folks. But what can a fellow get? A statue!" His eyes brightened.
"That's just the thing--a statue of Washington or Lincoln or General
Grant--how's that for an idee, Mark?"
"Excellent, if you are trying to make an impression on her uncle," I
answered.
Perry shook his hands despairingly.
"You have come to a poor person at such business, Perry," said I.
"What little I know of courting I have from books, and it seems to me
that the usual thing is flowers--violets--roses."
My friend straightened up in his chair and gazed at me very long and
hard. From me his eyes wandered to the calendar that hung behind my
desk.
"November--November," he muttered. "A touch of snow too--and violets
and roses."
He leaned toward me fiercely. "Violets come in May," he said. "This
here is a matter of weeks."
"I'm serious, Perry," said I. "Books are the thing, and flowers; not
wreaths and statues and paintings. You must send something that
carries some sentiment with it."
He saw that I was in earnest, and his countenance became brighter.
"Geraniums," he muttered; thumping the table. "I'll get Mrs. Arker to
let me have one of them window-plants of hers, and I'll put it in a new
tomato-can and paint it. How's that for a starter?"
"I've never read about men sending geraniums," I replied. "It's odd,
but I never have. I suppose the can makes them seem a little
unwieldly. Still----"
"I had thought of forty-graph album." Perry spoke timidly again.
I had no mind to let him venture any more suggestions. His was too
fickle a fancy, and I had settled on an easy solution of the problem.
He was to send her a geranium. Somehow, I knew deep down in my own
heart, ill versed as I was in such things, that I should never send her
such a gift myself. I would climb to the top of Gander Knob for a wild
rose or rhododendron; I would stir the leaves from the gap to the river
in search of a simple spray of arbutus for her. But step before her
with my arms clasping a tin can with a geranium plant r Heaven forbid!
Perry was different. The suggestion pleased him. He was rubbing his
hands and smiling in great contentment.
"I might send a po-em with it," he said. "I've allus found that poetry
kind of catches ahold of a girl when you are away. It keeps you in her
mind. It must be sing-song, though, kind of gettin' into her head like
quinine. It must keep time with the splashin' of the churn and the
howlin' of the wind. I mind when I was keepin' company with Rhoda
Spiker--she afterward married Ulysses G. Harmon, of Hopedale--I sent
her a po-em that run somethin' like this: 'I live, I love, my Life, my
Light; long love I thou, Sweetheart so bright'----"
Perry's po-em never got into my brain, for as he repeated the
captivating lines, I was gazing over his shoulder, out of the window,
down the road to the village. I saw a girl on the store porch,
standing by the door a moment as if undecided which way to go. Then
she turned her head into the November gale and came rapidly up the
road. In a minute more she would be passing the school-house door.
Tim's letter was in my pocket and the sun was still high over the gable
of the mill.
[Illustration: I saw a girl on the store porch.]
"Rhoda sent me a postal asking me to write her a po-em full of Ks or Xs
or Ws, just so as she could get the Ls out of her head, and----"
"Perry!" I broke right into his story and seized the lapel of his
waistcoat as though he were my dearest friend. "My girl is going by
the school-house door this very minute. Now you help me. Take the
school for the rest of the afternoon."
"Your girl?" cried Perry. His voice broke from the smothered
conference tone and the school heard it and tittered. He recovered
himself and poked me in the chest.
"Oh!" he said, "Widow Spoonholler--I seen you last Sunday singin' often
the same book--I seen you. Hurry, Mark, hurry; and luck to you!
You've done me most a mighty good turn."
X
Mary sat knitting. Beware of a woman who knits. The keenest lawyer in
our county is not so clever a cross-examiner as his sister when she
sits with her needles and yarn. Questions directed at one can be
parried. You expect them and dodge. The woman knits and knits, and
lulls you half to sleep, and then in a far-away voice asks questions.
They come as a boon, a gracious acknowledgment that you exist, and
though in her mind your place is secondary to the flying needles and
the tangled worsted, still you are there and she is half listening to
what you have to say. So you tell her twice as much as is wise. You
have no interest for her. Her eyes are fixed on her work. She asks
you the secret of your life, and then bends farther over, seeming to
forget your existence. Desperate, you shout it at her, and she looks
up and smiles, a wondering, distraught smile; then goes on knitting.
