it is not serious. They were worried at the store. Mr. Mills was for
coming right away, but we got word you were better, and he thought I
should run up anyway for a day to see if we could do anything. I'm to
go back to-morrow."
"It was good of you to come," Weston said, "but there is nothing to be
done. Just tell Mills the whole valley is nursing me; tell him that
I've one nurse alone who is worth a score." Mrs. Spiker looked very
conscious, but Weston smiled at Mary. Then he quickly added: "Tell him
that Mrs. Bolum and Mrs. Spiker and Mrs. Pulsifer--" he paused to make
sure that none was missed--"and Mark here are a hospital corps, taken
singly or in a body."
"I've told him that already," said Tim. "He knows everybody in Six
Stars, I guess, and he says as soon as you get well and come back to
the office, he will take a holiday himself, fox hunting."
"Poor little Colonel!" murmured Weston. "He'll have a melancholy
career. And Mary, too, she'll----"
"But it was when I told him about Mary that he made up his mind to
come," Tim said.
"Indeed." The girl spoke very quietly. "And, perhaps, Tim, you'll
send Edith along to help us. We women of Black Log are so clumsy."
"A good idea," said Weston. "Capital. You must bring Miss Smyth up,
too, Tim."
"Parker," I corrected, "Edith Parker."
"But is it Parker?" Weston appealed to my brother. "Mark tells me
she's the book-keeper's daughter. Has old Smyth gone?"
"No," Tim stammered, very much confused. "I guess you don't know
Parker. He's come lately."
"That explains it, then," said Weston.
But he turned and looked away from us, his brow knitted. Something
seemed to puzzle him, for he was frowning, but by and by the old
cynical smile came back.
He said suddenly: "Tim, I wish you luck. I'm glad anyway it isn't
Smyth's daughter. That was what I couldn't understand. Ever see
Smyth's daughter? No. Well, you needn't bemoan it. I dare say Miss
Parker is all you picture her, and I hope you'll win."
"Don't you think you'd better rest now?" asked Tim, with sudden
solicitation. Though he addressed himself to Weston, his eyes were
appealing to the doctor.
"I think I had," Weston answered, not waiting for the physician to
interpose any order. "I get tuckered out pretty easily these days,
with this confounded bullet-hole in me--but stay a moment, Tim.
They've got a letter from me at the office by this time. It may
surprise them; it may surprise you, but I wanted you to know I'd fixed
it all right for you, my boy. I did it for Edith's sake."
Tim, with face flushed and hands outstretched in protest, arose from
his chair and went to the bedside.
"But don't you see it's all a joke," he cried. "I can't take it.
Won't you believe me this time? There isn't any Edith!"
"I knew that long ago, Tim," Weston answered quietly. "But there may
be some day."
He turned his back to us.
"Please go," he said brusquely. "I want to rest. Don't stand over me
that way, Tim. Why, you look like little Colonel!"
* * * * * *
At the school-house door Tim halted suddenly.
"I'm going back, Mark," he whispered, "just for a minute. Weston will
think I'm a fraud and I want to tell him something. Now that the
others have left I may have a chance. Confound these kind-hearted
women that overrun the house! Why, a fellow couldn't say a word
without a dozen ears to hear it."
"I'll go back with you," said I.
We had fallen a few steps behind the others, but somehow they divined
our purpose and stopped, too.
"You needn't," said Tim. "I'll only be a minute."
"But I've something to tell you--a secret--and Mary----"
He was gone.
"I'll be back in a minute," he called. "Go on home."
He was lost in the darkness, and I started after him.
"Ain't you comin'?" cried Nanny Pulsifer.
"I must go back to Warden's," I answered.
"Then we'll go with you," said Mrs. Spiker firmly.
"Can't you go on home?" I said testily. "There's no use of your
troubling yourself further."
"Does you think we'll walk by that graveyard alone?" demanded the
tavern-keeper's wife.
"But there are no ghosts," I argued.
[Illustration: "But there are no ghosts," I argued.]
"We know that," returned Mrs. Pulsifer. "Everybody knows that, but
it's never made any difference."
"A graveyard is a graveyard even if there is no bodies in it," said
Mrs. Spiker, planting herself behind me so as to cut off further
retreat.
Tim must have caught some echoes of the argument on the spirit world,
for down the hill, through the darkness, came his call.
"Go on home, Mark--I'll be back in a minute."
