Chapter 7

"I have kep' a good deal of company," he said. "On account of my fiddlin', and singin', and recitin' I've always had things pretty much my own way. It's opposition that's ruination. That's what shatters a man's heart and takes all his sperrit. As long as the game's between just a man and a girl there's nothin' very serious. One or the other loses, and you can begin a new game somewheres else. But when two men and one girl get a playin' three handed, then it is serious; then it's desperate. A man has to th'ow his whole heart and mind into it, if he'd whip, and he gets so worked up he thinks his whole happiness to the end of time depends on his drivin' the other fellow to drownin' himself in the mill-dam."

"In other words, if you had not found another laying piles of books and such gifts at the feet of this fair one, whose name I can never guess, you would have fiddled to her and sung to her and recited to her until she said 'I love you.' Then you would have sought new heavens to conquer."

"That's about it," said Perry, smiling feebly. His face brightened. "You know how it is yourself, Mark. Mind how you kep' company once with Emily Holmes and nothin' come of it. She went off to normal school in desperation--you mind that, don't ye?--and she married a school-teacher from Snyder County--you mind that, don't ye? Now supposin' you and that Snyder County chap had been opposin' one another instead of you and Emily Holmes--I allow her name would have been changed to Emily Hope long ago, or you'd 'a' drownded yourself."

"But I never had any intention of marrying Emily Holmes," I protested.

"I know you didn't," Perry replied, thumping the table in triumph. "That's just the pint. If the world was popilated by one man and one woman, they'd be a bachelor and an old maid. If there was two men and one woman, then one of the men would marry the old maid sure."

"Your meaning is more clear," I said.

Though Perry did not know it, I was meeting the same opposition that so aroused his ire. In part there was truth in what he said, for while opposition does not increase one's love, it surely quickens it. I doubt if I should have been making a journey nightly up the hill if I had not expected to find Weston there. Of Perry I had no fear, and it was not egotism in me to be indifferent to him. He lives so far down the valley. It's a long walk from Buzzards Glory to Six Stars, and the road has many chuck-holes. Perry is our man-about-the-valley _par excellence_, but he is discreet, so it had chanced we met but once at Warden's, and that was on the night when we heard the story of Flora Martin and the famine in India. He knew me still as a friend, and not regarding him as a rival, I treated him as a companion in arms. To be sure, I could not see where he could be of much assistance; but we had a common aim and a common foe. That made a bond between us. With that common foe disposed of, the bond might snap. Till then I was Perry's friend.

"I agree with you partly," I said. "Still, it seems to me a man should love a woman for herself--wholly, entirely for herself, and not because some other fellow has set his heart on her."

"You are right there, in part," Perry answered. "I have set my heart on a particular young lady, but the fact that another--a lean, cadaverous fellow with red whiskers and no particular looks or brains--is slowly pushing himself between us makes it worse. It aggravates me; it affects my appetite." Perry smiled grimly. "It drives away sleep. You know how it 'ud have been if that Snyder County teacher had been livin' in Six Stars when you was keepin' company with Emily Holmes."

"I don't know how it would have been at all," I retorted hotly.

"Well, s'posin' when you'd walked four miles to set up with her, and thought you had her all to yourself, s'pose this Snyder County teacher with red whiskers, and little twinklin' eyes, and new clothes, come strollin' in, and stretched out in a chair like he owned her, and begin tellin' about all the countries he'd seen--about England and Rome, Injy and Africa--and she leaned for'a'd and looked up into his eyes and just listened to him talk, drank it all in like--s'pose all that, and then s'pose----"

"I'll suppose anything you like," said I, "except that I am in love with Emily Holmes and that the Snyder County teacher is cutting me out. For example, let us put me in your place. I am enamored of this fair unknown--of course I can't guess her name--and this second man, also unknown--he of the red whiskers, is my rival. Let us suppose it that way."

"If you insist," Perry replied. "Well then, you are settin' up with her. You've invited her to be your lady at the next spellin' bee between Six Stars and Turkey Walley, and she has said she'll think about it. Then you've told her that there is something wrong with you. You don't know what it is, 'ceptin' you feel all peekit like for no special reason; you can't eat no more, and sleep poorly and has sighin' spells. Then she kind of peeks at you outen the corner of her eye and smiles. S'posin' just then in comes this man and bows most polite, and tells you he is so delighted to see you, and makes her move from the settee where you are, to a rocker close to him; and leans over her and asks about the health of all the family as if they was his nearest and dearest; inquires about her dog; tells her she looks just like the portrates of his great-grandma. S'posin' she just kind of looks at the floor quiet-like or else up to him--you'll begin to think you ain't there at all, won't you? Then you'll concide that you are there but you oughtn't to be, and kind of slide out without your hat and forget your fiddle. I tell you, Mark, it's then love becomes a consumin' fire."

Perry looked at me appealingly. Men hesitate to speak of love--except to women. He had already shown a frankness that was surprising, but then with a certain deftness he had placed me in the position of the sentimental one with a problem to solve. He was seeking for himself a solution of that problem, and was appealing to me to help him.

"Suppose again," said I, "that going another day to see the girl, I found her poring over a pile of books--all new books--just given her by this same arrogant interloper." Perry was silent, but when I paused and looked at him, I saw in his face that I was arguing along the right line. "Then the question arises, what shall I do?"

Perry nodded.

"What would you do?" he said. "That's it exact."

"I'd meet him at his own game," I answered.

"With what?" he asked.

"With what?" I repeated.

There was the rub! With what? I sat with my head clasped between my hands trying to answer him.

"With what?" I repeated, after a long silence.

"S'posin' I got her a wreath." Perry offered the suggestion, and in his enthusiasm he forgot that in our premise I was the person concerned; but I was not loath to let him take on himself the burden of our perplexity.

"Is she dead?" I asked.

"I needn't get one of that kind," he solemnly replied. "Somethin' in autumn leaves ought to be nice."

"You might do better."

"A hand-paintin', then," he ventured timidly.

I smiled on this with more approval.

"They have some be-yutiful ones at Hopedale," he said with more heart. "The last time I was down I was lookin' at 'em. They've fine gold frames and----"

"Why send her a picture of a tree when the finest oak in the valley is at her door?" I protested. "Why send her a picture of a slate-colored cow when a herd of Durhams pastures every day right under her eye?"

"That's true," Perry answered. "Hand-paintin's is meant for city 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.

"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.