The Soldier of the Valley Part 6

No answer came from the floor above. Again sounded the stentorian tones.

"Mark says as if you are there, you're to come down; he wants to see you."

A last "Ho-there-ho"; a long silence; the door opened. There was light again and Elmer was before me.

"He ain't there, I guess," he said. "Still, if you want me to make sure, I'll go up."

[Ill.u.s.tration: No answer came from the floor above.]

Inasmuch as mine host's cries must still be echoing in the uttermost parts of the house, it seemed needless to compel him to take the climb.

Spiker agreed with me. It was not surprising that Weston was out, for he was an odd one, always spooking around somewhere, investigating everything, and asking questions. His room was full of books in various languages, and when he wasn't wandering about the valley, he would be sitting reading far into the night--sometimes as late as half-past ten. There was a fellow named Goth, who seemed to be Weston's favorite writer. This Goth was a Pennsylvania Dutchman, and as Elmer's own ancestors were from Allentown, he thought he'd like to take up the language, so he'd borrowed from his guest a book called "The Sorrows of Werther." Of all the rubbish that was ever wrote, them "Sorrows" were the poorest. Elmer had only figured out a page and a half, but that gave him enough insight into their character to convince him that a man who could set reading them till half-past ten was--here mine host tapped his forehead and winked. Curious chap, Weston. Elmer had seen a heap of men in his time and never met the like. There's no way to get to see men and understand them like keeping a hotel. When you've "kept" for about forty years, there's hardly a man comes along that you can't set right down in his particular cla.s.s before he's even registered. But Weston had blocked him at every turn. Elmer knew no more of the man now than on the day he came. In fact, he was getting more and more tangled up about him all the time. For instance, why should one who could read Goth and understand the "Sorrows," want to set around the store and argue with such-like ignoramuses as Ike Bolum and Hen Holmes? Spiker was willing to bet that right now Weston was over the way trying to prove to them that two and two was four.

The suggestion seemed a likely one, so I interrupted the flow of Elmer's troubled thoughts to say good-night, and went out. I paused a moment on the porch. A lamp was blazing in the store and I could plainly see everyone gathered along the counter. Henry Holmes was standing with his back to the stove, one hand wagging up and down at the solemn line of figures on the bench. But Weston was not there.

And in our valley, when a man is not at home o'night he should be at the store, else there is a mystery to be solved. To solve this one I stopped on the tavern steps, leaned against a pillar, and gazed through the dozing village.

At the head of the street where our house stood a bright light burned.

There Tim was and there I should be also. A hundred times down South on my post at night, with my back on the rows and rows of white tents, I had sought to pierce the black gloom before me as if there I could see that same light--the home light. Often I fancied I saw it, and in its bright circle Tim was bending over his book. Here it was in truth, calling me, but I turned from it and looked away over the flats, where another light was winking on the hillside.

Behind that hill, on the eastward ridge, a great ball is glowing, fiery red. Higher and higher it rises, into the tree-tops, then over them; higher and higher, bathing the valley in soft, white light, uncovering the gray road that climbs the ridge-side; higher and higher, until the pines on the ridge-top stand out boldly, fringing into the sky; higher and higher, casting mysterious shadows over the meadows, touching with light the hillside, new-ploughed and naked; clear and white lies the road over the flats to the hill there--clear and white and smooth. On the hillside the light is burning. It is only a short half mile, and the way is easy. In the old house at the end of the street another light is blinking solemnly. Beneath it Tim is waiting. He misses me.

He wonders why I am so long. Soon he will be coming. Base deserter, truly! But for once--this once--for the white road over the flat and up the hillside leads to the light!

VI

"Why, Mark, but you did give me a start!" cried Luther Warden, laying down his book and hurrying forward to greet me.

It was not surprising that the good man should be taken back, for in all the years we had lived together in the valley this was my first evening visit. So unusual an occurrence required an explanation, so I said that I just happened to be taking a stroll and dropped in for a minute. I glanced at Mary to see if she understood my feeble subterfuge, but I met only a frank smile, as though, like her uncle, she believed that I was likely to go hobbling about on moonlight nights this way. Luther never doubted me.

