The Soldier of the Valley | Page 6

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.
She stood before me in a sombre gown, almost ugly in its gray color and severe lines, but to me she was a quaint figure such as might have stepped out of the old world and the old time when men lived with a vengeance, and godliness and ugliness went arm in arm, for Satan had preempted the beautiful. Against her a homely garb failed. She was beautiful in spite of her clothes and not because of them. But this is generally true with women. This one, instead of sharing our admiration with her gown, claimed it all for herself. Her face had no rival.
I did not turn away. I could not. The gray eyes, once flashing with the light of kindly humor, now softened with sympathy, now glowed with pity. Pity! The thought of it stirred me with anger. The justice of it made me rage. She saw in the chair a thin, broken figure, a drawn brown face, a wreck of a man. Yesterday--a soldier. To-day--a hero. To-morrow--a crippled veteran, and after that a pensioner drifting fast into a garrulous dotage. She, too, was looking into the future. She knew what I had lost. She saw what I dreaded. Her eyes told me that. She did not know what I had gained, for she came of a silly people whose blood quickened only to the swing of a German hymn and who were stirred more