalk line! It's all in the training and pedigree! My Nestor
colt holds the record for the Melton-Mowbry meet, and his high jump was
five feet six."
My Aunt turned the subject as if it were forgotten. But I knew she
never forgot, and that she had something up her sleeve.
I was worried that Goff should linger so on my first night, for I saw
plainly that he hoped we would retire and that he wanted to get Eloise
off for a _tete-a-tete_. Aunt Lucretia saw this also, and whispered to
me when she got the chance, "Freeze him out, Jack; he shan't have her
to-night!"
"Why, Major Hawthorn," she said presently, turning and rising abruptly.
The major came in on us silently, in his soft, well-bred way. I rose
instantly to greet him.
"Jack, my boy!" said he, throwing one arm around me, and drawing me to
him. "How you have grown! I heard you had come home, and I had to see
you to-night."
"And you didn't want to see _me_?" said Eloise, coming up, and kissing
him; for the Major was her ideal, and she was always his pet. "Now,
Major, you always said that you loved me as much as you did Jack," she
teased, winding an arm into his.
"Just the same as ever, my dear; you are both my two children always,"
he laughed. "Why, good evening, Goff--and the General, where is he?" he
asked my Aunt Lucretia. "I have news that will please him."
My Aunt went after my grandfather.
"Jack," he turned to me, "what a man you have grown into! I'm hungry
for a long talk with you."
The Major sat down, and Colonel Goff offered him a cigar. He struck a
match, but before using it, held it a moment to my face. "Inspection,
Jack," said he, smiling; "you know how hard it is to break an old
soldier of his habits."
I saw his finely-cut, sensitive face light up. I noticed the familiar
turn of his mustache, his kindly mouth, the correct dress, the straight,
martial bearing, and the courtesy, that seemed a gift of his own.
"And it looks as if I might die in harness," he went on. "Ah, here's
the General."
He rose and shook hands with my grandsire. "I have come over to tell
you, General, of a telegram I received this afternoon from the
President, and I should so like to have your advice before
answering--the advice of all of you," he said kindly, turning and bowing
our way.
"Ah, Hawthorne," said my grandsire, "I know what it is--I knew it was
coming--I wrote Joe Wheeler--"
"I thought you had something to do with it," said the Major, "and I
shall abide by your decision, my General," he added softly.
"McKinley has appointed you Brigadier-General," went on my grandsire
quietly. "The First Tennessee will be in your brigade. I can't talk of
it, Hawthorne--I want to go to the Philippines with you so bad, and give
the damned Yankees--ah, pardon--pardon me--I mean the damned Spaniards
another good drubbing!"
There was a burst of laughter from us all. My grandsire sat down
confused.
"It is as you said," Major Hawthorne replied, "and I am going to do as
you say, General. I have taken your orders in Virginia too often to
refuse now."
"Hawthorne, I envy you; by gad, I envy you," said the old man.
"General, do you know that I never was so happy before? I have so
wanted to fight under the old flag. Jack," he turned to me, his face
smiling, "Jack, I have come to see you for this purpose--I want you on
my staff--I know the training you have had, I know the stuff that is in
you. I want you, my boy. I've ridden ten miles to-night to tell you."
"Tut--tut--Hawthorne--nonsense!" broke in the General. "Don't start out
making breaks like that. Jack is a good boy, but he is not a
fighter--now, there's Braxton Bragg--"
"My grandfather is doubtless right, General Hawthorne," I said quietly.
"I thank you from my heart for your kindness--but--"
Eloise arose flushing, indignant. "Jack _is_ a fighter; a better
fighter than some people who strut around in khaki, and make great
pretense, but amount to nothing," she said deliberately and with
emphasis.
Then she came over and put one arm affectionately on my shoulder. "And
General Rutherford," she went on, her voice trembling with anger, "I
mean this for you, and I mean no disrespect; but it is cruel of you the
way you have slurred Jack, and I almost doubt that you ever made the
good fighting record you have, when I think how easily you can be fooled
into taking a tin soldier for the real thing! I do, and now you know
what _I_ think."
Colonel Goff laughed, pleased. "You pinked him just right, Eloise.
Been thinking I'd tell the General that myself--eh, General?" and he
slapped the old man familiarly on the back.
The old General answered testily, "Tut--tut--madam;" and then he
laughed. "Gad, but I wish you were a man! Damned if _you_ wouldn't
fight!"
*CHAPTER V*
*PEDIGREES AND PRINCIPLES*
My Aunt Lucretia undoubtedly was the real master of The Home Stretch.
She ruled its thousand acres of low, rolling, blue grass land, which
bore in pioneer days the canebrake and the poplar, and for a century had
been the nursery of thoroughbreds.
