Chapter 3

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.

It was kind of Josiah to come, for he is an old man and lives a full mile above the village, half way up the ridge-side. He is very fat, too, from much meditation, and to aid his thin legs in moving his bulky body he carries a very long stick, which he uses like a paddle to propel him; so when you see him in the distance he seems to be standing in a canoe, sweeping it along. Really he is only navigating the road. He had a clothes-prop with him that day, and pausing at the end of the porch, he leaned on it and gasped. I ought to have been pleased to see Josiah.

"Well, Mark," he said, "I am glad you're home. Mighty! but you look improved."

He gasped again and smiled through his bushy beard.

"Thank you," said I, icily, waving him toward a chair.

Josiah sat down and smiled again.

"It just does me good to see you," he said, having completely recovered his power of speech. "I should have come down last night, Mark. I 'pologize for not doin' it, but it's mighty troublesome gittin' 'round in the dark. The last time I tried it, I caught the end of my stick between two rocks and it broke. There I was, left settin' on the Red Hill with no way of gittin' home. I was in for comin' down here to receive you--really I was--but my missus says she ain't a-goin' to have me rovin' 'round the country that 'ay agin. 'Gimme an extry oar,' I says. And she says: 'Does you 'spose I'll let you run 'round lookin' like a load of wood?' And I says----"

The gate latch clicked. Again Tim appeared from the maze of corn and stood shading his eyes and gazing toward the house. Now the footfalls were light. And Mary came! But how could I look careless and dashing, with Josiah Nummler in the chair I had fixed so close to mine? Rising, I bowed as awkwardly as possible. I insisted on her taking my own rocker, while I fixed myself on the floor with a pillar for a back-rest. Not a word did the girl say, but she sat there clutching the little basket she held in her lap.

"Eggs?" inquired Josiah.

She shook her head, but did not enlighten him.

"I should judge your hens ain't layin' well, figurin' on the size of the basket," said the old man, ignoring her denial. "There's a peculiarity about the hens in this walley--it's somethin' I've noticed ever since I was a boy. I've spoke to my missus about it and she has noticed the same thing since she was a girl--so it must be a peculiarity. The hens in this walley allus lays most when the price of eggs is lowest."

This was a serious problem. It is not usual for Josiah to be serious, either, for he is generally out of breath or laughing. Now he was wagging his head solemnly, pulling his beard, and over and over repeating, "But hens is contrary--hens is contrary."

Mary contrived to drop the basket to her side, out of the old man's sight.

"Speakin' of hens," he went on. "My missus was sayin' just yesterday how as----"

Tim was shouting. He was calling something to me. I could not make out what it was, for the wind-was rustling the corn-shocks, but I arose and feigned to listen.

"It's Tim," said I. "He's calling to you, Josiah. It's something about your red heifer."

"Red heifer--I haven't no red heifer," returned the old man.

"Did I say heifer? I should have said hog--excuse me," said I, blandly.

"But I have killed all my hogs," Josiah replied, undisturbed.

Tim shouted again, making a trumpet of his hands. To this day I don't know what he was calling to us, but when this second message reached Josiah's ears, it concerned some cider we had, that Tim was anxious to know if he would care for. At the suggestion Josiah's face became very earnest, and a minute later he was hurrying down the field to the spot where Tim's hat and Tip Pulsifer's shaggy hair showed above the wreck of a corn-shock.

"How could you hear what Tim was saying?" Mary asked.

It was almost the first word she had spoken to me, and I was in my chair again, and she was where I had planned so cunningly to have her.

"I know my brother's voice," I answered gravely.

"I couldn't make out a word," said she, "but it isn't like him to let an old man go tottering over fields to see him. He would have come up here."

"I guess he would." There was a twinkle in her eyes and I knew it was useless to dissemble. "Tim and I are different. I never hesitate to use strategy to get my chair, even at the expense of a feeble old man."

"How gallant you are," she said with a touch of scorn.

"You must not scold," I cried. "Remember I had reason, after all. You did not come to see Josiah Nummler."

She was taken by surprise. It was brutal of me. But somehow the old reckless spirit had come back. I was speaking as a soldier should to a fair woman, bold and free. That's what a woman likes. She hates a man who stutters love. And while I did not own to myself the least passion for the girl, I had seen just enough of her on the evening before and I had smoked just enough over her that morning to be in a sentimental turn of mind that was amusing. And I gained my point. She turned her head so as almost to hide her face from me, and I heard a gentle laugh.