There were some things in Tim's letter that I did not intend to tell
Mary. He had written to me in confidence. A man does not mind letting
one of his fellows know that he is in love with a woman, but to let a
woman know it is different. She will think him a fool, unless she is
his inspiration. I knew Tim. I knew that he was no fool, and I did
not wish her to get such an impression. I loved a pretty woman. So
did Tim. But Mary would not understand it in Tim's case. That was why
I folded the letter when I had read the first four pages.
But Mary was knitting. "It is fine to think he is getting along so
well," she said.
She looked up, but not at me. Her face was turned to the window; her
eyes were over the valley which was growing gray, for the sun was down.
What she saw there I could not tell. A drearier sight is hard to find
than our valley when the chill of the November evening is creeping over
it as the fire in the west goes out. Night covers it, and it sleeps.
But the winter twilight raises up its shadows. In the darkness all is
hidden. In the half-light there is utter loneliness.
I turned from the window to the letter, and Mary looked at me for the
first time in many minutes.
"Are you going to read the rest of the letter?" she demanded.
"You have heard 'most all of it," I replied evasively.
"And the rest?" she said.
"Is of no interest," I answered. "It's just a few personal,
confidential things. Perhaps some time I can tell you."
"Oh," she exclaimed carelessly, and went on knitting, drawing closer to
the lamplight.
"How long is it since he left?" she asked at last, reaching down to
untangle the worsted from the end of the rocker.
"Six weeks," said I. "It's just six weeks coming to-morrow since Tim
and I parted at Pleasantville. To think he has been promoted already!
At that rate he should be head of the firm in a year or two."
"Mr. Weston has been very kind," said she. "Of course he has seen that
Tim had every chance. He is the most thoughtful man I ever knew.
He----"
Weston's excellent qualities were well known to me. I had discovered
them long ago, and I did not care to hear Mary descant on them at
length. He had done much for Tim, but it was what Tim had done for
himself that I was proud of, so I interrupted her rather rudely.
"Yes, he got Tim his place; but you must remember Mr. Weston has hardly
been in New York a day since the boy left. He doesn't bother much
about business, so, after all, Tim is working his way alone."
"Yes," said Mary. She had missed a stitch somewhere, and it irritated
her greatly. That was evident by the way she picked at it. She
remedied the trouble somehow, recovered her composure, and went on
knitting.
"Is it eight dollars he is making, did you say?" she asked.
"Yes, eight," I replied, verifying the figure with a glance at the
letter.
"A week or a month?"
"A week. Just think of it--that is more than I got in the army."
But Mary was not a bit impressed. I remembered that she came from
Kansas, and in Kansas a dollar is not so big as in our valley.
"Living is so expensive in the city," she said absently. "With eight
dollars a week here Tim would be a millionaire. But in New York--" A
shrug of the shoulder expressed her meaning.
"True," said I, a bit ruefully.
I had expected her to clasp her hands, to look up at me and listen to
my stories of Tim's success, and hear my dreams for his future.
Instead, she went on knitting, never once raising her eyes to me. It
exasperated me. In sheer chagrin I took to silence and smoking. But
she would not let me rest long this way, though I was slowly lulling
myself into a state of semi-coma, of indifference to her and calm
disdain.
"Of course Tim has made some friends," she said, glancing up from her
work very casually.
"Of course he has," I snapped.
"That's nice," she murmured--knitting, knitting, knitting.
I expected her to ask who his friends were, and how he had made them.
That was all in the letter. Moreover, it was in the part I had not
read to her. But she abruptly abandoned this line of inquiry. She did
not care. She let me smoke on.
Suddenly she dropped her work and asked, "Is that a footstep on the
porch?"
"Footsteps! No--why, who did you think was coming?" I said.
"Mr. Weston promised to drop in on his way home from hunting--but I
guess he'll disappoint me. I hoped it was he." She fell to her task
again, only now she began to hum softly, thus shutting me off entirely.
For a very long while I endured it, but the time came when action of
some kind was called for. We were not married, that I could sit
forever smoking while she hummed. Even in Black Log, etiquette
requires that a man talk to a woman when in her company; and when the
woman ceases to listen, the wise man departs. That was just what I did
not want to do, and only one alternative was left me. I got out the
letter and held it under the light.
"You were asking about Tim's friends, Mary," said I.
"Was I?" she returned. "I had forgotten. What did I say?"
"You asked if he had made any friends," I replied, as calmly as I
could. "I was going to read you what he said."
"Oh!" she cried. And at last she dropped her knitting, and resting her
elbows on her knees, clasping her chin in her hands, she looked up at
me from her low chair. "I thought it was forbidden," she said.
