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THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY
by
NELSON LLOYD
Illustrated by A. B. Frost
[Frontispiece: They called to me as a boy.]
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York ------------ 1904
Copyright, 1904, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Published, September, 1904
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
They called to me as a boy . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
"Welcome home--thrice welcome!"
Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and
he had lost
"Well, old chap!"
Josiah Nummler
He did not stop to hear my answer
Swearing terrible oaths that he will never return
No answer came from the floor above
The tiger story
He had a last look at Black Log
"He pumped me dry"
"Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells
and quit work"
I was back in my prison
"'At my sover-sover-yne's will'"
Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior
"You'll begin to think you ain't there at all"
I saw a girl on the store porch
Aaron Kallaberger
Leander
"Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn,
the Binns of Turkey Walley"
William had felt the hand of "Doogulus"
"Aren't you coming?" young Colonel seemed to say
Sat little Colonel, wailing
The main thing was proper nursing
Well, ain't he tasty
"But there are no ghosts," I argued
"Of course it hurts me a bit here"
"An seein' a light in the room, I looked in"
Tip Pulsifer leaned on my gate
The horse went down
"And I'm his widder"
Then Tim came
Old Captain
When we three sit by the fire
THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY
I
I was a soldier. I was a hero. You notice my tenses are past. I am a
simple school-teacher now, a prisoner in Black Log. There are no bars
to my keep, only the wall of mountains that make the valley; and look
at them on a clear day, when sunshine and shadow play over their green
slopes, when the clouds all white and gold swing lazily in the blue
above them, and they speak of freedom and of life immeasurable. There
are no chains to my prison, no steel cuffs to gall the limbs, no guards
to threaten and cow me. Yet here I stay year after year. Here I was
born and here I shall die.
I am a traveller. In my mind I have gone the world over, and those
wanderings have been unhampered by the limitations of mere time, for I
know my India of the First Century as well as that of the Twentieth,
and the China of Confucius is as real to me as that of Kwang Su.
Without stirring from my little porch down here in the valley I have
pierced the African jungles and surveyed the Arctic ice-floes. Often
the mountains call me to come again, to climb them, to see the real
world beyond, to live in it, to be of it, but I am a prisoner. They
called to me as a boy, when wandering over the hills, I looked away to
them, and over them, into the mysterious blue, picturing my India and
my China, my England and my Russia in a geographical jumble that began
just beyond the horizon.
Then I was a prisoner in the dungeons of Youth and my mother was my
jailer. The day came when I was free, and forth I went full of hope,
twenty-three years old by the family Bible, with a strong, agile body
and a homely face. I went as a soldier. For months I saw what is
called the world; I had glimpses of cities; I slept beneath the palms;
I crossed a sea and touched the tropics. Marching beneath a blazing
sun, huddling from the storm in the scant shelter of the tent, my
spirits were always keyed to the highest by the thought that I was
seeing life and that these adventures were but a fore-taste of those to
come. But one day when we marched beneath the blazing sun, we met a
storm and found no shelter. We charged through a hail of steel. They
took me to the sea on a stretcher, and by and by they shipped me home.
Then it was that I was a hero--when I came again to Black Log--what was
left of me.
My people were very kind. They sent Henry Holmes's double phaeton to
the county town to meet my train, and as I stumbled from the car, being
new to my crutches, I fell into the arms of a reception committee. Tim
was there. And my little brother fought the others off and picked me
up and carried me, as I had carried him in the old days when he was a
toddling youngster and I a sturdy boy. But he was six feet two now and
I had wasted to a shadow. Perry Thomas had a speech prepared. He is
our orator, our prize debater, our township statesman, and his
frock-coat tightly buttoned across his chest, his unusually high and
stiffly starched collar, his repeated coughing as he hovered on the
outskirts of the crowd, told me plainly that he had an address to make.
Henry Holmes, indeed, asked me to stand still just one minute, and I
divined instantly that he was working in the interest of oratory; but
Tim spoiled it all by running off with me and tossing me into the
phaeton.
So in the state-coach of Black Log, drawn by Isaac Bolum's
lemon-colored mules, with the committee rattling along behind in a
spring wagon, politely taking our dust, I came home once more, over the
mountains, into the valley.
Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever make another journey as long as that
one. Sometimes I have ventured as far as the gap, and peeped into the
broad open country, and caught the rumble of the trains down by the
river. There is one of the world's highways, but the toll is great,
and a crippled soldier with a scanty pension and a pittance from his
school is wiser to keep to the ways he knows.
And how I know the ways of the valley! That day when we rode into it
every tree seemed to be waving its green arms in salute. As we swung
through the gap, around the bend at the saw-mill and into the open
country, checkered brown and yellow by fields new-ploughed and fields
of stubble, a flock of killdeer arose on the air and screamed a
welcome. In their greeting there seemed a taunting note as though they
knew they had no more to fear from me and could be generous. I saw
every crook in the fence, every rut in the road, every bush and tree
long before we came to it. But six months had I been away, yet in that
time I had lived half my life, and now I was so changed that it seemed
strange to find the valley as fat and full as ever, stretched out there
in the sunshine in a quiet, smiling slumber.
"Things are just the same, Mark, you'll notice," said Tim, pointing to
a hole in the flooring of the bridge over which we were passing.
