II
Perry Thomas still had his speech to deliver. He hovered around the rocking-chair in which they had enthroned me, and with one hand he kept clutching violently at his throat as though he were suppressing his eloquence by muscular effort. His repeated coughing seemed a constant warning that at any moment he might be vanquished in the struggle for becoming silence. There was a longing light in his eyes and a look of appeal whenever our glances met. My position was embarrassing. He knew that I realized his predicament, but how could I interrupt the kindly demonstrations of the old friends who pressed about me, to announce that the local orator had a formal address of welcome that was as yet unspoken? And an opportunity like this might never again occur in Perry's life! Here were gathered not only the people of the village, but of the valley. His words would fall not alone on the ears of a few choice spirits of the store forum, or the scoffing pedants of the literary society, for crowded into that little room were old men whose years would give weight to the declaration that it was the greatest talking they had ever heard; were young children, who in after years, when a neglected gravestone was toppling over all that was left of the orator, would still speak of the wonders of his eloquence; were comely women to whom the household was the world and the household task the life's work, but who could now for the moment lift their bent forms and have their dulled eyes turned to higher and better things. Moreover, there were in that room a score of deep eyes that could not but quicken at the sight of a slender, manly figure, clad in scholastic black, of a thin, earnest face, with beetled brows and a classic forehead from which swept waves of black hair. Little wonder Perry was restless under restraint! Little wonder he grew more melancholy and coughed louder and louder, as the light without faded away, and the faces within were dimmed in the shadow!
From the kitchen came the clatter of dishes and pans and a babel of women's voices, the shrill commands of old Mrs. Bolum rising above them. The feast was preparing. Its hour was at hand. Apollo never was a match for Bacchus, and Perry Thomas could not command attention once Mrs. Bolum appeared on the scene. He realized this. Her cries came as an inspiration to action. In the twilight I lost him, but the lamp-light disclosed him standing over Henry Holmes, who had been driven into a corner and was held prisoner there by a threatening finger. There was a whispered parley that ended only when the old man surrendered and, stepping to the centre of the room, rapped long and loud on the floor with his cane.
Henry is always blunt. He has a way of getting right at the heart of things with everyone except Bolum. For Isaac, he regards circumlocution as necessary, taking the ground that with him the quantity and not the quality of the words counts. So when he had silenced the company, and with a sweep of his cane had driven them into close order about the walls, he said: "Mr. Thomas is anxious to make an address."
At this moment Mr. Thomas was about to step into the zone of fire of a hundred eyes. There was a very audible titter in the corner where three thoughtless young girls had squeezed themselves into one rocking-chair. The orator heard it and brought his heels together with a click.
"Mind what I told you, Henery," he whispered very loud, glaring at Mr. Holmes.
"Oh, yes," Henry returned in a casual tone.
He thumped the floor again, and when the tittering had subsided, and only the snuffling of Cevery Pulsifer broke the silence, he said: "In jestice to Mr. Thomas, I am requested to explain that the address was originally intended to be got off at the railroad. It was forgot by accident, and him not havin' time to change it, he asks us to make believe we are standin' alongside of the track at Pleasantville just as the train comes in."
Isaac Bolum had fixed himself comfortably on two legs of his chair, with the projecting soles of his boots caught behind the rung. Feet and chair-legs came to the floor with a crash, and half rising from the seat, one hand extended in appeal, the other at his right ear, forming a trumpet, he shouted: "Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!"
"This ain't a liter'ry meetin', Mr. Bolum. The floor is Mr. Thomas's, I believe," said Henry with dignity.
"But I didn't catch the name of the station you said we was to imagine."
"I said Pleasantville," cried Henry angrily.
"I apologize," returned Isaac. "I thought you said Meadowville, and never havin' been there, I didn't see how I could imagine the station."
"It seems to me, Isaac Bolum," retorted Henry with dignified asperity, "that with your imagination you could conjure up a whole railroad system, includin' the freight-yard. But Mr. Thomas has the floor."
"See here, Henery Holmes," cried Isaac, "it's all right for us old folks, but there's the children. How can they imagine Pleasantville station when some of 'em ain't yet seen a train?"
This routed even Henry Holmes. At the store he would never have given in, but he was not accustomed to hearing so loud a murmur of approval greet the opposition. He realized that he had been placed in a false position by the importunities of Mr. Thomas, and to him he now left the brunt of the trouble by stepping out of the illumined circle and losing himself in the company.
The fire-swept zone had no terrors for Perry. With one hand thrust between the first and second buttons of his coat, and the other raised in that gesture with which the orator stills the sea of discontent, he stepped forward, and turning slowly about, brought his eyes to bear on the contumacious Bolum. He indicated the target. Every optic gun in the room was levelled at it. The upraised hand, the potent silence, the solemn gaze of a hundred eyes was too much for the old man to bear. Slowly he swung back on two legs of his chair, caught the rungs again with the projecting soles, turned his eyes to the ceiling, closed them, and set himself to imagining the station at Pleasantville. The rout was complete.
