The Soldier of the Valley Part 11

"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 a.s.sistance; 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 appet.i.te." 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You'll begin to think you ain't there at all."]

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 alb.u.m." 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 k.n.o.b 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 pa.s.sing the school-house door.

Tim's letter was in my pocket and the sun was still high over the gable of the mill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 t.i.ttered. He recovered himself and poked me in the chest.