XIII
Hindsight is better than foresight. A foolish saying. By foresight we do God's will. By hindsight we would seek to better His handiwork. Things are right as they are, I say, as I sit quietly of an evening smoking my pipe on my porch, watching the mountains in the west bathe in the gold and purple of the descending sun. What might have been, might also have been all wrong. A foolish saying, says Tim, for if what might have been should actually be, then we should have the realization of our fondest dreams. And with that realization might come a dreadful awakening from our dreams, say I. You might have become a tea-king, Tim, and measure your fortune in millions. I might have turned lawyer instead of soldier; I might have made a great name for myself in Congress by long speeches full of dry facts and figures, or short ones puffed up with pompous phrases. The fact that Six Stars existed might have gone beyond our valley because here you and I were born, and for a time we honored the place with our presence. Suppose all that had been, and you the tea-king and I the great lawyer sat here together as we sit now, smoking, could you add one note to the evening peace; would the night-hawk pay us homage by a single added ring as he circles among the clouds; would the bull-frogs in the creek sing louder to our glory; would the bleating of the sheep swing in sweeter to the music of the valley? And look at God's fireplace, I cry, pointing to the west, where the sun is heaping the glowing cloud coals among the mountains. God's fireplace? says Tim, with a queer look in his eyes. Yes, say I, and the valley is the hearthstone. The mountains are the andirons. Over them, piled sky high, the cloud-logs are glowing, and never logs burned like those, all gold and red. Night after night I can sit here and warm my heart at that fireside. Could you, tea-king, buy for my eyes a picture more wonderful? The fire is dying. The cloud coals grow fainter—now purple; and now in ashes they float away into the chill blue. But they will come again. Could your millions, tea-king, buy for me a sweeter music than the valley's heart throb as it rocks itself to sleep?
"No," Tim answers, "but suppose——"
"And could I have better company to watch and listen with?" I exclaim. "For with you a tea-king, Tim, and I a lawyer, it would be just the same, would it not?"
"That's just what I was trying to get at," says Tim. "Suppose that day of the fox-hunt you had not carried Weston——"
I hold up my hand to check him.
"Were it to happen a hundred times over, I would take him to Mary's," I cry. "Else he would have died."
"You are right, Mark," Tim says.
I took Weston to Mary's house that day when I found him lying in the charcoal clearing, with little Colonel standing over him wailing. Tearing open his coat and shirt, I stanched his wound as best I could. Then I called the others to me. Tip and Arnold picked him up and carried him, while Murphy Kallaberger and I broke a path through the bushes, and Aaron ran on to Warden's to tell them of the accident and have them prepare for the wounded man. Warden's was the nearest house, but that was a mile from the clearing, and in the woods our progress was slow. Once free of the ridges and in the open fields the way was easy, and Murphy could lend a hand to the others.
"He's monstrous light," Tip said. "He doesn't seem no more than skin and bones in fancy rags."
It is strange how even our clothes go back on us when we are down. Weston I had always known as a lanky man, but about his loosely fitting garments there had been an air of careless distinction. Now that he was broken, they hung with such an odd perversion as to bring from its hiding-place every sharp angle in the thin frame. The best nine tailors living could not have clothed him better for that little journey, nor lessened a whit the pathos of the thin arms that lay limply across the shoulders of Tip and Arnold.
"He's a livin' skelington," old Arker whispered, as I plodded along at his side. "Poor devil!"
"Poor devil!" said I. For looking at the almost lifeless man I thought of my own good fortune. This morning I had envied him. Now he had nothing but his wealth, and his hold on that was weakening fast. I had everything—life and health, home and friends—I had Mary. As we parted a few minutes before, up there in the woods, I had pitied him. He had seemed so lonely, so bitter in his loneliness, and yet at heart so good. Now his eyes half opened as they carried him on, his glance met mine in recognition, and it seemed to me that he smiled faintly. But it was the same bitter smile. "Poor devil!" I said to myself.
And we carried him into Mary's house.
She was waiting for us, and without a word led us upstairs to a room where we laid him on a bed.