Perry wheeled and faced me. The hand was lowered slowly; four fingers disappeared and one long one, one quivering one, remained, a whip with which to chastise the prisoner at the bar.
"Mark Hope," he began, in a deep, rich, resonant voice, "we welcome you home. We have come down from the valley, fourteen mile through the blazin' noonday sun, fourteen mile over wind-swept roads, that you, when agin you step on the soil of our beloved county, may step into lovin' hands, outstretched to meet you and bid you welcome. Welcome home—thrice welcome—agin I say, welcome!"
[Illustration: "Welcome home—thrice welcome!">[
Both of the orator's hands swung upward and outward, and he looked intently at the ceiling. He seemed prepared to catch me as I leaped from a second-story window. The pause as he stood there braced to receive the body of the returning soldier as it hurtled at him, gave Isaac Bolum an opportunity to be magnanimous. He clapped his hands and cheered. In an instant his shrill cry was drowned in a burst of applause full of spirit and heart, closing with a flourish of wails from Cevery Pulsifer and the latest of the Kallabergers. Perry's arms fell gracefully to his side and he inclined his head and half closed his eyes in acknowledgment. Then turning to Isaac, measuring every word, in a voice clear and cutting, his long forefinger shaking, he cried: "From the bloody battlefields of Cuby, from her tropic camps where you suffered and bled, you come home to us to-day. You have fought in the cause of liberty. To your country you have give a limb—you——"
Poor Bolum! Awakened from the gentle doze into which he had fallen the instant Cevery Pulsifer relieved him of the duty of leading the applause, he brought his chair down on all four legs, and slapped both knees violently. Satisfied that they were still there, he looked up at the orator.
"You have give a limb," repeated Perry, emphasizing the announcement by shaking his finger at the old man.
Isaac's mouth was half open for a protest, when he remembered, and leaning over seized the toe of each boot in a hand and wriggled his feet. When we saw his face again he was smiling gently, and swinging back, he nestled his head against the wall and closed his eyes once more.
"You would have give your life," cried Perry.
But the only sign old Bolum made was to twirl the thumbs of his clasped hands.
"Six months ago, six short, stirrin' months ago you left us, just a plain man, at your country's call." Perry was thundering his rolling periods at us. "To-day, a moment since, standin' here by the track, we heard the rumblin' of the train and the engyne's whistle, and we says a he-ro comes—a he-ro in blue!"
Had Perry looked my way, he might have noticed that I was clad in khaki, but he was addressing Henry Holmes, whose worthy head was nodding in continual acquiescence. The old man stood, with eyes downcast and hands clasped before him, a picture of humility. The orator, carried away by his own eloquence, seemed to forget its real purpose, and in a moment, sitting unnoticed in my chair with Tim at my side, I became a minor figure, while half a hundred were gathered there to do honor to Henry Holmes. Once I even forgot and started to applaud when Perry raised his hand over the gray head as though in blessing and said solemnly: "He-ro in blue—agin we bid you welcome!"
A little laugh behind me recalled me to my real place, and with a burning face I turned.
I have in my mind a thousand pictures of one woman. But of them all the one I love most, the one on which I dwell most as I sit of an evening with my pipe and my unopened book, is that which I first saw when I sought the chit who noticed my ill-timed applause and laughed at me. I found her. I saw that she laughed with me and for me, and I laughed too. We laughed together. An instant, and her face became grave.
The orator, now swelling into his peroration, was forgotten. The people of the valley—Tim—even Tim—all of them were forgotten. I had found the woman of my firelight, the woman of my cloudland, the woman of my sunset country down in the mountains to the west. She, had always been a vague, undefined creature to me—just a woman, and so elusive as never to get within the grasp of my mind's eye; just a woman whom I had endowed with every grace; whose kindly spirit shone through eyes, now brown, now blue, now black, according to my latest whim; who ofttimes worn, or perhaps feigning weariness, rested on my shoulder a little head, crowned with a glory of hair sometimes black, and sometimes golden or auburn, and not infrequently red, a dashing, daring red. Sometimes she was slender and elf-like, a chic and clinging creature. Again she was tall and stately, like the women of the romances. Again she was buxom and blooming, one whose hand you would take instead of offering an arm. She had been an elusive, ever-changing creature, but now that I had looked into those grave, gray eyes, I fixed the form of my picture, and fixed its colors and fired them in to last for all my time.
Now she is just the woman that every woman ought to be. Her hair is soft brown and sweeps back from a low white forehead. She has tried to make it straight and simple, as every woman should, but the angels seem to have curled it here and mussed it there, so that all her care cannot hide its wanton waves. Her face is full of life and health, so open, so candid, that there you read her heart, and you know that it is as good as she is fair.
