The setting sunlight streamed on her hair till it looked like banked
western clouds. The very skies of Heaven were in her eyes, and her
dignity and poise were like a queen's.
She took off the heart's-ease she had pinned on my coat.
"You don't need this now, my sweet prince."
"Don't, Elsie," I said; "my God, I can't explain, but, child--I need it
now more than I ever did in my life."
For a moment she looked at me with pretended offended eyes.
"Ay, ay, I see; but you shall have me when you will, and you will need
it, my bonny prince, until I am there," and she pinned it back between
hot flushes and tears. "And you will see me soon, Jack, right here in
our sweet trysting place?
"Good-by," she said in time. "You will see me soon, Jack?" Then taking
my hand before I could prevent, she pressed it to her bosom, kissing it.
"Elsie, Elsie, don't--I would die to save you pain! I would die to save
you pain! Don't!"
"I am so happy. Good-by, Jack."
"Elsie!" I called. "Oh, you misunderstood me--you don't understand."
But she only laughed back gladly as a child would, throwing kisses to me
as she ran like the doe of her own heather up the hill.
I saw Marget and Tammas at the door, smiling; and I knew that they saw
Elsie's happiness.
*CHAPTER XVII*
*"LADY CARFAX"*
I knew that I must save Elsie from the false, unthinking fate her own
romantic nature and Braxton Bragg's infamy might thrust upon her. I
loved Elsie as my own sister and knew that now I stood in a false
position toward her. Once as I strode home in the gathering darkness I
was tempted to turn back. I would right myself. I could not stand my
false position even until to-morrow. I had but a few days to act.
Elsie had gone home happy--I, miserable--hating myself. Always before me
was the glad smile I saw on Tammas' and Marget's faces as Elsie went up
the path--the smile of hopes fulfilled, of Elsie safe, of a great wish
come to pass.... How they stabbed me now--Elsie's words: "You shall
have me when you will, your Heart's-Ease."
And yet if I did? Great God! I might be a murderer! I saw how much
Elsie was like Ophelia. I saw it all: the pale, conscience-stricken,
helpless little soul, the proud spirit scorned, the unthinking creature,
of romance and of hopes destroyed. The deep pool in the valley might
hide her in its waters before another day. So I went on, choosing what
seemed to be the lesser of two wrongs.
As I rode Satan over to The Manor after supper I thought of all my past
life in which Braxton Bragg had figured. I remembered him first as a
large, bullying, overgrown boy, three years older and much larger than
I. I remembered his small, bullet-shaped head, the fat, heavy jowls,
the short neck, and the loud laugh. From the first he had teased and
derided me. I did not understand it then, but it was plain now. Young
as he was, he had set his plans to work to discredit me with my
grandsire; to own The Home Stretch himself, and to win Eloise. The
conceit of him! Only one great thing Braxton Bragg had in him, his aim.
That was something to his credit: but without brain and heart behind it,
of what availed the aim? He was like a wharf-rat, stealing on board a
man-of-war, to shoot a thirteen-inch gun at the moon! He had never been
a boy, a real playmate to me. He had always been cruel to the little
negroes around us, and to dumb animals, and in everything he had been a
coward and a bully. I had never taken his designs on Eloise seriously,
nor had she. Yet his persistency was notable, even up to now, when her
engagement to Colonel Goff had been announced.
Braxton Bragg, I decided, meant to deceive Elsie, to play with her, this
little creature of fun and love, this pure little flower that was as
much of The Home Stretch as the flowers on the hills, the locust
blossoms that perfumed all the air in spring.
He had beaten me out of my birthright by deceit and make-believe. I
could stand that. I could make my own Home Stretch, as every man must
make his, whether he will it or not, if he and his home shall ever
become two halves that make one. And he must make it by work of heart
as well as of brain and of body if he hold it truly: for God is
inexorable, and His law of possession is: _if you have not earned it,
you shall not hold it_! In vain do men subterfuge with that law, by
gifts, inheritance, entail, by trustees and trusts; shambling along they
may go a generation: then God and His Higher Court decrees, and the
little tenants by courtesy pass out. The little mice who have not the
love of it, which has been born of labor, the pride of it begot of
sacrifices given, find themselves food in the claws of the great eagles
which work and dare.
This last act of Braxton Bragg roused me to an anger I had never felt
before in all my life. I had always been for quietness and peace. I
did not know it then, but I know now that there are Three of me--Me,
Myself, and my Soul--which are almost as distinct one from another as
three separate personalities.
