Nelson Lloyd - The Soldier of the Valley
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Nelson Lloyd >> The Soldier of the Valley
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THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY
by
NELSON LLOYD
Illustrated by A. B. Frost
[Frontispiece: They called to me as a boy.]
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York ------------ 1904
Copyright, 1904, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Published, September, 1904
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
They called to me as a boy . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
"Welcome home--thrice welcome!"
Tim and I had stopped our ploughs to draw lots and
he had lost
"Well, old chap!"
Josiah Nummler
He did not stop to hear my answer
Swearing terrible oaths that he will never return
No answer came from the floor above
The tiger story
He had a last look at Black Log
"He pumped me dry"
"Nanny is likely to get one of her religious spells
and quit work"
I was back in my prison
"'At my sover-sover-yne's will'"
Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior
"You'll begin to think you ain't there at all"
I saw a girl on the store porch
Aaron Kallaberger
Leander
"Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn,
the Binns of Turkey Walley"
William had felt the hand of "Doogulus"
"Aren't you coming?" young Colonel seemed to say
Sat little Colonel, wailing
The main thing was proper nursing
Well, ain't he tasty
"But there are no ghosts," I argued
"Of course it hurts me a bit here"
"An seein' a light in the room, I looked in"
Tip Pulsifer leaned on my gate
The horse went down
"And I'm his widder"
Then Tim came
Old Captain
When we three sit by the fire
THE SOLDIER OF THE VALLEY
I
I was a soldier. I was a hero. You notice my tenses are past. I am a
simple school-teacher now, a prisoner in Black Log. There are no bars
to my keep, only the wall of mountains that make the valley; and look
at them on a clear day, when sunshine and shadow play over their green
slopes, when the clouds all white and gold swing lazily in the blue
above them, and they speak of freedom and of life immeasurable. There
are no chains to my prison, no steel cuffs to gall the limbs, no guards
to threaten and cow me. Yet here I stay year after year. Here I was
born and here I shall die.
I am a traveller. In my mind I have gone the world over, and those
wanderings have been unhampered by the limitations of mere time, for I
know my India of the First Century as well as that of the Twentieth,
and the China of Confucius is as real to me as that of Kwang Su.
Without stirring from my little porch down here in the valley I have
pierced the African jungles and surveyed the Arctic ice-floes. Often
the mountains call me to come again, to climb them, to see the real
world beyond, to live in it, to be of it, but I am a prisoner. They
called to me as a boy, when wandering over the hills, I looked away to
them, and over them, into the mysterious blue, picturing my India and
my China, my England and my Russia in a geographical jumble that began
just beyond the horizon.
Then I was a prisoner in the dungeons of Youth and my mother was my
jailer. The day came when I was free, and forth I went full of hope,
twenty-three years old by the family Bible, with a strong, agile body
and a homely face. I went as a soldier. For months I saw what is
called the world; I had glimpses of cities; I slept beneath the palms;
I crossed a sea and touched the tropics. Marching beneath a blazing
sun, huddling from the storm in the scant shelter of the tent, my
spirits were always keyed to the highest by the thought that I was
seeing life and that these adventures were but a fore-taste of those to
come. But one day when we marched beneath the blazing sun, we met a
storm and found no shelter. We charged through a hail of steel. They
took me to the sea on a stretcher, and by and by they shipped me home.
Then it was that I was a hero--when I came again to Black Log--what was
left of me.
My people were very kind. They sent Henry Holmes's double phaeton to
the county town to meet my train, and as I stumbled from the car, being
new to my crutches, I fell into the arms of a reception committee. Tim
was there. And my little brother fought the others off and picked me
up and carried me, as I had carried him in the old days when he was a
toddling youngster and I a sturdy boy. But he was six feet two now and
I had wasted to a shadow. Perry Thomas had a speech prepared. He is
our orator, our prize debater, our township statesman, and his
frock-coat tightly buttoned across his chest, his unusually high and
stiffly starched collar, his repeated coughing as he hovered on the
outskirts of the crowd, told me plainly that he had an address to make.