"All's fair in love and war," I said, "and were Josiah twice as old, I should be justified in using those means to this end."

Then I rocked. There is something so sociable about rocking. And I smoked. There is something so sociable about smoking. For a moment the girl sat quietly, screening her face from me. Then she began rocking too, and I caught a sidelong glance of her eye, and the color mounted to her cheeks, and we laughed together.

So it came that she suddenly stopped her rocking, and dropping the little basket at my feet, exclaimed: "I love soldiers--just love them!"

Then I told her that I must keep Perry Thomas's oration going to the end, and she leaned toward me, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on mine and asked: "But will you?"

"I can make no promises," I answered. "They say our bodies change entirely every seven years. Mark Hope, age fifty, will be a different man from Mark Hope, age twenty-three. He may have nothing to boast about himself, and his distorted mind may magnify the deeds of the younger man. Now the younger man refuses to commit himself. He will not be in any way responsible for his successors."

"How wise you are!" she cried.

"Wise?" I exclaimed, searching her face for a sign of mockery. But there was none.

"I mean you talk so differently from the others in the valley. Either they talk of crops or weather, or they sit in silence and just look wise. I suppose you have travelled?"

"As compared to most folks in Black Log I am a regular Gulliver," I answered. "My father was a much-travelled man. He was an Englishman and came to the valley by chance and settled here, and to his dying day he was a puzzle to the people. That an Englishman should come to Six Stars was a phenomenon. That Isaac Bolum and Henry Holmes should be born here was no mere chance--it was a law of nature."

"And this English father?"

"He married, and then Tim and I came to Black Log."

"Like Isaac Bolum and Henry Holmes?"

"Exactly; and we should have grown like them, but our father was a bookish man, and with him we travelled; we went with Dickens and Thackeray and those fellows, and as we came to different places in the books, he told us all about them. He'd seen them all, so we got to know his country pretty well. Once he took us to Harrisburg, and by multiplying everything we saw there, Tim and I were able to picture all the great cities of the world--for instance, London is five hundred times Harrisburg."

"But why didn't you go to see the places yourself?"

"Why doesn't everybody in Black Log go to Florida in winter or take the waters at Carlsbad? We did plan a great trip--father and mother and Tim and I--we were going to England together when the farm showed a surplus. We never saw that surplus. I went to Philadelphia once. It's a grand place, but I had just enough of money to keep me there two days and bring me home. Then the war came. And now Tim thinks I've been around the world. He's jealous, for he has never been past Harrisburg; but I've really gone around a little circle. I've seen just enough of flying fishes to hanker after Mandalay, just enough of Spaniards to long for a sight of Spain. But they've shipped me home and here I am anchored. Here I shall stay until that surplus materializes; and you know in our country we have neither coal nor oil nor iron."

"But they tell me that you are to teach the school," she said.

"For which I am grateful," I answered. "Twenty dollars a month is the salary, and school keeps for six months, so I shall earn the large sum of $120 a year."

"But your pension?"

"With my pension I shall be a nabob in Six Stars. Anywhere else I should cut a very poor figure. But after all, this is the best place, for is there any place where the skies are bluer; is there any place where the grass is greener; is there any place where the storms are wilder than over our mountains?"

"Sometimes I would say in Kansas," the girl answered. "Here the world seems to end at the top of the mountain. It is hard to picture anything beyond that. Out there you raise yourself on tiptoe, and you see the world rolling away for miles and miles, and it seems to have no ending."

"I suppose you will not be able to endure your imprisonment. Some day you will go back to Kansas."

"Some day--perhaps," she laughed. "But now I am a true Black Logger. Look at my gown."

It was the gray Dunkard dress--the concession to her uncle's beliefs on worldliness. It was the first time I had noticed it.

"That is not the garb of Black Log," I said. "It was designed long ago in Germany, after patterns from Heaven."

"And designed by men," said Mary, laughing; "forced by them on a sex which wears ribbons as naturally as a bird does feathers."

"In other words, when you came to live with your pious uncle, he picked you?"

"Exactly," she said; "but I submitted humbly. I came here, as I supposed, a fairly good Christian, with an average amount of piety and an average number of faults. My worldliness shocked my uncle, and being a peaceful person, I let him pick me. But I rebelled at the bonnet--spare me from one of those coal-scuttles--I'll go to the stake first."

