The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
could not tell him things liable to disturb him,” said she, “and so
I--well, I expect I just didn’t exactly tell him the facts. I said yes,
you were packing up for a little visit to your folks. They had not seen
you for quite a while, I said. And he looked at those boxes kind of
silent like.”
“There’s no need to move him,” said Molly. ‘“It is simpler to move
them--the boxes. I could take out some of my things, you know, just
while he has to be kept there. I mean--you see, if the doctor says the
room should be cheerful--”
“Yes, deary.”
“I will ask the doctor next time,” said Molly, “if he believes I
am--competent to spread a rug upon a floor.” Molly’s references to
the doctor were usually acid these days. And this he totally failed to
observe, telling her when he came, why, to be sure! the very thing!
And if she could play cards or read aloud, or afford any other light
distractions, provided they did not lead the patient to talk and tire
himself, that she would be most useful. Accordingly she took over the
cribbage board, and came with unexpected hesitation face to face again
with the swarthy man she had saved and tended. He was not so swarthy
now, but neat, with chin clean, and hair and mustache trimmed and
smooth, and he sat propped among pillows watching for her.
“You are better,” she said, speaking first, and with uncertain voice.
“Yes. They have given me awdehs not to talk,” said the Southerner,
smiling.
“Oh, yes. Please do not talk--not to-day.”
“No. Only this”--he looked at her, and saw her seem to shrink--“thank
you for what you have done,” he said simply.
She took tenderly the hand he stretched to her; and upon these terms
they set to work at cribbage. She won, and won again, and the third time
laid down her cards and reproached him with playing in order to lose.
“No,” he said, and his eye wandered to the boxes. “But my thoughts get
away from me. I’ll be strong enough to hold them on the cyards next
time, I reckon.”
Many tones in his voice she had heard, but never the tone of sadness
until to-day.
Then they played a little more, and she put away the board for this
first time.
“You are going now?” he asked.
“When I have made this room look a little less forlorn. They haven’t
wanted to meddle with my things, I suppose.” And Molly stooped once
again among the chattels destined for Vermont. Out they came; again the
bearskin was spread on the floor, various possessions and ornaments went
back into their ancient niches, the shelves grew comfortable with books,
and, last, some flowers were stood on the table.
“More like old times,” said the Virginian, but sadly.
“It’s too bad,” said Molly, “you had to be brought into such a looking
place.”
“And your folks waiting for you,” said he.
“Oh, I’ll pay my visit later,” said Molly, putting the rug a trifle
straighter.
“May I ask one thing?” pleaded the Virginian, and at the gentleness of
his voice her face grew rosy, and she fixed her eyes on him with a sort
of dread.
“Anything that I can answer,” said she.
“Oh, yes. Did I tell yu’ to quit me, and did yu’ load up my gun and
stay? Was that a real business? I have been mixed up in my haid.”
“That was real,” said Molly. “What else was there to do?”
“Just nothing--for such as you!” he exclaimed. “My haid has been mighty
crazy; and that little grandmother of yours yondeh, she--but I can’t
just quite catch a-hold of these things”--he passed a hand over
his forehead--“so many--or else one right along--well, it’s all
foolishness!” he concluded, with something almost savage in his tone.
And after she had gone from the cabin he lay very still, looking at the
miniature on the wall.
He was in another sort of mood the next time, cribbage not interesting
him in the least. “Your folks will be wondering about you,” said he.
“I don’t think they will mind which month I go to them,” said Molly.
“Especially when they know the reason.”
“Don’t let me keep you, ma’am,” said he. Molly stared at him; but he
pursued, with the same edge lurking in his slow words: “Though I’ll
never forget. How could I forget any of all you have done--and been? If
there had been none of this, why, I had enough to remember! But please
don’t stay, ma’am. We’ll say I had a claim when yu’ found me pretty well
dead, but I’m gettin’ well, yu’ see--right smart, too!”
“I can’t understand, indeed I can’t,” said Molly, “why you’re talking
so!”
He seemed to have certain moods when he would address her as “ma’am,”
and this she did not like, but could not prevent.
“Oh, a sick man is funny. And yu’ know I’m grateful to you.”
“Please say no more about that, or I shall go this afternoon. I don’t
want to go. I am not ready. I think I had better read something now.”
“Why, yes. That’s cert’nly a good notion. Why, this is the best show
you’ll ever get to give me education. Won’t yu’ please try that EMMA
book now, ma’am? Listening to you will be different.” This was said with
softness and humility.
Uncertain--as his gravity often left her--precisely what he meant by
what he said, Molly proceeded with EMMA, slackly at first, but soon with
the enthusiasm that Miss Austen invariably gave her. She held the volume
and read away at it, commenting briefly, and then, finishing a chapter
of the sprightly classic, found her pupil slumbering peacefully. There
was no uncertainty about that.
“You couldn’t be doing a healthier thing for him, deary,” said Mrs.
Taylor. “If it gets to make him wakeful, try something harder.” This was
the lady’s scarcely sympathetic view.
But it turned out to be not obscurity in which Miss Austen sinned.
When Molly next appeared at the Virginian’s threshold, he said
plaintively, “I reckon I am a dunce.” And he sued for pardon. “When I
waked up,” he said, “I was ashamed of myself for a plumb half-hour.” Nor
could she doubt this day that he meant what he said. His mood was again
serene and gentle, and without referring to his singular words that had
distressed her, he made her feel his contrition, even in his silence.