In grief and despair, in times of crisis only, do we see them most
distinctly; or, after a sweet sleep at night you do not quite waken in
the morning, they are then all so plainly distinct: there is Me--the
carnal one, selfish one, the animal one: the lowest: and there is
Myself, that is part of both, that would be spiritual, would be good,
only that not always may it be. And highest and loftiest, and
altogether greatest, and incomprehensible, and exclusive, standing
alone, and aloof above Me and Myself, the Supreme Judge of the others,
and the final arbiter of all their little efforts and aims is I, the
Spiritual, God-given small, silent-voiced I.
It governs, controls, is king.
Me--is a man merely: given to eating and drinking, to stomach troubles
and pills; to subterfuges and make-believes; to vacillations--changes:
to thinking this one day and that another--full of policies and conceits
and deceits; of whims and caprices: changeable; consistent only in one
thing that it is always animal, deceiving its own self all the time, and
Myself half the time, but deceiving _I--never_!
I only smiles, and lets the other two go on till they need the judgment
and the whip--then they get them.
ME--a miserable, little animal that came from the fishes, or perhaps
what is left of my anthropoid ancestors, full of fun one day and
to-morrow a lion full of fight, always an animal, sensual;
money-getting, love-getting, land-getting, place-getting,
fame-getting--always and forever, with an eye out for ME and My Chance.
ME--a thing with a liver and two legs--Me! And above that is the second
Me, Myself--half spirit and half flesh.
It is this that weeps, laughs or curses the acts of the First, yet has
no power to change them; it can arrest him somewhat, haul him up a
little while before the court--a kind of a police officer for a brief
trial--but only the Supreme Judge--only _I_ may pass the act that stops
him. When the First has groveled in the dust of things, it is This that
fights back with the spirit's disgust, giving due notice to the flesh
that it is not all supreme, not all in all, that there is really
something else, somewhere, somehow, or else we would not have sorrow
after sin, penitence after pain, fear after a fall.
MYSELF, my little soul--a half-bred mongrel Compromising Thing it is--a
bird with gills and a bladder, a chrysalis that has yet to burst and be
a butterfly; a tadpole with a tail unshed, which one day may be dropped
in that metamorphosis to a higher state and yet more likely to die a
tadpole!
And then there is I, the still, small, silent I. ME, it talks, and
struts and brags; and MYSELF and its little soul is full of whines and
little pretenses, of platitudes to Men and Things. But I--it never
speaks, never sleeps, never compromises, but always commands.
It exercises its authority as it is needed in great sorrows, or the
great crises of the other little lives. And it comes sweetest and
clearest (which is proof positive that it exists) before even the others
are awake, in the first dawn of day, or in the still night watches of
dreams; and it fairly crushes you with the sweetness of its presence, in
that quiet kingdom through which you loiter, and then pass through--that
Kingdom between the Dawn and the Daylight. Suddenly we awake enough to
know that we are there--_It_ is there--in another world--painfully,
awfully, preciously there. Then we see how truly Me and Myself--my
little body of ME may die and pass away, and be as naught--but that _I_,
the still, small, silent I of Me has come from AEons to go on to
Eternities; and after all the little plans of me, and the braggart,
_this I will do and that I will not do of Me, this I will be and that I
will not be of Me_, and after all my resolves and final decisions, and
my well-laid plans of Me--_I_, the kingly _I of Me_ has only to appear,
sitting silent as a burning flame in the throne room of my soul, and all
My's plans both of doing and being, and all of my soul's resolve of
purpose--the great decisions of my very soul--become as slaves to fall
down before and crawl to do its bidding! ...
Braxton Bragg's perfidy had aroused me to an anger that I had never
known before: I had been a quiet boy, I loved not strife, "_Oh, he won't
fight, not one of them will,_" I caught myself mimicking my grandsire,
and in hot forgetfulness, I struck the big horse I was riding with a
quick touch of my heel--I was almost unseated with the leap he made.
"Steady, quiet, forgive me, old boy!" I cried, stroking his crest to
calmness--"that only means I see things differently; that in this little
world our ethics is one thing, our little religions, laws, our
civilization is one thing, and God and His laws are another. One says
if he smite you, turn your other cheek; the other says, if he strike
you, strike back harder. One says peace--the other says it is war, even
in the name of peace; one says Justice and her scales, the other says
the Eagle and the Battleship. There is a time in every honest man's
life when he must fight or die. Satan, old boy, I am going to fight
awhile!"