The valley had been driving around that same danger spot these ten
years. There was a world of meaning to the returning wanderer in that
broken plank, and it was not hard to catch the glance of my brother's
eye and to know his mind.
Henry Holmes on the front seat, driving, caught the inflection of Tim's
voice and cried testily: "You are allus runnin' the walley down. Why
don't you tell him about the improvements instead of pintin' out the
bad spots in the road?"
"Improvements?" said I, in a tone of inquiry.
"Theop Jones has bought him a new side-bar buggy," replied the old man.
"Then the Kallabergers has moved in from the country and is fixin' up
the Harmon house at the end of the town."
"And a be-yutiful place they're makin' of it," cried Isaac Bolum;
"be-yutiful!"
"They've added a fancy porch," Henry explained, "and are gittin' blue
glass panes for the front door."
"We've three spring-beds in town now," put in Isaac in his slow, dreamy
way. "If I mind right the Spikers bought theirs before war was
declared, so you've seen that one. Well, Piney Martin he has got him
one--let me see--when did he git it, Henery?"
Old Holmes furrowed his brow and closed one eye, seeking with the other
the inspiration of the sky.
"July sixth," he answered. "Don't you mind, Ike, it come the same day
and on the wery same stage as the news of the sinkin' of the Spaynish
fleet?"
"Nonsense," retorted Isaac. "You're allus mixin' dates, Henery.
You're thinkin' of Tip Pulsifer's last baby. He come July six, for
don't you mind how they called him Cevery out of pity and generosity
for the Spayniards? Piney's spring-bed arrived the same day and on the
same stage as brung us the news of Mark here havin' his left leg shot
off."
"Mebbe--mebbe--mebbe," muttered Henry, shaking his head dubiously. "It
certainly do beat all how things happens all at once in this world.
Come to think of it, the wery next day six of my sheep was killed by
dogs."
"It's good you're gittin' your dates cleared," snapped old Bolum. "On
history, Henery Holmes, you are the worst."
Henry retorted with an angry protest against the indictment, declaring
that he was studying history when Bolum was being nourished on "soft
food." That was true. Isaac admitted it frankly. He wasn't his
mother's keeper, that he could regulate his own birthday. Had that
been in his power he would certainly have set it a half century earlier
or later to avoid being constantly annoyed by the "onreasonablest
argeyments" Six Stars had ever heard. This made old Holmes smile
softly, and he turned and winked at me. The one thing he had ever been
thankful for, he said, was that his life had fallen with that of Isaac
Bolum. Whenever he done wrong; whenever the consciousness of sin was
upon him and he needed the chastisin' rod, he just went to the store
and set and listened to Ike. To this Isaac retorted that it was a
wonder the rod had not worn out long ago; it was pleasing to know, at
least, that he was made of tough old hickory. Henry admitted this to
be a "good 'un" on him--an unusual one, considering the source--but
that did not settle the exact date of the arrival of Piney Martin's
spring-bed.
It was time for me to protest that it mattered little whether the event
occurred on July sixth or a week later, since what really interested me
was the question as to who was the owner of the third of these
luxuries. Isaac's serious, self-conscious look answered me, but I
pressed the inquiry to give him an opportunity to sing the praises of
this newest of his household gods. Mr. Bolum's pleasure was evident.
Once launched into an account of the comfort of springs as compared to
a straw-tick on ropes, he would have monopolized our attention to the
end of the journey, but the sagacious Henry blocked him rudely by a tug
at the reins which almost threw the lemon-colored mules on their
haunches.
We were at the foot of the slope where the road to Buzzards Glory
branches from the pike. The Arkers had spied us coming, and ran down
from the tannery to greet us. Arnold, after he had a dozen times
expressed his delight at my return, asked if I had seen any shooting.
His son Sam's wife nudged him and whispered in his ear, upon which he
apologized abruptly, explaining that he had dropped his spectacles in
the tanning vat. Sam sought to extricate his father from these
imaginary difficulties by demanding that I go coon-hunting with him on
the next night. This set Sam's wife's elbow going again very
vigorously, and the further embarrassment of the whole family was saved
by Henry Holmes swinging the whip across the backs of the mules.
On went the state-coach of Black Log. We clattered quickly over the
last level stretch. We dragged up the last long hill, and from its
brow I looked on the roofs of Six Stars rising here and there from the
green bed of trees. I heard the sonorous rumble of the mill, and above
it a shrill and solitary crow. On the state-coach went, down the
steep, driving the mules madly before it. Their hoofs made music on
the bridge, and my journey was ended.
Home again! Even Tip Pulsifer was dear to me then. He was between the
wheels when we stopped, and I planted a crutch on one of his bare feet
and embraced him.
He grinned and cried, "Mighty souls!"
That embrace, that grin and that heart-born exclamation marked the
entrance of the Pulsifer family into my life. Theretofore I had
regarded them with a suspicion born of a pile of feathers at the door
of their shanty on the ridge, for they kept no chickens. Now the six
little Pulsifers, all with the lower halves of their faces washed and
their hair soaped down, were climbing around me, and the latest comer,
that same Cevery who arrived with Piney Martin's spring-bed, was
hoisted into kissing distance by his mother, who was thinner and more
wan than ever, but still smiling. But this was home and these were
home people. My heart was open then and warm, and I took the seven
little Pulsifers to it. I took old Mrs. Bolum to it, too, for she
tumbled the clamoring infants aside and in her joy forgot the ruffles
in the sleeves of her wonderful purple silk. At her elbow hovered the
tall, spare figure of Aaron Kallaberger. Mindful of the military
nature of the occasion he appeared in his old army overcoat, in spite
of the heat. Rare honor, this! And better still, he hailed me as
"Comrade," and enfolding my hand in his long horny fingers, cried
"All's well, Mark!"
