THE PEDIGREE OF ACHIEVEMENT
Man may breed up all animals but himself. Strive as he may, the laws of heredity are hidden. “Like produces like or the likeness of an ancestor” is the unalterable law of the lower animal. Not so with man—he is a strange anomaly. Breed him up—up—and then from his high breeding will come reversion. From pedigrees and plumed hats and ruffled shirts come not men, but pygmies—things which in the real fight of life are but mice to the eagles which have come up from the soil with the grit of it in their craws and the strength of it in their talons.
We stop in wonder—balked. Then we see that we cannot breed men—they are born; not in castles, but in cabins.
And why in cabins? For therein must be the solution. And the solution is plain: It is work—work that does it.
We cannot breed men unless work—achievement—goes with it.
From the loins of great horses come greater horses; for the pedigree of work—achievement—is there. Unlike man, the race-horse is kept from degeneracy by work. Each colt that comes must add achievement to pedigree when he faces the starter, or he goes to the shambles or the surgeon.
Why may not man learn this simple lesson—the lesson of work—of pedigree, but the pedigree of achievement?
The son who would surpass his father must do more than his father did. Two generations of idleness will beget nonentities, and three, degenerates.
The preacher, the philosopher, the poet, the ruler—it matters not what his name—he who first solves the problem of how to keep mankind achieving will solve the problem of humanity.
And now to Helen Conway for the first time in her life this simple thing was happening—she was working—she was earning—she was supporting herself and Lily and her father. Not only that, but gradually she was learning to know what the love of one like Clay meant—unselfish, devoted, true.
If to every tempted woman in the world could be given work, and to work achievement, and to achievement independence, there would be few fallen ones.
All the next week Helen went to the mill early—she wanted to go. She wanted to earn more money and keep Lily out of the mill. And she went with a light heart, because for the first time in her life since she could remember, her father was sober. Helen's earnings changed even him. There was something so noble in her efforts that it uplifted even the drunkard. In mingled shame and pride he thought it out: Supported by his daughter—in a mill and such a daughter! He arose from it all white-lipped with resolve: “I will be a Conway again!” He said it over and over. He swore it.
It is true he was not entirely free from that sickening, sour, accursed smell with which she had associated him all her life. But that he was himself, that he was making an earnest effort, she knew by his neatly brushed clothes, his clean linen, his freshly shaved face, his whole attire which betokened the former gentleman.
“How handsome he must have been when he was once a Conway!” thought Helen.
He kissed his daughters at the breakfast table. He chatted with them, and though he said nothing about it, even Lily knew that he had resolved to reform.
After breakfast Helen left him, with Lily sitting on her father's lap, her face bright with the sunshine of it:
“If papa would always be like this”—and she patted his cheek.
Conway started. The very intonation of her voice, her gesture, was of the long dead mother.
Tears came to his eyes. He kissed her: “Never again, little daughter, will I take another drop.”
She looked at him seriously: “Say with God's help—” she said simply. “Mammy Maria said it won't count unless you say that.”
Conway smiled. “I will do it my own self.”
But Lily only shook her head in a motherly, scolding way.
“With God's help, then,” he said.
Never was an Autumn morning more beautiful to Helen as she walked across the fields to the mill. She had learned a nearer way, one which lay across hill and field. The path ran through farms, chiefly The Gaffs, and cut across the hills and meadow land. Through little dells, amid fragrant groves of sweet gum and maples, their beautiful many-colored leaves now scattered in rich profusion around. Then down little hollows where the brooks sputtered and frothed and foamed along, the sun all the time darting in and out, as the waters ran first in sunshine and then in shadow. And above, the winds were so still, that the jumping of the squirrel in the hickories made the only noise among the leaves which still clung to the boughs.
All so beautiful, and never had Helen been so happy.
She was earning a living—she was saving Lily from the mill and her father from temptation.
Her path wound along an old field and plunged into scrub cedar and glady rocks. A covey of quail sprang up before her and she screamed, frightened at the sudden thunder of their wings.
Then the path ran through a sedge field, white with the tall silvered panicled-leaves of the life-everlasting.
Beyond her she saw the smoke-stack of the mill, and a short cut through a meadow of The Gaffs would soon take her there.
She failed to see a warning on the fence which said: Keep out—Danger.
Through the bars she went, intent only on soon reaching the mill beyond and glorying in the strong rich smell of autumn in leaf and grass and air.
“What a beautiful horse that is in the pasture,” she thought, and then her attention went to a meadow lark flushed and exultant. She heard shouts, and now—why was Jim, the stable boy, running toward her so fast, carrying a pitchfork in his hands and shouting: “Whoa—there, Antar—Antar,—you, sir!”
And the horse! One look was enough. With ears laid back, and mouth wide open, with eyes blazing with the fire of fury he was plunging straight at her.
Helpless, she turned in sickening doubt, to feel that her limbs were limp in the agony of fear. She heard the thunder of the man-eating stallion's hoofs just behind her and she butted blindly, as she sank down, into some one who held bravely her hand as she fell, and the next instant she heard a thundering report and smelt a foul blast of gunpowder. She looked up in time to see the great horse pitch back on his haunches, rear, quiver a moment and strike desperately at the air with his front feet and fall almost upon her.
When she revived, the stable boy stood near by the dead stallion, pale with fright and wonder. A half-grown boy stood by her, holding her hand.
“You are all right now,” he said quietly as he helped her to arise. In his right hand he held a pistol and the foul smoke still oozed up from the nipple where the exploded cap lay shattered, under the hammer.
He was perfectly cool—even haughtily so. He scarcely looked at Helen nor at Jim, who kept saying nervously:
“You've killed him—you've killed him—what will Mr. Travis say?”
The boy laughed an ironical laugh. Then he walked up and examined the shot he had made. Squarely between the great eyes the ball had gone, and scarcely had the glaring, frenzied eye-balls of the man-eater been fixed in the rigid stare of death. He put his fingers on it, and turning, said:
“A good shot, running—and at twenty paces!”
Then he stood up proudly, and his blue eyes flashed defiance as he said:
“And what will Mr. Travis say? Well, tell him first of all that this man-eating stallion of his caught the bullet I had intended for his woman-eating master—this being my birth-day. And tell him, if he asks you who I am, that last week I was James Adams, but now I am James Travis. He will understand.”
He came over to Helen gallantly—his blue eyes shining through a smile which now lurked in them:
“This is Miss Conway, isn't it? I will see you out of this.”
Then, taking her hand as if she had been his big sister, he led her along the path to the road and to safety.