In her defiance she swung her own straw hat wildly around on the string. Pausing, she smoothed out the gray gown and eyed it critically.

"Was such a thing ever intended for a woman to wear!" she exclaimed.

"For most women, surely not," said I. "Few could carry that handicap and win. But after all, your uncle means it kindly. He acts from interest in your soul's welfare."

Mary's face became serious.

"Yes," she said, "he has paid me the highest compliment a man can pay to a woman--he wants to meet me in Heaven."

How could I blame Luther Warden?

I had forgotten my uniform and my glory, my hair and my hat, and was leaning forward with my eyes on the girl. And she was leaning toward me and our heads were very close. The rebellious brown hair was almost in the shade of my own dashing hat-brim.

Then I said to myself in answer to the poet, "Here's the cheek that doth not fade, too much gazed at." For its color was ever changing. And again I said to myself and to the poet, when my glance had met hers, and the color was mounting higher: "Here's the maid whose lip mature is ever new; here's the eye that doth not weary." And now aloud, forgetfully, leaning back in my chair and gazing at her from afar off--"Here's the face one would meet in every place."

Mary's chair flew back, and it was for her to gaze at me from afar off.

"What were you saying?" she demanded in a voice not "so very soft."

"Was I saying anything?" I answered, feigning surprise. "I thought I was only thinking. But you were speaking of Luther Warden."

"Was I?" she said, more quietly, but in an absent tone.

"You said he had paid you a great compliment, but do you know----"

I paused, being a bit nervous, and flushed, for she was looking right at me. Not till she turned away did I finish.

"Do you know," I went on, "last night when I saw you, I thought we must have met before, and I thought if I had met you anywhere before, it must have been in Heaven."

I had expected that at a time like this Josiah Nummler would appear. In that I was disappointed. In his place, with a bark and a bound, came a lithe setter, a perfect stranger to me, and Mary seized the long head in her hands and cried: "Why, Flash--good Flash."

She completely ignored my last remark, and patted the dog and talked to him.

"Isn't he a beauty?" she cried. "He is Mr. Weston's."

"Whose?" I asked, concealing my irritation. "Mr. Weston--and who is Mr. Weston?"

Mary held up a warning finger. There were footfalls on the gravel walk around the house.

"Sh," she whispered, "here he comes--no one knows who he is."

To this day Robert Weston's age is a mystery to me; I might venture to guess that it is between thirty and fifty. Past thirty all men begin to dry up or fatten, and he was certainly a lean person. His face was hidden beneath a beard of bristling, bushy red, and he had a sharp hook nose and small, bright eyes. From his appearance you could not tell whether he was a good man or a bad one, wise or stupid, kind-hearted or a brute. He seemed of a neutral tone. His clothes marked him as a man of the city, for we do not wear shooting jackets, and breeches and leather leggings in our valley. In the way he wore them there was something that spoke the man of the world, for in such a costume we of Black Log should feel dressed up and ill at ease; but his clothes seemed a part of him. They looked perfectly comfortable and he was unconscious of them. This is where the city men have an advantage over us country-breds. I can carry off my old clothes without being awkward. I could enter a fine drawing-room in the patched blouse I wear a-hunting with more ease than in that solemn-looking frock-coat I bought at the county town five years ago. In that garment I feel that "I am." No one could ever convince me that I am a mere thought, a dream, a shadow. Every pull in the shoulders, every hitch in the back, every kink in the sleeves makes me a profound materialist. But I don't suppose Weston would bother spreading the tails out when he sat down. I doubt if he would know he had it on. He is so easy in his ways. I saw that as he came swinging around the house, and I envied him for it.

"Well, I am in luck!" he cried cheerfully. "Here I came to see the valley's soldier and I find him holding the valley's flower."

This to me was rather an astounding thing to say, and if he intended to disable me in the first skirmish he succeeded admirably, for my only answer was a laugh; and the more I laughed the more foolish and slow-witted I felt. I wanted to run to Mary's aid, but I did not know how, and while I was rummaging my brain for some way to meet him, she was answering him valiantly.

"Almost, but not quite," she said. "But he has earned the right to hold the valley's flower entirely--whoever she may he. It's a pity, Mr. Weston, you have not been doing so, too, instead of loafing around the valley all summer long."

She did not speak sharply to him, and that angered me. She was smiling as she spoke, and he did not seem to mind it at all.

"I came to see the veteran," he said, "and not to be scolded."