"Tim didn't say anything about not reading it," I answered. "At first,
though, it seemed best not to; but you'll understand, Mary. Of course,
we mustn't take him too seriously, but it does sound foolish. Poor
Tim!"
"Poor Tim!" repeated the girl. "He must be in love."
"He is," said I.
"Then don't read it!" she cried. "Surely he never intended you to read
it to me."
"Of course he did," I laughed, for at last I had aroused her, and now
her infernal knitting was forgotten; she no longer strained her ears
for Weston's footfalls. Her eyes were fixed on me. "Poor old Tim!
Well, let's wish him luck, Mary. Now listen."
So I read her the forbidden pages.
"'You should see Edith Parker, Mark. She is so different from the
girls of Black Log. Her father is head book-keeper in the store, and
he has been very good to me. Last week he took me home to dinner with
him. He has a nice house in Brooklyn. His wife is dead, and he has
just his daughter. We have no women in Black Log that compare to her.
She is tall and slender and has fair hair and blue eyes.'"
"I hate fair-haired women," broke in Mary with some asperity. "They
are so vain."
"I agree with you," said I. "That is invariably the case, and dark
hair is so much more beautiful; but we must make allowance for Tim.
Let us see--'fair hair and blue eyes and the sweetest face'--I do
believe that brother of mine is out of his head to write such stuff."
"He certainly is," said Mary, very quietly.
"Poor Tim! But go on."
"'We played cards together for a while, till old Mr. Parker went asleep
in his chair, and then Edith and I had a chance to talk. You know,
Mark, I've always been a bit afraid of women, and awkward and ill at
ease around them. But Edith is different from the girls of Black Log.
We were friends in a minute. You don't know what it is to talk to
these girls who have been everywhere, and seen everything, and know
everything. They are so much above you, they inspire you. For a girl
like that no sacrifice a man can make is too great. To win a girl like
that a man must do something and be something. Now up in Black
Log----'"
"Yes, up in Black Log the women are different," said Mary in a quiet
voice. "They have to work in Black Log, and it's the men they work
for. If they sat on thrones and talked wisdom and looked beautiful,
the kitchen-fires would die out and the children go naked."
"Tim doesn't say anything disparaging to the people of our valley," I
protested. "He says, 'in Black Log the girls don't understand how to
dress. They deck themselves out in gaudy finery. Now Edith wears the
simplest things. You never notice her gown. You only see her figure
and her face.'"
"Do I deck myself out in gaudy finery, Mark?" Mary's appeal was direct
and simple.
A shake of the head was my only answer. I wanted to tell her that Tim
was blind. I wanted to tell her the boy was a fool; that Edith, the
tall, thin, pale creature, was not to be compared to one woman in our
valley; that I know who that woman was; that I loved her. I would have
told her this. With a sudden impulse I leaned toward her. As suddenly
I fell back. My crutches had clattered to the floor!
A battered veteran! A pensioner! A back-woods pedagogue! That I was.
That I must be to the end. My place was in the school-house. My place
was on the store bench, set away there with a lot of other broken
antiquities. That I should ask a woman to link her life with mine, was
absurd. A fair ship on a fair sea soon parts company with a
derelict--unless it tows it. A score of times I had fought this out,
and as often I had found but one course and had set myself to follow
it, but there was that in Mary's quiet eyes that shook my resolution.
There was an appeal there, and trust.
"I am glad, anyway, I am not so much above you, Mark," she said, now
laughing.
I gathered up my crutches and the letter. I gathered up my wits again.
"There's where I feel like Tim, indeed," I said.
"I don't think I should like this lofty Edith," the girl exclaimed.
"What a pompous word it is--Edith! Tim is ambitious. I suppose he
rolls that name over and over in his mind."
It seemed that Mary was unnecessarily sharp toward a young woman she
had never seen and of whom she had as yet heard nothing but good.
While for myself I felt a certain resentment at Tim for his praise of
this girl and the condescending references to my misfortune in never
having seen her like, I had for him a certain keen sympathy and hope
for his success. I had a certain sympathy for Edith, too, for a man in
love, if unrestrained in his praise, will make a plain, sensible,
motherly girl look like a frivolous fool. Perhaps in this case Edith
was the victim. I suggested this to Mary, and she laughed softly.
