The Valley of Vision Part 20

"My dear Walter," said the Pastor, "my dear boy, we are so glad to have you home with us again. We are very proud of you. You are our Hero."

"Thank you," said Walter, "it is mighty good to be home again. But there is no hero business about it. I only did what all the other Americans who went over there did--fought my--excuse me, my best, against the beastly Germans."

"But your leg," said the Pastor impulsively, "it is gone. Aren't you angry about that?"

Walter was silent for a moment. Then he answered.

"No, I don't think angry is the right word. You remember that story about Nathan Hale in the Revolution--'I only regret that I have but one life to give to my country.' Well, I'm glad that I had two legs to give for my country, and particularly glad that she only needed one of them."

"Tell me a bit about the fighting," said the Pastor, "I want to know what it was like--the hero-touch--you understand?"

"Not for me," said Walter, "and certainly not now. Later on I can tell you something, perhaps. But this is Christmas Day. And war?

Well, Doctor, believe me, war is a horrible thing, full of grime and pain, madness, agony, h.e.l.l--a thing that ought not to be. I have fought alongside of the other fellows to put an end to it, and now--"

The door swung open, and Sammy, the eldest son of the house, pranced in.

"Look, Daddy," he cried, "see what Aunt Emily has sent me for Christmas--a big box of tin soldiers!"

Mayne smiled as the little boy carefully laid the box on his knee; but there was a shadow of pain in his eyes, and he closed them for a few seconds, as if his mind were going back, somewhere, far away. Then he spoke, tenderly, but with a grave voice.

"That's fine, sonny--all those tin soldiers. But don't you think they ought to belong to me? You have lots of other toys, you know.

Would you give the soldiers to me?"

The child looked up at him, puzzled for a moment; then a flash of comprehension pa.s.sed over his face, and he nodded valiantly.

"Sure, Father," he said, "You're the Captain. Keep the soldiers.

I'll play with the other toys," and he skipped out of the room.

Mayne's look followed him with love. Then he turned to the old Pastor and a strange expression came into his face, half whimsical and half grim.

"Doctor," he said, "will you do me a favor? Poke up that fire till it blazes. That's right. Now lay this box in the hottest part of the flames. That's right. It will soon be gone."

The elder man did what was asked, with an air of slight bewilderment, as one humors the fancies of an invalid. He wondered whether Mayne's fever had quite left him. He watched the fire bulging the lid and catching round the edges of the box. Then he heard Mayne's voice behind him, speaking very quietly.

"If ever I find my little boy _playing with tin soldiers,_ I shall spank him well. No, that wouldn't be quite fair, would it?

But I shall tell him why he must not do it, and _I shall make him understand that it's an impossible thing."_

Then the old Pastor comprehended. There was no touch of fever. The one-legged Hero had come home from the wars completely well and sound in mind. So the two men sat together in love by the Christmas fire, and saw the tin soldiers melt away.

SALVAGE POINT

The Hermanns built their house at the very end of the island, five or six miles from the more or less violently rustic "summer-cottages"

which adorned the hills and bluffs around the native village of Winterport.

There was a long point running out to the southward at the mouth of the great bay, rough and rocky for the most part, with little woods of pointed firs on it, some acres of pasture, and a few pockets of fertile soil lying between the stony ridges. A yellow farmhouse, with a red barn beside it, had nestled for near a hundred years in one of these hollows, buying shelter from the winter winds at the cost of an outlook over sea and sh.o.r.e.

It was a large price to pay. The view from the summit of the little hill a few hundred yards away was superb--a wonder even on that wonderful coast of Maine where mountain and sea meet together, forest and flood kiss each other.

But I suppose the old Yankee farmer knew what he wanted when he paid the price and snuggled his house in the hollow. I am certain the Hermanns knew what they wanted when they bought the whole point and perched their house on the very top of the hill, where all the winds of heaven might visit it as roughly as they pleased, but where nothing could rob the outlook of its ever-changing splendor and mystery, its fluent wonder and abiding charm.

You see, the Hermanns knew what they wanted because they had come through a lot of trouble. I met them when they were young--no matter how many years ago--when they were in the thick of it.

Alice Mackaye and Will Hermann had the rare luck to fall in love--a very real and great love--when they were in their early twenties.

You would think that extraordinary piece of good fortune would have been enough to set them up for life, wouldn't you? But no. There was an Obstacle. And that Obstacle came very near wrecking them both.

Will Hermann was an artist and the son of an artist. The love of beauty ran in his blood. Otherwise he was poor. He earned a decent living by his painting, but each year's living depended on each year's work. Hence he was in the proletarian cla.s.s.

