IX
Perry's head was close to mine, over my table. The school was studying louder than ever, and our voices could not have gone beyond the platform; but my friend was cautious. The scholars might well have thought that the whispered conference boded them ill; that the new teacher and the old teacher were hatching some conspiracy against them. It must have looked like it. Perry's elbows were on the table, and my elbows were on the table. My chin rested in my hands, but his hands were waving beneath my chin as he unfolded to me the plot he had just discovered against his hopes and his happiness. But the school was good. The second grammar class had been relieved from a recitation by this confab, and somehow Perry had a subduing influence. Even the Biggest Boy opened his desk quietly and never once looked up from his geography except for a cautious glance out of the corner of his left eye.
"There was a pile of 'em that high, Mark," said Perry, waving his hands about a foot above the table. "There was some books of po-ems and novels and such. He'd sent them all to her in one batch—all new, mind ye, too—and it pleased her most to death. Well, it made me feel flat, I tell you—so flat that when she asked me if I didn't think it was lovely of him, I burst right out and said it was really. What I should 'a' done was kind of pass it off as if it didn't amount to much."
"Who is the young woman?" I asked.
"I ain't mentionin' names," Perry replied, "and I ain't givin' the name of the other man; but I have an idee you could guess if you kep' at it."
Our valley does not bloom with beautiful young women. We always have a few, but those few can be counted on one's fingers. Our valley does not number among its men many who can supplement their sentimental attentions with gifts of books. I knew of one. So it did not require much guessing on my part to divine the cause of Perry's heart-sickness; but as long as the other persons in his drama were anonymities, he would speak freely, so I relieved him by declaring solemnly that never in the world could I guess. I had always supposed him a lover of all women, a slave of none.
Perry smiled.
"I have kep' a good deal of company," he said. "On account of my fiddlin', and singin', and recitin' I've always had things pretty much my own way. It's opposition that's ruination. That's what shatters a man's heart and takes all his sperrit. As long as the game's between just a man and a girl there's nothin' very serious. One or the other loses, and you can begin a new game somewheres else. But when two men and one girl get a playin' three handed, then it is serious; then it's desperate. A man has to th'ow his whole heart and mind into it, if he'd whip, and he gets so worked up he thinks his whole happiness to the end of time depends on his drivin' the other fellow to drownin' himself in the mill-dam."
"In other words, if you had not found another laying piles of books and such gifts at the feet of this fair one, whose name I can never guess, you would have fiddled to her and sung to her and recited to her until she said 'I love you.' Then you would have sought new heavens to conquer."
"That's about it," said Perry, smiling feebly. His face brightened. "You know how it is yourself, Mark. Mind how you kep' company once with Emily Holmes and nothin' come of it. She went off to normal school in desperation—you mind that, don't ye?—and she married a school-teacher from Snyder County—you mind that, don't ye? Now supposin' you and that Snyder County chap had been opposin' one another instead of you and Emily Holmes—I allow her name would have been changed to Emily Hope long ago, or you'd 'a' drownded yourself."
"But I never had any intention of marrying Emily Holmes," I protested.
"I know you didn't," Perry replied, thumping the table in triumph. "That's just the pint. If the world was popilated by one man and one woman, they'd be a bachelor and an old maid. If there was two men and one woman, then one of the men would marry the old maid sure."
"Your meaning is more clear," I said.
Though Perry did not know it, I was meeting the same opposition that so aroused his ire. In part there was truth in what he said, for while opposition does not increase one's love, it surely quickens it. I doubt if I should have been making a journey nightly up the hill if I had not expected to find Weston there. Of Perry I had no fear, and it was not egotism in me to be indifferent to him. He lives so far down the valley. It's a long walk from Buzzards Glory to Six Stars, and the road has many chuck-holes. Perry is our man-about-the-valley par excellence, but he is discreet, so it had chanced we met but once at Warden's, and that was on the night when we heard the story of Flora Martin and the famine in India. He knew me still as a friend, and not regarding him as a rival, I treated him as a companion in arms. To be sure, I could not see where he could be of much assistance; but we had a common aim and a common foe. That made a bond between us. With that common foe disposed of, the bond might snap. Till then I was Perry's friend.
"I agree with you partly," I said. "Still, it seems to me a man should love a woman for herself—wholly, entirely for herself, and not because some other fellow has set his heart on her."
"You are right there, in part," Perry answered. "I have set my heart on a particular young lady, but the fact that another—a lean, cadaverous fellow with red whiskers and no particular looks or brains—is slowly pushing himself between us makes it worse. It aggravates me; it affects my appetite." Perry smiled grimly. "It drives away sleep. You know how it 'ud have been if that Snyder County teacher had been livin' in Six Stars when you was keepin' company with Emily Holmes."
"I don't know how it would have been at all," I retorted hotly.
"Well, s'posin' when you'd walked four miles to set up with her, and thought you had her all to yourself, s'pose this Snyder County teacher with red whiskers, and little twinklin' eyes, and new clothes, come strollin' in, and stretched out in a chair like he owned her, and begin tellin' about all the countries he'd seen—about England and Rome, Injy and Africa—and she leaned for'a'd and looked up into his eyes and just listened to him talk, drank it all in like—s'pose all that, and then s'pose——"
"I'll suppose anything you like," said I, "except that I am in love with Emily Holmes and that the Snyder County teacher is cutting me out. For example, let us put me in your place. I am enamored of this fair unknown—of course I can't guess her name—and this second man, also unknown—he of the red whiskers, is my rival. Let us suppose it that way."
