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.
CHAPTER XII
WORK AND MINE ACRE
There is but one balm for a heartache, and that is work.
Nothing in all my life had left me so stranded; had killed so utterly the sweetness of all my dreams as this giving up of Eloise. And with no dream there is no life.
I felt that she was lost to me now: if she were not engaged to Colonel Goff, there was nothing in me now, I thought bitterly, that could awaken in her the real love she had never felt for anyone. Yet with all her spirit, her apparent indifference, and even recklessness, I knew she had a throne in her heart of hearts for love on a higher plane than those who love easily. I knew that only one side of her had ever been revealed, either to herself or to the world; that beautiful as she was there was a yet more beautiful side to her; and that brave as she was there were yet deeper depths of bravery within her, a moral bravery which under the spur of her soul would take another leap, as far greater than that she took on Satan as the brave leap of Pegasus over the clouds. I had known her always. I knew what she did not know: that I was loving an Eloise that was yet, and forever would be, an unseen star in an unknown heaven, above the head of the man who had never yet learned to look up. Should I sit still and let him take her, let him do this irreparable wrong both to himself, and to her and to me? My heart cowered a moment at the thought of its hopelessness. Then—how wonderful is the word of the soul unto the soul, the passed soul to the passing soul, the absent soul to the present soul,—I thought of the words of Aunt Lucretia: "What would Andrew Jackson do, Jack?" Into my soul came the steel of Andrew Jackson. With the quickness of the thought came the change. "Aye, my unseeing old grandsire," I said, "you shall see whether I am a fighter or not! ... For Eloise."
From that moment I resolved to fight. God's blessings on the memory of Andrew Jackson!
But I would fight in my own way. For I knew that Eloise's idea of love was a love of life and death: she who would ride a mad horse over a five-foot fence for the conquering instinct of a mastering nature, what would she not do for love—her love—and she a woman? For let it be writ both of history and life, 'tis woman at last who loves. Man knows not love. Even as his own life came to him the babe of Love and Passion, so only can he give that unto another. But she who gave it being, her name was Love! Oh, to win such a love as I knew Eloise would bring to me; which she herself knew not was there.
I lost my bitterness of it all when it came clear to me. Before, I had been maddened to think she would barter this love of hers for title and wealth and the place it bought. But now I saw clearly, now I knew that she was blameless, because never having had that love, she knew not what she was giving away. Like an Indian princess, who owned an island of pearls, but did not know their value, she would give them to the first foreigner, coming down in ships, for the baubles of his forecastle.