She stood before me in a sombre gown, almost ugly in its gray color and severe lines, but to me she was a quaint figure such as might have stepped out of the old world and the old time when men lived with a vengeance, and godliness and ugliness went arm in arm, for Satan had preempted the beautiful. Against her a homely garb failed. She was beautiful in spite of her clothes and not because of them. But this is generally true with women. This one, instead of sharing our admiration with her gown, claimed it all for herself. Her face had no rival.
I did not turn away. I could not. The gray eyes, once flashing with the light of kindly humor, now softened with sympathy, now glowed with pity. Pity! The thought of it stirred me with anger. The justice of it made me rage. She saw in the chair a thin, broken figure, a drawn brown face, a wreck of a man. Yesterday—a soldier. To-day—a hero. To-morrow—a crippled veteran, and after that a pensioner drifting fast into a garrulous dotage. She, too, was looking into the future. She knew what I had lost. She saw what I dreaded. Her eyes told me that. She did not know what I had gained, for she came of a silly people whose blood quickened only to the swing of a German hymn and who were stirred more by the groans of a penitent sinner than the martial call of the bugle.
So it came that I struggled to my crutches and broke rudely in on Perry Thomas's peroration. I had gathered all my strength for a protest against the future. The people of the valley were to know that their kindness had cheered me, but of their pity I wanted none. I had played a small part in a great game and in the playing was the reward. I had come forth a bit bruised and battered, but there were other battles to be fought in this world, where one could have the same fierce joy of the conflict; and he was a poor soldier who lived only to be toted out on Decoration days. I was glad to be home, but gladder still that I had gone. That was what I told them. I looked right at the girl when I said it, and she lifted her head and smiled. They heard how in the early spring in the meadow by the mill-dam Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and he had lost. He had to stay at home, while I went out and saw the world at its best, when it was awake to war and strife, and the mask that hid its emotion was lifted. They heard a very simple story and a very short one, for now that I came to recount it all my great adventure dwindled to a few dreary facts. But as best I knew I told them of the routine of the camp and of the endless drills in the long spring days down there at Tampa before the army took to sea. I spoke of the sea and the strange things we saw there as we steamed along—of the sharks that lolled in our wake, of the great turtles that seemed to sun themselves on the wave-crests, of the pelicans and the schools of flying fishes. Elmer Spiker interrupted to inquire whether the turtles I had seen were "black-legs, red-legs, or yaller-legs." I had not the remotest idea, and said that I could not see how the question was relevant. He replied that it was not, except that it would be of interest to some of those present to learn that there were three distinct kinds of "tortles"—red-legs, black-legs, and "yaller-legs." They were shipped to the city and all became "tarripine." This annoyed me. Elmer is a great scholar, and it was evident that he was simply airing his wisdom, and rather than give him a second opportunity I tried to hurry to land; but Isaac Bolum awoke and wanted to know if he had been dreaming.
"I thot I heard some one speakin' of flyin' fishes," he said.
[Illustration: Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and he had lost.]
It was reckless in me to mention these sea wonders, for now in defence of my reputation for truthfulness, I had to prove their existence. The fabric of my story seemed to hang on them. Elmer Spiker declared that he had heard his grandfather tell of a flying sucker that inhabited the deep hole below the bridge when he was a boy, but this was the same grandfather who had strung six squirrels and a pigeon on one bullet in the woods above the mill in his early manhood. There Elmer winked. Isaac Bolum allowed that they might be trout that had trained themselves in the use of wings, but he did not believe that any ordinary fish such as a chub or a pike or a sunny would care to leave its natural element to take up with the birds. Perry Thomas began to cough. That cough is always like a snake's warning rattle. Before he had time to strike, I blocked the discussion by promising that if the company suspended judgment I would in the near future prove the accuracy of my statements on flying fishes by the encyclopaedia. This promise met with general approval, so I hurried over the sea to the dry land where I knew the ways better and was less likely to arouse higher criticism. I told them of the stirring times in Cuba, till the day came when we stormed the hill, and they had to carry me back to the sea. I told them how lucky I was to get to the sea at all, for often I had closed my eyes, worn out by the pain and the struggle for life, little caring whether ever again I opened them to the light. Then strength came, and hope, and I turned my face to the North, toward the valley and home. It was hard to come back on crutches, but it was better than not to come at all. It was best, to have gone away, else I had never known the joy of the return, and I was pretty sure to stay, now that I was home, but if they fancied me dozing away my life at the store stove they were mistaken; not that I scorned the learned discussion there, but the frosts were coming soon to stir up sluggish blood, and when the guns were barking in the woods, and the hounds were baying along the ridges, I would be with them.
I looked right at the girl when I said it. I was boasting. She knew it. She must see, too, what a woful figure I should make with strong-limbed fellows like Tim there, and strong-limbed hounds like old Captain, who was lying at my side. But somehow she liked my vaunting speech. I knew it when our eyes met.