"If you insist," Perry replied. "Well then, you are settin' up with her. You've invited her to be your lady at the next spellin' bee between Six Stars and Turkey Walley, and she has said she'll think about it. Then you've told her that there is something wrong with you. You don't know what it is, 'ceptin' you feel all peekit like for no special reason; you can't eat no more, and sleep poorly and has sighin' spells. Then she kind of peeks at you outen the corner of her eye and smiles. S'posin' just then in comes this man and bows most polite, and tells you he is so delighted to see you, and makes her move from the settee where you are, to a rocker close to him; and leans over her and asks about the health of all the family as if they was his nearest and dearest; inquires about her dog; tells her she looks just like the portrates of his great-grandma. S'posin' she just kind of looks at the floor quiet-like or else up to him—you'll begin to think you ain't there at all, won't you? Then you'll concide that you are there but you oughtn't to be, and kind of slide out without your hat and forget your fiddle. I tell you, Mark, it's then love becomes a consumin' fire."
[Illustration: "You'll begin to think you ain't there at all.">[
Perry looked at me appealingly. Men hesitate to speak of love—except to women. He had already shown a frankness that was surprising, but then with a certain deftness he had placed me in the position of the sentimental one with a problem to solve. He was seeking for himself a solution of that problem, and was appealing to me to help him.
"Suppose again," said I, "that going another day to see the girl, I found her poring over a pile of books—all new books—just given her by this same arrogant interloper." Perry was silent, but when I paused and looked at him, I saw in his face that I was arguing along the right line. "Then the question arises, what shall I do?"
Perry nodded.
"What would you do?" he said. "That's it exact."
"I'd meet him at his own game," I answered.
"With what?" he asked.
"With what?" I repeated.
There was the rub! With what? I sat with my head clasped between my hands trying to answer him.
"With what?" I repeated, after a long silence.
"S'posin' I got her a wreath." Perry offered the suggestion, and in his enthusiasm he forgot that in our premise I was the person concerned; but I was not loath to let him take on himself the burden of our perplexity.
"Is she dead?" I asked.
"I needn't get one of that kind," he solemnly replied. "Somethin' in autumn leaves ought to be nice."
"You might do better."
"A hand-paintin', then," he ventured timidly.
I smiled on this with more approval.
"They have some be-yutiful ones at Hopedale," he said with more heart. "The last time I was down I was lookin' at 'em. They've fine gold frames and——"
"Why send her a picture of a tree when the finest oak in the valley is at her door?" I protested. "Why send her a picture of a slate-colored cow when a herd of Durhams pastures every day right under her eye?"
"That's true," Perry answered. "Hand-paintin's is meant for city folks. But what can a fellow get? A statue!" His eyes brightened. "That's just the thing—a statue of Washington or Lincoln or General Grant—how's that for an idee, Mark?"
"Excellent, if you are trying to make an impression on her uncle," I answered.
Perry shook his hands despairingly.
"You have come to a poor person at such business, Perry," said I. "What little I know of courting I have from books, and it seems to me that the usual thing is flowers—violets—roses."
My friend straightened up in his chair and gazed at me very long and hard. From me his eyes wandered to the calendar that hung behind my desk.
"November—November," he muttered. "A touch of snow too—and violets and roses."
He leaned toward me fiercely. "Violets come in May," he said. "This here is a matter of weeks."
"I'm serious, Perry," said I. "Books are the thing, and flowers; not wreaths and statues and paintings. You must send something that carries some sentiment with it."
He saw that I was in earnest, and his countenance became brighter.
"Geraniums," he muttered; thumping the table. "I'll get Mrs. Arker to let me have one of them window-plants of hers, and I'll put it in a new tomato-can and paint it. How's that for a starter?"
"I've never read about men sending geraniums," I replied. "It's odd, but I never have. I suppose the can makes them seem a little unwieldly. Still——"
"I had thought of forty-graph album." Perry spoke timidly again.
I had no mind to let him venture any more suggestions. His was too fickle a fancy, and I had settled on an easy solution of the problem. He was to send her a geranium. Somehow, I knew deep down in my own heart, ill versed as I was in such things, that I should never send her such a gift myself. I would climb to the top of Gander Knob for a wild rose or rhododendron; I would stir the leaves from the gap to the river in search of a simple spray of arbutus for her. But step before her with my arms clasping a tin can with a geranium plant r Heaven forbid! Perry was different. The suggestion pleased him. He was rubbing his hands and smiling in great contentment.
"I might send a po-em with it," he said. "I've allus found that poetry kind of catches ahold of a girl when you are away. It keeps you in her mind. It must be sing-song, though, kind of gettin' into her head like quinine. It must keep time with the splashin' of the churn and the howlin' of the wind. I mind when I was keepin' company with Rhoda Spiker—she afterward married Ulysses G. Harmon, of Hopedale—I sent her a po-em that run somethin' like this: 'I live, I love, my Life, my Light; long love I thou, Sweetheart so bright'——"
Perry's po-em never got into my brain, for as he repeated the captivating lines, I was gazing over his shoulder, out of the window, down the road to the village. I saw a girl on the store porch, standing by the door a moment as if undecided which way to go. Then she turned her head into the November gale and came rapidly up the road. In a minute more she would be passing the school-house door. Tim's letter was in my pocket and the sun was still high over the gable of the mill.
[Illustration: I saw a girl on the store porch.]
"Rhoda sent me a postal asking me to write her a po-em full of Ks or Xs or Ws, just so as she could get the Ls out of her head, and——"
"Perry!" I broke right into his story and seized the lapel of his waistcoat as though he were my dearest friend. "My girl is going by the school-house door this very minute. Now you help me. Take the school for the rest of the afternoon."
"Your girl?" cried Perry. His voice broke from the smothered conference tone and the school heard it and tittered. He recovered himself and poked me in the chest.
"Oh!" he said, "Widow Spoonholler—I seen you last Sunday singin' often the same book—I seen you. Hurry, Mark, hurry; and luck to you! You've done me most a mighty good turn."