mother that Nance--Jean Francois' red-headed jade--was to have a
birthday party, and that he was expected to go, his heart became sick
and then rebellious. In the first place she held no interest for him.
She had always been in the world, he supposed. He couldn't remember when
she hadn't lived over the alley. It seemed that always she had made
herself conspicuous through the crack in the fence. For the first time
he genuinely regretted that he had not nailed it up long ago.
Then another good reason for protest, upon the suggestion that it would
not be healthful for him if he failed to attend the party, was the fact
that he would have to wash his feet and put on shoes and stockings. It
was under such circumstances he wished he belonged to the Rices, who
lived on a shanty boat, fishing for a living. The little Rices never had
to wash except accidentally as they got wet helping their father trace
his trot-lines, or for fun when they went swimming. This time he pleaded
with his mother to let him run to the river and "go-in"; this being a
sure way of getting amusement out of an otherwise unpleasant task.
However, mother was very serious and father looked like a newspaper with
legs to it. He refused to be inveigled into sympathy. So the boy was
duly scrubbed, shined, stocking-and-shoed. Thus, feeling very stiff, dry
all over, and exceedingly unlike Robinson Crusoe, he was thrust
unceremoniously through the crack in the fence with a parting injunction
similar to the one he had seen administered to Nance not a great while
ago. He did not cry, however, but, very much of a martyr, he tramped
with reckless delight over Aunt Barbara's flower-beds to the front door
and lifted the knocker. Here he paused for fully a minute with timid
dignity, then let it fall. It seemed an earthquake.
When he had once gotten in, had his hat, a very superfluous piece of
wearing apparel, disposed of, he was formally presented to many
uncomfortable-looking small boys in the strange disguise of Sunday suits
and fluttering, beribboned little girls who now, for the first time,
seemed to have the occasion better in hand than himself. The dry feeling
now left him for one that was hot and smothery, seemingly caused by
having on too much clothing. He accepted the chair thrust beneath him by
her Aunt Barbara, whose glance was one of withering disapproval. Knowing
that he had surely broken some rule of conduct, his eyes sought the open
window as if measuring his chance for escape. Evidently none presented
itself, for he turned resignedly to the gay group of tiny flutterers
about him. He mentally calculated how many times he could chin the
curtain pole if he were allowed to remove his coat; he wondered if she
ever tried it; and remembering the cat-skinning episode he concluded
that she was no doubt a practised hand. Suddenly he straightened up and
regained a portion of self-respect as he thought how he could throw the
whole lot of them out of the window if he chose.
It was then that the games began. Even the boys--Jim, "Capt." "Leggins,"
and the rest--seemed more at ease, and the chances were, from
appearances, he believed, that they were actually going to have some
fun. Before he knew just how it happened, and wholly unconscious of its
nature, he was in a game in which the reward, or penalty it would have
seemed to him, was kissing the upturned cheek of some fluttering little
maid. Very abruptly, so it seemed, Nance stood before him. There was a
look of mischief in her dancing eyes, a droop of mock timidity about her
mouth, and a round, flushed, dimpled cheek was held for his lips. As the
other girls were always inclined to let him alone, this was a part of
the game he had not anticipated. Just as a drowning man thinks in a
second of every wicked act of his life, so the boy thought of every
worm he had ever put on her, of every pinch, every twitch of her hair,
of every bit of tantalizing of which he had ever been guilty. Most of
all he remembered the vengeance she had promised him for refusing to go
away while she skinned the cat.... At any rate, there she stood, her
happy little face sparkling from without a perfect mass of fluffy red
curls, that, to the boy, seemed quite as bright and beautiful as the
sunshine on the river in the early morning. Beneath this hair and lifted
cheek stood an eager small body, very much frilled and furbelowed, which
to him, for the first time, was very mysterious and alluring. It was
decidedly a new experience for him. For a moment he hesitated, uneasy,
blushing vigorously; then he glanced behind. Yes, it was there and open!
One bound and he was through the window, running and stumbling toward
the crack in the fence. For a second Nance gazed in amused amazement at
the place left vacant, and out into the night into which he had escaped.
Then she turned to another and the game continued. Within her heart was
a feeling of deep satisfaction.
The boy was down in the buggy shed, his coat off, hanging on the bar
skinning the cat several times in rapid succession.
"Huh," he exclaimed as he came to a sudden stop. "I bet she couldn't do
it agin!" It might be well to here record the fact that so far as
anybody ever knew, she never did.
