All the Brothers Were Valiant

by Ben Ames Williams

The moon flecked down through the leaves upon her face. There was moonlight on her cheek, and on her mouth; but her thick hair and her eyes were shadowed and mysterious. Joel saw that her lips were smiling.... She drew his head down toward hers.... Joel was flesh and blood; and she panted, and gasped, and pushed him away, and smoothed her hair, and laughed at him. “I love you to be so strong,” she whispered, happily.

He had not told them, at supper, of his promotion. He told Priscilla now; and the girl could not sit still beside him. She danced in the path before the seat; she perched on his knee, and caught his big shoulders in her tiny hands and tried to shake him back and forth in her delight. “You don’t act a bit excited,” she scolded. “You don’t act as though you were glad, a bit. Aren’t you glad, Joe? Aren’t you just so proud?...”

“Yes,” he told her. “Of course. Yes. Yes, I am glad, and I am proud.”

“Oh,” she cried, “I could—I could just hug you in two.” She tried it, tightening her arms about his big neck, clinging to him.... He sat stiff and awkward under her caresses, thrilling with a happiness that he did not know how to express. He felt uneasy, half embarrassed. Her ecstasy continued....

Then, abruptly, it passed. She became practical. Still upon his knee, she began to ask questions. When would he sail away? She had heard the Nathan Ross was almost ready. When would he come back? When would he be rich, so that they might be married? Would it be long?...

Joel found tongue. “We will be married Monday,” he said slowly. “We will go away—on the Nathan Ross—together. I do not want to go alone.”

She slipped from his knee, stood before him. “Why, Joel! You’re—you’re just crazy to think of it.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I have thought all about it. It is the best thing to do. We will be married Monday; and we will make a bigger cabin on the—Nathan Ross....” His voice always slowed a little as he spoke the name of his first ship. “You will be happy on her,” he said. “You will like it all.... The sea....”

She returned to his knee, tumbling his hair. “You silly! Men don’t understand. Why, I couldn’t be ready for ever so long. And I wouldn’t dare go away with you. For so awfully long. I just couldn’t....” Her eyes misted with thought, and she said quite seriously: “Why, Joel, we might find we didn’t like each other at all. But we’d be on the ship, with no way to get away from it ... for three years. Don’t you see?”

Joel said calmly: “That is not so; because we know about—liking each other, already. I know how it is with you. It is clothes that you are thinking about. Well, you can get them in the stores. And you have many, already. You have new dresses whenever I see you....”