The Soldier of the Valley Part 3

"How I should like to see the woman!" she cried. "How proud she must be of you!"

"Of me?" I laughed. "The woman? Why, she doesn't exist."

"Then why did you turn soldier?"

"I feared that some day there might be a woman, and when that day came I wished to be prepared. I thought that the men who fought would be the men of the future. But I have learned a great deal. They will be the men of the past in a few months. The memory of a battle's heroes fades away almost with the smoke. In a little while, to receive our just recognition we old soldiers will have to parade before the public with a bra.s.s band, and the band will get most attention. Would you know that Aaron Kallaberger was a hero of Gettysburg if he didn't wear an army overcoat?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "I have heard about it so often. He has told me a hundred times."

"I suppose you have told a hundred other persons of Aaron's prowess?"

said I.

"No-o-o," she answered.

"And so," said I, "when Perry Thomas finished his oration last night, I had to catch it up; and if my soldiering is to result in any material good to me I must keep that oration moving to the end."

"But will you?" she asked.

How I liked the way she put it! It was flattering--subtly so. She seemed to imply that I was a modest soldier, and if there is a way to flatter a man it is to call him modest. Modesty is one of the best of policies. To call a man honest is no more than to call him healthy or handsome. These are attributes of nearly everyone at some time in his life. But to do a great deed or a good deed, and to rejoice that it has been done and the world is better for it, and not because you did it and the world knows it, that is different. So often our modesty consists in using as much effort to walk with hanging head and sloping shoulders as we should need for a majestic strut.

She called me modest. Yet there I sat in my old khaki uniform. It was ragged and dirty, and I was proud of it. It was a bit thin for a chilly autumn day, but in spite of Tim's expostulation I had worn it, refusing his offers of a warmer garb. I was clinging to my glory.

While I had on that old uniform, I was a soldier. When I laid it aside, I should become as Aaron Kallaberger and Arnold Arker. A year hence people would ask me if I had been a railroad man in my time.

She called me modest. That very morning Tim told me she was coming.

She had made some jellies, so she said, for the soldier of the valley.

They were her offering to the valley's idol. She thought the idol would consume them, for bachelor cooking was never intended for bachelor invalids. Tim had mentioned this casually. I suspected that he believed that the visit to me was simply a pretence and that she knew he was to be working in the field by the house. But I took no chances. In the seclusion of my room I brushed every speck off the uniform and made sure that every inch of it fitted snugly and without an unnecessary wrinkle. Then when my hair had been parted and smoothed down, I crowned myself with my campaign hat at the das.h.i.+ngest possible tilt. Thus arrayed I fixed myself on the porch, to be smoking my pipe in a careless, indifferent way when she came. An egotist, you say--a vain man. No--just a man. For who when She comes would not look his best? We prate a lot about the fair s.e.x and its sweet vanities. Yet it takes us less time to do our hair simply because it is shorter.

When Mary comes! The gate latch clicked and I whistled the sprightliest air I knew. Down in the field Tim appeared from the maze of corn-stalks and looked my way beneath a shading hand. There were foot-falls on the porch. Had they been light I should have kept on whistling in that careless way; but now I looked up, startled. Before me stood not Mary, but Josiah Nummler.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Josia Nummler.]

It was kind of Josiah to come, for he is an old man and lives a full mile above the village, half way up the ridge-side. He is very fat, too, from much meditation, and to aid his thin legs in moving his bulky body he carries a very long stick, which he uses like a paddle to propel him; so when you see him in the distance he seems to be standing in a canoe, sweeping it along. Really he is only navigating the road.

He had a clothes-prop with him that day, and pausing at the end of the porch, he leaned on it and gasped. I ought to have been pleased to see Josiah.

"Well, Mark," he said, "I am glad you're home. Mighty! but you look improved."

He gasped again and smiled through his bushy beard.

"Thank you," said I, icily, waving him toward a chair.

Josiah sat down and smiled again.