All of this was what passed in review as he sat paddling in the water
that June morning. He wondered what Jean Francois would say when he
heard about it. He was filled with pride and humiliation all at one
time. An unusual relationship was now evident. She was in the
ascendancy.... He wanted to think it all out, if it were possible, and
the river, rippling about his bare feet, felt very cool and very
soothing.
CHAPTER SIX
THE JADE, A NONENTITY, BECOMES THE ILLUSTRIOUS NANCE
When our grandfathers were snub-nosed little boys, quaintly dressed in
the toggery of near a century ago, every town in the South boasted of
its college. It was long before the coming of the state universities and
the heavily endowed Church institutions. They were usually the property
of some pompous individual whose pedantry and assumption, among the
simple folk about him, went by the name of culture and learning. He was
usually looked upon as being something sacred. His authority upon
matters generally, and letters specifically, was indisputable. That
being a day when, though there were no poor, there were also no rich,
ancestry and one's mind counted for something. Therefore these old
scholars, whose charlatanry was what they deemed an honest part of
pedagogy, were honored with the very highest esteem. These schools soon
acquired an atmosphere very dear to the Southern heart: a quiet air of
good breeding. This was frequently abused by the institutions themselves
inasmuch as it was made an inducement to secure attendance. To-day our
very same grandparents are not so proud of the education attained, for
that was usually very meager, but of the aristocratic name left to the
now tottering buildings.
One of the most popular of all of these in its day was Oldmeadow
College. Even to this time its legends are passed by careful and
reverent tongues to those born in so unfortunate a period as not to have
been able to attend it. In the narrow vision of many of our
cracker-barrel philosophers there never existed men so erudite, so
acceptably great as many of the old professors. Now and then, with
modifications, this was true. Our village had no doubt whatever that she
was the moral and culture center of Kentucky. It might please you to
know that from Lexington, with Transylvania University, down to the
least hamlet possessed of her college, every town in the State thought
the same thing ... feel reasonably sure each one of them was right!
There was but one part of Oldmeadow which might boast of being anything
like a hill. On the western edge of the town beside the river this
knoll, many feet higher than the surrounding country, was entirely
within the college campus. At its apex was the college itself. A brick
building consisting of a basement with three stories and a half above
it--these stories were higher than the average--made a rather imposing
structure which sat like a monitor upon a stool overlooking the conduct
of the village spread before it. On the first floor were an assembly and
two recitation rooms. In the five apartments on the second lived the
President and his family. The third was devoted to music and class
rooms. On the pilot-house-like tower, which crowned the building, there
rested a huge bell once the property of a boastful steamboat, the
_General Litell_, which had blown up at a point just below town, in a
vain attempt to run faster than a rival. I used to believe the bell,
rope and all, had been neatly blown over upon the roof, but I am now
inclined to believe that friends must have rescued it from the sand-bar
for its present position. It is still a mystery to me how it was ever
mounted to where it is to-day.
Now all of this was very long ago, before you knew anything about
Oldmeadow and my river beside it. When we first knew the village, you
will remember, all that was left of the college was the building, the
bell, and the wonderful view of the most beautiful stream in the world,
from its windows, or its top. Standing beside the relic of the _General
Litell_, you may see the great Ohio wandering idly, vagabondishly,
through the valley, until it looks like a silver thread losing itself in
the misty distance. Just think of being able to see, on a clear sunny
morning, twenty miles or more of the river you love. By your side it
drifts, broad, full of strength, in pleasing sinuosity, covered by a
thousand hurrying little ripples. Beyond it becomes smoother, the yellow
of the water turning a clearer green, and motionless it winds in and out
among the farms and woodland until it may be followed only by the line
of blue vapor between the hills. Here and there hangs the smoke of a
steamboat; a forest shuts it momentarily from sight only that you may
catch a glimpse of silver sheen, lake-like, smiling in the happy
sunshine; a farmhouse, as a silent, contemplative fisherman, sits here
and there on the bank; and over it all, as if with satisfaction the
master builder were viewing his work, there broods the great mystery.
Though all of these things remained, when we came into our inheritance
the college was no longer a "college," but had fallen into the vulgar
times of being used as the public school building. Here some erstwhile
student held forth for six months in the year, teaching on the first
floor, living on the second, his children making a playhouse out of the
third.
I will not presume to say how long I had been attending the "college"
when, upon a certain cheerful September morning, I saw old Doctor
Longstreet come walking up the campus with the timid fingers of our
Nance held protectingly in his own. She seemed very much scared, a
trifle knock-kneed, and just a bit too starched up to be as pretty as I
acknowledged her in my heart. She passed us--a group of boys at
play--with scarcely a look of recognition. I watched them climb the
steps into the building, her two huge red plaits seeming to be about all
there was of her. These same plaits looked quite lonely and as if they
wanted to turn and run for it. I do not think I have ever seen her so
humble, so unassuming as she was that day. To be sure it did not last
long. Before another week she had figuratively made a crack in the fence
and slipped through to victory.