“I am right glad you have come,” he said. And as he saw her going to the
bookshelf, he continued, with diffidence: “As regyards that EMMA book,
yu’ see--yu’ see, the doin’s and sayin’s of folks like them are above
me. But I think” (he spoke most diffidently), “if yu’ could read me
something that was ABOUT something, I--I’d be liable to keep awake.” And
he smiled with a certain shyness.
“Something ABOUT something?” queried Molly, at a loss.
“Why, yes. Shakespeare. HENRY THE FOURTH. The British king is fighting,
and there is his son the prince. He cert’nly must have been a jim-dandy
boy if that is all true. Only he would go around town with a mighty
triflin’ gang. They sported and they held up citizens. And his father
hated his travelling with trash like them. It was right natural--the boy
and the old man! But the boy showed himself a man too. He killed a big
fighter on the other side who was another jim-dandy--and he was sorry
for having it to do.” The Virginian warmed to his recital. “I understand
most all of that. There was a fat man kept everybody laughing. He was
awful natural too; except yu’ don’t commonly meet ’em so fat. But the
prince--that play is bed-rock, ma’am! Have you got something like that?”
“Yes, I think so,” she replied. “I believe I see what you would
appreciate.”
She took her Browning, her idol, her imagined affinity. For the pale
decadence of New England had somewhat watered her good old Revolutionary
blood too, and she was inclined to think under glass and to live
underdone--when there were no Indians to shoot! She would have joyed to
venture “Paracelsus” on him, and some lengthy rhymed discourses; and she
fondly turned leaves and leaves of her pet doggerel analytics. “Pippa
Passes” and others she had to skip, from discreet motives--pages which
he would have doubtless stayed awake at; but she chose a poem at length.
This was better than Emma, he pronounced. And short. The horse was a
good horse. He thought a man whose horse must not play out on him would
watch the ground he was galloping over for holes, and not be likely to
see what color the rims of his animal’s eye-sockets were. You could not
see them if you sat as you ought to for such a hard ride. Of the next
piece that she read him he thought still better. “And it is short,” said
he. “But the last part drops.”
Molly instantly exacted particulars.
“The soldier should not have told the general he was killed,” stated the
cow-puncher.
“What should he have told him, I’d like to know?” said Molly.
“Why, just nothing. If the soldier could ride out of the battle all shot
up, and tell his general about their takin’ the town--that was being
gritty, yu’ see. But that truck at the finish--will yu’ please say it
again?”
So Molly read:--
“‘You’re wounded! ‘Nay,’ the soldier’s pride
Touched to the quick, he said,
‘I’m killed, sire!’ And, his chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead.”
“‘Nay, I’m killed, sire,’” drawled the Virginian, amiably; for (symptom
of convalescence) his freakish irony was revived in him. “Now a man
who was man enough to act like he did, yu’ see, would fall dead without
mentioning it.”
None of Molly’s sweet girl friends had ever thus challenged Mr.
Browning. They had been wont to cluster over him with a joyous awe that
deepened proportionally with their misunderstanding. Molly paused to
consider this novelty of view about the soldier. “He was a Frenchman,
you know,” she said, under inspiration.
“A Frenchman,” murmured the grave cow-puncher. “I never knowed a
Frenchman, but I reckon they might perform that class of foolishness.”
“But why was it foolish?” she cried.
“His soldier’s pride--don’t you see?”
“No.”
Molly now burst into a luxury of discussion. She leaned toward her
cow-puncher with bright eyes searching his; with elbow on knee and hand
propping chin, her lap became a slant, and from it Browning the poet
slid and toppled, and lay unrescued. For the slow cow-puncher unfolded
his notions of masculine courage and modesty (though he did not deal in
such high-sounding names), and Molly forgot everything to listen to him,
as he forgot himself and his inveterate shyness and grew talkative to
her. “I would never have supposed that!” she would exclaim as she heard
him; or, presently again, “I never had such an idea!” And her mind
opened with delight to these new things which came from the man’s mind
so simple and direct. To Browning they did come back, but the Virginian,
though interested, conceived a dislike for him. “He is a smarty,” said
he, once or twice.
“Now here is something,” said Molly. “I have never known what to think.”
“Oh, Heavens!” murmured the sick man, smiling. “Is it short?”
“Very short. Now please attend.” And she read him twelve lines about
a lover who rowed to a beach in the dusk, crossed a field, tapped at a
pane, and was admitted.
“That is the best yet,” said the Virginian. “There’s only one thing yu’
can think about that.”
“But wait,” said the girl, swiftly. “Here is how they parted:--
“Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim--
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.”
“That is very, very true,” murmured the Virginian, dropping his eyes
from the girl’s intent ones.
“Had they quarrelled?” she inquired.
“Oh, no!”
“But--”
“I reckon he loved her very much.”
“Then you’re sure they hadn’t quarrelled?”
“Dead sure, ma’am. He would come back afteh he had played some more of
the game.”
“The game?”
“Life, ma’am. Whatever he was a-doin’ in the world of men. That’s a
bed-rock piece, ma’am!”
“Well, I don’t see why you think it’s so much better than some of the
others.”