"You may have my chair then." Mary was rising. "I shall leave you to the veteran--if he does not object."

She was moving away.

"Then I shall have to go with you," said the stranger calmly, "if the veteran doesn't object. He knows a woman should not go unattended around the valley. He'd rather see me doing my duty than having a sociable pipe with him and hearing about the war. How about it, Hope?"

He did not stop to hear my answer. Had he waited a moment instead of striding after the girl, with his dog at his heels, he might have seen my reply.

I raised my pipe above my head and hurled it against the fence, where it crashed into a score of pieces.

V

"Who is Robert Weston?" I asked of Tim.

"If you can answer that question Theophilus Jones will give you a cigar," replied my brother. "He has tried to find out; he has cross-questioned every man, woman, and child that comes to his store, and he admits that he is beaten."

"When Theop can't find out, the mystery is impenetrable." I recalled our suave storekeeper and his gentle way of drawing from his customers their life secrets as he leaned blandly over the counter with his sole thought apparently to do their commands. Theophilus had known that I was going to enlist long before I had made up my own mind. He had told Tim that I was coming home before he had handed him the postal card on which I had scrawled a few lines announcing my return. So when I heard that Weston was still a puzzle to him I knew that Six Stars had a mystery. For Six Stars to have a mystery is unusual. Occasionally we are troubled with ghosts and such supernatural demonstrations, which cause us to keep at home at night, but we soon forget these things if we do not solve them. But for our village to number among its people a man whose whole history and whose family history was not known was unheard of. For such a man to be here six weeks and not enlighten us was hardly to be dreamed of. Robert Weston had dared it. Even Tim regarded the matter as serious.

"It is suspicious," he said, shaking his head gravely.

He was cleaning up the supper dishes at the end of the table opposite me. By virtue of my recent return I had not fallen altogether into our household ways as yet, and sat smoking and watching him.

"It's mighty odd," he went on. "At noon one day, about six weeks ago, Weston rode up to the tavern on a bicycle and told Elmer Spiker he was going to stay to dinner. He loafed about all that afternoon, and stayed that day and the next, and ever since. First there came a trunk for him, and then a dog. You see him about all the time, for when he isn't walking, he's loafing around the tavern, or is over at the store, arguing with Henry Holmes or Isaac Bolum. Yet all we know about him is that he's undecided how long he'll stay and that he has lived in New York."

"Has no one asked him point-blank what he is doing here?"

"No. Isaac Bolum declares every day that he is going to, but when the time comes he breaks down. Every other means of finding out has been taken."

"Josiah Nummler told me to-day he believed Weston was a detective."

"That was Elmer Spiker's theory. But, as Theop says, who is he detecting?"

Theophilus settled that theory conclusively, in my mind, at least, for I knew every man, woman, and child in the valley; and taking a mental census, I could find no one who seemed to require watching by a hawkshaw.

"Perry Thomas guessed he was an embezzler," said Tim, putting the last dish in the cupboard and sitting down to his pipe. "Perry says Weston is the best-learned man he ever met, and that embezzlers are naturally educated or they would not be in places where they could embezzle."

"A truly Perryan argument," said I; "and after all, a reasonable one, for no one would think of looking here for a fugitive."

"That's just what Perry says," rejoined Tim. "But Theop has read every line in the papers for weeks, and he swears that no embezzlers are missing now."

"Perhaps his crime is still concealed," I ventured.

"That was just what Isaac Bolum thought," Tim answered. "But Henry Holmes says no missing criminal is likely to have a setter dog shipped to him. He says such a man might send for his clothes, but he would draw the line on dogs."

"Perhaps he has deserted his wife," I said, seeing at last a possible solution of the mystery.

"That's what Arnold Arker suggested just a few days ago," returned Tim; "but Tip Pulsifer allowed that no fellow would have to come so far to desert his wife."

"Tip ought to know," said I, "for he deserts his once a year, regularly."

"He always comes back the next day," retorted Tim stoutly.

My brother has always been Tip's champion in his matrimonial disagreements, and whenever Pulsifer flees across the mountain, swearing terrible oaths that he will never return, Tim goes straight to the clearing on the ridge and talks long and seriously to the deserted wife about her duty.

But there was reason in Tip's contention regarding Weston. Indeed, from Tim's account of events, I could see that the store had very thoroughly threshed out the whole case and that the problem was not one that could be solved by abstract reasoning. There was only one person to solve it, and that was Robert Weston himself.