The mill ceased its rumbling. Already the valley was rocking itself to
sleep. Out of the darkening sky rang the twanging call of a
night-hawk, and the cluck of a dozing hen sounded from the foliage
overhead. A flock of weary sheep pattered along the road, barnward
bound, heavy eyed and bleating softly. The blue gate was opened wide.
My hand was on Tim's shoulder and Tim's arm was my support.
"All's well!" I cried. For I was hobbling home.
II
Perry Thomas still had his speech to deliver. He hovered around the
rocking-chair in which they had enthroned me, and with one hand he kept
clutching violently at his throat as though he were suppressing his
eloquence by muscular effort. His repeated coughing seemed a constant
warning that at any moment he might be vanquished in the struggle for
becoming silence. There was a longing light in his eyes and a look of
appeal whenever our glances met. My position was embarrassing. He
knew that I realized his predicament, but how could I interrupt the
kindly demonstrations of the old friends who pressed about me, to
announce that the local orator had a formal address of welcome that was
as yet unspoken? And an opportunity like this might never again occur
in Perry's life! Here were gathered not only the people of the
village, but of the valley. His words would fall not alone on the ears
of a few choice spirits of the store forum, or the scoffing pedants of
the literary society, for crowded into that little room were old men
whose years would give weight to the declaration that it was the
greatest talking they had ever heard; were young children, who in after
years, when a neglected gravestone was toppling over all that was left
of the orator, would still speak of the wonders of his eloquence; were
comely women to whom the household was the world and the household task
the life's work, but who could now for the moment lift their bent forms
and have their dulled eyes turned to higher and better things.
Moreover, there were in that room a score of deep eyes that could not
but quicken at the sight of a slender, manly figure, clad in scholastic
black, of a thin, earnest face, with beetled brows and a classic
forehead from which swept waves of black hair. Little wonder Perry was
restless under restraint! Little wonder he grew more melancholy and
coughed louder and louder, as the light without faded away, and the
faces within were dimmed in the shadow!
From the kitchen came the clatter of dishes and pans and a babel of
women's voices, the shrill commands of old Mrs. Bolum rising above
them. The feast was preparing. Its hour was at hand. Apollo never
was a match for Bacchus, and Perry Thomas could not command attention
once Mrs. Bolum appeared on the scene. He realized this. Her cries
came as an inspiration to action. In the twilight I lost him, but the
lamp-light disclosed him standing over Henry Holmes, who had been
driven into a corner and was held prisoner there by a threatening
finger. There was a whispered parley that ended only when the old man
surrendered and, stepping to the centre of the room, rapped long and
loud on the floor with his cane.
Henry is always blunt. He has a way of getting right at the heart of
things with everyone except Bolum. For Isaac, he regards
circumlocution as necessary, taking the ground that with him the
quantity and not the quality of the words counts. So when he had
silenced the company, and with a sweep of his cane had driven them into
close order about the walls, he said: "Mr. Thomas is anxious to make an
address."
At this moment Mr. Thomas was about to step into the zone of fire of a
hundred eyes. There was a very audible titter in the corner where
three thoughtless young girls had squeezed themselves into one
rocking-chair. The orator heard it and brought his heels together with
a click.
"Mind what I told you, Henery," he whispered very loud, glaring at Mr.
Holmes.
"Oh, yes," Henry returned in a casual tone.
He thumped the floor again, and when the tittering had subsided, and
only the snuffling of Cevery Pulsifer broke the silence, he said: "In
jestice to Mr. Thomas, I am requested to explain that the address was
originally intended to be got off at the railroad. It was forgot by
accident, and him not havin' time to change it, he asks us to make
believe we are standin' alongside of the track at Pleasantville just as
the train comes in."
Isaac Bolum had fixed himself comfortably on two legs of his chair,
with the projecting soles of his boots caught behind the rung. Feet
and chair-legs came to the floor with a crash, and half rising from the
seat, one hand extended in appeal, the other at his right ear, forming
a trumpet, he shouted: "Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!"
"This ain't a liter'ry meetin', Mr. Bolum. The floor is Mr. Thomas's,
I believe," said Henry with dignity.
"But I didn't catch the name of the station you said we was to imagine."
"I said Pleasantville," cried Henry angrily.
"I apologize," returned Isaac. "I thought you said Meadowville, and
never havin' been there, I didn't see how I could imagine the station."
"It seems to me, Isaac Bolum," retorted Henry with dignified asperity,
"that with your imagination you could conjure up a whole railroad
system, includin' the freight-yard. But Mr. Thomas has the floor."
"See here, Henery Holmes," cried Isaac, "it's all right for us old
folks, but there's the children. How can they imagine Pleasantville
station when some of 'em ain't yet seen a train?"
