"I'll stay here all night, Colonel Goff," I assured her father.
"Thank you, Jack," he said, his face brightening for the first time.
"Of course you will stay with her."
"The crisis will come with her awakening," said the doctor. "She will
awaken sound of mind and at death's door, or she will awaken to live,
her mind gone. It is all in her sleeping, and to-night will decide it.
I will retire, waken me if I am needed."
All night Colonel Goff and I sat up. Every little while we went into
her room to see Elsie sleeping, Marget by her side, the nurse asleep on
the cot.
Twice the doctor came in. "Her pulse and temperature are normal," he
would say. "That's good. Let her sleep."
But Colonel Goff and I could not sleep. All night he smoked, talked and
walked the floor. He told me his life's story, and in the hopefulness
of Elsie's sleeping he seemed to have taken a new hold of things. "If
the hand that has flung the loaded dice for me all my life will only
give me one clean deal now," he cried, as he paced the floor with his
steady military stride.
"It will," I said, "Colonel Goff. It gives a clean deal to a clean
heart always, and yours is a different heart now. I see it; you are a
different man now. Now, I would give my very life for you and my poor
little Elsie."
There was deep emotion in the man before me, his eyes were moist.
"Great God, Jack, do you mean that, man? Do you know you have said it?
It is even so--I see it--have seen it all night--wondering, how--
"God help me," he went on, "and save Elsie as He has saved me--from
myself--through it all. I see it now--through all my life--my own fool
will, my obstinacy, madness, sin--unseeingness: brought me through it
all, back to my own, my family name, my earldom--my own--Great God,
think of it--what has been done to unseeing, uncaring me! How much I
have received--how little I have earned!"
I left him a strong man pacing the floor, his face aglow with a new
life.
Elsie had slept twelve hours.
"We can't awaken her," said the doctor as I went in after a short sleep.
"I suspect you possess unconsciously hypnotic power, Jack. It all looks
like it. You must awaken her if you can. I don't wish to use heroic
means."
"If I have," I said, "I am not aware of it. But let me talk to her. And
if you please I would rather only Marget stayed."
"Surely," he said nodding. "If she wakens we want no one with her but
you. And you'll just keep her thinking she's at her old place by the
dairy."
I sat down by her, taking her hand in the old way. She was smiling in
her sleep. Then I said laughingly in her ear, slapping her cheek with
the back of my hand, "Wake up, little Heart's Ease; we are going to the
spring. It's Jack. I will not go unless you go with me, to gather the
Bluebells of Scotland on the hills--come--wake up!"
Instantly she sat up, her blue eyes resting calmly on me.
"Jack," she said, putting her arms about my neck, "I had wondered--I
have worried because--for so long a time I seem not to be able to
remember--where you were."
I laughed. "Nonsense; you have only dreamed a bad dream last night,"
said I.
Marget was bustling around the room pretending to clean up. Her voice
choked so that she could scarcely speak and yet she said bravely,
"Surely, Elsie. It is as Mr. Jack says. You've been sick a little and
had bad dreams."
Elsie clung to me sobbing. "Jack, my bonny Jack," she said, "it's good
of you, but I am all right now; I am strong again, so much stronger than
you would ever believe."
"You must not let yourself think of anything unpleasant," I said
quietly, "for my sake now, Elsie, and daddy's."
"I couldn't, Jack," she said with all her old frank candor, "with you
here. It all came because I thought you were gone. Call Daddy in," she
said firmly, "I want to talk to you all."
Colonel Goff was already in the room, the smile on his face telling of
his great joy. He knelt by the bedside, kissing her. He was laughing
boyishly. "Bless me, but my Lady Elsie is feeling fine, isn't she?"
said he.
Elsie nodded happily.
"And you and I have been so blind, Daddy," she said, laying her hand on
mine. "So blind, both of us. Now, you know what we are going to do? I
am going to be very strong and well in a few days and then we are all
going to our English home, you and me, Marget and Tammas, and we are
going to find Eloise. Find her, Daddy, and make her well--for Jack--if
it takes half of all that earldom of yours."
