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Mary sat knitting. Beware of a woman who knits. The keenest lawyer in our county is not so clever a cross-examiner as his sister when she sits with her needles and yarn. Questions directed at one can be parried. You expect them and dodge. The woman knits and knits, and lulls you half to sleep, and then in a far-away voice asks questions. They come as a boon, a gracious acknowledgment that you exist, and though in her mind your place is secondary to the flying needles and the tangled worsted, still you are there and she is half listening to what you have to say. So you tell her twice as much as is wise. You have no interest for her. Her eyes are fixed on her work. She asks you the secret of your life, and then bends farther over, seeming to forget your existence. Desperate, you shout it at her, and she looks up and smiles, a wondering, distraught smile; then goes on knitting.
There were some things in Tim's letter that I did not intend to tell Mary. He had written to me in confidence. A man does not mind letting one of his fellows know that he is in love with a woman, but to let a woman know it is different. She will think him a fool, unless she is his inspiration. I knew Tim. I knew that he was no fool, and I did not wish her to get such an impression. I loved a pretty woman. So did Tim. But Mary would not understand it in Tim's case. That was why I folded the letter when I had read the first four pages.
But Mary was knitting. "It is fine to think he is getting along so well," she said.
She looked up, but not at me. Her face was turned to the window; her eyes were over the valley which was growing gray, for the sun was down. What she saw there I could not tell. A drearier sight is hard to find than our valley when the chill of the November evening is creeping over it as the fire in the west goes out. Night covers it, and it sleeps. But the winter twilight raises up its shadows. In the darkness all is hidden. In the half-light there is utter loneliness.
I turned from the window to the letter, and Mary looked at me for the first time in many minutes.
"Are you going to read the rest of the letter?" she demanded.
"You have heard 'most all of it," I replied evasively.
"And the rest?" she said.
"Is of no interest," I answered. "It's just a few personal, confidential things. Perhaps some time I can tell you."
"Oh," she exclaimed carelessly, and went on knitting, drawing closer to the lamplight.
"How long is it since he left?" she asked at last, reaching down to untangle the worsted from the end of the rocker.
"Six weeks," said I. "It's just six weeks coming to-morrow since Tim and I parted at Pleasantville. To think he has been promoted already! At that rate he should be head of the firm in a year or two."
"Mr. Weston has been very kind," said she. "Of course he has seen that Tim had every chance. He is the most thoughtful man I ever knew. He——"
Weston's excellent qualities were well known to me. I had discovered them long ago, and I did not care to hear Mary descant on them at length. He had done much for Tim, but it was what Tim had done for himself that I was proud of, so I interrupted her rather rudely.
"Yes, he got Tim his place; but you must remember Mr. Weston has hardly been in New York a day since the boy left. He doesn't bother much about business, so, after all, Tim is working his way alone."
"Yes," said Mary. She had missed a stitch somewhere, and it irritated her greatly. That was evident by the way she picked at it. She remedied the trouble somehow, recovered her composure, and went on knitting.
"Is it eight dollars he is making, did you say?" she asked.
"Yes, eight," I replied, verifying the figure with a glance at the letter.
"A week or a month?"
"A week. Just think of it—that is more than I got in the army."
But Mary was not a bit impressed. I remembered that she came from Kansas, and in Kansas a dollar is not so big as in our valley.
"Living is so expensive in the city," she said absently. "With eight dollars a week here Tim would be a millionaire. But in New York—" A shrug of the shoulder expressed her meaning.
"True," said I, a bit ruefully.
I had expected her to clasp her hands, to look up at me and listen to my stories of Tim's success, and hear my dreams for his future. Instead, she went on knitting, never once raising her eyes to me. It exasperated me. In sheer chagrin I took to silence and smoking. But she would not let me rest long this way, though I was slowly lulling myself into a state of semi-coma, of indifference to her and calm disdain.
"Of course Tim has made some friends," she said, glancing up from her work very casually.
"Of course he has," I snapped.
"That's nice," she murmured—knitting, knitting, knitting.
I expected her to ask who his friends were, and how he had made them. That was all in the letter. Moreover, it was in the part I had not read to her. But she abruptly abandoned this line of inquiry. She did not care. She let me smoke on.
Suddenly she dropped her work and asked, "Is that a footstep on the porch?"
"Footsteps! No—why, who did you think was coming?" I said.
"Mr. Weston promised to drop in on his way home from hunting—but I guess he'll disappoint me. I hoped it was he." She fell to her task again, only now she began to hum softly, thus shutting me off entirely.
For a very long while I endured it, but the time came when action of some kind was called for. We were not married, that I could sit forever smoking while she hummed. Even in Black Log, etiquette requires that a man talk to a woman when in her company; and when the woman ceases to listen, the wise man departs. That was just what I did not want to do, and only one alternative was left me. I got out the letter and held it under the light.
"You were asking about Tim's friends, Mary," said I.
"Was I?" she returned. "I had forgotten. What did I say?"
"You asked if he had made any friends," I replied, as calmly as I could. "I was going to read you what he said."
"Oh!" she cried. And at last she dropped her knitting, and resting her elbows on her knees, clasping her chin in her hands, she looked up at me from her low chair. "I thought it was forbidden," she said.
"Tim didn't say anything about not reading it," I answered. "At first, though, it seemed best not to; but you'll understand, Mary. Of course, we mustn't take him too seriously, but it does sound foolish. Poor Tim!"
"Poor Tim!" repeated the girl. "He must be in love."