"Perhaps so," she said. "But I must admit it irritates me to see our
Tim lose his head over a stranger. I can only picture her as he
does--a superior being, who lives in Brooklyn, whose name is Edith, and
who wears her hair in a small knot on top of her head. Can you
conceive her smile, Mark, if she saw us now--if this fine Brooklyn girl
with her city ways dropped down here in Black Log?"
"That's all in Tim's letter," I cried. "Listen. 'She asked all about
my home and you. I told her of the place and of all the people, of
Mary and Captain. Last night I took over that picture of you in your
uniform, and I won't tell you all the nice things she said about you,
and----'"
"She's a flatterer," cried Mary.
"I am beginning to love her myself," said I. "But listen to Tim. 'She
told me she hoped to see Black Log some day, and to meet the soldier of
the valley. I said that I hoped she would, too, but I didn't tell her
that a hundred times a day, as I worked over the books in the office, I
vowed that soon I'd take her there myself.'"
"As Mrs. Tim," Mary added, for I was folding up the letter.
"As Mrs. Tim, evidently," said I. "Poor old Tim! It's a very bad
case."
"Poor old Tim!" said Mary.
She took up her needles and her work, and fell to knitting.
"I suppose they must be very rich--the Parkers, I mean." This was
offered as a wedge to break the silence, for the needles were going
very rapidly now, and the stitches seemed to call for the closest
watching.
"Yes," said Mary.
I lighted my pipe again.
"What a grand man Tim will be when he comes back home." I suggested
this after a long silence. "He'll look fine in his city clothes, for
somehow those city men do dress differently from us country chaps. Now
just picture Tim in a--in a----"
Mary was humming softly to herself.
XI
The county paper always comes on Thursday. This was Thursday. Elmer
Spiker sat behind the stove, in a secluded corner, the light of the
lamp on the counter falling over his left shoulder on the leading
column of locals. Elmer was reading. There was a store rule
forbidding him to read aloud, which caused him much hardship, for as he
worked his way slowly down the column, his right eye and left ear kept
twitching and twitching as though trying to keep time with his lips.
Josiah Nummler's long pole rested on the counter at his side, and his
great red hands were spread out to drink in the heat from the glowing
bowl of the stove.
"It's a-blowin' up most a-mighty, ain't it?" he said, cheerfully. "Any
news, Elmer?"
"Oh now, go home," grunted Mr. Spiker, rolling his pipe around so the
burning tobacco scattered over his knees. "See what you've done!" he
snapped angrily, brushing away the sparks.
"I didn't notice you was in the middle of a word, Elmer, really I
didn't," pleaded old Mr. Nummler.
"I wasn't in the middle of a word," retorted Elmer, as he drove his
little finger into his pipe in an effort to save some of the tobacco.
"I was just beginnin' a new piece. Things is gittin' so there ain't a
place left in this town for a man to read in peace and comfort. Here I
am, tryin' to post up on the local doin's, on polytics and religion,
and ringin' in my ears all the time is 'lickin' the teacher, lickin'
the teacher, lickin' the teacher.' S'pose every man here did lick the
teacher in his time--what of it, I says, what of it?"
"Yes, what of it?" said I, closing the door with a bang.
I was plodding home from Mary's. She had hummed me out at last, and I
had tucked Tim's letter in my pocket and hobbled back to the village.
The light in the store had drawn me aside and I stopped a moment just
to look in. The store is always a fascinating place. There is always
something doing there, and I opened the door a crack to hear what was
under discussion. Catching the same refrain that troubled Elmer
Spiker, I entered.
"What of it?" I demanded, facing the company. "I don't believe there
is a man here who ever thrashed the teacher."
Theophilus Jones raised himself from the counter on which he was
leaning, and waved a lighted candle above his head.
"Here comes the teacher--make way for the teacher!"
Josiah Nummler pounded the floor with his long pole.
"See the conquerin' hero comes," he cried. "A place for him--a place
for him!" And with the point of his stick he drove the six men on the
bench so close together as to give me an excellent seat.
"Thrice welcome, noble he-ro, as Perry Thomas says!" shouted Aaron
Kallaberger, thrusting his hand into his bosom in excellent imitation
of the orator.
"He's lookin' pretty spry yet, ain't he, boys?" said Isaac Bolum. He
stood before me, leaning over till his hands clasped his knees, and
peered into my face, smiling. "The teacher ain't changed a bit."
"Thank you for the reception," said I. "But explain. What's this all
about?"
Elmer Spiker folded the county paper and came around to our side of the
stove. There he struck his favorite attitude, which was always made
most effective by the endless operation of putting his spectacles in
their case--pulling them out--waving them--_ad infinitum_. For in our
valley spectacles are the sceptre of the sovereign intellect.
