It was dark when I reached home. Opening the door, I groped my way across the room till I found the lamp and lighted it. Then I sat down a minute to think. Two weeks is a very short time, but when you have been over the mountains and back, when you have hovered for days close to the banks of the Styx, when you have huddled for days close to the Shadrack stove, listening to the widow's stories of her John and Tip's praise of his wife, then a fortnight seems an age. But everything was as I had left it. Even the pen leaned against the inkwell and the scraps of paper littered the floor where I had tossed them that morning, when Tip and I started over the mountain. Those scraps were part of the letter I did not send to Mary. They flashed to me the thought of the one I had sent, and of the answer I never expected. It was foolish to look, but I had told her to slip her note under the door, if she did send it, and I was taking no chances. Seizing the lamp, I hobbled to the kitchen, and laughing to myself at the whole absurd proceeding, leaned over and swept the floor with the light.
Right on the sill it lay, a small white envelope! I did not waste time hobbling back to my chair and the table. I sat right down on the floor with the lamp at my side, and tore open the note and read it.
"Dear Mark. Please come to me."
That was all she said. It was enough. It was all I wanted in the world.
Once I had been disappointed, but now there was no mistaking it. Upside down, backward and forward I read it, right side up and criss-cross, rubbing my eyes a half a hundred times, but there was her appeal—no question of it. After all, all was well. And when Mary calls I must go, even if I have crossed two mountains and am supperless. All the bitterness had gone. All those days of brooding were forgotten, for I could go again up the road, my white road, to the hill, and the light there would burn for me.
Then Tim came!
Then Tim came.[Illustration: Then Tim came.]
Then Tim came.[Illustration: Then Tim came.]
I was still sitting on the floor when he came, reading the note over and over, with the lamp beside me.
With Captain and Colonel at his heels he burst in upon me.
"Well, Mark, you scoundrel," he cried, laughing, as he caught me by the arm and lifted me up. "Where have you been?"
"Travelling," I answered grimly. "And you—what are you doing here?"
"I came to find you," he said. "Do you suppose you can disappear off the face of the earth for two weeks and that I will not be worried? Why, I came from New York to hunt you up—just got here this afternoon and was over at Bolum's when we saw the light. Now give an account of yourself."
"It isn't necessary," said I, smiling complacently. I put the lamp on the table and picked up my hat. "I'll be back in a while," I said. "I'm going up to see Mary."
"To see Mary?" Tim cried.
"Yes, to see Mary," I answered.
Then, with a little flourish of triumph, I handed him her note.
Tim read it. His face became very grave, and he looked from it to me, and then turned and, with an elbow resting on the mantel, stood gazing down into the empty fireplace.
"Well?" I exclaimed, angered by his mood.
"This is two weeks old, Mark," he said, handing me the paper.
"What of it?" I cried querulously, putting on my hat and moving to the door.
My hand was on the knob turning it, when Tim said, "Mary has left the valley."
It did not bother me much when he said that. I was getting so used to being knocked about that a blow or two more made little difference. The knob was not turned though. It shot back with a click, and I leaned against the door, staring at my brother.
"And when did she go?" I asked. "And where—back to Kansas?"
"To New York," Tim answered, "and with Weston—she has married Weston."
I was glad the door was there, for that trip over the mountain, with the creek, and the powwowing and all that, had left me still a little wobbly. Tim's announcement was not adding to my spirit. Long I gazed at his quiet face; and I knew well enough that he was speaking the truth. And, perhaps, after all, the truth was best. It was all over, anyway, and we were just where we started before she came to the valley.
I was just where I was before I found that note lying on the door-sill. I had been foolish, sitting there on the floor reading that message of hers that she had belied. But that was only for a minute, and I would never be foolish again. Trust me for that.
"She has married Weston," I said. "Well, the little flirt!"
Tim got down on the hearth and began piling paper and kindling and logs in the fireplace. He started the blaze, and when it was going cheerily he looked up to find me in my old chair by the table, with Captain beside me, his head on my knee as I stroked it.
"The little flirt!" I said again, bound that he should hear me.