Henry Holmes, indeed, asked me to stand still just one minute, and I
divined instantly that he was working in the interest of oratory; but
Tim spoiled it all by running off with me and tossing me into the
phaeton.
So in the state-coach of Black Log, drawn by Isaac Bolum's
lemon-colored mules, with the committee rattling along behind in a
spring wagon, politely taking our dust, I came home once more, over the
mountains, into the valley.
Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever make another journey as long as that
one. Sometimes I have ventured as far as the gap, and peeped into the
broad open country, and caught the rumble of the trains down by the
river. There is one of the world's highways, but the toll is great,
and a crippled soldier with a scanty pension and a pittance from his
school is wiser to keep to the ways he knows.
And how I know the ways of the valley! That day when we rode into it
every tree seemed to be waving its green arms in salute. As we swung
through the gap, around the bend at the saw-mill and into the open
country, checkered brown and yellow by fields new-ploughed and fields
of stubble, a flock of killdeer arose on the air and screamed a
welcome. In their greeting there seemed a taunting note as though they
knew they had no more to fear from me and could be generous. I saw
every crook in the fence, every rut in the road, every bush and tree
long before we came to it. But six months had I been away, yet in that
time I had lived half my life, and now I was so changed that it seemed
strange to find the valley as fat and full as ever, stretched out there
in the sunshine in a quiet, smiling slumber.
"Things are just the same, Mark, you'll notice," said Tim, pointing to
a hole in the flooring of the bridge over which we were passing.
The valley had been driving around that same danger spot these ten
years. There was a world of meaning to the returning wanderer in that
broken plank, and it was not hard to catch the glance of my brother's
eye and to know his mind.
Henry Holmes on the front seat, driving, caught the inflection of Tim's
voice and cried testily: "You are allus runnin' the walley down. Why
don't you tell him about the improvements instead of pintin' out the
bad spots in the road?"
"Improvements?" said I, in a tone of inquiry.
"Theop Jones has bought him a new side-bar buggy," replied the old man.
"Then the Kallabergers has moved in from the country and is fixin' up
the Harmon house at the end of the town."
"And a be-yutiful place they're makin' of it," cried Isaac Bolum;
"be-yutiful!"
"They've added a fancy porch," Henry explained, "and are gittin' blue
glass panes for the front door."
"We've three spring-beds in town now," put in Isaac in his slow, dreamy
way. "If I mind right the Spikers bought theirs before war was
declared, so you've seen that one. Well, Piney Martin he has got him
one--let me see--when did he git it, Henery?"
Old Holmes furrowed his brow and closed one eye, seeking with the other
the inspiration of the sky.
"July sixth," he answered. "Don't you mind, Ike, it come the same day
and on the wery same stage as the news of the sinkin' of the Spaynish
fleet?"
"Nonsense," retorted Isaac. "You're allus mixin' dates, Henery.
You're thinkin' of Tip Pulsifer's last baby. He come July six, for
don't you mind how they called him Cevery out of pity and generosity
for the Spayniards? Piney's spring-bed arrived the same day and on the
same stage as brung us the news of Mark here havin' his left leg shot
off."
"Mebbe--mebbe--mebbe," muttered Henry, shaking his head dubiously. "It
certainly do beat all how things happens all at once in this world.
Come to think of it, the wery next day six of my sheep was killed by
dogs."
"It's good you're gittin' your dates cleared," snapped old Bolum. "On
history, Henery Holmes, you are the worst."
