Chapter XVIII The Last Dance
It was a night in early June. The Home Stretch was all a-glitter, its porches and the great trees on the lawn lighted with rows of colored lanterns.
My Aunt and Eloise had returned; the Cumberland races, the social event of the year, began the next day, and in accordance with her custom my Aunt was giving her annual ball. This time it was to serve a two-fold purpose; for it was also in honor of Eloise and Colonel Goff and was to be the formal announcement of their coming marriage.
I rode over early. If I was needed I wanted to help as of old; and I had seen neither of them since they had returned a week ago, for I had been away for several weeks, in an adjoining county, earning my first fee in forestry. I had been employed by a corporation to pass upon a large tract of timber, to report its millage and availability, but best of all I was to put my plans into effect in its harvesting, cutting out only the ripe trees, and preserving the young ones beneath from death and mutilation.
I had spent two weeks among them. There were many different kinds, and they had become almost like children to me, and like children, they each had different temperaments—these trees—different forms, dispositions, dreams, and they always talked to me, through their little leaves, but sweetest of all in the night, even as children do, when, full of themselves and of life, they gossip so friendly in the balm of the June moon. They told me like village gossipers, of their every little affair, their little vexes, turmoils, the very little scandals of their wood. And in more stirring moods when the night winds would arise and sweep through them the writers, minstrels and poets, stirred to historic flights, quivered with their greater dreams, sang their tales of tree tragedies, of wars had, of fights for life and of martyr and hero deaths.
And I had lain and listened, and felt my heart grow big with throbbing even as when I first read of the wanderings of Ulysses.
I came from out among them older, braver, better. I came with higher motives for my own life and eyes which saw clearer into the future and read more kindly the lives of others.
And gladly would I have stayed in the wood among them, to go back—rather than to see what I must see—Eloise betrothed to another. No tree tragedy could be more cruel than that which had killed the love of my own life.
In withholdingness and sorrow I left them: “duty” not as someone has said, “is the sublimest word in the English language” because duty is often done in pleasure, but the real sublimity of duty is the duty done in pain. To fail to go were cowardice, and I was no coward even if my grandsire did think so.
But when I went into the great hall of The Home Stretch, filled with chattering guests, the contrast was poignant. It was as if deep in the sleeping and silent forces a cloud of chattering birds had landed suddenly among my trees.
“It is good to see you home again, Jack.”
It was Eloise who spoke. Her eyes told me that she had been waiting, and a brave lingering smile went with her words. There were little tired, hard lines around her sweet mouth. She looked tired but game, as when, in a long day’s hunt after quail and the route home was long, and our luck nil, it needed a good heart to smile.
She stood with Goff in the reception room, as though she were Countess of Carfax already. The hand I held trembled for the first time in mine.
“Glad to see you back, Jack,” said Goff, his face aglow with the pride he felt.
“Where have you been, Jack? I thought you were never coming to see me again?” Eloise asked.
She gradually moved away with me from the crowd in the center of the room until we stood apart in the large bay window.
“Come,” I said teasingly, “you have got away from your lord; he will miss you.”
It was not fun to her. Her face flushed, then paled. “Jack, you must dance with me once to-night—our last dance. I have something to tell you then.”
“I don’t think you ought to punish me any more than you have already, Eloise,” I said frankly.
“Maybe I am punishing myself more,” she said softly.
“Eloise, Eloise—”
But she had turned and was receiving the newly arrived and merry crowd behind us.
My Aunt held to some customs which she permitted none of the innovations of society to alter. One was that her balls must open with the Virginia Reel. I saw her coming and understood.
“Jack,” she nodded, commandingly, “we are ready, you and Eloise open it up.”
Eloise stood behind her smiling. She placed both her hands in mine and together we glided to the head of the line. We stood holding hands and waiting for the music. Coming closer, my Aunt smiled and whispered, “I wish you two children could see what a fine pair you make. Pedigree counts even in a Virginia Reel, and you two were bred for it.”
We both laughed.
“Look into that mirror across yonder,” she laughed, “and see how much better I am at pairing off people than they are themselves.”
We glanced across and saw Goff and a fat lady from town.
“They are matched perfectly,” said my Aunt Lucretia, “both grass-fed.”
“Please don’t, Aunt Lucretia,” said Eloise, “that isn’t fair. You are trying your best to keep me from being a countess.” Then she added suddenly, “Oh, Jack, tell me about Satan. You don’t know how I’ve missed him. Where have you two been?”
“In the wood together. No—n-o—you shall never have him, such a horse—such a comrade.”
Eloise pouted. “You’ll see. Why Colonel Goff has promised I shall take him to England with me. And Jack—how about his exercise? My heart is set on beating him in that hurdle race, and Aunt Lucretia would have apoplexy if she lost that bet.”
“Oh, he’s hard enough. I rode him two hundred miles to Obion County and back. I honestly believe he could run across the county to-morrow; and jump! I am glad you mentioned it—-it was wonderful—he is foolish about me. It is because he knows I love you, dear,” I said, whispering in her ear.
“Please don’t, Jack, you only hurt me.”
“I was across a small ravine from him one day, had hitched him and was looking at some timber. He broke his halter and came to me. I heard his calling neigh and I answered him, and he came to me, clearing a ten-foot ravine in a jump.”