He heard. He took his old chair, and resting his elbows on the table, resting his chin in his hands, a favorite attitude of his, he sat there eying me quietly.
"The little what, Mark?" he said at last.
"Flirt," I snapped.
It was simply a braggart's way. I knew it. Tim knew it, too. He seemed to look right through me. I was angry with him, I was jealous of him, because she had cared for him. I knew she had. I knew why she had. Tim and I were far apart. But he had made the breach. All the wrong wrought was his, and yet he sat there, calmly eying me, as though he were a righteous judge and I the culprit.
"Why did you say flirt?" he asked quietly.
"She promised to marry me," I said.
"Yes."
"She loved you, Tim."
"Yes—and how did you know it?"
"Perry Thomas saw you that night when you went to stay a minute."
The color left Tim's face and he leaned back in his chair, away from the light into the shadow, and whistled softly.
"You knew it, then," he said, after a long while. "I didn't intend you should, Mark. I didn't intend you ever should."
"Naturally," said I in an icy tone.
"Naturally," said he. His face came into the light again, and he leaned there on the table, watching me as earnestly as ever.
"Naturally," he said again. "I was going away, Mark, never to bother you nor her. Did I know then that you loved her? Had you ever told me? Was I to blame for that moment when I knew I loved the girl and that she loved me?"
"No. I never told you—that's true," I said.
"And yet I knew you cared for her, Mark. I could see that. I saw it all those nights when you would leave me to go plodding up the hill. That's why I went away."
"Why did you go away?" I cried. "You went to see the world and make money——"
"I went because I loved the girl and you did, too," said Tim. And looking into those quiet eyes, I knew that he spoke the truth and I had been blind all this time. "Weston knew it," he went on. "He saw it from the first. That's why he helped me."
"You are not at all an egotist," I sneered, trying to bear up against him.
"Entirely so," he said calmly. "I even thought that I might win, Mark. But then I had so much and you so little chance, I went away to forget. Weston knew that. He knew, too, that there was no Edith Parker."
"And what has Edith Parker to do with all this?" I asked more gently, for he was breaking down my barriers.
"She might have done much for you had I not come back when Weston was shot. Couldn't you see, Mark, how angry Mary was with me for forgetting her? But Weston knew it. And that night—that minute—I only wanted to explain to Mary, and she saw it all, Mark, and I saw it all—and we forgot. Then she told me of you."
"She told you rather late," said I.
"But she would have kept her promise. Couldn't you forgive her, Mark, for that one moment of forgetting? It was just one moment, and I left her then forever. We thought you'd never know."
"And thinking that, you came whistling down the road that night," I sneered. "You came whistling like a man mightily pleased with his conquest—or, perhaps you sang so gayly from sheer joy in your own goodness. It seems to me at times like that a man would——"
"A man would whistle a bit for courage," Tim interrupted. "Couldn't he do that, Mark? Couldn't he go away with his head up and face set, or must he totter along and wail simply because he is doing a fair thing that any man would do?"
"Why, in Heaven's name, couldn't you keep her for yourself?" I cried, pounding the floor with my crutch.
Then, in my anger I arose and went stamping up and down the room, while Tim sat there staring at me blankly. At last I halted by the fireplace and stood there looking down at him very hard. I looked right into his heart and read it. He winced and turned his face from me. I was the righteous judge now and he the culprit.
"You left her, Tim," I said hotly. "You might have known the girl could never marry me after that minute. You might have known she was not the girl to deceive me—she would have told me; and then, Tim, do you think that I would have kept her to her promise? Why didn't you come to me and tell me?"
"For your sake, Mark, I didn't," Tim answered, looking up.
"And for my sake you left the girl there—you turned your back on her and went away. Then in her perplexity she looked to me again, and I had gone. I didn't know. I went away for her sake, and when she sent for me I had forsaken her, too. That's a shabby way to treat a woman. Do you wonder she turned to Weston?"
"No," Tim said, "for Weston is a man of men, he is—and he cared for her—that's why he stayed in the valley."
