The Soldier of the Valley Part 27

He joined me at the fireplace, and we stood side by side, as often we had stood in the old days, warming our hands, and watching the crackling flames. "Do you blame her? I had gone, vowing never to come back again till she kept her promise to you; you had fled from her--she wrote, and no word came. And Weston is a wise man and a kind man, and when she turned to him she found comfort. Do you blame her?"

"No," I said, half hesitating.

"After all, it's better, too," Tim went on. "What could you have given her, Mark--or I, compared to what his wealth means to a woman like Mary?"

Wealth was not happiness. Money was not peace. Etches were a delusion. Now she had them. That was what Weston would give her, and I wished her joy. True, he loved the girl. True, he offered her just what I did, and with it he gave those fleeting joys that wealth brings.

She should be happy--just as much so as if she had made herself a fellow-prisoner with me here in the little valley. For what had I to offer her? The love of a crippled veteran; the wealth of a petty farmer; the companionship of a crotchety pedagogue. What joy it would give her ambitious soul as the years went on to watch her husband develop; to see him growing in the learning of the store; to have him ranking first among the worthies of the bench; to greet him as he hobbled home at night after a busy day at nothing! It was better as it was--aye--a thousand times.

But there was Tim. What a man Tim was, and how blind I had been and selfish! He stood before me tall and strong, watching me with his quiet eyes, and as I looked at him I thought of Weston, the lanky cynic, with his thin, homely face and loose-jointed, shambling walk.

Then I wondered at it all. Then I said to myself, "Is it best?"

"What makes you so quiet, Mark?" asked Tim.

"I was wishing, Tim," I answered, laying a hand on each of his broad shoulders, "I was wishing you had kept her when you had her."

Tim laughed. It was his clear, honest laugh.

"It is best as it is," he said. "It's best for her and best for us, for she'll be happy. But supposing one of us had won--would it have been the same--the same as it was before she came--the same as it is now?"

"No," I answered.

"No," he cried. "Now for supper--then our pipes--all of us together--you in your chair and I in mine--and Captain and Colonel--just as it used to be."

XX

Tim has gone back to the city after his first long vacation and here I am alone again. He wants me to be with him and live down there in a brick and mortar gulch where the sun rises from a maze of tall chimneys and sets on oil refineries. I said no. Some day I may, but that day is a long way off. In the fall I am to go for a week and we are to have a fine time, Tim and I, but Captain and Colonel will have to be content to hear about it when I get back. Surely it will give us much to talk of in the winter nights, when we three sit by the fire again--Captain and Colonel and I.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Captain.]

Tim says it is lonely for me here. Lonely? Pshaw! I know the ways of the valley, and there is not a lonely spot in it from the bald top of Thunder k.n.o.b to the tall pine on the Gander's head. I would have Tim stay here with me, but he says no. He wants to win a marble mausoleum.

I shall be content to lie beneath a tree. Tim is ambitious.

Just a few nights ago, we sat smoking in the evening, warming our hearts at the great hearth-stone. Thunder k.n.o.b was all aglow, and the cloud coals were piled heaven-high above it, burning gold and red.

Down in the meadow Captain and Colonel raced from shock to shock on the trail of a rabbit, and a flock of sheep, barnward bound, came bleating along the road.

[Ill.u.s.tration: When we three sit by the fire.]

Tim began to suppose. He was supposing me a great lawyer and himself a great merchant and all that. I lost all patience with him.

Suppose it all, Tim, I said. Suppose that you, the great tea-king, and I, the statesman, sat here smoking. Would the cloud coals over there on Thunder k.n.o.b blaze up higher in our honor? And the quail, perched on the fence-stake, would she address herself to us or to Mr. Robert White down in the meadow? Would the night-hawk, circling in the clouds, strike one note to our glory? Could the bleating of the sheep swing in sweeter to the music of the valley as she is rocked to sleep?