This routed even Henry Holmes. At the store he would never have given
in, but he was not accustomed to hearing so loud a murmur of approval
greet the opposition. He realized that he had been placed in a false
position by the importunities of Mr. Thomas, and to him he now left the
brunt of the trouble by stepping out of the illumined circle and losing
himself in the company.
The fire-swept zone had no terrors for Perry. With one hand thrust
between the first and second buttons of his coat, and the other raised
in that gesture with which the orator stills the sea of discontent, he
stepped forward, and turning slowly about, brought his eyes to bear on
the contumacious Bolum. He indicated the target. Every optic gun in
the room was levelled at it. The upraised hand, the potent silence,
the solemn gaze of a hundred eyes was too much for the old man to bear.
Slowly he swung back on two legs of his chair, caught the rungs again
with the projecting soles, turned his eyes to the ceiling, closed them,
and set himself to imagining the station at Pleasantville. The rout
was complete.
Perry wheeled and faced me. The hand was lowered slowly; four fingers
disappeared and one long one, one quivering one, remained, a whip with
which to chastise the prisoner at the bar.
"Mark Hope," he began, in a deep, rich, resonant voice, "we welcome you
home. We have come down from the valley, fourteen mile through the
blazin' noonday sun, fourteen mile over wind-swept roads, that you,
when agin you step on the soil of our beloved county, may step into
lovin' hands, outstretched to meet you and bid you welcome. Welcome
home--thrice welcome--agin I say, welcome!"
[Illustration: "Welcome home--thrice welcome!"]
Both of the orator's hands swung upward and outward, and he looked
intently at the ceiling. He seemed prepared to catch me as I leaped
from a second-story window. The pause as he stood there braced to
receive the body of the returning soldier as it hurtled at him, gave
Isaac Bolum an opportunity to be magnanimous. He clapped his hands and
cheered. In an instant his shrill cry was drowned in a burst of
applause full of spirit and heart, closing with a flourish of wails
from Cevery Pulsifer and the latest of the Kallabergers. Perry's arms
fell gracefully to his side and he inclined his head and half closed
his eyes in acknowledgment. Then turning to Isaac, measuring every
word, in a voice clear and cutting, his long forefinger shaking, he
cried: "From the bloody battlefields of Cuby, from her tropic camps
where you suffered and bled, you come home to us to-day. You have
fought in the cause of liberty. To your country you have give a
limb--you----"
Poor Bolum! Awakened from the gentle doze into which he had fallen the
instant Cevery Pulsifer relieved him of the duty of leading the
applause, he brought his chair down on all four legs, and slapped both
knees violently. Satisfied that they were still there, he looked up at
the orator.
"You have give a limb," repeated Perry, emphasizing the announcement by
shaking his finger at the old man.
Isaac's mouth was half open for a protest, when he remembered, and
leaning over seized the toe of each boot in a hand and wriggled his
feet. When we saw his face again he was smiling gently, and swinging
back, he nestled his head against the wall and closed his eyes once
more.
"You would have give your life," cried Perry.
But the only sign old Bolum made was to twirl the thumbs of his clasped
hands.
"Six months ago, six short, stirrin' months ago you left us, just a
plain man, at your country's call." Perry was thundering his rolling
periods at us. "To-day, a moment since, standin' here by the track, we
heard the rumblin' of the train and the engyne's whistle, and we says a
he-ro comes--a he-ro in blue!"
Had Perry looked my way, he might have noticed that I was clad in
khaki, but he was addressing Henry Holmes, whose worthy head was
nodding in continual acquiescence. The old man stood, with eyes
downcast and hands clasped before him, a picture of humility. The
orator, carried away by his own eloquence, seemed to forget its real
purpose, and in a moment, sitting unnoticed in my chair with Tim at my
side, I became a minor figure, while half a hundred were gathered there
to do honor to Henry Holmes. Once I even forgot and started to applaud
when Perry raised his hand over the gray head as though in blessing and
said solemnly: "He-ro in blue--agin we bid you welcome!"
A little laugh behind me recalled me to my real place, and with a
burning face I turned.
I have in my mind a thousand pictures of one woman. But of them all
the one I love most, the one on which I dwell most as I sit of an
evening with my pipe and my unopened book, is that which I first saw
when I sought the chit who noticed my ill-timed applause and laughed at
me. I found her. I saw that she laughed with me and for me, and I
laughed too. We laughed together. An instant, and her face became
grave.
The orator, now swelling into his peroration, was forgotten. The
people of the valley--Tim--even Tim--all of them were forgotten. I had
found the woman of my firelight, the woman of my cloudland, the woman
of my sunset country down in the mountains to the west. She, had
always been a vague, undefined creature to me--just a woman, and so
elusive as never to get within the grasp of my mind's eye; just a woman
whom I had endowed with every grace; whose kindly spirit shone through
eyes, now brown, now blue, now black, according to my latest whim; who
ofttimes worn, or perhaps feigning weariness, rested on my shoulder a
little head, crowned with a glory of hair sometimes black, and
sometimes golden or auburn, and not infrequently red, a dashing, daring
red. Sometimes she was slender and elf-like, a chic and clinging
creature. Again she was tall and stately, like the women of the
romances. Again she was buxom and blooming, one whose hand you would
take instead of offering an arm. She had been an elusive,
ever-changing creature, but now that I had looked into those grave,
gray eyes, I fixed the form of my picture, and fixed its colors and
fired them in to last for all my time.