"I stumbled, Mark, I stumbled," he whispered, as I leaned over him. "The fox came and I ran for it—then I fell—and then the little hound came, and then——"
Mary was bathing his forehead, and for the first time he saw her.
"I stumbled, Mary," he whispered. "I swear it."
It was nearly ten o'clock when I left Weston's room. The doctor was with him and was preparing to bivouac at the patient's side. He was a young man from the big valley. Luther Warden had driven to the county town and brought him back to us. The first misgivings I had when I caught sight of his youthful, beardless face were dispelled by the business-like way in which he went about his work. He had been in a volunteer regiment, he told me, as an assistant surgeon, but had never gone past the fever camps, as this was his first case of a gunshot wound. He had made a study of gunshot wounds, and deemed himself fortunate to be in when Mr. Warden called. Truly, said I to myself, one man's death is another man's practice. But it was best that he was so confident, and I found my faith in him growing as he worked. The wound was a bad one, he said, and the ball had narrowly missed the heart, but with care the man would come around all right. The main thing was proper nursing. The young doctor smiled as he spoke, for standing before him in a solemn row were half the women of Six Stars. Mrs. Bolum was there with a tumbler of jelly; Mrs. Tip Pulsifer had brought her "paytent gradeated medicent glass," hoping it would be useful; Mrs. Henry Holmes had no idea what was needed, but just grabbed a hot-water bottle as she ran. Elmer Spiker's better half was there to demand her injured boarder at once; he paid for his room at the tavern; it was but right that he should occupy it and that she should care for him. When she found that she could not have him entirely, she compromised on the promise that she would be allowed to watch over him the whole of the next day. In spite of the jar of jelly, the doctor chose Mrs. Bolum to help him that night, and when I left them the old woman was sitting in a rocker at the bedside, her eyes watching every movement of the sleeping patient's drawn face.
[Illustration: The main thing was proper nursing.]
Outside, the wind was whistling. The steady heating of an oak branch on the porch roof told me it was blowing hard. It sounded cold. Mary stood tiptoe to reach my collar and turn it up. Then she buttoned me snug around the neck. It was the first time a woman had ever done that for me. How good it was! I absently turned the collar down again and tore my coat open. Then I smiled.
Again she raised herself tiptoe before me, and with a hand on each shoulder, she stood looking from her eyes into mine.
"You fraud!" she cried.
Then I laughed. Lord, how I laughed! Twenty-four years I had lived, and until now I had never known a real joke, one that made the heart beat quicker, and sent the blood singing through the veins; that made the fingers tingle, the ears burn, and brought tears to the eyes. I don't suppose that other people would have thought this one so amusing. The young doctor upstairs might not have feigned a smile, for instance. That was what made it all the better for me, for it was my own joke and Mary's, and in all the world I was the only man who could see the fun of it.
"When you turn that collar up again I am going," said I.
So she sprang away from me, laughing, and quick as I reached out to seize her, she avoided me.
"You know I can't catch you," I cried, taunting her, "so I must wait."
As she stood there before me quietly, her hands clasped, her eyes looking up into mine, I saw how fair she was, and I wondered. The picture of Weston in the woods, standing off there gazing at me, came back then, and with it a vague feeling of fear and distrust. I saw myself as Weston saw me, and I marvelled.
"Mary," I said, "this morning up there in the woods I told Robert Weston everything, and he stood off just as you are standing now. It seemed to me he wondered how it could be true, and now I wonder too. Maybe it's all a mistake."
"It's not a mistake, Mark," the girl said, and she came to me again and put a hand on each shoulder and looked up. "If I did not care for you I'd never have given you the promise I did last night. But I do care for you, Mark, more than for anyone else in the world. You are big and strong and good—that's why—it's all any woman can ask. You are true, Mark—and that's more than most men——"
"But, Mary, there's Tim," I protested, for I did not care to usurp to myself the sum of all the virtues allotted to my sex.
"Tim?" said she lightly, as though she had never heard of him.
"Yes, Tim," I said shortly. "Why did you choose me instead of a lad like Tim?"
"Mark, I care for you more than anyone else in the world," said Mary.
"But do you love me?" I asked quickly.
"I think I do," she said. But reaching up, she turned my collar again and buttoned my coat against the storm.