"I've no right to make you wretched like this, Jack," she said, rising.
"I am going in; and when I return do you be gone Jack,
somewhere--anywhere." Her voice trembled. She stood quiet, and I by
her, dazed and helpless.
"There is one thing I am going to take to England with me, Jack," and
she pulled out from beneath her gown yoke, a little token I had
forgotten. I recognized the locket and the chain I had given her years
ago. "And this little picture in it is you, Jack. You gave them both
to me the day I helped you lick Braxton Bragg."
Then she turned quickly and left me.
"Jack," said my Aunt, as we parted the next day at the station, "I am
afraid things are all against us. Father, I see, is going to will The
Home Stretch to Braxton Bragg. If I were you--"
"I have already done it," I said. "I am going to move to-day to Dr.
Gottlieb's; there I shall work out my plans."
My Aunt smiled grimly. "I want you to remember one thing when I am
gone. Don't give up--remember Old Hickory."
I looked up at her quickly. I saw something in her eye that gave me
heart again. I bade her good-by. I dared not say it to Eloise. I
slipped away, but I watched the train of cars die away behind the trail
of smoke in the distance as I rode back home, and it seemed as if my
whole afterlife lay clouded in that path of smoke. It was hard to give
up my home, the old home, every tree I knew, and with them Eloise and my
life-dream....
One's dream and one's home--what else is there which grips so the very
tendrils of one's soul. To give up one cuts deeply into the roots of the
heart, but when the blow is doubled, there is only one thing that can
make one stand upright and not fall, and that is the Spirit Within.
People have different ideas of God as their souls reveal. It runs all
the way from the pitiable, crude, faint conception which comes to the
savage in cloud, a sun, or star or image of stone, to the higher mind
which perceives Him in the Great Spirit of the Universe. None of these
is my idea of God. I have never been able to dissociate God from my own
self. I have never been able to conceive of Him as apart from me....
And not always the same, but always there.... In my meaner self so
little of Him is there, so tiny a spot of the divine light ... so faint,
so seemingly nothing. And this is the greatest of it--this is the
test--the very divinest evidence. _He is always there_; and when a blow
comes, humbling the material, the meaner of me, then He claims His
own--my nobler self--taking it unto His care, flooding it with His
presence. It is then, searching yourself and your own heart that you
find Him--that you know that you are a part of God because He is there!
Riding home it all swept over me so. In my innermost soul I knew it:
like a flash came the inspiration of it, the old Prophet of Deuteronomy:
"_As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth
abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings._" Did God
mean in this, the wrecking of my nest, that I should fly--even as a
young eagle?
"And remember Satan, Jack, to keep him fit," I heard Eloise's voice say.
*CHAPTER XVI*
*HEART'S-EASE*
Never was there a quieter, better place to work than at Dr. Gottlieb's,
whither I had gone after Aunt Lucretia and Eloise had left. In a short
while I had become reconciled, in my hard work, to my lot; for to live
with Dr. Gottlieb meant to work, to classify, to probe into things, and
this meant to put aside all else, even for awhile one's heart's trouble
for the hard mental strain of it. I remember those study nights well
and with such pleasure. I can recall the little quiet man with his
books, his abstraction, his quaint comments, the learned deductions that
fell now and then from his lips as if he were unconscious that he was
speaking. From studying the pollen of a flower he would look up
abstractedly and drawl, "_Ah, Jack; and Miss Lucretia--that most
beautiful and charming of women! Did I ever tell you that each of us
has our prototype in a plant? And how much to my mind--ah, Jack, and to
my heart, how much she resembles the beautiful red wood lily!_"
He would put down his book, and look longingly out over the hills. It
was the only foolish thing he ever did, I thought, and so I forgave him,
knowing that each of us has at least one foolish thought within us.
He always had a smile for me; often he would walk around all the evening
thinking abstractedly, or puttering among his books and plants and
geographical specimens, and then start into real work at midnight. And
I would work with him; for, besides studying my forestry, I was carrying
on some experiments, testing the various effects of fertilizers on the
soil of The Home Stretch. Dr. Gottlieb would say: "It is not the time,
it is the inspiration, Jack; catch it when it comes."
Exercising Satan daily as I did, I became as attached to the great game
fellow as did he to me. He was a singular horse, of a type entirely his
own. The harder the ride, the more difficult the feat, the stubborner,
gamer he grew. Not every horse is an individual, in fact few are; they
are horses merely. But Satan was one, almost human in his
idiosyncrasies. If he had been a man he would have been one of the
world's leaders. There was nothing he would not do for me after he
learned to love me.
Even in my heartache, in my despair at giving up Eloise, I thought often
of Elsie; for, having known her since she was a tot of three years, when
she came to live with Tammas and Marget, riding her, a wee girl in front
of me on my pony, going with her, a little maid, over the hills to hunt
for some Scotch flowers, I had that attachment for her that one has for
a little sister. She had developed far more beautifully than I had
dreamed of, both spiritually and in body; for the connection between
them at last is the same. I had never thought before that there was any
mystery about Elsie. Tammas and Marget, with all their apparent
frankness, had the greatest inherited trait of their race, a shrewd
secretiveness when it was best. Heretofore I had thought of Elsie only
as their orphaned grandchild. I supposed her father was some sturdy
Scotchman of their own class, who, perhaps, died after his wife, or, if
alive, had given her to her grandparents. But now I saw differently;
perhaps her beauty, and the romantic turn events had taken; the Juliet
outpouring of her own exquisite nature had touched in me some subtle
instinct.
It was this affair of Braxton Bragg which worried me most of all. I had
not seen him since I returned. I did not want to. There are those born
into our lives who seem always to oppose, thwart, counteract what we do.
Braxton Bragg had played this part in my life. I could not escape him,
try as I would. Even when I was in Germany, with an ocean between us,
had he not cheated me of my own birthright? He was with his company in
the city of Nashville, where the Tennessee troops were mobilized for the
war. They expected orders to sail for the Philippines any day. All his
life Braxton Bragg, weak as he was in character and mind, with that
conceit which often goes with weakness, had really believed that, after
he had acquired The Home Stretch, or a greater military reputation in
the army, he would marry Eloise. All his life he had openly proclaimed
it. His mentality was not great, and he had not yet learned that in
real love monies, farms, reputation, fame, are the least that count.
Goff had won her. Braxton Bragg now knew that. Goff had always
befriended him, and bore with him more than anyone else. Goff had
confided in him and trusted him. Braxton Bragg was as immoral as he was
weak. Therefore I reasoned this matter lay in one of two ways. Either
he was recklessly scheming to deceive and ruin Elsie, or else he had
found out something that none of us knew and was scheming to marry her
on account of it. Besides deceiving my grandsire, as he had all his
life, I now learned that he had further deceived him:--that, graduating
from West Point, he had been appointed to the army, but even before he
went on duty, he had been caught in an act unbecoming a soldier and
gentleman, and to escape courtmartial had resigned. My grandfather's
influence had saved him and got him elected captain of a company which
my grandsire had himself raised and equipped for the war.
Absorbed in my own affairs, numbed by the wreckage which had come to my
soul's dream, I had neglected Elsie of late. When I realized it, and
what it meant to a sensitive nature such as hers, I went over at once,
fearing that, since our last meeting she might have misunderstood my
absence, and brooded over imaginary wrongs to her own hurt. I found it
was high time when I learned the real situation.
Tammas met me, his face weary; for the first time in all our greetings
with no broad smile.
"Tammas," I said, "where is Elsie? I want to see her."
"Come, Mr. Jack," said he, taking off his big butter apron; "we'll gang
ben into Marget's room, for we baith want to talk to you."