Chapter IV Colonel Goff
Colonel Goff followed us shortly afterwards into the hall. He had ridden over on his English hunter while Eloise and I had been on the lawn greeting our tree friends. He was immaculately groomed, in polished boots, puttees and cap, an English crop in his hands. Fifty years old, his black hair slightly streaked with gray, he was handsome, and there was a masterful air about him that even an enemy must have admired. A younger son of the Earl of Carfax, he had come to America when my grandsire was fighting with Stonewall Jackson in Virginia. He had volunteered for service, and had been placed in Jackson’s corps, and on my grandsire’s staff. Here his real, sterling qualities found birth and he proved to be a brilliant soldier. It was he who charged ahead of the rebel yell and led the advance that scattered Banks. It was he who led again at Cedar Creek, caught the brilliant Sheridan napping, and sent his command reeling back in a retreat which would have meant demoralization for anyone but Sheridan. His fondness for my grandsire was no less than the old man’s for him, and after the war Colonel Goff, being in disgrace, it was said, with his father at home, moved to Tennessee to be near his old commander. He had bought a fine place near ours, and here he had lived the life of an English gentleman, with his hounds, his horses, and his utter disregard of all the local and established ideas of country temperance or morals. He was not a man who asked for things, he took them.
Even before I left home I had secretly rebelled at his admiration for Eloise. In all her masterful ways, her riding, her fox chasing, her hunting with the men, following Goff or the General all day on her pony, and killing quail dead-straight, in the flush of the covey, he had openly admired her. Afterwards I heard him say that she was a duchess born, and the only one he had seen in America. He had humored, petted and helped to spoil her as a child. As a girl, there never was a costly thing she wanted but he gave it to her.
In the dining-room, when supper had been announced, I noticed the flushed pleasure in Eloise’s eyes at sight of him. It was half a daring look, as of the hunted defying the hunter, that I saw in her eyes, but I could not rightly decipher it, or tell whether it meant she was conquered or as yet unconquered.
My heart burned with jealousy at the sight of it. The great joy of my home-coming was gone! I knew his way, and that he would stay for supper.
“I had thought,” I whispered sourly to Eloise, “that I would at least have this first evening alone with you.”
Eloise laughed. “Oh, he comes when he pleases, and I—I send him home when I please.”
He had greeted me pleasantly, but during supper he paid little attention to me. Once he laughed at my study of forestry, and added, “And to go to Germany for it, when you might have gone to England!”
After supper, when I had gone with Aunt Lucretia to the barn to help her with a sick colt, I smelt the odor of his cigar coming up from our old seat under the elm. I grew bitter at the thought that anyone but I should sit there with Eloise. My Aunt must have noticed this, for she called: “Come in here—both of you. This isn’t fair to Jack.”
Aunt Lucretia and Colonel Goff could never meet ten minutes in their lives without a heated argument over American and English horses. She generally worsted him, because she had all the records at her tongue’s end, and because in any kind of controversy she was fearless. For an hour to-night, and until he left, she scored him fearlessly. “Take that nick-tailed horse of yours,” said Aunt Lucretia, “Colonel Goff, couldn’t you do better than that in England?” There were two things which always especially incensed her; one was to cut off a horse’s tail and the other to import an animal from England, when a better one might be had here.
Colonel Goff explained that there were no such horses in America. “He is a four-mile hurdler,” said he. “You’ve nothing of the kind in this blooming country.”
“Why, madam, he holds the record jump behind the Quoin hounds at Melton-Mowbry. The kill was in the main driveway of a manor and his rider cleared the picket fence to be in first. That fence measured five and a half feet and to this day it is the record at Melton-Mowbry.”
“A four-miler, that means a running horse,” said my Aunt. “Of course we have them. And a hurdler—that’s only a jumping horse. Now, we’ve never cared much for jumpers. Why, I’ve a mule in my barn that can go over a ten rail fence any day. Uncle Ned says she just climbs it; anyway, I’ve never been able to build one high enough to keep her out of the cornfield on the other side. But there’s Eloise’s Satan, son of Young Hickory, scion of General Jackson’s Truxton. The man his sire is named for used to beat your English at any kind of a game at New Orleans, and I’ll wager that Satan would be a mighty hurdler and high jumper if he only had a chawnce,” she said, smiling, in funny mimicry of Goff.