My Aunt lived and dreamed in pedigrees. Heaven, according to her, was a
blue-grass meadow filled with pedigreed people, and hell--I remember how
I had laughed when she said, "Why, Jack, if there is such a place, it's
a low jockey-yard filled with scrubs!"
Pedigrees, I am certain, was her gauge of life. She was more man than
woman, handsome though she was. She should have been a bewigged,
knee-breeched, ruffle-shirted, horse-racing Virginia gentleman of the
old school, as many of her ancestors had been. She still clung to a few
blooded horses, though her immaculate dairy of Jersey cows was her
greatest pride. When my parents died, even before I could remember, she
had adopted me. She intended that I should inherit The Home Stretch.
Then, true to her ideas, she had planned a proper mate for me. She had
been a success in mating everything but herself. Her ribbons won at
State Fairs and in Horse Shows proved it; for her Merino sheep she held
a great cup from the International Exhibit in Paris. The wool of her
Tennessee sheep had gone back across the ocean, and beaten the parent
wool on its own soil. This great, heavy, solid silver cup sat on the
mantel in the library, and every spring, when I had a cold, she had
given me punch cobbler out of it.
She had early paired me off with Eloise Ward, who was an orphan, and a
distant relative of her mother. My Aunt had adopted her, as she had me,
and given her every grace of a fashionable education. At ten she had,
as she expressed it, engaged us. I remember it was Eloise's tenth
birthday and my twelfth. She bought a little turquoise ring and made me
give it to Eloise.
"Now, Jack, Eloise is yours! Eloise, you will marry him when you are
grown. Now kiss each other as sensibly engaged people do, to seal it.
After this no more kissing."
The last advice was unneeded. Up to then we had never kissed, but had
fought continually. Knowing Aunt Lucretia, and that if we did not do as
she said, something uncomfortable would happen to us, we screwed up our
mouths, each trying to outdo the other in mock martyrdom, and complied.
After that Aunt Lucretia was very gracious. I think we showed remarkable
horse-sense, young as we were, in carrying out her wishes, inasmuch as
we expected some day to own the great farm and house.
To comfort me she used to say--for she knew my love of blooded stock:
"She is beautiful, Jack, well built and coupled just right in the back.
One link more of vertebrae would have spoiled her, turned her up too
sloping between the shoulders, and made her gangling in the hips. If
there's too many links in a filly's back, when the pinch of contest
comes, you know, Jack, as well as I do, there will be a crumpling--and
it is generally in their legs. And Eloise's, Jack--well, you should see
it--thoroughbred--taut as a bow string--holding hip and head together.
And not too short, either, Jack; the little dicky, short-backed ones,
with schooner hips, are a sure sign of several vertebrae being lost by
sitting on them for too many generations at the loom or the wheel, or
carrying home the week's washing on their heads! It's the scrub sign,
my boy. And Eloise is clean-limbed with good flat bones. Jack, as you
love me and your God, never marry a woman that can't span her ankle with
her thumb and forefinger--that kind of a fetlock is a scrub of the most
pronounced type! It came from ancestors before them for a thousand
years, who had all their weight on their ankles--just hauling plows like
beasts of burden. And Eloise has great style with a fine sweep and
action. Look how boldly she steps and clean and true! No loblolling,
lazy ambling there--hitting even on the ground--and her hair,
Jack--red-chestnut--it is beautiful and not too much. Shun the
brood-mare with mane thick and heavy. It is pretty but comes from the
scrub Shetlands or Andalusian jennets. Look--look, Jack--isn't she
beautiful?"
I watched her myself, tall, her scornful, daring head thrown back, her
fine braids of sorrel, silken hair flying out, as in a long-limbed,
leaping sweep, she chased the collie across the yard.
The comparison was fitting--as a thoroughbred, Eloise was superb. My
Aunt had copied it all by herself, tabulating for me, most elaborately
and artistically, on a great sheet of parchment, Eloise's pedigree. It
was such a tabulation as I had seen her work over night after night,
often for months, handing down volume after volume of the English and
Bruce's Stud Book and the Trotting and Pacing Register. In bold, block,
decorated letters, she gradually evolved Eloise's sire and dam, as she
grimly called them, and thence on to granddams and g. g. dams (every g.
as I learned standing for another generation) until it looked, when
finished, like a great river, with a hundred branching streams flowing
in, and an endless row of g. g. g. g. g.'s
Under each sire and dam, and in red ink, in contrast to the black of
their names, she had written their records, short and pointed, and often
with astonishing frankness. I remember that under her grandsire--a
Governor of Virginia--the red ink ran: _Died of a wetting, while drunk
at a horse race! Watch your children for too much crude liquor!_
Under one of her dams, daughter of a Carolina judge, she had: _She had a
streak of common, for she ate onions. If you have daughters, don't
plant the things in your garden!_
Another of her great Virginia ancestors was a preacher, noted for his
zeal in proselyting; under him was: _Too religious--the reaction may
come in your grandson, who is likely to be an infidel, Nature
maintaining her balance in morals as in matter_.