"He is," said I.
"Then don't read it!" she cried. "Surely he never intended you to read it to me."
"Of course he did," I laughed, for at last I had aroused her, and now her infernal knitting was forgotten; she no longer strained her ears for Weston's footfalls. Her eyes were fixed on me. "Poor old Tim! Well, let's wish him luck, Mary. Now listen."
So I read her the forbidden pages.
"'You should see Edith Parker, Mark. She is so different from the girls of Black Log. Her father is head book-keeper in the store, and he has been very good to me. Last week he took me home to dinner with him. He has a nice house in Brooklyn. His wife is dead, and he has just his daughter. We have no women in Black Log that compare to her. She is tall and slender and has fair hair and blue eyes.'"
"I hate fair-haired women," broke in Mary with some asperity. "They are so vain."
"I agree with you," said I. "That is invariably the case, and dark hair is so much more beautiful; but we must make allowance for Tim. Let us see—'fair hair and blue eyes and the sweetest face'—I do believe that brother of mine is out of his head to write such stuff."
"He certainly is," said Mary, very quietly.
"Poor Tim! But go on."
"'We played cards together for a while, till old Mr. Parker went asleep in his chair, and then Edith and I had a chance to talk. You know, Mark, I've always been a bit afraid of women, and awkward and ill at ease around them. But Edith is different from the girls of Black Log. We were friends in a minute. You don't know what it is to talk to these girls who have been everywhere, and seen everything, and know everything. They are so much above you, they inspire you. For a girl like that no sacrifice a man can make is too great. To win a girl like that a man must do something and be something. Now up in Black Log——'"
"Yes, up in Black Log the women are different," said Mary in a quiet voice. "They have to work in Black Log, and it's the men they work for. If they sat on thrones and talked wisdom and looked beautiful, the kitchen-fires would die out and the children go naked."
"Tim doesn't say anything disparaging to the people of our valley," I protested. "He says, 'in Black Log the girls don't understand how to dress. They deck themselves out in gaudy finery. Now Edith wears the simplest things. You never notice her gown. You only see her figure and her face.'"
"Do I deck myself out in gaudy finery, Mark?" Mary's appeal was direct and simple.
A shake of the head was my only answer. I wanted to tell her that Tim was blind. I wanted to tell her the boy was a fool; that Edith, the tall, thin, pale creature, was not to be compared to one woman in our valley; that I know who that woman was; that I loved her. I would have told her this. With a sudden impulse I leaned toward her. As suddenly I fell back. My crutches had clattered to the floor!
A battered veteran! A pensioner! A back-woods pedagogue! That I was. That I must be to the end. My place was in the school-house. My place was on the store bench, set away there with a lot of other broken antiquities. That I should ask a woman to link her life with mine, was absurd. A fair ship on a fair sea soon parts company with a derelict—unless it tows it. A score of times I had fought this out, and as often I had found but one course and had set myself to follow it, but there was that in Mary's quiet eyes that shook my resolution. There was an appeal there, and trust.
"I am glad, anyway, I am not so much above you, Mark," she said, now laughing.
I gathered up my crutches and the letter. I gathered up my wits again.
"There's where I feel like Tim, indeed," I said.
"I don't think I should like this lofty Edith," the girl exclaimed. "What a pompous word it is—Edith! Tim is ambitious. I suppose he rolls that name over and over in his mind."
It seemed that Mary was unnecessarily sharp toward a young woman she had never seen and of whom she had as yet heard nothing but good. While for myself I felt a certain resentment at Tim for his praise of this girl and the condescending references to my misfortune in never having seen her like, I had for him a certain keen sympathy and hope for his success. I had a certain sympathy for Edith, too, for a man in love, if unrestrained in his praise, will make a plain, sensible, motherly girl look like a frivolous fool. Perhaps in this case Edith was the victim. I suggested this to Mary, and she laughed softly.
"Perhaps so," she said. "But I must admit it irritates me to see our Tim lose his head over a stranger. I can only picture her as he does—a superior being, who lives in Brooklyn, whose name is Edith, and who wears her hair in a small knot on top of her head. Can you conceive her smile, Mark, if she saw us now—if this fine Brooklyn girl with her city ways dropped down here in Black Log?"
"That's all in Tim's letter," I cried. "Listen. 'She asked all about my home and you. I told her of the place and of all the people, of Mary and Captain. Last night I took over that picture of you in your uniform, and I won't tell you all the nice things she said about you, and——'"
"She's a flatterer," cried Mary.
"I am beginning to love her myself," said I. "But listen to Tim. 'She told me she hoped to see Black Log some day, and to meet the soldier of the valley. I said that I hoped she would, too, but I didn't tell her that a hundred times a day, as I worked over the books in the office, I vowed that soon I'd take her there myself.'"
"As Mrs. Tim," Mary added, for I was folding up the letter.
"As Mrs. Tim, evidently," said I. "Poor old Tim! It's a very bad case."
"Poor old Tim!" said Mary.
She took up her needles and her work, and fell to knitting.
"I suppose they must be very rich—the Parkers, I mean." This was offered as a wedge to break the silence, for the needles were going very rapidly now, and the stitches seemed to call for the closest watching.
"Yes," said Mary.
I lighted my pipe again.
"What a grand man Tim will be when he comes back home." I suggested this after a long silence. "He'll look fine in his city clothes, for somehow those city men do dress differently from us country chaps. Now just picture Tim in a—in a——"
Mary was humming softly to herself.