Colonel Goff kissed her again and again, and reaching out, gripped my
hand. "Thank God, Jack! Elsie," he added, "you're not to talk now, but
sleep again. I'll do as you say."
"Now look here," she said in her old teasing way, "don't you for a
moment--don't you try any funny things on me. I'm as well as any of
you, and I'm going to get up, right soon. And I don't want ever to hear
of that dream I had again," she said, raising a commanding little finger
at us.
"We have both been very foolish, Daddy, you and me," she went on,
"foolish and unseeing; but now we're both going to be very sensible and
brave, so you'll all go out but Marget, and Mr. Jack." She turned to
me, her eyes smiling in the old way, "You'll kiss me good-by now till
you come to see us at Carfax Hall--you and--and--" She clasped my neck,
kissing me quickly, "Good-by, my bonny, bonny Prince! I'll bring her
back to you, see if I don't!"
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE CALL OF THE DRUM*
The Tennessee troops were to make a last parade before leaving for the
war in the Philippines.
All the night before they left a strange, weird feeling had been upon
me. For hours I could not sleep, and when I did it seemed as if I were
going down a dimly remembered path, hearing a far-off call in far-away
mountains, the battle cry of my ancient Aryan people rallying against
the Mongrel and the Mongol. Then I awoke with the fire of battle in my
heart and the hot sweat of the conflict beaded over my face, to call it
a dream. But it was no dream. There are dreams, and there is that which
is more than dreams. There is the spirit's walk into wayside lands.
I rose and dressed. I went out for calmness among my trees. They had
been my friends, my thousand-voiced leaf-whispering friends. But in
this strange feeling, this fighting mood which, despite all my efforts,
had overwhelmed me, I cared for them no longer. And they scorned me.
Not one leaf whispered to me. I had not one friend among them. They
were no longer my brothers in green. They were merely trees. My soul
had been torn up to its very roots by the Hand that had planted it and
told to grow into another soul or die!
Everything I had held to in life had reversed itself on me. Every
star-enthroned truth which I had worshipped had fallen to earth, a clay
idol to mock me with its grinning lying lips of dirt! I had been turned
out from my home unjustly; the love of my very life was gone, dead,
perhaps; and Elsie--
Nothing since the tragedy that had fallen to Eloise had cut into my soul
like that nightmare leap over a rock wall into cold air and the stinging
whirl of yellow water and the glory of her courage and unselfishness as
she had said, "I'll bring her back to you, Jack--see if I don't!"
And there had been the good-by of Tammas and Marget. Tammas could not
speak, he could only hold my hand with tears in his eyes. But Marget
spoke, kissing me for the first and last time. "Ay, but our Jackie,
good-by, 'tis God that stirs up the nest of His eagles. An' so God bide
ye, lad. God bless and God guide ye--for 'tis God that leads ye,
Jackie!"
At the cabin Dr. Gottlieb had tried to explain to me the great book he
was writing, which was called "The Effect of the Insect Pollen-Gatherers
on Flower Life."
But I would have none of it. I could not listen. I slipped out, knowing
he could read it all night to the big arm chair I had sat in, and not
know it was empty.
The drum was calling to me--I who had been for peace, for trees, for
love, for poems, I knew I must now fight or my soul would die within me,
die like a Chinese foot in its wooden shoe.
I saddled Satan and rode over to the Hermitage. Was it this horse, this
brave-souled, unafraid brute that had sent the fighting spirit into me,
since my first touch of him? For on him I felt that I could ride over a
regiment. I walked alone in the moonlight over the grounds of the
Hermitage.
How bulwarked, restful and yet martial-walled was the old brick mansion!
And down the long avenues of cedars which ran from the gate to the home,
I met the fighting ghosts of my ancestors.
Was it a dream or not? But what is the difference, since they are the
same. What is the difference?
If a child comes into your home, smiling, from out the sunshine, is it
any more your child than the one which enters from out the still, dead
night, motherless and homeless, a fantastic waif, but your very own?