"It's good of you to drop in," he said, after he had fixed me in his own comfortable chair and drawn up the settee for himself. "When I was livin' alone up here I often used to wish some of you young folks would come in of an evenin' and keep me company and join me in readin' the Good Book. It used to be lonely sometimes, but since I've got Mary it ain't so bad. But I hope her bein' here won't make no difference, and now as you've started you'll come just the same as if I was alone."

I a.s.sured him that I would come just the same. That made Mary laugh.

She had been sitting in the lamp-lit circle, and now she rocked back into the shade, so, craning my neck, I could just see the dark outline of her face. She made some commonplace but kindly speech of welcome, and I was about to engage her, seeking to draw her from the shadow, when her uncle suddenly interposed himself between us and took a book from the table. Drawing the settee closer to the light, he opened the great volume across his knees and adjusted his spectacles. Throwing back his head and looking at me benignly from under his gla.s.ses, he said: "It's peculiarly fortunate you come to-night, Mark. When you knocked I was readin' aloud to Mary. We read together every night now, her and me, and most instructin' we find it."

I told Luther that it was too much for me to allow him to wear out his eyes reading to me; much as I should enjoy it, I could not hear of it, but I would ask him to let me have the volume when he had finished with it. It did seem that this should bring Mary into the light again, and that she would support my protests; but calmly and quietly she spoke from the darkness, like a voice from another world, "Go on, Uncle Luther; I want Mr. Hope to hear this."

Now had Mary Warden called me by my Christian name she would have followed the custom of our valley and it would have pa.s.sed unnoticed; but when she used that uncalled-for "Mister" her uncle looked around sharply. First he tried to pierce the shadows and see her, but she drew farther and farther into the darkness. So he gazed at me. He was beginning to suspect that after all I had not come to see him. Had Mark Hope become proud? Was Mary falling again into the ways of the wicked world from which he was striving so hard to wean her, that she should thus address one of the humblest of G.o.d's creatures, a mere man?

Old Luther rubbed his spectacles very carefully and slowly; blowing on them and rubbing them again; finally adjusting them, he leaned forward and tried to study the girl's face, to find there some solution of the puzzle.

"Read to Mr. Hope," she said clearly, and with just a touch of defiance.

Had she used some endearing term the old man could not have frowned harder than when he turned on me then, and eyed me through his great spectacles.

"Yes, read to us, Luther," said I calmly; "Miss Warden and I will listen."

"G.o.d has been very good to me," said the old man solemnly, "and I've not yet heard Him call me Mister Luther Warden. I s'pose with you and your kind, when He comes to you, He calls you Mister Mark Hope."

This rather took me back, and I stammered a feeble protest, but he did not heed me. Turning to Mary, he went on: "And you, Mary Warden, I s'pose at such times you are 'Miss.' What wanity! What wanity!

Politeness, they calls it. Politeness? Well, in the great eternity, up above, where they speaks from the heart, you'll be just Mark and just Mary. But down yander--yander, mind ye--the folks will probably set more store by t.i.tles." The old preacher was pointing solemnly in the direction of the cellar.

There was a long pause, an interval of heavy silence. Then from Mary in the darkness came, "Well, Uncle, let us hope that when we reach that great eternity, Mark and I will be good enough friends to lay aside such vanities."

"Right!" cried Luther, smiling again, and speaking real heartily.

"Right," said I; "and we'll begin eternity to-day, won't we, Mary?"

"We will," said she.

And in my heart I blessed Luther Warden. Guilelessly, the old man, in a few words, had swept away the barrier Mary and I had raised between us. He had added years to our friendship. So had he stopped there it would have been wonderfully well; but he had to go floundering innocently on. He was laughing softly.

"Do you know, Mark," he said, rubbing his spectacles nervously, "she made me jealous of you when she talked that way. I thought she'd set her cap for you, I did. Whenever a man and woman gits polite, whenever they has to bow and sc.r.a.pe that way, a-misterin' and a-missin' one another, they're hiding somethin'; they ain't actin' open. So I was beginnin' to think mebbe she wanted to marry you and----"

"Go on reading--please read to us," pleaded Mary.

