Across the valley from the dairy is the blue grass pasture of the cows;
and on a hillside studded with dwarf cedars, Nature's first efforts to
cover up her nakedness after man's ax has passed, runs a streak of bare,
brown limestone, winding across the hills an acre wide. Above it the
grass and cedars grew down to the bare rocks, and then they stopped
short, for no soil was there. Years before, pioneer men, fighting,
unthinking, world-conquering, with the primal instinct of the Aryan
_wander-lust_ in their blood, had stripped that spot of earth of its
clothing, leaving the naked ground beneath, lifeless and bare. In all
the beautiful blue grass pasture this was the one scar: on this green
shield of Nature, the one rent. The birds, which love the deep shade of
the cedars, stopped at its borders and flew back from the strip of brown
desert.
The rabbits, hiding in the tangled thickets above, and whose
spring-water ran in the glen below, made a path around it, through the
concealing grass and cedar boughs that brushed their furry coats. None
would cross this bare spot, hot to their feet in summer and freezing to
them in winter, where they would be stared at by every bird, or hunted
by the eyes of men.
Even the crows drew their line there, and would not fly over it; for the
crow makes no path in the sky above that does not parallel a path of
supplies below. Often had I seen the Jersey herd, brown and gray and
chocolate, browsing in a phalanx, following the earliest grass which
grew closest to the rocks, come to the very border of this scar in the
cheek of the earth and then in sudden anger plunge in and seek the
cedars on the hill, anywhere to forget this outrage on Nature!
I remember the spring I first saw the stone-crop. The winter had been
long and raw. Even the blue grass had had a struggle to keep green, and
the cedars' stems had become black under the bite of frost. But blacker
yet lay the earth's scar beyond them.
Then one day in the spring I went over the hill to Tammas's home. As I
came up from the slope and out from the great lindens, and looked across
at the other hill for the ugly scar, I stopped thrilled with a strange
and nameless beauty. I have no word for the exultation that swept over
me.
But I remembered when Elizabeth Browning was dying--she so unbeautiful
in face and so star-like in mind,--she uttered a poem which seemed to me
to surpass all that great woman ever wrote. For the characters in it
were she, her husband, and her God: and the subject was The Beauty of
Immortality.
"How do you feel, dearest?" he asked, holding her in his arms and
looking into her dying face.
"Oh, I feel beautiful," she said, as she smiled back into his face and
died.
Oh, frail little woman, who never wrote a weak line! O, earth-bound and
earth-found one, who never created save of heaven! O, little homely
one, whose portrait I did not till then even love to recall, so
different it seemed from the soul which could write as it wrote: now it
hangs the most beautiful thing on my study wall.
I stood there, looking, steeped in the thrill of it. I thought a pink
rainbow had fallen across the hills.
Then the nobility of this pink flower went into me, for there is
nobleness even among flowers and trees. The blue grass is the
aristocrat, who sits only at the richest tables, with cedars to wait on
him, refreshed with the waters of a thousand hills. The bermuda runs
hither and yon, sending its stolons after the fat things of earth; and
the redtop grows only where it can reach the richest granaries. The
stone-crop alone clings to this bare brown rock, shielding its poverty.
Seeing this, I gloried in the chance that faced me, the chance to be
another type of pioneer, and to undo the wrongs and ravages of my
forbears. For this I had sacrificed the love of my grandsire, the
General, who had wanted me to be a soldier, and of my Aunt Lucretia, and
even of Eloise, it seemed, that one sweet dream of my life. For in the
four years I had been gone from her I had lost my chance to win her.
What did her talk of the night before mean but that she meant to wed
another?
*CHAPTER IX*
*THE TRANSPLANTED PINE*
Tradition, that greatest of all historians, had it, that the first
settlers on the lands of The Home Stretch had been a young pioneer and
his bride from Virginia; and that she, leaving her old home for a new
one in the wilderness, yielded to the pretty sentiment of her girl's
heart, and brought away with her a young pine from under her own roof
tree. Nursed and watered through all the long journey, over mountains,
wilderness and river, she planted it among the great oaks and poplars of
her western home. Tradition told how, when the young husband had built
his double log-cabin from the solid trunks of the black walnut and
thatched it with the rich red hearts of the cedar shingles, the little
bride cherished the pine. The story was full of pathos; she and her baby
had died that first year, and both were buried in the same grave under
the little pine. It was a great pine now, but lonely. It had been a
great pine since I could remember. It had always appealed to me,
standing alone amid the other trees. For miles I could see it, towering
above all the others. And always a little tremor of loneliness came, as
one who passes a deserted schoolhouse door where once children have
played. The great trees around it, oaks, elms, poplars, maples, seemed
at home. This was _their soil_, these were their friends and kindred.