Eloise clapped her hands, and my Aunt, who had come up and heard it, smiled. Then she said, with her usual red-tape accuracy, “I hope you took the measurements. Was it really ten feet, Jack?”
“I measured it,” I said, “and it was nearly bottomless. If one foot had missed—”
My Aunt nodded to Eloise. “That little branch in Cumberland Park is only ten across from bank to bank. Oh, we’ll play it on his lordship fine! Come!”
There was a crash of music. With radiant cheeks and eyes that I saw many a night afterwards in my dreams, and a proud smile she went with me down the line.
There was a pretty surprise for us at the supper. We had filed into the dining hall. My grandfather sat alone, his hair white under the candles. On the right of him stood Eloise and Colonel Goff, and the long line of expectant guests stood around down the long table.
My grandfather rapped, and, raising his glass, proposed a toast to the future Earl and Countess of Carfax. There was a burst of applause. The guests lifted their glasses.
“My friends,” said Colonel Goff, bravely, when the room became quiet, “I came to you years ago, an exiled Englishman, and I found a home here, following my old commander from the war. I came lonely and alone. I go back with a sorrow in my heart at leaving many friends behind, but instead of going alone, I return taking with me one who will be the peer of any countess of the long line of Carfax.”
He turned, bowing grandly to Eloise, who, pale, and with trembling lips listened. I could see her breast faltering with quickened breathing. Her parted lips panted for air, even though she stood beaming graciously to the greeting. “I have another announcement to make,” he went on very quietly, “and I think it right that I do it now, that I may be just to myself, to the good people who have reared her, and to my child whom I love. My coming here was not altogether purposeless. You will understand when I introduce to you my daughter, Lady Elsie.”
There was a stir at the lower end of the table, and I saw my Aunt Lucretia open the folding doors and Tammas followed by Marget enter. Elsie followed, her face ablaze with that beauty which was always hers when excited. She was more like an angel of light than a girl, and around her neck and in her hair were the jewels of the house of Carfax.
Goff met and kissed her, and very simply and sweetly she advanced and kissed Eloise, graciously, almost unconsciously, a kiss both of love and tribute. She stood between them, bowing and smiling so graciously down the table that her breeding was evident.
All who knew her loved her, and for the next ten minutes they thronged around her with kisses and congratulations.
I did not go, for there were tears in my eyes and a great choking in my throat. When I looked up Tammas and Marget were standing by me, Tammas making a bold effort at winking his tears away and smiling. He mopped his brow vigorously, and said mechanically, “’Tis a bonny night for us, a bonny night and a glorious for our lassie!”
“Ay, weel,” said Marget between her sobs, “but dinna she look it—like her ain sweet mother? Oh, but she was that bonny, and ’tis she, our lassie, Tammas, can be looking down on her this blessed minute, her bairn who has come into her own.”
Then Elsie saw us and came quietly forward. She clasped me impulsively around the neck and kissed me, whispering, “Oh, it is mine, Jack, that I felt but could not tell. ’Tis the unattainable come true, and now, Jack, dear Jack, that I am Lady Elsie, now that I am worthy of you—” she could not speak. Her lips were deadly white as if with faintness. I held her, stroking her hair.
“You were always worthy of anyone, sweet one. Be brave, be brave, now,” I whispered, “and go back to your father’s side.”
I looked up to find Eloise’s eyes upon me, and a strange understanding in their depths.
“I am staying with papa, at The Manor now,” said Elsie as she left me and Marget. “You will not let it keep you from coming to see me often, will you, Jack?”
“Ay, weel, to be sure, lassie,” broke in Tammas, and I caught the pleased look that seemed part of his countenance that night as if now his heart’s desire had already come to pass, “ay, weel, to be sure, for our Mr. Jack will always be our Mr. Jack to us, lassie.”...
It was the last waltz. Eloise beckoned to me, and when I reached her, she opened her arms and I took her in mine. I could not speak, my heart beating almost strangled me. I held her tight, and into the sweetness of the music and the lure of the waltz came again all the past sweetness from her girlhood up, all blending in memory with the perfume of her hair, the whiteness of her throat, and the firm supple touch of her lithe, strong body against mine. Again she was my Little Sister and comrade of the long past. My life, my love, my all that I dreamed and hoped, danced with her in that last dance....
I felt her heart beating against mine. Her breathing was a sob. I felt her wilt, her limbs give way beneath her, her arms hang limp, her head fall back. I carried her in my arms to the sofa....
“A little ice water,” said my Aunt Lucretia. When I looked up Colonel Goff stood over her bathing her face. “I should not have let her dance so much—it was all too much for her.” He bent again, stroking the beautiful hair. I could not see more for my anger.
In the cool air outside I came to myself. My anger died, all but my own bitterness. I saw the long line of carriages and the men sleeping on boxes, and then I heard a nicker, a friendly little recalling whinny from Satan’s stall, and the next instant I had swung into his saddle, and touched my heel to his flank.
I saw the grooms on the boxes sit up, and stare into the night, for straight to the banks of a little creek I rode him, not down the old road. He leaped high into the air, enjoying even more than I did the glory of the risk and jump. He swept like a whirlwind through the gate. The mad ride home soothed me.