The Soldier of the Valley Part 4

"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 d.i.c.kens 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 anch.o.r.ed. 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 gra.s.s 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 s.e.x 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."