Now she is just the woman that every woman ought to be. Her hair is
soft brown and sweeps back from a low white forehead. She has tried to
make it straight and simple, as every woman should, but the angels seem
to have curled it here and mussed it there, so that all her care cannot
hide its wanton waves. Her face is full of life and health, so open,
so candid, that there you read her heart, and you know that it is as
good as she is fair.
She stood before me in a sombre gown, almost ugly in its gray color and
severe lines, but to me she was a quaint figure such as might have
stepped out of the old world and the old time when men lived with a
vengeance, and godliness and ugliness went arm in arm, for Satan had
preempted the beautiful. Against her a homely garb failed. She was
beautiful in spite of her clothes and not because of them. But this is
generally true with women. This one, instead of sharing our admiration
with her gown, claimed it all for herself. Her face had no rival.
I did not turn away. I could not. The gray eyes, once flashing with
the light of kindly humor, now softened with sympathy, now glowed with
pity. Pity! The thought of it stirred me with anger. The justice of
it made me rage. She saw in the chair a thin, broken figure, a drawn
brown face, a wreck of a man. Yesterday--a soldier. To-day--a hero.
To-morrow--a crippled veteran, and after that a pensioner drifting fast
into a garrulous dotage. She, too, was looking into the future. She
knew what I had lost. She saw what I dreaded. Her eyes told me that.
She did not know what I had gained, for she came of a silly people
whose blood quickened only to the swing of a German hymn and who were
stirred more by the groans of a penitent sinner than the martial call
of the bugle.
So it came that I struggled to my crutches and broke rudely in on Perry
Thomas's peroration. I had gathered all my strength for a protest
against the future. The people of the valley were to know that their
kindness had cheered me, but of their pity I wanted none. I had played
a small part in a great game and in the playing was the reward. I had
come forth a bit bruised and battered, but there were other battles to
be fought in this world, where one could have the same fierce joy of
the conflict; and he was a poor soldier who lived only to be toted out
on Decoration days. I was glad to be home, but gladder still that I
had gone. That was what I told them. I looked right at the girl when
I said it, and she lifted her head and smiled. They heard how in the
early spring in the meadow by the mill-dam Tim and I had stopped our
ploughs to draw lots and he had lost. He had to stay at home, while I
went out and saw the world at its best, when it was awake to war and
strife, and the mask that hid its emotion was lifted. They heard a
very simple story and a very short one, for now that I came to recount
it all my great adventure dwindled to a few dreary facts. But as best
I knew I told them of the routine of the camp and of the endless drills
in the long spring days down there at Tampa before the army took to
sea. I spoke of the sea and the strange things we saw there as we
steamed along--of the sharks that lolled in our wake, of the great
turtles that seemed to sun themselves on the wave-crests, of the
pelicans and the schools of flying fishes. Elmer Spiker interrupted to
inquire whether the turtles I had seen were "black-legs, red-legs, or
yaller-legs." I had not the remotest idea, and said that I could not
see how the question was relevant. He replied that it was not, except
that it would be of interest to some of those present to learn that
there were three distinct kinds of "tortles"--red-legs, black-legs, and
"yaller-legs." They were shipped to the city and all became
"tarripine." This annoyed me. Elmer is a great scholar, and it was
evident that he was simply airing his wisdom, and rather than give him
a second opportunity I tried to hurry to land; but Isaac Bolum awoke
and wanted to know if he had been dreaming.
"I thot I heard some one speakin' of flyin' fishes," he said.
[Illustration: Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and he
had lost.]
It was reckless in me to mention these sea wonders, for now in defence
of my reputation for truthfulness, I had to prove their existence. The
fabric of my story seemed to hang on them. Elmer Spiker declared that
he had heard his grandfather tell of a flying sucker that inhabited the
deep hole below the bridge when he was a boy, but this was the same
grandfather who had strung six squirrels and a pigeon on one bullet in
the woods above the mill in his early manhood. There Elmer winked.
Isaac Bolum allowed that they might be trout that had trained
themselves in the use of wings, but he did not believe that any
ordinary fish such as a chub or a pike or a sunny would care to leave
its natural element to take up with the birds. Perry Thomas began to
cough. That cough is always like a snake's warning rattle. Before he
had time to strike, I blocked the discussion by promising that if the
company suspended judgment I would in the near future prove the
accuracy of my statements on flying fishes by the encyclopaedia. This
promise met with general approval, so I hurried over the sea to the dry
land where I knew the ways better and was less likely to arouse higher
criticism. I told them of the stirring times in Cuba, till the day
came when we stormed the hill, and they had to carry me back to the
sea. I told them how lucky I was to get to the sea at all, for often I
had closed my eyes, worn out by the pain and the struggle for life,
little caring whether ever again I opened them to the light. Then
strength came, and hope, and I turned my face to the North, toward the
valley and home. It was hard to come back on crutches, but it was
better than not to come at all. It was best, to have gone away, else I
had never known the joy of the return, and I was pretty sure to stay,
now that I was home, but if they fancied me dozing away my life at the
store stove they were mistaken; not that I scorned the learned
discussion there, but the frosts were coming soon to stir up sluggish
blood, and when the guns were barking in the woods, and the hounds were
baying along the ridges, I would be with them.