Now that I had come home from Germany it was evidently my Aunt's
intention that Eloise and I should marry.
"Come, Eloise," said she, after our guests had left, and my grandfather
had retired, "we will light Jack to bed in the old way."
Eloise jumped up, slipping her arm into mine. Then she two-stepped with
me up the hall, humming "A Hot Time In The Old Town To-night."
Aunt Lucretia looked on, her stern face relaxed into a satisfied smile.
I slipped my arm around Eloise's slim waist, and, bending over, tried to
kiss her cheek. But she drew back laughing, and Aunt Lucretia's voice
came sternly from behind. "Jack--Eloise!"
We stopped instantly under the chandelier. Aunt Lucretia shut the heavy
doors, and came up with all the sternness of a Roman lictor in her face.
"Turn her loose, Jack. Listen, both of you: I had intended to inform
you to-morrow finally, but this is as good a time as any."
We stood silent before her. Eloise's pretty mouth drooped in pretended
humbleness.
"You know how I love you both, and--well, how you respect each other.
You know that I have planned and dreamed for you both, ever since I
brought you together here. Now let me see. This is April--well, I am
going to marry you to each other in the fall, and until I marry you
off," she went on sternly, "I have only one rule--no hugging--no
kissing. It is bad before marriage, and after you are married," she
added with becoming stiffness, "you will not want to."
"Don't you think your conditions are awfully severe for engaged people?"
asked Eloise demurely.
"And I may seal it with a kiss surely, Aunt Lucretia," I said, "for
once."
"No, not for once. That silly performance has caused more trouble in
the world than all the sins of Satan combined. We will never have a
decent race of people till kissing is cut out," she exclaimed. "There,
no more at present--march!"
And she marched us into my room.
"Isn't this fine!" I said, looking around at the old room, glad to be
home again.
It was twenty by twenty, the pioneer size, with a great fireplace, built
of oak and ash. In a corner was my old mahogany tester bed, big posted
and canopy-topped. The little cherry writing desk stood near, and so
did the quaint mahogany bureau, resting on dragon claws, with great
drawers for a base, and ending pyramid-like in a top of granite finish,
set off by a little mirror, and with a tiny shaving drawer for my
razors. Big windows looked out on all sides.
After Eloise had left Aunt Lucretia sat quietly thinking, looking now
and then at a pedigree of Eloise which she had once made and hung over
my mantel. It was framed in walnut and decorated with fancy letters.
At last she smiled.
"Isn't she a thoroughbred, Jack?"
"I haven't really got my breath yet, Aunt Lucretia," I answered. "I
never dreamed she would grow into a being so beautiful. Don't you
really believe you might er--er--hurry up this--er--affair--" and I
stopped, blushing.
Aunt Lucretia broke out in her rare, good-humored laugh.
"Poor boy! Jack, you must be careful. You talk as if you had a real
case of the silly, unsensible thing."
"Always had it, Aunt Lucretia," I smiled weakly.
"Jack, that would be very unfortunate. I want you to marry on common
sense--not love."
"You know how I have always loved her," I went on. Aunt Lucretia
glanced sharply at me. "I mean how I've cared for her," I amended. "But
do you--do you honestly believe, Aunt Lucretia, that she loves me--cares
for me that way?"
"Tut--tut," she said sharply, "what nonsense you talk! What does it
matter? This silly love business has spoiled more good pedigrees and
brought more fools into the world, I tell you, than anything else under
the sun. What a fine breed of folks we'd have had in the world by now
if so many idiots had not fallen in love and married without a moment's
thought of results. You ought to be grateful to me, Jack," she
continued after a while; "you will be grateful, I am sure, some day,
that you had me to select a wife for you and didn't just happen to fall
in love. That's an accident often as fatal as happening to fall down
the steps.
"It is awful, Jack, this haphazard of humanity!" she went on in a
moment. "No wonder only one in a hundred is born who has got any brains
in his head. Think of it, Jack, our race is so pig-headed from
thoughtless marryings that it took them three hundred years after they
invented a saddle before it dawned upon them that they needed stirrups
to complete it. Rode three centuries on bare saddles for lack of sense
enough to invent stirrups! Some day for the benefit of humanity I am
going to open a human Registry. I want to do this because I think it is
our duty to try to teach people to take as much interest in their own
children's pedigree as they do in their horses' or dogs'. Many a man
falls in love with and marries a woman whose qualities and character,
and pedigree, if she were a horse, he wouldn't be caught trading a blind
mule for! And many a woman, under the same divine influence, marries
some vicious brute of a man for no other reason than because she has
just fallen in love with him, or maybe wants to reform him, who, if he
were turned into a buggy horse she wouldn't be caught risking her neck
behind.