"I knew that," said I, "for I saw it that day when he went away from me to the charcoal clearing."
"Then think of the lonely girl up there on the hill, Mark," Tim said. He joined me at the fireplace, and we stood side by side, as often we had stood in the old days, warming our hands, and watching the crackling flames. "Do you blame her? I had gone, vowing never to come back again till she kept her promise to you; you had fled from her—she wrote, and no word came. And Weston is a wise man and a kind man, and when she turned to him she found comfort. Do you blame her?"
"No," I said, half hesitating.
"After all, it's better, too," Tim went on. "What could you have given her, Mark—or I, compared to what his wealth means to a woman like Mary?"
Wealth was not happiness. Money was not peace. Etches were a delusion. Now she had them. That was what Weston would give her, and I wished her joy. True, he loved the girl. True, he offered her just what I did, and with it he gave those fleeting joys that wealth brings. She should be happy—just as much so as if she had made herself a fellow-prisoner with me here in the little valley. For what had I to offer her? The love of a crippled veteran; the wealth of a petty farmer; the companionship of a crotchety pedagogue. What joy it would give her ambitious soul as the years went on to watch her husband develop; to see him growing in the learning of the store; to have him ranking first among the worthies of the bench; to greet him as he hobbled home at night after a busy day at nothing! It was better as it was—aye—a thousand times.
But there was Tim. What a man Tim was, and how blind I had been and selfish! He stood before me tall and strong, watching me with his quiet eyes, and as I looked at him I thought of Weston, the lanky cynic, with his thin, homely face and loose-jointed, shambling walk. Then I wondered at it all. Then I said to myself, "Is it best?"
"What makes you so quiet, Mark?" asked Tim.
"I was wishing, Tim," I answered, laying a hand on each of his broad shoulders, "I was wishing you had kept her when you had her."
Tim laughed. It was his clear, honest laugh.
"It is best as it is," he said. "It's best for her and best for us, for she'll be happy. But supposing one of us had won—would it have been the same—the same as it was before she came—the same as it is now?"
"No," I answered.
"No," he cried. "Now for supper—then our pipes—all of us together—you in your chair and I in mine—and Captain and Colonel—just as it used to be."
Tim has gone back to the city after his first long vacation and here I am alone again. He wants me to be with him and live down there in a brick and mortar gulch where the sun rises from a maze of tall chimneys and sets on oil refineries. I said no. Some day I may, but that day is a long way off. In the fall I am to go for a week and we are to have a fine time, Tim and I, but Captain and Colonel will have to be content to hear about it when I get back. Surely it will give us much to talk of in the winter nights, when we three sit by the fire again—Captain and Colonel and I.
Old Captain.[Illustration: Old Captain.]
Old Captain.[Illustration: Old Captain.]
Tim says it is lonely for me here. Lonely? Pshaw! I know the ways of the valley, and there is not a lonely spot in it from the bald top of Thunder Knob to the tall pine on the Gander's head. I would have Tim stay here with me, but he says no. He wants to win a marble mausoleum. I shall be content to lie beneath a tree. Tim is ambitious.
Just a few nights ago, we sat smoking in the evening, warming our hearts at the great hearth-stone. Thunder Knob was all aglow, and the cloud coals were piled heaven-high above it, burning gold and red. Down in the meadow Captain and Colonel raced from shock to shock on the trail of a rabbit, and a flock of sheep, barnward bound, came bleating along the road.
When we three sit by the fire.[Illustration: When we three sit by the fire.]
When we three sit by the fire.[Illustration: When we three sit by the fire.]
Tim began to suppose. He was supposing me a great lawyer and himself a great merchant and all that. I lost all patience with him.
Suppose it all, Tim, I said. Suppose that you, the great tea-king, and I, the statesman, sat here smoking. Would the cloud coals over there on Thunder Knob blaze up higher in our honor? And the quail, perched on the fence-stake, would she address herself to us or to Mr. Robert White down in the meadow? Would the night-hawk, circling in the clouds, strike one note to our glory? Could the bleating of the sheep swing in sweeter to the music of the valley as she is rocked to sleep?