I had walked through the old-fashioned garden, rose bordered and lined
with hollyhocks and rare old pinks that Aunt Rachel loved. And I had
stood bareheaded before the tomb of the old warrior and his bride. I
had gone across the meadow to the log cabin they had loved best of
all....
Then, very plainly I saw the great fireplace light up with the blaze of
hickory logs, and the shadows come and go across the smoked rafters
above. And before that fire sat the slim, grim, sword-faced fighter and
lover, with a child on one knee and a lamb on the other, even as old
Parton had told it.
He turned, smiled, and reaching, took his sword from the wall behind him
and, beckoning to me, pointed to the west....
I rushed toward him. The solid door met me, knocking me to my knees on
the grass. I arose stunned, but thrilled. My doubts had gone, the
spirit of Andrew Jackson pointed me the way. On the grass I knelt for a
moment before that hut which is a shrine. _A lamb and a child and the
sword of the Lord and of Gideon: I thank thee, Lord; for it takes them
all to make a man!_ ... I had not slept but had ridden into town to see
the Tennessee troops go by in their last parade.
They came by in battalions, the old battle flag of Jackson at their
head, and beside it rode old Hawthorne, sitting his horse as gallantly
as when in younger days he rode with Forrest and Morgan.
He saw me, smiled, and saluted.
I watched Braxton Bragg go by at the head of his company, and I saw him
look covetously at the beautiful horse I rode.
Following an old custom, a fife and drum corps followed. I heard them
coming and my blood leaped fiercely as they marched by, playing "_The
Girl I Left Behind Me_."
It was their last call for enlistment, and as they passed I stepped in
behind the big drum, throwing my silver dollar into its head.
So I enlisted for the war.
The old drummer smiled and nodded, the crowd cheered--I looked up--Old
Hawthorne had ridden back and sat his horse smiling down on me. "God
bless you, Jack, Jack!" he cried. "Do you know that I rode back to see
you do it? I knew you would do it--'tis the call of the drum--the blood
of the men of your tribe who could both pray and fight! Come, you shall
be on my staff. Captain Jack Ballington from the home of Old Hickory."
I smiled. "General, you are good to me, too good. But let me prove my
own worth, if there is any in me. No soldier was ever made except by
merit. Give me a chance to make myself. I am going to the war and I am
going with you. But under two conditions: that this horse I am riding
goes with us, is yours. This is Eloise's," I added softly, "and I loved
her. 'Tis the only horse in Tennessee fit to carry our General. She
gave him to me. I give him to you."
He was silent; he understood.
"And the other is that you give me a rifle in the ranks." ...
After I had enlisted I wanted to see the homestead again, the hickories
that Eloise and I had loved, and to bid my old grandsire farewell.
He was sitting under his favorite elm tree smoking when I rode up. I
did not see who was with him until I had dismounted and stood before
him, hat off, holding my horse's reins.
Then I saw that it was Braxton Bragg who was talking excitedly and
loudly; and I knew that he had been drinking. He did not speak to me
nor see me. The old man did not know me in the gathering darkness.
"I am Jack, Grandfather, Jack Ballington. And I have come to bid you
good-by."
"Ah, Jack--Jack--" he repeated--"and you are my grandson--ha-ha. I'd
about forgotten it. And you have come to tell me good-by--why I thought
you had gone, somewhere--ha-ha."
I heard a short laugh from Braxton Bragg. I saw the sneering smile that
was unconcealed in his face. I turned on him with fighting anger, cut
to the heart. And then I remembered the first lesson of every soldier
is to command himself. Very calmly I said, "I have not gone far, sir;
only to Dr. Gottlieb's; but to-morrow I am going to the war. I have
enlisted with the First Tennessee, and I felt that it was my duty, sir,
to call and tell you good-by."
Instantly he was on his feet, holding to a crutch he now carried.
"Going to the war! Enlisted with the First Tennessee? By God, sir, do
you really mean that?"
"I am, sir," I said.