I believed him, and I obeyed.
XV
Tim's minute? God keep me from another as long!
I had my pipe in my chair by the fire, and knocking the ashes out, I
went to the door, and with a hand to my ear listened for his footsteps.
Tim's minutes are long! Another pipe, and the clock on the mantel
marked nine. Still I smoked on. He had had a long talk with Weston,
perhaps, and had stopped downstairs for a minute with Mary. She had
told him all. How astounded the boy must be! Why, it would take her a
half hour at least to convince him that she spoke the truth when she
told him she was to marry his wreck of a brother; then when he believed
it, another half hour would hardly be enough for him to welcome her
into the family of Hope, and to talk over the wonderful fortunes of its
sons. Doubtless he had felt it incumbent on himself to sing my
praises, for he had always been blind to my faults. In this
possibility of his tarrying to display my virtues there was some
compensation for my sitting alone, with old Captain and young Colonel,
both sleeping, and only my pipe for company. Of course, I should
really be there with Tim, but Nanny Pulsifer and Mrs. Spiker had
decreed otherwise. Who knows how great may be my reward for bringing
them safely past the graveyard!
The third pipe snuffled out. I opened the door and listened. Tim's
minutes are long, for the last light in the village is out now. I went
to the gate and stood there till I caught the sound of foot-falls.
Then I whistled softly. There was no reply, but in a moment Perry
Thomas stepped into the light of our window.
"Good-evening," he said cheerfully. "It's rather chilly to be
swinging on the gate."
"I was waiting for Tim," I answered.
Perry gave a little dry cackle. "Let's go in," he said. "It's too
cold out here to discuss these great events."
I did not know what he meant, neither did I much care, for Perry always
treated the most trivial affairs in the most elegant language he knew.
But now that he stood there with his back to the fire, warming his
hands, he made himself more clear.
"Well, Mark," he said, "I congratulate you most heartily."
I divined his meaning. It did not seem odd that he had learned my
secret, for I was lost in admiration of his having once weighed an
event at its proper value. So I thanked him and returned to my chair
and my pipe.
"Of course it hurts me a bit here," said he, laying his hand on his
watch-pocket. "I had hopes at one time myself, but I fear I depended
too much on music and elocution. Do you know I'm beginnin' to think
that a man shouldn't depend so much on art with weemen. I notice them
gets along best who doesn't keep their arms entirely occupied with
gestures and workin' the fiddle."
[Illustration: "Of course it hurts me a bit here."]
Perry winked sagely at this and cackled. He rocked violently to and
fro on his feet, from heel to toe and toe to heel.
"Yet it ain't a bit onreasonable," he went on. "The artist thinks he
is amusin' others, when, as a matter of fact, he is gettin' about
ninety per cent. of the fun himself. We allus enjoys our own singin'
best. I see that now. I thought it up as I was comin' down the road
and I concided that the next time I seen a likely lookin' Mrs. Perry
Thomas, she could do the singin' and the fiddlin' and the elocution,
and I'd set by and look on and say, 'Ain't it lovely?'"
"You bear your disappointments bravely," said I.
"Not at all," Perry responded. "I'm used to 'em. Why, I don't know
what I'd do if I wasn't disappointed. Some day a girl will happen
along who won't disappoint me, and then I'll be so set back, I allow I
won't have courage to get outen the walley. Had I knowd yesterday how
as all the courtin' I've done since the first of last June was to come
tumblin' down on my head to-night like ceilin' plaster, not a wink of
sleep would I 'a' had. Now I know it. Does I look like I was goin' to
jump down the well? No, sir. 'Perry,' I says, 'you've had a nice time
settin' a-dreamin' of her; you've sung love-songs to her as you
followed the plough; you've pictured her at your side as you've strayed
th'oo fields of daisies and looked at the moon. Now in the natural
course of events she's goin' to marry another. When she's gettin'
peekit like trying to keep the house goin' and at the same time prevent
her seven little ones from steppin' into the cistern or fallin' down
the hay-hole, you can make up another pretty pickter with one of the
nine hundred million other weemen on this globe as the central figger!'"
At the conclusion of this philosophic speech my visitor adjusted his
thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, brought himself to rest with a click
of his heels and smiled his defiance.
"But I congratulate you truly, heartily," he added.
"Thank you, Perry," I answered. "In spite of your trifling way of
regarding women, I hope that some day you may find another as good as
Mary Warden."