But the pine was not of them. It had been transplanted. Were trees
men, the pine would be a Highlander of the clan McGregor. And away from
its clan, in a valley where it belonged not, in soil that made for
fatness and richness but not for religion and art, it was lonely. For
trees are but men who are dumb.
Often, as a boy, staying with Dr. Gottlieb in his cabin, I would awake
at night and hear the pine sighing. Once I remember there had been a
fierce storm, and as it swept through the forest it maddened the other
trees until they roared in their wrath. But the lonely pine tree had
called above the roar of the others. One would not look in the Swiss
mountains for the cherries of the valley, nor for the cedars of Lebanon
in the rich loam of the rivers. This pine was the Scotch McGregor in an
English court. It was Bonaparte on Elba. It was Thomas Carlyle in
Gaiety street. It was a tree without a country....
Dr. Gottlieb lived among the trees in a double log-cabin, and had lived
there since I could remember. My Aunt Lucretia's heart was as big as
her farm, and for many years she and Dr. Gottlieb had been friends. He,
being a scholar and a botanist, a very babe in a strange land in spite
of all his learning, had been easily parted from what little he had
brought to America, and had actually come to sickness and want. Then it
was that my Aunt Lucretia took him in and gave him this cabin on her
farm. Since then he had grown famous, and was known over two continents
as one of the greatest living botanists. In fall and winter he was dean
of that department in a noted college, but in spring and summer nothing
could keep him from his walnut log-cabin by the great pine in the little
valley, where his wild flowers grew in the hills behind him and the
trees were his friends and comrades.
His story was like that of many who claim America as home. In the
discontent of the Bavarians in their struggle for a more liberal
government, many republican ideas were advanced. Gottlieb, then a
student in Munich, with a number of other young men, attempted to
celebrate Washington's birthday in the Bavarian capital with speeches so
revolutionary that they brought on a riot. In the fighting his roommate
and best friend killed a police officer. Gottlieb's family was
influential and stood high in royal favor. But the boy who had done the
killing was not so fortunate. To be found out meant certain death for
him. So Gottlieb pleaded guilty for his friend's sake, and would have
been executed, but for the influence of his family. Even they could not
save him from banishment, and so he had lived with us, as great a
patriot as I ever knew, loving his country so that the thought of it
would bring tears to his eyes, loving his Fatherland, and yet himself a
man without a country.
Now I stood looking down on the double log-cabin that was his home. All
around it was peace and calmness. Here had I learned under Dr. Gottlieb
to love the flowers, and the trees, and his books.
What a picture his home made! A great wooded blue grass hill rose
gradually, slope on slope, above it, and on a little plateau sat the
solid log-cabin. At the foot of the slope and running like a horseshoe
around it, was a bubbling stream, coming from the hills to the north,
circling around and running into the valley below. Over this, a rustic
foot-bridge led to the house. The meadows lay in front of it all. I
stood back and wondered how that young pioneer had known so accurately
and artistically where to place this cabin? Had it been placed ten
yards either way, to right or left, it would have ruined the center of
the background of trees beyond, and fifty feet further in front would
have placed it too far down the dead level of the center.
In stately distances around stood maples, beeches and poplars, some
towering high above the cabin. Lengthwise to the rustic bridge it
stood, a beautiful, solid home of walnut, and the red heart of the
cedar, its dark, rich logs chinked with the white cement of the lime
hills. Clear across the front ran the big porch, solid floored; both
ends flanked with purple stars of clematis, hanging overhead, and
drooping low over the entrance its great masses of bloom.
The orchard, of apple, peach, plum, and cherry trees, lay off to the
right. The old-fashioned flowers were all to the right and the pine
tree towered over them all.