I looked right at the girl when I said it. I was boasting. She knew
it. She must see, too, what a woful figure I should make with
strong-limbed fellows like Tim there, and strong-limbed hounds like old
Captain, who was lying at my side. But somehow she liked my vaunting
speech. I knew it when our eyes met.
III
The gate latch clicked. From the road Henry Holmes called a last
good-night, and Tim and I were alone. We sat in silence, watching
through the window the old man's lantern as he swung away toward home.
Then the light disappeared and without all was black. The village was
asleep.
By the stove lay my hound, Captain, snoring gently. He had tried to
keep awake, poor beast! For a time he had even struggled to hold one
eye open and on his master, but at last, overcome by weariness, his
head snuggled farther and farther down into his fore paws, and the
tired tail ceased its rhythmic beating on the floor.
What is home without a dog! Captain is happy. He smiles gently as he
sleeps, and it seems that in that strange dog-dreamland he and I are
racing over the ridges again, through the nipping winds, on the trail
of a fox or a rabbit. His master is home. He has wandered far to
other hunting grounds, but now that the tang is in the air that
foretells the frost and snow, he has come again to the dog that never
misses a trail, the dog that never fails him.
The hound raised his head and half opened one eye. He was sure that I
was really there, and the gleam of white teeth showed a broadening
dog-smile. And once more we were away on the dreamland trail--Captain
and I.
"He's been counting the days till you got home, Mark," said Tim,
holding a burning match over my pipe. "It was a bit lonely here, while
you were gone, so Captain and I used to discuss your doings a good deal
after the rest of the place had gone to bed. And as for young Colonel,
why he's heard so much of you from Captain there, I'm afraid he'll
swallow you when he gets at you in the morning."
Young Colonel was the puppy the returning soldier had never seen. He
had come long after I had gone away, and as yet I knew him only by his
voice, for I had heard his dismal wails down in the barn. In the
excitement of the evening I had forgotten him, but now I raised a
warning finger and listened, thinking that I might catch the appealing
cry. And is there any cry more appealing than that of a lonely puppy?
There was not a sound outside, and I turned to Tim.
My brother lighted his pipe, and leaned back in his chair, and looked
at me. I looked at him very, very hard. Then we both began to blow
clouds of smoke in each other's faces. Hardly a word had Tim and I
passed since that day in the field when I drew the long twig that sent
me away and left him behind to keep our home. What a blessing a pipe
is at a time like this! Tim says more by the vigor of his smoking than
Perry Thomas could express in a year's oration. So we enshrouded our
emotions in the gray cloud; but if he did not speak, I knew well what
he would be saying, and the harder I puffed the easier did he divine
what was uppermost in my mind. For we were brothers! This was the
same room that for years had been our world; this the same carpet over
which we had tumbled together at our mother's feet. There was the same
cupboard that had been our mountain; here the same chairs that formed
our ridges and our valleys. At the table by my side, by the light of
this very lamp, we sat together not so very long ago, boys, spelling
out with our father, letter by letter, word by word, the stories of the
Bible. Here we had lived our little lives; here we were to live what
was to come; and where life is as simple as it is with us we grow a bit
like the animals about us. We sit together and smoke; we purr, as it
were, and know each other's mind. Tim and I purred. Incident by
incident, year by year, we travelled down the course of our lives
again, over the rough ways, over the smooth ways, smoking and smoking,
until at last we brought up together at the present. Not a word had
either of us spoken, but at last when our reminiscent wanderings were
over and we paused on the threshold of the future, Tim spoke.
"Attractive?" he said in a tone of inquiry.
He was looking at me with eyebrows arched, curiously, and there was a
faint suggestion of hostility in the set of his mouth.
Poor Tim! He has seen so little of women! We have them in our valley,
of course. But he and I lived much in the great book-land beyond the
hills. We had read together of all the heroines of the romances, and
we knew their little ways and their pretty speeches as well as if we
had ourselves walked with them through a few hundred pages and lived
happily ever after. They had been the women of our world as distinct
from the women of our valley. The last we knew as kindly, honest
persons with a faculty for twisting their English and a woful ignorance
of well-turned speeches. They never said "Fair Sir" nor "Master." But
I had gone from that book-world and had seen the women of the real
world. Here I had the advantage of my brother. Into his life a single
woman had come from the real world. She was different from the women
of our valley. I had known that the moment our eyes met, and by the
way Tim smoked now, and by the tone of his terse inquiry, I knew that
he had met a woman who had said "Fair Sir" to him, and I feared for
him. It was disturbing. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but whether for
the tall, strong young fellow before me, to whom I had been all, or for
the fair-faced girl, I could not for the life of me tell. It seemed to
be a bit of both.
"I remarked that she was attractive," said Tim aggressively, for I had
kept on smoking in silence.
"Rather," I answered carelessly. "But who is she--a stranger here?"
"Rather," repeated Tim hotly. "Well, you are blind. I suppose you
judged her by that ugly gray gown. You thought she was some pious
Dunkard."
"I am no enemy of piety," I retorted. "In fact, I hardly noticed her
clothes at all, except to think that their simplicity gave her a sort
of Priscilla air that was fetching."
Tim softened. "That's it exactly," he said. "But, Mark, you should
have seen Mary Warden when she came here."
"From where?" I asked.
"From Kansas. She lived in some big town out West, and when her mother
died there was no one left to her but Luther Warden, her uncle. He
sent for her, and now she is living with him. The old man sets a great
store by her."