"The same to you, Mark," said he.
"The same to me?" I cried, with a touch of resentment.
"Of course," he replied. "I says to myself to-night, 'I hope Mark is
as fortunate,' I says, when I saw them two a----"
"What two?" I exclaimed, lifting myself half out of my chair in my
eagerness.
"Why, Tim and her," Perry answered. "Ain't you heard it yet, Mark? Am
I the first to know?"
"Tim and her," I cried. "Tim and Mary?"
"Yes," said Perry.
He saw now that he was imparting strange news to me. In my sudden
agitation he divined that that news had struck hard home, and that I
was not blessed with his own philosophic nature. The smile left his
face. He stepped to me, as I sat there in the chair staring vacantly
into the fire, and laid a hand on my shoulder.
"I thought of course you knowd it," he said gently. "I thought of
course you knowd all about it, and when I seen them up there to-night,
her a-holdin' to him so lovin', says I to myself, 'How pleased Mark
will be--he thinks so much of Tim and Mary.'"
Tim's minute! I knew now why it was so long. I should have known it
long ago. I feared to ask Perry what he had seen. I divined it. I
had debated with myself too much the strangeness of Mary's promise, and
often in the last few days there had come over me a vague fear that I
was treading in the clouds. She had told me again and again that she
cared for me more than for anyone else in the world. But that night
when I had asked her if she loved me, she had turned my collar up. I
believed that when she spoke then it was what she thought the truth.
She had pledged herself to me and I had not demanded more. I had been
selfish enough to ask that she link herself to my narrow life, and she
had looked at me clear in the eye. "You are strong, Mark, and good,
and true," she had said, "and in all the world there is none I trust
more. I'll love you, too. I promise."
On that promise I had built all my hopes and happiness, and it had
failed me. It was not strange. I had been a fool, a silly dreamer,
and now I had found it out. A soldier? Paugh! Away back somewhere in
the past, I had gone mad at a bugle-call. A hero? For a day. For a
day I had puffed myself up with pride at my deeds. And now those deeds
were forgotten. I was a veteran, a crippled pensioner, an humble
pedagogue, a petty farmer. This was the lot I had asked her to share.
She had made her promise, and that promise made and broken was more
than I deserved. From a heaven she had smiled down on me, and I had
climbed to the clouds, reaching out for her. Then her face was turned
from me, and down I had come, clattering to common earth, cursing
because I had hurt myself.
I turned to my pipe and lighted it again. Old Captain came and rested
his head on my knee and looked up at me, as I stroked it slowly.
"Poor dog," I said. It was such a relief, and Perry misunderstood.
"Has he been hurt?" he asked sympathetically.
"Yes," I answered, still stroking the old hound's head. "Very badly.
But he'll be all right in a few days--and we'll go on watching the
mountains--and thinking--and chasing foxes--to the end--the end that
comes to all poor dogs."
"It's curious how attached one gets to a dog," said Perry sagely,
resuming his rocking from heel to toe and toe to heel.
"It is curious," I said, smoking calmly. I even forced a grim smile.
Now that I could smile, I was prepared to hear what Perry had to tell
me, for after all I had been drawing conclusions from what might prove
to be but inferences of his. But he had been so positive that in my
inmost heart I knew the import of all he had to say.
"Well, Perry," I said, "you did give me a surprise. I didn't know it,
and, to tell the truth, was taken back a bit, for it hurt me here." I
imitated his effective waistcoat-pocket gesture, which caused him much
amusement. "I had hopes myself--you know that, and as I neither
fiddled nor recited poetry your own conclusions may be wrong."
"But Tim didn't do nothin'," Perry cackled. "He just goes away and
lets her pine. When he comes back she falls right into his arms and
gazes up into his eyes, and--" Perry stopped rocking and looked into
the fire. "You know, Mark," he said after a pause, "it must be nice
not to be disappointed."
"It must be very nice," said I, smoking harder than ever.
"That's what I said to myself as I looked in the window and seen them."
"You looked in the window--you peeped!" I fairly shouted, making a
hostile demonstration with a crutch.
"Why, yes" said Perry, looking hurt that I should question his action
in the least. "I didn't mean to. Comin' from over the ridge I passed
Warden's and thought I'd stop in and warm up and see how Weston was.
