“‘You’re wounded! ‘Nay,’ the soldier’s pride
Touched to the quick, he said,
‘I’m killed, sire!’ And, his chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead.”
“‘Nay, I’m killed, sire,’” drawled the Virginian, amiably; for (symptom
of convalescence) his freakish irony was revived in him. “Now a man
who was man enough to act like he did, yu’ see, would fall dead without
mentioning it.”
None of Molly’s sweet girl friends had ever thus challenged Mr.
Browning. They had been wont to cluster over him with a joyous awe that
deepened proportionally with their misunderstanding. Molly paused to
consider this novelty of view about the soldier. “He was a Frenchman,
you know,” she said, under inspiration.
“A Frenchman,” murmured the grave cow-puncher. “I never knowed a
Frenchman, but I reckon they might perform that class of foolishness.”
“But why was it foolish?” she cried.
“His soldier’s pride--don’t you see?”
“No.”
Molly now burst into a luxury of discussion. She leaned toward her
cow-puncher with bright eyes searching his; with elbow on knee and hand
propping chin, her lap became a slant, and from it Browning the poet
slid and toppled, and lay unrescued. For the slow cow-puncher unfolded
his notions of masculine courage and modesty (though he did not deal in
such high-sounding names), and Molly forgot everything to listen to him,
as he forgot himself and his inveterate shyness and grew talkative to
her. “I would never have supposed that!” she would exclaim as she heard
him; or, presently again, “I never had such an idea!” And her mind
opened with delight to these new things which came from the man’s mind
so simple and direct. To Browning they did come back, but the Virginian,
though interested, conceived a dislike for him. “He is a smarty,” said
he, once or twice.
“Now here is something,” said Molly. “I have never known what to think.”
“Oh, Heavens!” murmured the sick man, smiling. “Is it short?”
“Very short. Now please attend.” And she read him twelve lines about
a lover who rowed to a beach in the dusk, crossed a field, tapped at a
pane, and was admitted.
“That is the best yet,” said the Virginian. “There’s only one thing yu’
can think about that.”
“But wait,” said the girl, swiftly. “Here is how they parted:--
“Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim--
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.”
“That is very, very true,” murmured the Virginian, dropping his eyes
from the girl’s intent ones.
“Had they quarrelled?” she inquired.
“Oh, no!”
“But--”
“I reckon he loved her very much.”
“Then you’re sure they hadn’t quarrelled?”
“Dead sure, ma’am. He would come back afteh he had played some more of
the game.”
“The game?”
“Life, ma’am. Whatever he was a-doin’ in the world of men. That’s a
bed-rock piece, ma’am!”
“Well, I don’t see why you think it’s so much better than some of the
others.”
“I could sca’cely explain,” answered the man. “But that writer does know
something.”
“I am glad they hadn’t quarrelled,” said Molly, thoughtfully. And she
began to like having her opinions refuted.
His bandages, becoming a little irksome, had to be shifted, and this
turned their discourse from literature to Wyoming; and Molly inquired,
had he ever been shot before? Only once, he told her. “I have been
lucky in having few fusses,” said he. “I hate them. If a man has to be
killed--”
“You never--” broke in Molly. She had started back a little. “Well,” she
added hastily, “don’t tell me if--”
“I shouldn’t wonder if I got one of those Indians,” he said quietly.
“But I wasn’t waitin’ to see! But I came mighty near doing for a white
man that day. He had been hurtin’ a hawss.”
“Hurting?” said Molly.
“Injurin.’ I will not tell yu’ about that. It would hurt yu’ to hear
such things. But hawsses--don’t they depend on us? Ain’t they somethin’
like children? I did not lay up the man very bad. He was able to travel
’most right away. Why, you’d have wanted to kill him yourself!”
So the Virginian talked, nor knew what he was doing to the girl. Nor
was she aware of what she was receiving from him as he unwittingly spoke
himself out to her in these Browning meetings they had each day. But
Mrs. Taylor grew pleased. The kindly dame would sometimes cross the
road to see if she were needed, and steal away again after a peep at the
window. There, inside, among the restored home treasures, sat the two:
the rosy alert girl, sweet as she talked or read to him; and he, the
grave, half-weak giant among his wraps, watching her.
Of her delayed home visit he never again spoke, either to her or to Mrs.