Alice Mackaye, on the other hand, belonged to the capitalist cla.s.s.

I say "belonged," because that is precisely the word to describe her situation. Her father was a millionaire sugar-merchant, who lived in an ugly palace near Morristown, New Jersey, and was accustomed to have his own way in that and other States. He was the Obstacle.

He was a florid, handsome old Scotchman, orthodox in religion, shrewd in business, correct in conduct, but with no more sentiment than a hard-sh.e.l.l crab, and obstinate as the devil. His fixed idea was that none of his daughters should ever be carried off by a fortune-hunter. The two older girls apparently escaped this danger by making fairly wealthy matches. But Alice--come away! why should she take up with this impecunious painter? He was good-looking and had the gift of the gab, but what was that worth? If he would come into the sugar-business, where a place was waiting for him, and make good there, it would be all right. Otherwise, the affair must be broken off, absolutely, finally, and forever. From this you can see that the Obstacle was not bad-hearted, but only pig-headed.

Well, for five or six years things drifted rather miserably along this way. Will Hermann was forbidden the house at Morristown. Alice was practically a captive; her correspondence was censored. But of course, even before Marconi, wireless communication in matters of this kind has always been possible.

The trouble was that the state of affairs between them, while conventionally correct, was thoroughly unnatural and full of peril.

Alice, a very good girl, obedient and tractable, was in danger of becoming a recalcitrant and sour old maid. Will, a healthy and normal young man, with no bad habits, was in danger of being driven to them by the emptiness and exasperation of his mind. The worst of it all was that both of the young people were, in accordance with a well-known law of nature, growing older with what seemed to them a frightful and unreasonable rapidity. The years crawled like snails. But the sum of them rose by leaps and bounds to an appalling total. Alice found two grey hairs in her red-gold locks.

Will had to use gla.s.ses for reading fine print at night. From their point of view, decrepitude, senility, dotage stared them in the face, while the bright voyage of life which they were resolved to make only together, was threatened with shipwreck among the shoals of interminable delay.

It was at this juncture of affairs that they came to me, as fine-looking a young couple as ever I saw. They were good, as mortals go; they were loyal and upright, they wanted no scandal, no rumpus in the family, no trouble or pain for anybody else; but they wanted to belong to each other much more than they wanted to belong to any cla.s.s, artistic, proletarian, or capitalist. And they were desperate because of the pertinacity of the Obstacle, whom they both respected fully as much as he deserved.

When they had stated their case, I made my answer.

"So far as I can see, the salvage of your ship of love depends entirely on yourselves. Mr. Hermann is not after a fortune, he only wants his girl; is that so? [Hermann nodded vigorously.] And Miss Mackaye does not care about being supported in the manner of living to which she has been accustomed; she only wants to live with the man whom she has chosen; is that so? [Alice blushed and nodded.] Well, then, why shouldn't you lay your course and sail ahead together? You are both of age, aren't you?"

They smiled at each other. "Yes, and a little over."

"But my father!" said Alice. "You know I honor him, and I can never deny his authority over me."

Here was the turn of the talk, the critical moment, the point where the chosen counsellor had to fall back upon the ultimate reality of his faith.

"Well," I said, "you are absolutely correct, dear daughter, in your feeling toward your father. He has earned his money and has a right to dispose of it as he will. But, you know, there is a statute of limitations in regard to the authority of parents over the _lives_ of their children. You have pa.s.sed the limitation.

What do you want to do?"

"To be married to Will Hermann," she said, "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, I don't care. But I don't want a family quarrel, a runaway match, all that horrid newspaper talk." Here she was evidently a little excited and on the verge of tears.

"Certainly not," I hastened to rea.s.sure her, "you can't possibly have a runaway match, because there is nothing for you to run away from. There is not a single duty in your father's house which you have not fulfilled, and of which your sisters can not now relieve you. There is no authority in the world which has the right to command the sacrifice of your life to another's judgment. There is only one thing that stands in your way, and that is your claim on a large inheritance. I understand you are quite willing to let that go. You are not even 'running away' from it--that is not the word--you are ready to _jettison_ it."

She looked puzzled, and murmured; "I don't exactly understand what that means."

"To jettison," I said, in that learned and dispa.s.sionate manner which is sometimes useful in relieving an emotional situation, "is a seafaring phrase. It means throwing overboard a part or the whole of a cargo in order to save the ship. As far as I can see that is the question which is up to you and your best friend at the present moment. Are you prepared to jettison the claim on a big fortune for the sake of making your voyage of life together?"

They looked at each other and a kind of radiance spread over their faces. "Surely," they answered with one voice. "But how can the marriage be arranged," asked Alice, "without a row in the family?"