“Fawncy!” laughed Goff, twisting his mustache. “Why, he couldn’t jump over a chalk line! It’s all in the training and pedigree! My Nestor colt holds the record for the Melton-Mowbry meet, and his high jump was five feet six.”
My Aunt turned the subject as if it were forgotten. But I knew she never forgot, and that she had something up her sleeve.
I was worried that Goff should linger so on my first night, for I saw plainly that he hoped we would retire and that he wanted to get Eloise off for a tête-à-tête. Aunt Lucretia saw this also, and whispered to me when she got the chance, “Freeze him out, Jack; he shan’t have her to-night!”
“Why, Major Hawthorn,” she said presently, turning and rising abruptly.
The major came in on us silently, in his soft, well-bred way. I rose instantly to greet him.
“Jack, my boy!” said he, throwing one arm around me, and drawing me to him. “How you have grown! I heard you had come home, and I had to see you to-night.”
“And you didn’t want to see me?” said Eloise, coming up, and kissing him; for the Major was her ideal, and she was always his pet. “Now, Major, you always said that you loved me as much as you did Jack,” she teased, winding an arm into his.
“Just the same as ever, my dear; you are both my two children always,” he laughed. “Why, good evening, Goff—and the General, where is he?” he asked my Aunt Lucretia. “I have news that will please him.”
My Aunt went after my grandfather.
“Jack,” he turned to me, “what a man you have grown into! I’m hungry for a long talk with you.”
The Major sat down, and Colonel Goff offered him a cigar. He struck a match, but before using it, held it a moment to my face. “Inspection, Jack,” said he, smiling; “you know how hard it is to break an old soldier of his habits.”
I saw his finely-cut, sensitive face light up. I noticed the familiar turn of his mustache, his kindly mouth, the correct dress, the straight, martial bearing, and the courtesy, that seemed a gift of his own.
“And it looks as if I might die in harness,” he went on. “Ah, here’s the General.”
He rose and shook hands with my grandsire. “I have come over to tell you, General, of a telegram I received this afternoon from the President, and I should so like to have your advice before answering—the advice of all of you,” he said kindly, turning and bowing our way.
“Ah, Hawthorne,” said my grandsire, “I know what it is—I knew it was coming—I wrote Joe Wheeler—”
“I thought you had something to do with it,” said the Major, “and I shall abide by your decision, my General,” he added softly.
“McKinley has appointed you Brigadier-General,” went on my grandsire quietly. “The First Tennessee will be in your brigade. I can’t talk of it, Hawthorne—I want to go to the Philippines with you so bad, and give the damned Yankees—ah, pardon—pardon me—I mean the damned Spaniards another good drubbing!”
There was a burst of laughter from us all. My grandsire sat down confused.
“It is as you said,” Major Hawthorne replied, “and I am going to do as you say, General. I have taken your orders in Virginia too often to refuse now.”
“Hawthorne, I envy you; by gad, I envy you,” said the old man.
“General, do you know that I never was so happy before? I have so wanted to fight under the old flag. Jack,” he turned to me, his face smiling, “Jack, I have come to see you for this purpose—I want you on my staff—I know the training you have had, I know the stuff that is in you. I want you, my boy. I’ve ridden ten miles to-night to tell you.”
“Tut—tut—Hawthorne—nonsense!” broke in the General. “Don’t start out making breaks like that. Jack is a good boy, but he is not a fighter—now, there’s Braxton Bragg—”
“My grandfather is doubtless right, General Hawthorne,” I said quietly. “I thank you from my heart for your kindness—but—”
Eloise arose flushing, indignant. “Jack is a fighter; a better fighter than some people who strut around in khaki, and make great pretense, but amount to nothing,” she said deliberately and with emphasis.
Then she came over and put one arm affectionately on my shoulder. “And General Rutherford,” she went on, her voice trembling with anger, “I mean this for you, and I mean no disrespect; but it is cruel of you the way you have slurred Jack, and I almost doubt that you ever made the good fighting record you have, when I think how easily you can be fooled into taking a tin soldier for the real thing! I do, and now you know what I think.”
Colonel Goff laughed, pleased. “You pinked him just right, Eloise. Been thinking I’d tell the General that myself—eh, General?” and he slapped the old man familiarly on the back.
The old General answered testily, “Tut—tut—madam;” and then he laughed. “Gad, but I wish you were a man! Damned if you wouldn’t fight!”