"Yes, do read to us," I echoed, for the position was a new one to me, and at best I am awkward and slow-witted where women are concerned. I could not adroitly turn the old man's wandering speculation into a general laugh as Weston would have done. My best was to break in rudely.

"Well--if I must," Luther said, opening the great book across his knees.

A long silence followed. I heard the solemn ticking of the clock on the mantel behind me; I heard Mary laughing softly in her retreat beyond the table; I heard Luther, now bending over his book, mumbling to himself a few words of the text.

"It is about the faymine in Injy," he said at last, holding his place on the page with a long, thin forefinger, and looking up at me. "There are three volumes, and this is the second. The third is yit to come.

I pay a dollar a year and every year I gits a new volume. It's a grand book, too, Mark. It was wrote by one of our brethren, Brother Matthias Pennel, who went to Injy in charge of a shipload of grain gathered by our people for the sufferin' heathen. The first volume tells all about the gittin' up of the subscription and the sailin' of the wessel.

Brother Matthias is a grand writer, and he tells all about Injy and the heathen, and how the wessel reached the main place there--what's the place, Mary?--you're allus good on geography!"

"Calcutta," prompted Mary.

"Yes, I mind now--Calcutty. Well, from there Brother Matthias went up into the country called--I can't just mind the exact name--oh, here it is--B-a-l-l-e-r-r-a-d Ballerrad--e-r-a-d--Ballerraderad."

Luther paused and sighed. "Them names--them names!" he exclaimed. "If there is one thing that convinces me that the story of the Tower of Babel is true, it is the names of the towns in Injy."

It seemed to me that perhaps from the viewpoint of the East Indian, the same thing might be said of our "villes" and "burgs," and I was about to raise my voice in behalf of the maligned heathen, when my host resumed his discourse.

"When you come in, I was readin' about a poor missionary woman in Baller--Baller--Ballerraderad--whose Sunday-school had been largely eat up by taggers. Her name was Flora Martin, Brother Matthias says, and she was one of the saintliest women he ever seen. He tells how the month before he come to Baller--Baller--Baller-daddad--an extry large tagger had been sneakin' around the mission-house, a-watchin' for scholars, and how one day, when, according to Brother Matthias, this here Flora Martin, armed only with a rifle and girded about with the heavenly sperrit--how this here Flora----"

There was a ponderous knock on the door, and then the k.n.o.b began to rattle violently. The bolt had been shot, so Luther had to rise in haste to admit the new-comer, leaving Flora Martin with nothing but the rifle and the heavenly spirit.

Perry Thomas stepped in.

"I just happened to be pa.s.sin' and thought I'd drop in for a spell," he said, with a profound bow to Mary, who arose to greet him.

This apology of Perry's was as absurd as mine had been, for he lived a mile on the other side of the village; and as the next house was over the ridge, a good three miles away, it was odd that he should be wandering aimlessly about thus. Besides, he had on his new Prince Albert, and there was a suspicion of a formal call in the smoothly oiled hair and tallowed boots. He carried his fiddle, too. There was to my mind every evidence that the visit had been preconceived, and to this point had been carried out with an eye on every detail. Had the contrary been true, there would have been no cause for Perry to glare at me as he did. The he-ro in blue was anything but welcome now.

Indeed, it seemed that could Perry's wish have been complied with, I should be back on the "lead-strewn fields of Cuby."

Mary was most cordial. She seized his fiddle and his hat and stowed them carefully away together, while Luther, pushing the latest visitor to a place at his side on the settee, told him how fortunate he was to drop in just at that time, as he would hear a few interesting things about the famine in India.

Perry was positively ungrateful. He declared that he could only stay a minute at the most, and that it was really not worth Luther's while to begin reading. Mary said that she would not hear of him leaving. She had hidden his hat and would insist on his playing; that was, if I did not mind and her uncle gave his permission. Perry smiled. There was less fire in his eyes when I vowed that not till I had listened again to the song of his beloved violin would I stir from my chair. So he settled back to pay the price and hear the story of Flora Martin and the tiger.