Taylor; and Molly veered aside from any trend of talk she foresaw was
leading toward that subject. But in those hours when no visitors
came, and he was by himself in the quiet, he would lie often sombrely
contemplating the girl’s room, her little dainty knickknacks, her home
photographs, all the delicate manifestations of what she came from and
what she was. Strength was flowing back into him each day, and Judge
Henry’s latest messenger had brought him clothes and mail from Sunk
Creek and many inquiries of kindness, and returned taking the news of
the cow-puncher’s improvement, and how soon he would be permitted the
fresh air. Hence Molly found him waiting in a flannel shirt of highly
becoming shade, and with a silk handkerchief knotted round his throat;
and he told her it was good to feel respectable again.
She had come to read to him for the allotted time; and she threw around
his shoulders the scarlet and black Navajo blanket, striped with its
splendid zigzags of barbarity. Thus he half sat, half leaned, languid
but at ease. In his lap lay one of the letters brought over by the
messenger: and though she was midway in a book that engaged his full
attention--DAVID COPPERFIELD--his silence and absent look this morning
stopped her, and she accused him of not attending.
“No,” he admitted; “I am thinking of something else.”
She looked at him with that apprehension which he knew.
“It had to come,” said he. “And to-day I see my thoughts straighter than
I’ve been up to managing since--since my haid got clear. And now I
must say these thoughts--if I can, if I can!” He stopped. His eyes were
intent upon her; one hand was gripping the arm of his chair.
“You promised--” trembled Molly.
“I promised you should love me,” he sternly interrupted. “Promised that
to myself. I have broken that word.”
She shut DAVID COPPERFIELD mechanically, and grew white.
“Your letter has come to me hyeh,” he continued, gentle again.
“My--” She had forgotten it.
“The letter you wrote to tell me good-by. You wrote it a little while
ago--not a month yet, but it’s away and away long gone for me.”
“I have never let you know--” began Molly.
“The doctor,” he interrupted once more, but very gently now, “he gave
awdehs I must be kept quiet. I reckon yu’ thought tellin’ me might--”
“Forgive me!” cried the girl. “Indeed I ought to have told you sooner!
Indeed I had no excuse!”
“Why, should yu’ tell me if yu’ preferred not? You had written. And you
speak” (he lifted the letter) “of never being able to repay kindness;
but you have turned the tables. I can never repay you by anything! by
anything! So I had figured I would just jog back to Sunk Creek and let
you get away, if you did not want to say that kind of good-by. For I saw
the boxes. Mrs. Taylor is too nice a woman to know the trick of lyin’,
and she could not deceive me. I have knowed yu’ were going away for good
ever since I saw those boxes. But now hyeh comes your letter, and it
seems no way but I must speak. I have thought a deal, lyin’ in this
room. And--to-day--I can say what I have thought. I could not make you
happy.” He stopped, but she did not answer. His voice had grown softer
than whispering, but yet was not a whisper. From its quiet syllables she
turned away, blinded with sudden tears.
“Once, I thought love must surely be enough,” he continued. “And
I thought if I could make you love me, you could learn me to be
less--less--more your kind. And I think I could give you a pretty good
sort of love. But that don’t help the little mean pesky things of day by
day that make roughness or smoothness for folks tied together so awful
close. Mrs. Taylor hyeh--she don’t know anything better than Taylor
does. She don’t want anything he can’t give her. Her friends will do for
him and his for her. And when I dreamed of you in my home--” he closed
his eyes and drew a long breath. At last he looked at her again. “This
is no country for a lady. Will yu’ forget and forgive the bothering I
have done?”
“Oh!” cried Molly. “Oh!” And she put her hands to her eyes. She had
risen and stood with her face covered.
“I surely had to tell you this all out, didn’t I?” said the cow-puncher,
faintly, in his chair.
“Oh!” said Molly again.
“I have put it clear how it is,” he pursued. “I ought to have seen from
the start I was not the sort to keep you happy.”
“But,” said Molly--“but I--you ought--please try to keep me happy!” And
sinking by his chair, she hid her face on his knees.
Speechless, he bent down and folded her round, putting his hands on the
hair that had been always his delight. Presently he whispered:-- “You
have beat me; how can I fight this?”
She answered nothing. The Navajo’s scarlet and black folds fell over
both. Not with words, not even with meeting eyes, did the two plight
their troth in this first new hour. So they remained long, the fair head
nesting in the great arms, and the black head laid against it, while
over the silent room presided the little Grandmother Stark in her frame,
rosy, blue, and flaxen, not quite familiar, not quite smiling.