The Soldier of the Valley Part 10

"'Fierth broke he forth,'" lisped the boy.

"Louder. Put some spirit in it," I cried. "'Fierce broke he forth!'"

And my crutch beat the floor.

"'Fierth broke he forth, and durtht thou then to bared----"

"To beard," I corrected.

"'Bared the lion in hith den--the Doog-dug-lath----'" Abraham stopped and took a long breath. I just gazed at him.

"'In hith hall,'" he shouted. "'And h-o-p-hop-e-s-t-hopest thou then unthscathed to go?'"

The boy's knees began to bend under him, and he was reaching a long, thin arm out behind hunting for the bench. He was fleeing. I knew it. I warned him.

"No--go on--read on."

Abraham sighed and drew his sleeve across his mouth from the elbow to the tips of his fingers. Then he sang:

"'n.o.by--Thent Bride--ofBoth--wellno--updraw--bridgegrooms--whatward--erho --lettheportculluthfall!'"

Young Spiker collapsed.

"'Lord Marmion turned; well was his need,'" I cried, "if Douglas ever addressed him in that fas.h.i.+on."

"Now watch me, boys," I added. And with as much fire as I could kindle in so short a time and under conditions so dampening, I thundered the resounding lines: "'No, by St. Bride of Bothwell, no! Up drawbridge, grooms--what, warder, ho!'"

"'Let the portcullis fall!'" This last command rang from the back of the room. Perry Thomas stood there smiling.

"I couldn't have done it better myself, Mark," he said. "It's a splendid piece--that Manny-yon--ain't it--grand--n.o.ble. I love to say it."

"Teacher Thomas, Teacher Thomas," came in the shrill voice of Chester Holmes, "ain't it Dooglas?"

Perry was at my side, smiling benignly on the school. He really seemed to love the scholars; but Perry is a pious man, and seeks to follow the letter of the Scriptures, and the command is to love our enemies.

"Doogulus--Doogulus," he said. "Of course, boys, it's Doogulus."

The word seemed to taste good, he rolled it over and over so in his mouth.

"Teacher Hope says you ain't such a fine speaker after all," cried Lulu Ann Nummler from the distant end of the bench.

She is fifteen and should have known better, but the people of our valley are dreadfully frank sometimes, and this girl spoke in the clear, sharp voice of truth that cut through one. Perry turned quick as a flash and eyed me.

For a moment all I could do was to thump the floor and cry "Order!

Silence! Lulu Ann Nummler, when you want to speak, you must hold up three fingers."

The three fingers shot up at once and waved at me, but I pretended not to see them and turned to my guest.

"I said, Perry, that you were not quite so great a speaker as Demosthenes," I stammered. Chester Holmes had three fingers up and Ira Snarkle was waving both hands, but I went calmly on: "They were telling me how beautifully you recited, and I was trying to instil into the piece a little of your spirit. But now that we have you here, I insist on your showing me and the school just how it is done."

Perry frowned fiercely on Lulu Ann Nummler, and the three fingers disappeared. On me he smiled.

"It's a great pleasure to me to be able to recite," he said. "To be able to repeat great po-ems at will, is to have a treasure you can allus carry with you while your voice lasts." All this was to the scholars. "There are three great arts in this world--singin', hand-paintin', and last but not least, speakin'. I try my hand at all of them except hand-paintin', and I wish to impress on all you scholars what a joy it is to oneself and one's friends to have mastered one of these muses. Singin' and speakin'

are closely allied, startin' from the same source. And hand-painting it allus seemed to me, is really elocution in oils; for a be-yutiful picture is a silent talker. What suggestions it brings to us as we look upon a paintin' of a wreath of flowers, or fruit, or a handsome lady! This art is lastin'. Speakin' and singin' is over as soon as they is done. So I have often thought that had I only time I'd hand-paint; but bein' a busy man I've had to content myself with but two of the muses."

Perry paused a moment to rub his hands and smile. I did not miss this opportunity to break in, for I had no intention of listening to a dissertation on art as well as to a recitation.

"Now let us have your 'Marmion,'" I said.

He had forgotten all about "Marmion," and came back to the knight with a start and a cough. Then he gazed long at the floor. The school buzz died away, and you could hear the ticking of my little clock. Perry coughed again and I knew that he was started, so I settled down in my chair and gazed out of the window.

"'But Doogulus round him drew his cloak,'" Perry was b.u.t.toning the two top b.u.t.tons of his Prince Albert as his voice rang out. "'Folded his arms and thus he spoke.'"