"And this is the way I'd go to registering my people," she continued.
"In all registration there must be a foundation stock. For man, I'd let
Truthfulness, Bravery, Honesty, Manliness, and Ability to Do Things,
count as Foundations. This would change the present social system
radically and let into good society and life a flood of good blood that
is at present badly needed but is shut out, unless it suddenly happens
to get rich and comes in under a dress suit. I would make
accomplishments, the _Ability to Do Things_, from the Ability to do
Poetry, Art, Drama, Music--everything that is worth while--to the
ability to make two blades of grass grow, the greatest of them all,
count as my classes, and it wouldn't take me long to straighten out Old
Humanity and breed a race of people, who, in a few generations, as old
Horace says, would strike the stars with their uplifted heads!"
She laughed. "Look, Jack, here it is. I have worked it all out, just
for fun." She unrolled a parchment, as immaculately executed in
decorated letters as Eloise's pedigree had been. Then she read,
glancing over her glasses now and then to emphasize her remarks.
"_A STANDARD OF HUMAN REGISTRATION_.
When white men and women meet the following requirements and are duly
registered, they shall be accepted as standard bred, and shall be
permitted to marry:
FIRST: Any white man, who has a home of his own and is honest,
industrious, and truthful, and sound in wind, limb and eye.
SECOND: Any white woman, who can cook a good meal, make her own clothes,
keep a home clean, lives a pure life, and has some moral standard for
herself and children, and will agree to raise them under it.
THIRD: Every man who is the father of a great man or woman.
FOURTH: Every woman who is the mother of a great man or woman.
_NON-STANDARD_:
The following shall be Non-Standard, and neither they nor their children
shall be registered.
FIRST: Fools.
SECOND: Liars.
THIRD: Cranks.
FOURTH: Idiots.
FIFTH: Geniuses. They are freaks merely, and fools in another form.
SIXTH: Sissy men.
SEVENTH: Consumptives, the cancerous, the insane.
EIGHTH: Impure women.
NINTH: Society people wherever found, and their one child.
TENTH: Married men who lead Germans.
ELEVENTH: The children of women who play cards for money and prizes.
TWELFTH: Evangelists who preach slang from the pulpit.
THIRTEENTH: Praying lawyers.
FOURTEENTH: Trading preachers.
FIFTEENTH: Professional politicians.
SIXTEENTH: Bank cashiers who run Sunday Schools.
SEVENTEENTH: Doctors who cut open people quickly, or dope them with much
medicine.
LUCRETIA RUTHERFORD,
Registrar."
I laughed. "It wouldn't do any harm to try it awhile, Aunt Lucretia;
but--referring again to Eloise--"
"We'll not refer again to Eloise," she said, seeing what I was coming
to; "this thing is settled. You two will marry this fall, and until then
I want no foolishness around me."
"But, suppose she--" I began.
"She is not to suppose anything--nor you. Get her a beautiful ring the
next time you go to town. I'll attend to the rest of it."
We talked for an hour or two. I could see how glad she was that I was
at home again, for, with all of her stern ways, my Aunt Lucretia was
very fond of me.
"And to think of your being the man you are, Jack," she said finally,
"and that lameness all gone. Ah, but that is what I'm telling you--the
Germans are the greatest thinkers in the world--because--well, because
they have been bred to think. Yes, it is good to see you here again,
Jack, and sound, and you will earn your oats from now on, young man,
remember that."
*CHAPTER VI*
*THE MAKE-BELIEVE*
After Aunt Lucretia had gone there was a faint tap at my window, which I
knew of old. When I raised the sash Eloise stood outside, smiling at me.
On the veranda she slipped her arm through mine, and led the way to our
old seat under the hickories.
"Jack," she began, and her serious tone seemed to bode no good, "I just
couldn't go to sleep until I had talked with you. Aunt Lucretia thinks
I'm in bed; just as she used to think we both were when we weren't,
Little Brother." She smiled half tenderly. "I think I ought to speak
to you. This thing is getting serious, don't you think?"
"It's been that way with me all the time," I said earnestly, "if I could
only get you to look at it seriously--"
For reply she thumped my cheek with her thumb and forefinger. It was a
trick Aunt Lucretia had used when I had been naughty as a boy, and
Eloise knew that nothing made me madder.
"Now, Jack--no nonsense--listen. We must do something--about--"
"Our marriage this fall?" I interrupted.