I raised the latch and entered. Dr. Gottlieb stood before me, framed by
shelves of dried flowers and herbs, a small man with a large head, kind
blue eyes. The broad brow wrinkled into its smile as he saw me. I
pointed to the stone-crop running across the hill. "Oh, Dr. Gottlieb,"
I cried, "what is it that in one night makes the bare spots so
beautiful?"
He quit his books and came forward, taking both of my hands in his.
"Jack, Jack, my boy, you have come back to us again--and from the
Fatherland--the Fatherland! ... Let me hold your hand--it has touched
the soil of the Fatherland--let me look into your eyes, they have seen
the Rhine!" There were tears in his blue eyes.
"Do you remember how it changes every spring, Dr. Gottlieb?" I asked,
pointing to the distant crowned hills, the rainbow of stone-crop
beneath, and the level stretches of pasture land.
He smiled as he looked across at the crimson covering of the bare
hillside. "Ay; but I've not been idle, Jack, since you left. You
remember what I had done before you went away--fifteen hundred species
all catalogued in my book." He turned and pointed to the glass shelves
around. "Now I have added four hundred more."
We talked long over our pipes. He had saved some rare old German ale in
cobwebbed bottles, and these we broke in honor of my return. I had to
go over my entire life in Germany, and all the four years' work there.
As I dwelt on this, as I told of the old places and scenes, he sat with
his head down, and I suspected tears.
I cannot remember when Dr. Gottlieb was not in love with my Aunt
Lucretia, though he had never spoken to her on the subject. He spoke
only to me, and that always in the same way. So I knew what was coming.
I had heard it before, and when I arose to go I could not help but smile
as he said, "Ah, Jack, but your Aunt Lucretia! That most beautiful and
charming of women! Did you know that each of us has our prototype in a
plant or flower; did you know that she resembles the great red wood
lily--_lilium Philadelphicum_? Ah, Jack, it has always been my
favorite."
*CHAPTER X*
*CONQUERING SATAN*
Eloise and I had always enjoyed riding over The Home Stretch with Aunt
Lucretia. Since I could remember she had ridden the same horse, a great
raw-boned sorrel pacer, full seventeen hands high, and so powerful that
he carried my aunt, large woman though she was, as if she had been a
child. "His beauty is in his gait," she used to say; "there is but one
saddle gait fit for business, and that is the nodding fox-trot, and
Tempest has that perfectly."
It was amusing to watch them in action. With his head down and nodding
with every stride, Tempest seemed fairly to butt his way into space,
reeling off the miles like a great machine in motion, and Aunt Lucretia,
in her great, high-pommeled side saddle, double girthed and double
decked, sat him as comfortably as if she were in her rocker.
Her saddle-bags, thrown over the saddle, were in themselves unusual, for
they held everything needed in an emergency on the farm. In one pocket
were the hatchet and nails, for she never rode by a loose plank but she
nailed it on again, and in the other were her medicines, everything
needed on the farm from a hypodermic syringe to a package of salts.
The day after I came home I rode over the farm with her. "It's good to
ride Little Sister," I said, stroking her crest. "What a beautiful
saddle mare she has made."
"Eloise did it," said my Aunt. "Jack, do you know she was always
foolish about that mare after you left?"
She squared her big horse up to me. "Jack," she whispered, "I don't
believe in the stuff, of course. It is all foolishness and not fit to
marry on, but there is a great vein of sentiment in that girl in spite
of her make-believe and her indifference. After you left she wouldn't
ride anything but that mare and I knew it was because of you, and the
clever way you did up those two old braggarts of ours in that race."
"Did she, Aunt Lucretia?"
She looked at me cuttingly and then burst into a laugh. "Jack, what
shall I do with you? You are so in love with Eloise that it's
positively painful. You must overcome it before you marry her; it's not
good policy, not manly nor becoming. The greatest race of men was in the
days when a man took his wife by force, conquered her and beat her into
submission. He couldn't own her until he proved he was a better man
than she. Now, the woman rules in everything. Take your silly weddings;
they're a glorification of the bride. To see them one would think the
poor devil of a groom was a kind of matrimonial valet, a second fiddler,
used chiefly to make a background for the bride to show off on--he is
not marrying--oh, no, it is the woman--and it's the same everywhere.