Luther Warden is rich. He has accumulated a fine lot of property above
Six Stars--several good farms, a mill and a tannery; but even the
chance of inheriting all these did not seem fair compensation for being
his niece and having to live with him. He was good to a fault. He
exuded piety. Six days of the week he worked, piling up the passing
treasures of this world. One whole day he preached, striving for the
treasures in that to come. You could not lay a finger on a weak spot
in his moral armor, but Tip Pulsifer protected from the assaults of
Satan only by a shield of human skin, always seemed to me the better of
the two. Tip wore leaky boots all last winter, but when spring came he
bought Mrs. Pulsifer a sewing machine. Have you ever worn leaky boots
when the snow was banked fence high? Luther Warden's boots never leak.
They are always tight and well tallowed. His horses and his cows
waddle in their fat, and the wool of his flocks is the longest in the
valley. Luther gets up with the sun and goes to bed with it. Some in
our valley think his heavy crops come from his six days of labor, and
some from his one day of preaching. He says that the one day does it
all; but he keeps on getting out with the sun on the other six. I knew
that the poor girl from Kansas must get up with the sun, too, for her
uncle was not the man to brook any dawdling. I knew, further, that
Sunday could not be a day of rest for her, for of all his people she
would have to listen to his preaching.
That was why I murmured in a commiserative tone, "Luther's niece--poor
girl!"
"You needn't pity her," Tim snapped. "She knows a heap more about the
world than you or I do. She--"
"She is not a Dunkard, then?" I interrupted.
"Not a bit," Tim answered. "I don't know what she was in Kansas, but
Luther has preached so much on worldliness and the vanity of fine
clothes that it wouldn't look right for his niece to go flaunting
frills and furbelows about the valley. That plain gray gown is a
concession to the old man. He'd like her to wear a prayer-cap and a
poke bonnet, I guess, but she has a mind of her own. I think she drew
the line there."
She had not given up so much, I thought. Perhaps in her self-denial
there was method, and her simple garb became her best. Even a
prayer-cap might frame her face the fairest; but she must know. And I
had seen that in the flash of her eye and the toss of her head that
told me that a hundred Luther Wardens, a hundred Dunkard preacher
uncles, could not abate her beauty one jot.
"She's rich," said Tim.
He blurted it out. As long as I had seen her and found her beautiful,
this announcement seemed uncalled for. Had she been plain of face and
figure it might have served a purpose, were my brother endeavoring to
excuse the sentimental state of mind he had disclosed to me. He knew
that the place he held in my heart was first. This had always been
true, and in our lonely innocence we had promised it should be true to
the end. There was to be a fair return. He had promised it, and now
he was learning how hard it was to keep faith. His attitude was one of
half penitence, half defiance. Had I not seen the girl, had he told me
that she was beautiful, and even rich and good, all our boyish pledges
would have been swept aside, and I should have cheered him on. But I
had seen her. She had laughed with me. Somehow we had understood each
other. And now I cared not so much what he felt for her as how she
looked on him. For once in our lives Tim and I were fencing.
"She's pretty, Tim," said I, "and rich, you say?"
"Mary has several thousand dollars," he answered. "Besides that,
she'll get all old man Warden has to leave, and that's a pretty pile."
"Little wonder she wears that Dunkard gown," said I with the faintest
sneer.
It angered Tim.
"That's not fair," he cried. "She's not that kind. Luther Warden is
all she has of kin, and if it makes him any happier to see her togged
out in that gawky Dunkard gown-----"
"Gawky?" said I. "Why, man, on a woman like that a plain dress is
simply quaint. She looks like an old Dutch picture. You must not let
her change it."
The insinuation of his authority made Tim pound the table with his
pipe. He was striving to be angry, but I knew what that furious flush
of his face meant. He tried to conceal it by smoking again, but ended
in a laugh.
"Oh, nonsense!" he said. Then he laughed again.
"Tell me," I went on, following up my advantage, "when is she coming
here, or when are you going to move up there?"
My brother recovered his composure.
"It's all silly, Mark. There is no chance of a girl like that settling
down here with a clumsy fellow like me--a fellow who doesn't know
anything, who's never been anywhere, who's never seen anything. Why,
she's travelled; she's from Kansas; she's lived in big cities. This is
nothing but a lark for her. She'll go away some day, and she'll leave
us here, grubbing away on our bit of a farm and spending our savings on
powder and shot--until we get to the happy hunting grounds."
Tim laughed mournfully. "I've been just a little foolish," he went on,
"but I couldn't help it, Mark. It doesn't amount to anything; it never
did and never will, and now that you're here and the rabbit season will
soon be in, we'll have other things to think of. But you must remember
I'm not the only man in the world who's been a bit of a fool in his
time."
"No," said I. "May I be spared myself, but see here, Tim, how does it
feel?"
"How does what feel?" snapped Tim.
"To be in love the way you are," I answered.
"Oh!" he exclaimed.
He had been taken back, and hesitated between anger and amusement.
When Tim hesitates he loses his temper as a sensible man should lose
it--he buries it, and his indomitable good humor wins.
"Tip Pulsifer says it's like religion," he answered. "At first it
makes you feel all low-down like, and miserable, and you don't care.
Then you either get over it entirely or become so used to it you don't
feel it at all."
