Jack Ballington, Forester

by John Trotwood Moore

It is this that weeps, laughs or curses the acts of the First, yet has no power to change them; it can arrest him somewhat, haul him up a little while before the court—a kind of a police officer for a brief trial—but only the Supreme Judge—only I may pass the act that stops him. When the First has groveled in the dust of things, it is This that fights back with the spirit's disgust, giving due notice to the flesh that it is not all supreme, not all in all, that there is really something else, somewhere, somehow, or else we would not have sorrow after sin, penitence after pain, fear after a fall.

MYSELF, my little soul—a half-bred mongrel Compromising Thing it is—a bird with gills and a bladder, a chrysalis that has yet to burst and be a butterfly; a tadpole with a tail unshed, which one day may be dropped in that metamorphosis to a higher state and yet more likely to die a tadpole!

And then there is I, the still, small, silent I. ME, it talks, and struts and brags; and MYSELF and its little soul is full of whines and little pretenses, of platitudes to Men and Things. But I—it never speaks, never sleeps, never compromises, but always commands.

It exercises its authority as it is needed in great sorrows, or the great crises of the other little lives. And it comes sweetest and clearest (which is proof positive that it exists) before even the others are awake, in the first dawn of day, or in the still night watches of dreams; and it fairly crushes you with the sweetness of its presence, in that quiet kingdom through which you loiter, and then pass through—that Kingdom between the Dawn and the Daylight. Suddenly we awake enough to know that we are there—It is there—in another world—painfully, awfully, preciously there. Then we see how truly Me and Myself—my little body of ME may die and pass away, and be as naught—but that I, the still, small, silent I of Me has come from Æons to go on to Eternities; and after all the little plans of me, and the braggart, this I will do and that I will not do of Me, this I will be and that I will not be of Me, and after all my resolves and final decisions, and my well-laid plans of Me—I, the kingly I of Me has only to appear, sitting silent as a burning flame in the throne room of my soul, and all My's plans both of doing and being, and all of my soul's resolve of purpose—the great decisions of my very soul—become as slaves to fall down before and crawl to do its bidding! ...

Braxton Bragg's perfidy had aroused me to an anger that I had never known before: I had been a quiet boy, I loved not strife, "Oh, he won't fight, not one of them will," I caught myself mimicking my grandsire, and in hot forgetfulness, I struck the big horse I was riding with a quick touch of my heel—I was almost unseated with the leap he made.

"Steady, quiet, forgive me, old boy!" I cried, stroking his crest to calmness—"that only means I see things differently; that in this little world our ethics is one thing, our little religions, laws, our civilization is one thing, and God and His laws are another. One says if he smite you, turn your other cheek; the other says, if he strike you, strike back harder. One says peace—the other says it is war, even in the name of peace; one says Justice and her scales, the other says the Eagle and the Battleship. There is a time in every honest man's life when he must fight or die. Satan, old boy, I am going to fight awhile!"

I was lusty and twenty—ME.

So I pondered as I rode over to see Colonel Goff. I found him in the library of The Manor, and was soon seated with him. I noticed the sterling beauty of the furniture, the trophies of the chase, both in India and America, and a full portrait of Eloise over the mantel. I had been a boy to Colonel Goff until my return. Now I imagined that my sudden change into a full-grown man had never quite come home to him, remembering me only as he had known me last.

"You have given me an unexpected pleasure, my boy," he said with a touch of cordiality in his voice. "I have been beastly lonely since Eloise left." He eyed me through his half-closed lids as he lighted a cigar and watched me light mine.

I flushed, and I fear he noticed it. Then I broke abruptly into my subject. "It is your help and advice I want to-night, sir. I have come to talk of Elsie."