So I stepped light along the porch, not wantin' to disturb him, and
seein' a light in the room, I looked in before I knocked. But I never
knocked, for I says to myself, 'I'll hurry down and tell Mark; it'll
please him.'"
[Illustration: "And seein' a light in the room, I looked in."]
"And you saw Tim and Mary," said I.
"I should say I did," said Perry, "till I slipped away. But says I to
myself, 'It must be nice not to be disappointed.'"
"You said you saw Tim and Mary," said I, a trifle angrily.
"I should say I did," Perry answered, chuckling and rocking again on
his feet. "The two of 'em, standin' there in the lamplight by the
table, him a-lookin' down like he was dyin', her a-lookin' up like she
was dyin' and holdin' on to him like he was all there was left for her
in the world. It made me swaller, Mark, it made me swaller."
There was a lump in Perry's throat at that moment, and he stopped his
rocking and turned to the fire, so his back was toward me.
"Of course you knocked," said I, after a silence.
"Of course I didn't," he snapped. "Do you suppose I was wanted then?
'No, sir,' I says, 'for them there is only two people in all the
world--there's Tim and there's Mary.'"
Perry was putting on his overcoat, winding his long comforter about his
neck and drawing on his mittens.
"To tell the truth," he said, with a forced laugh, "I don't feel as
chipper as I usually do under such like circumstances. It seems to me
you ain't so chipper as you might be, either, Mark."
"Good-night, Perry," I said, smoking very hard.
"Good-night," he answered. At the door he paused and gazed at me.
"Say, Mark," he said, "them two was just intended for one another--you
know it--I see you know it. God picked 'em out for one another. I
know it. You know it, too. But it's hard not to be picked
yourself--ain't it?"
Tim's minute! God keep me from such another!
* * * * * *
It was all so plain now. The fire was dying away. The hands of the
clock were crawling off another hour, and still he did not come. But
what did I care? All in the world that I loved I had lost--Mary and my
brother--and Tim had taken both. He who had so much had come in his
strength and robbed me, left me to sit alone night after night, with my
pipe and my dogs and my crutches. Had he told me that night when I
came back to the valley that he loved the girl in all truth, I should
have stood aside and cheered him on in his struggle against her, but I
had not measured the depth of his mind nor given him credit for
cunning. Perry Thomas saw it. He had gone away from her and wounded
her by his neglect. In the fabrication of the other girl, the
beautiful Edith, whose charms so outshone all other women, he had hit
at the heart of her vanity; and now he had come back so gayly and
easily to take from me what I might not have won in a lifetime. Losing
her, I cared little that what he had done had been in ignorance that I
loved her and that she was plighted to me. Losing her, I had no
thought of blame for the girl, for when she told me that in all the
world she cared for none so much as me, she meant it, for she believed
that he had passed out of her life.
By the fireplace, so close that I could put my hand upon the arm, was
the rocking-chair I had placed for her, and many a night had I sat
there watching it and smiling, and picturing it as it was to be when
she came. There would Mary be, sewing beneath the lamplight; there the
fire burning, with old Captain and young Colonel, snuggling along the
hearthstone; here I should be with my pipe and my book, unread, in my
lap, for we should have many things to talk of, Mary and I. We should
have Tim. As he played the great game, we should be watching his every
move. And when he won, how she and I would smile over it and say "I
told you so!" When he lost--Tim was never to lose, for Tim was
invincible! Tim was a man of brain and brawn. His arm was the
strongest in the valley; in all our country there was no face so fine
as his; in all the world few men so good and true.
Now he had come! The chair there was empty. So it would always be.
But here I should always be with my pipe and my crutches, and the dogs
snuggling by the fire.
Tim had come! The clock hands were crawling on and on. His minute had
better end. I hurled my pipe into the smouldering coals; I tossed a
crutch at little Colonel, and the dog ran howling from the room. Old
Captain sat up on his haunches, his slantwise eyes wide open with
wonder.
Aye, Captain, men are strange creatures. Their moods will change with
every clock-tick. One moment your master sits smoking and watching the
flames--the next he is tearing hatless from the house; and it is cold
outside and the wind in the chimney is tumbling down the soot. When
the wind sings like that in the chimney, it is sweeping full and sharp
down the village street, and across the flats by the graveyard, whither
he goes hobbling.
Little Colonel comes cautiously into the room, hugging the wall till he
is back at the fireside. With his head between his fore-paws and one
eye closed, he watches the tiny tongue of flame licking up the last
coal. There are worse lives than a dog's.