"They was talkin' about lickin' the teacher," Elmer said, "and sech
talkin' I never heard. It was the nonsensicalest yet. The way them
boys was tellin' about the teachers they had knowed made me feel for
your life when I seen you come in. I thought they'd fall on you like
so many wolves."
"Now see here, Elmer Spiker," shouted Henry Holmes, "that's an
injestice. I never said I'd licked the teacher when I was a boy. I
only said I'd tried it."
"You give me to understand that the teacher was dead now," returned
Elmer severely.
"He is," cried Henry.
"And you claim you done it."
"I done it," shouted Mr. Holmes, pounding the floor with his cane. "I
done it! You think I'm a murderer? Why, old Gilbert Spoonholler was
ninety-seven year old when he went away. He was only forty when him
and me had it out."
"That's different," said Elmer calmly. "I understood from your
original account that he died in battle."
"I tho't so too, Henery," put in Isaac Bolum. "You misled me,
complete. 'Here,' says I, 'at last I have met a man who has licked the
teacher.' And all the time you was tellin' about it, we was admirin'
you--Joe Nummler and me--and now we finds Gil Spoonholler lived
fifty-seven year after that terrible struggle."
"I can't just fetch my memory back to that particular incident,
Henery," said Josiah, "but my recollection is that Gil Spoonholler held
the school-house agin all comers, and that's sayin' a good deal, for we
was tough as hickory when we was young."
"The modern boys is soft," Aaron Kallaberger declared. "They regards
the teacher in a friendlier light than they used to. They are
weakenin'. The military sperrit's dyin' out. The spectacle is
conquerin' the sword."
[Illustration: Aaron Kallaberger.]
This was too direct a slap at Elmer Spiker to pass unnoticed; Elmer was
too old an arguer to use any ponderous weapon in return. He even
smiled as he punctuated his sentences with his battered spectacle-case.
"You never said a truer word, Aaron. It allus was true. It allus will
be true. It's just as true to-day as when Henery Holmes tackled old
Gilbert Spoonholler, as when Isaac Bolum yander argyed with Luke
Lampson that five times eleven was forty-five; as when you refused to
admit to the same kind teacher that Harrisburg was the capital of
Pennsylwany."
"And as to-day when William Belkis--" Theophilus Jones was acting
strangely. He was bowing politely at me.
I was mystified. Why at a time like this I should be treated as a
subject of so much distinction was a puzzle, and I was about to demand
an explanation, when Josiah Nummler interrupted.
"It's true," he said. "Teachers ain't changed and the boys ain't
changed. I'm eighty year old within a week, and all my life I've heard
boys blowin' about how they was goin' to lick the teacher, and I've
heard old men tell how they done it years and years before--but I've
never seen an eye-witness--what I wants is an eye-witness."
"You've been talkin' to Elmer Spiker," said Henry Holmes, plaintively.
"He's convinced you. He'd convince anybody of anything. He's got me
so dad-twisted I can't mind no more whether I went to school even."
"You never showed no signs, Henery." Isaac Bolum spoke very quietly.
"I guess you otter know it as well as anybody," Henry retorted angrily.
"Your ma was allus askin' me to take care of you, and you was a
nuisance, too, you was, Isaac. You was allus a-blubberin' and
a-swallerin' somethin'. You mind the time you swallered my copper
cent, don't you? You mind the fuss your ma made to my ma about it,
don't you? Why, she formulated regular charges that I 'tempted to
pizon you--she did, and----"
"Don't rake up them old, old sores," said Josiah Nummler soothingly,
"Ike'll give you back your copper cent, Henery."
"All Ike's property to-day ain't as val'able to me now as that cent was
then," Mr. Holmes answered solemnly. "It was the val'ablest cent I
ever owned. I never expect to have another I'd hate so to see
palpitatin' in Isaac Bolum's th'oat between his Adam's apple and his
collar-band."
"We're gittin' away from the subject," said Josiah. "You're draggin'
up a personal quarrel between you and Isaac Bolum, when we was
discussin' the great problem that confronts every scholar in his
day--that of thrashin' the teacher."
"It's a problem no scholar ever solved in the history of this walley,
anyway," declared Elmer Spiker.
"It ain't on the records," said Kallaberger.
"There are le-gends," Isaac Bolum said. He pointed at Henry Holmes
with his thumb. "Sech as his."