The women are writing our novels, our magazines, our poetry, running our
conventions, starring in our theatres and churches, and doing everything
else worth while except making the money. The men have become
unconsciously so enslaved that the few of them who do write novels or
poetry write effeminate things because the age is under the influence of
woman. There is no man-poetry any longer, that's why I never read it.
If we don't get a man-age into the world again," she added vehemently,
"we are all going to the devil, going to be wiped out by some heathen
man-race of the Nibelungen woods, not yet born!"
I smiled guiltily, for I saw Eloise coming out of the house and my heart
fluttered queerly at sight of her. She came forward and I saw Goff's
roses pinned on her breast.
"This is like old times, Jack," she said laughing, "but where is my
horse?" She looked around, glancing at the little pony-mare we had
saddled for her.
"I thought you'd like to ride the pony-mare again," said Jim, who stood
holding the reins, "like you useter ride with Mr. Jack," he added.
Eloise tossed her head. "No, no; now, Jim, you may saddle Satan for me.
Why, I've been dreaming of this for months, a chance to show the
splendid fellow and his paces to Jack. I wouldn't miss it for
anything."
Jim stood scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Dat devil horse, he ain't a
good horse, this mohnin', ma'am, 'specially for ladies."
"Jim," she said sternly, "look me in the eye! What have you been doing
to Satan?"
Jim grinned apologetically. "I had to ride him las' night for some
med'cine for my sick chile."
"And I told you never to ride him, that he hated the very smell of a
negro."
Jim still grinned.
"But you tried him?" she went on.
"Yes'um, and he flung me!"
Eloise laughed. "Served you right. You know that horse doesn't like
you."
"An' when I went into the stall to saddle him, he remembered it."
"Of course he did. I told him never to let you or anyone else ride
him--no one but me."
"That horse," said Aunt Lucretia, as we followed Eloise to the barn, "is
dangerous. I have been expecting to hear of him killing her. It's all
in his pedigree, Jack; he can't help being mean. His sire was a
rattle-headed but game and iron horse--fast, but utterly unreliable.
You may remember how fast he was, but would go crazy, and ran away in a
race, running into another horse and getting a sulky shaft driven
through his heart. All of his colts I ever saw are crazy, fast and
game--but cruelly mean when roused. Still I'm to blame for this one. I
thought Little Sister's brain and sweet temper might overcome it in the
sire."
"Little Sister is his dam, then?" I said, patting the neck of the mare I
was riding.
"Yes, he was foaled the year after you left for school, and is now
three," she answered.
I heard Satan before I saw him. He was walking the length of his
halter, now and then neighing, then whinnying to Eloise softly. It was
the sound of her voice that had softened him. Above the anger which
shook his frame, maddened at the sight of the groom who had offended
him, he had heard the soothing voice of Eloise, and responded with a
gentle whinny.
She smiled. "Just listen to him! Dangerous--he's an angel! Bring him
out, Jim." She winked at Aunt Lucretia and me.
Jim grinned sillily. "'Scuse me, Miss 'Leeze; you's jes' sayin' that to
guy me. He loves my leetle boy, an' he feeds him an' keers for 'im," he
added, "but it looks like he thinks I put an insultment on him. 'Scuse
me, Miss Leeze, but I wouldn't go in there for no money."
It was true. At the sound of Jim's voice, Satan's eyes had kindled, and
he threw back his head, trying to break his halter to get to him.
"You try him, Jack," said Eloise; "I'm sure he loves you. I never knew
one that didn't."
I opened the door. Never had I looked upon so superb a horse: a great
star stood out beneath the tangled foretop of his mane, on a great
square, broad forehead, so black it was silken. The rest of him, too,
was midnight, except one white satin foot. His tail was a heavy hemp of
black, shiny silk; his shoulders sloped in the line of strength. His
chest was splendid, his muscles, fore and aft, bunched above the
cleanest of bony legs. There was great strength, brain, and self-will
in his head.
He was watching me keenly, as a wild beast eyes a new keeper. An animal
knows friend or foe instantly. Their instinct is unerring and surpasses
man's reason. I saw his eyes light up doubtfully, hesitate, and then
gleam when I put my hands out and rubbed his cheek. "You splendid
fellow; mean? It's not true. Did Jim put an insultment on you, old
boy?" I laughed.
Then he rubbed my shoulder with his clean-cut nose.