Annagretta Holmes is only three years old. They send her to school to keep her warm and out of mischief. She sat on the very front row, right under Perry's eye. The poor child didn't understand why Teacher Thomas should stare so at her, and she let out one long, unending bleat. This gave me a chance to send Lulu Ann Nummler out of the room in charge of the infant, and I rested easier when Perry drew his Prince Albert around him once more and spoke.

A grand figure Perry would have made in Tantallion's towers. I forgot the school, and the village and the valley, as I sat there looking out of the window into the sky. I am in those towers when Marmion stops to bid adieu, but in place of the proud Scottish n.o.ble, Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior. What a pair they make--the knight armed cap-a-pie, at his charger's side, and Perry in that close-fitting, s.h.i.+ny coat that has seen so many great occasions in the valley. There is a gracious bigness about the Englishman forgetting the cold respect with which he has been treated and offering a mailed hand in farewell. But Perry b.u.t.tons his Prince Albert, waves his brown derby under the very vizor of the departing guest, rests easily on his right leg, bends the left knee slightly, folds his arms and speaks. "Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire." Little wonder! If Perry Thomas spoke to me like that I'd cleave his head. But Marmion spares proud Angus. He beards the Doogulus in his hall. He dashes the rowels in his steed, dodges the portcullis, and gallops over the draw. And Perry Thomas is left standing with folded arms, gazing through the chalk-dust haze into the solemn, wide open eyes of the children of Six Stars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Perry Thomas stands confronting the English warrior.]

IX

Perry's head was close to mine, over my table. The school was studying louder than ever, and our voices could not have gone beyond the platform; but my friend was cautious. The scholars might well have thought that the whispered conference boded them ill; that the new teacher and the old teacher were hatching some conspiracy against them.

It must have looked like it. Perry's elbows were on the table, and my elbows were on the table. My chin rested in my hands, but his hands were waving beneath my chin as he unfolded to me the plot he had just discovered against his hopes and his happiness. But the school was good. The second grammar cla.s.s had been relieved from a recitation by this confab, and somehow Perry had a subduing influence. Even the Biggest Boy opened his desk quietly and never once looked up from his geography except for a cautious glance out of the corner of his left eye.

"There was a pile of 'em that high, Mark," said Perry, waving his hands about a foot above the table. "There was some books of po-ems and novels and such. He'd sent them all to her in one batch--all new, mind ye, too--and it pleased her most to death. Well, it made me feel flat, I tell you--so flat that when she asked me if I didn't think it was lovely of him, I burst right out and said it was really. What I should 'a' done was kind of pa.s.s it off as if it didn't amount to much."

"Who is the young woman?" I asked.

"I ain't mentionin' names," Perry replied, "and I ain't givin' the name of the other man; but I have an idee you could guess if you kep' at it."

Our valley does not bloom with beautiful young women. We always have a few, but those few can be counted on one's fingers. Our valley does not number among its men many who can supplement their sentimental attentions with gifts of books. I knew of one. So it did not require much guessing on my part to divine the cause of Perry's heart-sickness; but as long as the other persons in his drama were anonymities, he would speak freely, so I relieved him by declaring solemnly that never in the world could I guess. I had always supposed him a lover of all women, a slave of none.

Perry smiled.

"I have kep' a good deal of company," he said. "On account of my fiddlin', and singin', and recitin' I've always had things pretty much my own way. It's opposition that's ruination. That's what shatters a man's heart and takes all his sperrit. As long as the game's between just a man and a girl there's nothin' very serious. One or the other loses, and you can begin a new game somewheres else. But when two men and one girl get a playin' three handed, then it is serious; then it's desperate. A man has to th'ow his whole heart and mind into it, if he'd whip, and he gets so worked up he thinks his whole happiness to the end of time depends on his drivin' the other fellow to drownin'

himself in the mill-dam."

"In other words, if you had not found another laying piles of books and such gifts at the feet of this fair one, whose name I can never guess, you would have fiddled to her and sung to her and recited to her until she said 'I love you.' Then you would have sought new heavens to conquer."

"That's about it," said Perry, smiling feebly. His face brightened.

"You know how it is yourself, Mark. Mind how you kep' company once with Emily Holmes and nothin' come of it. She went off to normal school in desperation--you mind that, don't ye?--and she married a school-teacher from Snyder County--you mind that, don't ye? Now supposin' you and that Snyder County chap had been opposin' one another instead of you and Emily Holmes--I allow her name would have been changed to Emily Hope long ago, or you'd 'a' drownded yourself."

"But I never had any intention of marrying Emily Holmes," I protested.

"I know you didn't," Perry replied, thumping the table in triumph.

"That's just the pint. If the world was popilated by one man and one woman, they'd be a bachelor and an old maid. If there was two men and one woman, then one of the men would marry the old maid sure."