"It just does me good to see you," he said, having completely recovered his power of speech. "I should have come down last night, Mark. I 'pologize for not doin' it, but it's mighty troublesome gittin' 'round in the dark. The last time I tried it, I caught the end of my stick between two rocks and it broke. There I was, left settin' on the Red Hill with no way of gittin' home. I was in for comin' down here to receive you--really I was--but my missus says she ain't a-goin' to have me rovin' 'round the country that 'ay agin. 'Gimme an extry oar,' I says. And she says: 'Does you 'spose I'll let you run 'round lookin'

like a load of wood?' And I says----"

The gate latch clicked. Again Tim appeared from the maze of corn and stood shading his eyes and gazing toward the house. Now the footfalls were light. And Mary came! But how could I look careless and das.h.i.+ng, with Josiah Nummler in the chair I had fixed so close to mine? Rising, I bowed as awkwardly as possible. I insisted on her taking my own rocker, while I fixed myself on the floor with a pillar for a back-rest. Not a word did the girl say, but she sat there clutching the little basket she held in her lap.

"Eggs?" inquired Josiah.

She shook her head, but did not enlighten him.

"I should judge your hens ain't layin' well, figurin' on the size of the basket," said the old man, ignoring her denial. "There's a peculiarity about the hens in this walley--it's somethin' I've noticed ever since I was a boy. I've spoke to my missus about it and she has noticed the same thing since she was a girl--so it must be a peculiarity. The hens in this walley allus lays most when the price of eggs is lowest."

This was a serious problem. It is not usual for Josiah to be serious, either, for he is generally out of breath or laughing. Now he was wagging his head solemnly, pulling his beard, and over and over repeating, "But hens is contrary--hens is contrary."

Mary contrived to drop the basket to her side, out of the old man's sight.

"Speakin' of hens," he went on. "My missus was sayin' just yesterday how as----"

Tim was shouting. He was calling something to me. I could not make out what it was, for the wind-was rustling the corn-shocks, but I arose and feigned to listen.

"It's Tim," said I. "He's calling to you, Josiah. It's something about your red heifer."

"Red heifer--I haven't no red heifer," returned the old man.

"Did I say heifer? I should have said hog--excuse me," said I, blandly.

"But I have killed all my hogs," Josiah replied, undisturbed.

Tim shouted again, making a trumpet of his hands. To this day I don't know what he was calling to us, but when this second message reached Josiah's ears, it concerned some cider we had, that Tim was anxious to know if he would care for. At the suggestion Josiah's face became very earnest, and a minute later he was hurrying down the field to the spot where Tim's hat and Tip Pulsifer's s.h.a.ggy hair showed above the wreck of a corn-shock.

"How could you hear what Tim was saying?" Mary asked.

It was almost the first word she had spoken to me, and I was in my chair again, and she was where I had planned so cunningly to have her.

"I know my brother's voice," I answered gravely.

"I couldn't make out a word," said she, "but it isn't like him to let an old man go tottering over fields to see him. He would have come up here."

"I guess he would." There was a twinkle in her eyes and I knew it was useless to dissemble. "Tim and I are different. I never hesitate to use strategy to get my chair, even at the expense of a feeble old man."

"How gallant you are," she said with a touch of scorn.

"You must not scold," I cried. "Remember I had reason, after all. You did not come to see Josiah Nummler."

She was taken by surprise. It was brutal of me. But somehow the old reckless spirit had come back. I was speaking as a soldier should to a fair woman, bold and free. That's what a woman likes. She hates a man who stutters love. And while I did not own to myself the least pa.s.sion for the girl, I had seen just enough of her on the evening before and I had smoked just enough over her that morning to be in a sentimental turn of mind that was amusing. And I gained my point. She turned her head so as almost to hide her face from me, and I heard a gentle laugh.

"All's fair in love and war," I said, "and were Josiah twice as old, I should be justified in using those means to this end."

Then I rocked. There is something so sociable about rocking. And I smoked. There is something so sociable about smoking. For a moment the girl sat quietly, screening her face from me. Then she began rocking too, and I caught a sidelong glance of her eye, and the color mounted to her cheeks, and we laughed together.

So it came that she suddenly stopped her rocking, and dropping the little basket at my feet, exclaimed: "I love soldiers--just love them!"

Then I told her that I must keep Perry Thomas's oration going to the end, and she leaned toward me, her hands clasped, her eyes fixed on mine and asked: "But will you?"

"I can make no promises," I answered. "They say our bodies change entirely every seven years. Mark Hope, age fifty, will be a different man from Mark Hope, age twenty-three. He may have nothing to boast about himself, and his distorted mind may magnify the deeds of the younger man. Now the younger man refuses to commit himself. He will not be in any way responsible for his successors."

"How wise you are!" she cried.