XVI
Tim came whistling down the road. He whistled full and clear, and
while he was still at the turn of the hill the wind brought me a bit of
his rollicking tune as I huddled on the school-house steps, waiting.
The world was going well with him. He had all that the wise count
good; he was winning what the foolish count better. With head high and
swinging arms he came on, the beat of his feet on the hard road keeping
time to his gay whistling. Tim was winning in the game. While his
brother was droning over the reader and the spelling-book with
two-score leather-headed children, he was fighting his way upward in
the world of commerce. While his brother was wringing a living from a
few acres of niggardly soil and a little school, he was on the road to
riches; while his brother was wrangling with the worthies of the store
over the momentous problems of the day, he was where those problems
were being worked out and standing by the men who were solving them.
All in this world worth having was Tim's, and now even what was his
brother's he had taken. To him that hath! From him that hath not! He
had all. I had nothing. Now as he came swinging on so carelessly, I
knew that I had lost even him.
Never once had there come to my mind the thought of doing my brother
any bodily harm. My emotions were too conflicting for me to know just
why I had come at all into the night to meet him. Now it was against
him that the violence of my anger would vent itself. Now it was
against myself, and I cursed myself for an idle, dreaming fool. Then
came over me, overwhelming me, a sense of my own utter loneliness, and
against it Tim stood out so bold and clear-cut and strong; that I felt
myself crying out to him not to desert me and let a woman take him from
me. I thought of the old days when he and I had been all in all to
each other, and I hated the woman who had come between us, who had
lured me from him, who had lured him from me. Then as against my
misery, she stood out so bold and good, so wholly fair, that I cursed
Tim for taking her from me. I wanted to see him in the full heat of my
anger to tell him to his face how he had served me; to stand before him
an accuser till he slunk from me and left me alone, as I would be alone
from now to the end.
So I had quickened my pace, hobbling up the starlit road to the
school-house. There I was driven by sheer exhaustion to the shelter of
the doorway, and in the narrow refuge I huddled, waiting and listening.
The keen wind found me out and seemed to take joy in rushing in on me
in biting gusts and then whirling away over the flat. By and by it
brought me the rollicking air my brother whistled, and then came the
sound of foot-falls. In a moment he would be passing, and I arose,
intending to hail him. It was easy enough when I heard only his
whistling to picture myself confrating him in anger, but now that in
the starlight I could see his dark form coming nearer and nearer; now
that he had broken into a snatch of a song we had often sung together,
my courage failed me and I slunk farther into my retreat.
So Tim passed me. He went on toward the village, singing cheerfully
for company's sake, and I stood alone, in the shadow of the
school-house woods, listening. His song died away. I fancied I heard
the beat of his stick on the bridge; then there was silence.
I turned. Through the pines on the eastward ridge the moon was
climbing, and now the white road stretched away before me. It was the
road to her house. The light that gleamed at the head of the hill was
her light, and many a night in this same spot I had stopped to take a
last look at it. It used to wink so softly to me as I waved a hand in
good-night. Now it seemed to leer. The friendly beacon on the hill
had become a wrecker's lantern. A battered hulk of a man, here I was,
stranded by the school-house. As the ship on the beach pounds
helplessly to and fro, now trying to drive itself farther into its
prison, now struggling to break the chains that hold it, so tossed
about my love and anger, I turned my face now toward the hill, now
toward the village. The same impulse that caused me to draw into the
darkness of the doorway instead of facing Tim made it impossible for me
to follow him home. Angry though I was, I wanted no quarrel, yet I
feared to meet him lest my temper should burst its bounds. But I had a
bitter wind to deal with, too, and if I could not go home, neither
could I stand longer in the road, turning in my quandary from the
beacon on the hill, where she was, to the light that gleamed in our
window in the village, where he was.
The school-house gave me shelter. I groped my way to my desk and there
sank into my chair, leaned my head on my hands, and closed my eyes. I
wanted to shut out all the world. Here in the friendly darkness, in
the quiet of the night, I could think it all out. I could place myself
on trial, and starting at the beginning, retracing my life step by
step, I would find again the course my best self had laid down for me
to follow. For the moment I had lost that clear way. Blinded by my
seeming woes, I had been groping for it, and I had searched in vain.
But now the dizziness was going, and as I sat there in the darkness, my
eyes closed to shut out even the blackness about me, the light came.