"May I be spared!" I cried, "and may you get over it."
But the youngster refused to commit himself. He just smiled and
smoked, and it seemed as though in his suffering he was half happy. I
smoked, too. We smoked together. The silence startled Captain, for
the clock struck, and yawning, he arose, trotted to my side, and with
one leap he brought his ponderous paws into my lap.
You can trust your dog. He never fails you.
"Well, old chap," I said, as I scratched his nose ever so gently, "you
at least have no one to think of but me and Tim there, eh?"
[Illustration: "Well, old chap!"]
"No," cried Captain heartily.
That was not the exact word that he used, but he expressed it by
beating his tail against the table and giving a long howl.
"And if Tim, there, goes dawdling after a woman, we shall stick to the
ridges, and the foxes, and the rabbits. We can't go as fast as we used
to, Captain, but we can go together, eh?"
"The same as ever and the same forever," cried Captain.
Those were not his exact words, but I saw his answer in his eyes, for
he had climbed higher and they were close to mine. He seemed ready to
swallow me.
"And when he brings her home, Captain," said I, "and fills the whole
house with young ones who'll pull your tail and tickle your ears and
play horse with my crutches, we shall sit outside and smoke our pipes
alone, in peace and quiet, eh, Captain?"
"Oho!" cried Captain. "That we will, and you never need want, Mark,
for I've many a fine bone buried away against old age and rainy
weather."
"Spoken like a man," said I, slapping the hound on the back.
Tim had lighted a candle. Now he blew out the lamp and stood over me
in the half-light, holding out a hand.
"Come," he said. "That's right, put your hand on my shoulder, for the
stairs are steep and will trouble you. That's the way. Come along,
Captain; to-night we'll all go up together. And when she comes--that
woman--we'll go to your house--all three of us--the same as now--eh,
Captain?"
IV
"I love soldiers--just love 'em," she said.
"The sentiment is an old one with women," said I. "Were it not so,
there would be no soldiers."
"And for that reason you went to war?" she said.
"In part, yes," I answered.
"How I should like to see the woman!" she cried. "How proud she must
be of you!"
"Of me?" I laughed. "The woman? Why, she doesn't exist."
"Then why did you turn soldier?"
"I feared that some day there might be a woman, and when that day came
I wished to be prepared. I thought that the men who fought would be
the men of the future. But I have learned a great deal. They will be
the men of the past in a few months. The memory of a battle's heroes
fades away almost with the smoke. In a little while, to receive our
just recognition we old soldiers will have to parade before the public
with a brass band, and the band will get most attention. Would you
know that Aaron Kallaberger was a hero of Gettysburg if he didn't wear
an army overcoat?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "I have heard about it so often. He has told me
a hundred times."
"I suppose you have told a hundred other persons of Aaron's prowess?"
said I.
"No-o-o," she answered.
"And so," said I, "when Perry Thomas finished his oration last night, I
had to catch it up; and if my soldiering is to result in any material
good to me I must keep that oration moving to the end."
"But will you?" she asked.
How I liked the way she put it! It was flattering--subtly so. She
seemed to imply that I was a modest soldier, and if there is a way to
flatter a man it is to call him modest. Modesty is one of the best of
policies. To call a man honest is no more than to call him healthy or
handsome. These are attributes of nearly everyone at some time in his
life. But to do a great deed or a good deed, and to rejoice that it
has been done and the world is better for it, and not because you did
it and the world knows it, that is different. So often our modesty
consists in using as much effort to walk with hanging head and sloping
shoulders as we should need for a majestic strut.
She called me modest. Yet there I sat in my old khaki uniform. It was
ragged and dirty, and I was proud of it. It was a bit thin for a
chilly autumn day, but in spite of Tim's expostulation I had worn it,
refusing his offers of a warmer garb. I was clinging to my glory.
While I had on that old uniform, I was a soldier. When I laid it
aside, I should become as Aaron Kallaberger and Arnold Arker. A year
hence people would ask me if I had been a railroad man in my time.
She called me modest. That very morning Tim told me she was coming.
She had made some jellies, so she said, for the soldier of the valley.
They were her offering to the valley's idol. She thought the idol
would consume them, for bachelor cooking was never intended for
bachelor invalids. Tim had mentioned this casually. I suspected that
he believed that the visit to me was simply a pretence and that she
knew he was to be working in the field by the house. But I took no
chances. In the seclusion of my room I brushed every speck off the
uniform and made sure that every inch of it fitted snugly and without
an unnecessary wrinkle. Then when my hair had been parted and smoothed
down, I crowned myself with my campaign hat at the dashingest possible
tilt. Thus arrayed I fixed myself on the porch, to be smoking my pipe
in a careless, indifferent way when she came. An egotist, you say--a
vain man. No--just a man. For who when She comes would not look his
best? We prate a lot about the fair sex and its sweet vanities. Yet
it takes us less time to do our hair simply because it is shorter.
When Mary comes! The gate latch clicked and I whistled the
sprightliest air I knew. Down in the field Tim appeared from the maze
of corn-stalks and looked my way beneath a shading hand. There were
foot-falls on the porch. Had they been light I should have kept on
whistling in that careless way; but now I looked up, startled. Before
me stood not Mary, but Josiah Nummler.
[Illustration: Josia Nummler.]