Chapter XI Two Ways of Love
I knew that Colonel Goff would not only stay the afternoon but the evening also. He had been doing it ever since the war, for he regarded his General’s home as his also. The assurance of the man incensed me. The divine right of his old kings seemed to have been born in him; and now that he had won Eloise, she and The Home Stretch and all that it contained were his whenever he chose to have them.
Eloise would tease him in pure wantonness, and scorn him, and even ridicule him; for all of which he worshipped her, as is apt to be the way with men. Yet I very quickly noticed the little touch of sadness, which, despite her efforts, fell over her so suddenly. To her wit and repartee, her fun and humor, his only answer would be flashes of his fine teeth, and his favorite exclamation, “Fawncy now, but isn’t that a blooming good one?” I was convinced that he loved Eloise and was proud of her; but I thought it was such a feeling as he might have for any beautiful animal, the same worship he might easily have bestowed upon an Arab mare of the desert.
It was not long before Colonel Goff and Aunt Lucretia were in their usual dispute about horses and he was scolding her for letting Eloise ride Satan: “Ah, that unregistered fool! Really, my dear madam, you should not let her go near him, he’ll be the death of her yet. Now, there is my imported Irish hunter; he’s got a head as well as legs; say now—suppose I just send him over for her,” and he looked at Eloise to see what she would say.
Eloise threw up her fine head significantly.
“The idea, Colonel Goff! Why, I wouldn’t be caught riding him! That big thing better than Satan! Why His Satanic Majesty can gallop rings all around him.”
Colonel Goff laughed. “Fawncy!”
“Yes, fawncy!” said Eloise, mimicking him, which made him flush again and then look at her admiringly.
Aunt Lucretia broke in. “He can,” she said very firmly. “I wonder, Colonel Goff, why you should send to England for a horse when you have better ones at home?”
Colonel Goff laughed loudly.
“Why you even think that bang-tailed son of Nestor can jump,” went on Aunt Lucretia, laying her trap quietly for him.
This was the one strong point of the son of Nestor, and the one thing about him that his owner had published on his arrival.
“Madam,” he said with great seriousness, a bit offended, “madam, I think I told you before that he held the championship for cross-country at Melton-Mowbry.”
“Oh, so you did,” said my Aunt Lucretia, ever so sweetly, “and yet I believe Satan can beat him both at the distance and over the hurdles.”
Goff laughed, but not as though pleased. He was too well-bred to reply to Aunt Lucretia in her kind. So he only tapped his boot, and looked at Eloise, who smiled sweetly at him, as if urging him on.
“I was talking the other day to Secretary Roswick of our State Fair,” went on Aunt Lucretia calmly, “and was entering some of my own things. Now, Roswick, you know, makes me put up about half of his programmes. He has asked me to get up some novelties on the side. We’ll just have a hurdle race if you say so.”
“Capital, capital!” said Goff, for the first time showing excitement. Then he quieted down suddenly. “What am I thinking about? What, in this unregistered country, could go against Nestor, champion hurdler of his class?”
“Satan,” said Aunt Lucretia, smiling sweetly.
“Fawncy!” shouted the Colonel decisively.
“I’ll lay you five hundred that he can,” said my Aunt, “and I don’t know a thing in the world about your game.”
“Madam,” said Goff, quietly, “I have never taken an unfair advantage of a woman.”
“Colonel Goff,” said my Aunt very seriously, “you know as well as you know anything, that if I know anything it is horses, that I am of age, and that I am good for all my obligations. I’ll bet you five hundred dollars that Satan will beat your horse at his own game.”
“Do you know, madam,” said Goff, “that a jumping horse is born to jump? Not one in a thousand can go over a three-foot hurdle, and this brute of yours—”
“Brute?” said Eloise, icily. “Brute, Colonel Goff, he is an angel! He can do anything.”
“And you will ride him?” he asked.
“Nobody else can,” said my Aunt. “Yes, she’ll ride him and beat you, too.”
“I’ll take your bet,” said he. “I’d give five hundred dollars to ride once in a race with the only girl in America who is really English. How she ever got into this blooming country I can’t see!”
I left my Aunt and the Colonel arranging their new game for the Cumberland meeting. I did not take much interest in Eloise riding against him!
I had ordered my horse, intending to ride over to Ned’s; I wanted to see my pets there, Little Sister, and Captain Skipper and the new arrival. Eloise followed me through the wood lot. She came up and slipped her arm through mine, and its very touch carried a sadness, it seemed as if the quick electric pulse was gone. In her eyes there was a weariness, an indefinable longing. It touched me to see her so, my live, light-hearted, foster sister of old.
“Jack,” she sighed, “I am—I am—” She stopped and looked up into my face.
“What?” I asked. “I should think you would be happy, so soon to marry an Earl.”
“It is sooner than you suppose,” she said seriously. “He does not wish it known yet because the proper notification has not come from his attorneys in England, but—but—Jack—Jack, his brother is already dead and he wants me to marry him. I have already promised to marry him next month.”
I knew she saw me pale. I could have cursed myself for the weakness.
She went on. “When I promised him six months ago it was all so vague, so far off, and I was so miserable, Jack—so homeless and badgered, and dependent, it was all so far off, I thought—waiting for his brother to die, and now! You know how these English are, they take these things so seriously, their marriages and promises, they are so matter-of-fact about it, and so consistent: why, Jack, he looks on me already as his bride. He is just as busy planning for our future, arranging how the estate is to be remodeled, what home we are to have, I couldn’t get out of it honorably even—Jack, even if—”
“Even if you should happen to love me?” I said, looking very earnestly into her eyes.
She nodded, her head dropped low. For the first time in her life I saw tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Jack, I am miserable! It was all so far off once,—now—only next month,—and you know I’d die before I’d deceive him—big boy that he is, and trusting and worshipping me, Jack. Yes, that is what hurts me—worshipping me as he does—I couldn’t. I couldn’t, Jack! If I have any one strong thing in me, you know it is—”
“Keeping your faith with your friends,” said I. She nodded. “Do you think I am wicked to marry him this way? Won’t you come, in after years, to despise me?”
For answer I stooped and kissed her. She put both her arms around my neck. “Please stay with me,” she cried, “I do so need you. I just heard it to-day. It was why he came and stayed so long. Please stay and be with me till he leaves. Just stay with me, Little Brother, this time.”
“Why,” I said, “this time? Surely he will resent it. Any man would want this night of all others to be with you.”
“Jack, you don’t understand. I am miserable. That is why I rode Satan as I did. When I put him at that fence I hoped—it is wicked I know—but I hoped that he would kill me.”
She was sobbing in my arms.
“Eloise, don’t,” I said; “let me go. Don’t you know that it is harder on me than it is on you? Do you think I am made of stone—of wood—to come home expecting sweetness and find it all rue—my dreams about you—”
“Just to-night, Jack. You’ll—you’ll laugh at me when I say why, but, but, you know how punctilious these Englishmen are, and he thinks I must kiss him to-night when he goes.”
I felt the hot blood rush to my heart. It was instinct, the reversion of a past ancestor who fought another man for kissing his wilderness bride.
“Eloise, you wouldn’t?”
“If you’ll kiss me again, Jack, as you did just now. I never felt so before—until—but it you’ll kiss me again—that way, I’ll never kiss him—never!”
I held her in my arms. I kissed her eyes, which were moist. I kissed her mouth, and it seemed as though my soul went into hers; for when, in desperation, in an exhilaration which was all but madness I broke away I heard her cry faintly, “Jack, Jack!”...
I saw her arms around the great fatherly tree, her head against it.