The Soldier of the Valley eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 225 pages of information about The Soldier of the Valley.

The Soldier of the Valley eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 225 pages of information about The Soldier of the Valley.

“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.”

“Your meaning is more clear,” I said.

Though Perry did not know it, I was meeting the same opposition that so aroused his ire.  In part there was truth in what he said, for while opposition does not increase one’s love, it surely quickens it.  I doubt if I should have been making a journey nightly up the hill if I had not expected to find Weston there.  Of Perry I had no fear, and it was not egotism in me to be indifferent to him.  He lives so far down the valley.  It’s a long walk from Buzzards Glory to Six Stars, and the road has many chuck-holes.  Perry is our man-about-the-valley par excellence, but he is discreet, so it had chanced we met but once at Warden’s, and that was on the night when we heard the story of Flora Martin and the famine in India.  He knew me still as a friend, and not regarding him as a rival, I treated him as a companion in arms.  To be sure, I could not see where he could be of much assistance; but we had a common aim and a common foe.  That made a bond between us.  With that common foe disposed of, the bond might snap.  Till then I was Perry’s friend.

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The Soldier of the Valley from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.