Henry retorted with an angry protest against the indictment, declaring
that he was studying history when Bolum was being nourished on "soft
food." That was true. Isaac admitted it frankly. He wasn't his
mother's keeper, that he could regulate his own birthday. Had that
been in his power he would certainly have set it a half century earlier
or later to avoid being constantly annoyed by the "onreasonablest
argeyments" Six Stars had ever heard. This made old Holmes smile
softly, and he turned and winked at me. The one thing he had ever been
thankful for, he said, was that his life had fallen with that of Isaac
Bolum. Whenever he done wrong; whenever the consciousness of sin was
upon him and he needed the chastisin' rod, he just went to the store
and set and listened to Ike. To this Isaac retorted that it was a
wonder the rod had not worn out long ago; it was pleasing to know, at
least, that he was made of tough old hickory. Henry admitted this to
be a "good 'un" on him--an unusual one, considering the source--but
that did not settle the exact date of the arrival of Piney Martin's
spring-bed.
It was time for me to protest that it mattered little whether the event
occurred on July sixth or a week later, since what really interested me
was the question as to who was the owner of the third of these
luxuries. Isaac's serious, self-conscious look answered me, but I
pressed the inquiry to give him an opportunity to sing the praises of
this newest of his household gods. Mr. Bolum's pleasure was evident.
Once launched into an account of the comfort of springs as compared to
a straw-tick on ropes, he would have monopolized our attention to the
end of the journey, but the sagacious Henry blocked him rudely by a tug
at the reins which almost threw the lemon-colored mules on their
haunches.
We were at the foot of the slope where the road to Buzzards Glory
branches from the pike. The Arkers had spied us coming, and ran down
from the tannery to greet us. Arnold, after he had a dozen times
expressed his delight at my return, asked if I had seen any shooting.
His son Sam's wife nudged him and whispered in his ear, upon which he
apologized abruptly, explaining that he had dropped his spectacles in
the tanning vat. Sam sought to extricate his father from these
imaginary difficulties by demanding that I go coon-hunting with him on
the next night. This set Sam's wife's elbow going again very
vigorously, and the further embarrassment of the whole family was saved
by Henry Holmes swinging the whip across the backs of the mules.
On went the state-coach of Black Log. We clattered quickly over the
last level stretch. We dragged up the last long hill, and from its
brow I looked on the roofs of Six Stars rising here and there from the
green bed of trees. I heard the sonorous rumble of the mill, and above
it a shrill and solitary crow. On the state-coach went, down the
steep, driving the mules madly before it. Their hoofs made music on
the bridge, and my journey was ended.
Home again! Even Tip Pulsifer was dear to me then. He was between the
wheels when we stopped, and I planted a crutch on one of his bare feet
and embraced him.
He grinned and cried, "Mighty souls!"
That embrace, that grin and that heart-born exclamation marked the
entrance of the Pulsifer family into my life. Theretofore I had
regarded them with a suspicion born of a pile of feathers at the door
of their shanty on the ridge, for they kept no chickens. Now the six
little Pulsifers, all with the lower halves of their faces washed and
their hair soaped down, were climbing around me, and the latest comer,
that same Cevery who arrived with Piney Martin's spring-bed, was
hoisted into kissing distance by his mother, who was thinner and more
wan than ever, but still smiling. But this was home and these were
home people. My heart was open then and warm, and I took the seven
little Pulsifers to it. I took old Mrs. Bolum to it, too, for she
tumbled the clamoring infants aside and in her joy forgot the ruffles
in the sleeves of her wonderful purple silk. At her elbow hovered the
tall, spare figure of Aaron Kallaberger. Mindful of the military
nature of the occasion he appeared in his old army overcoat, in spite
of the heat. Rare honor, this! And better still, he hailed me as
"Comrade," and enfolding my hand in his long horny fingers, cried
"All's well, Mark!"
The mill ceased its rumbling. Already the valley was rocking itself to
sleep. Out of the darkening sky rang the twanging call of a
night-hawk, and the cluck of a dozing hen sounded from the foliage
overhead. A flock of weary sheep pattered along the road, barnward
bound, heavy eyed and bleating softly. The blue gate was opened wide.
My hand was on Tim's shoulder and Tim's arm was my support.
"All's well!" I cried. For I was hobbling home.
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.
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