During these early years in school, to prove my prowess, when I believed
her looking, I never lost an opportunity to stand on my head. I did not
realize at the time how ungallant was the undue advantage I took of her.
Long, long since I have learned that she secretly practised it at home.
As a consequence, that which at first so won her admiration soon was the
cause of contempt. Though I could never know, she was sure that she
could do it with better grace than her one-time hero. I am now told that
I only maintained my prestige by my ability to suddenly seize upon and
throw down the boy nearest by. This was something of which she might
only make a dream.
All of this showing off and the confidence in my own powers fully
convinced me how much superior was man to woman. All she could do was to
look on--at least so far as I knew--with an occasional attempt at being
something, by a sudden and unexpected getting of my tag. This I
frequently treated with contempt. Once in a while I risked my reputation
for being manly by running pell-mell after her until the tag was
successfully recovered.... And yet I was to be humiliated by this
red-headed jade.
Jean Francois had caused consternation by announcing that within a few
days he must be off for the white highways. Already he had remained too
long in one place. However much he might love us, he could not afford to
let his liver atrophy. Besides, were they not waiting for their happy
pedler in another far-off gracious land?... "They await my pack," said
he restlessly, "for fine knacks for ladies--pins, points, laces, gloves,
and the thousand flimsy, silky things they adore!" And he bowed with a
smile full of splendid mockery.... Our hearts were sad. Did we not want
him forever?
The story of my humiliation comes here.... You will remember how we used
to have to memorize long verses and recite them from the platform on
Friday afternoons before visitors and the high and mighty school
committee? It was upon such an auspicious occasion. Your speech--I am
sure of the terminology--was, "I Am Dying, Egypt, Dying." Mine, with
swimming gestures and trembling voice, was "Bingen, Fair Bingen on the
Rhine." Who, dear friends, could think of greater recitations than
these? Were they not time-honored? Were they not a part of the tradition
of Oldmeadow? Certainly, I answer.
Now Jean Francois had been prevailed upon to enter for at least one hour
beneath a roof. The pedler had serious objections to hats, which he
never wore, and houses, which he rarely entered. Yet, out of compassion
because of his leaving us, he had come to hear our speech-making. He sat
with uneasy grace upon a front bench by Doctor Longstreet, who found
much to amuse him in the umbrella man's discomfort.... It was when Nance
stood before us, scared white, with tears beneath just the surface of
her restless eyes, that Jean Francois lost his self-consciousness. Mr.
Finus Appleblossom, proprietor of the store, chairman of the board,
prominent in lodge and church circles, cleared his august throat
ostentatiously and swelled with importance. Something seemed to be in
the atmosphere.... Then in a very pretty little voice, which at once
gained confidence, Nance began a song. Didn't I know it? Certainly, I
assert. Had I not heard Jean Francois sing it a hundred times, but who,
save the jade, would have ever thought of toppling custom, tradition,
and the school board by singing a song--a very short one at that--Friday
afternoon? And such a song!
This was the song of the jade:
"Lawn as white as driven snow;
Cypress black as e'er was crow;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses;
Masks for faces, and for noses;
Bugle-bracelets, necklace amber;
Perfume for a lady's chamber;
Golden quoifs and stomachers,
For my lads to give their dears;
Pins and poking-sticks of steel,
What maids lack from head to heel:
Come, buy of me, come; come, buy, come, buy;
Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry:
Come, buy."
For a moment after she had concluded she stood as if dumb,
half-frightened, heart-sick, and then, bursting into tears, with a
stifled little cry of despair, she rushed and fell all in a heap at the
knees of Jean Francois. Forgetting all of us, he picked her up in his
big, strong arms--she who was but a fragile child--and, smoothing the
rumpled hair from her eyes, kissed her brow.
"Dear little jade," said he quite tenderly, "I didn't know that it made
all of this difference."
"You won't go, Jean Francois?" she smiled through her tears.
"I must," said he regretfully. "I cannot help it.... But next June I'll
come again. And every June that follows, as long as I shall live, the
happy caravan shall be yours."
A few moments later, as we hurried into the open, I noticed that Nance
was actually growing. It had never occurred to me that she would ever be
any larger than the day she first thrust herself through my crack in the
fence. As she passed with her grandfather, Jean Francois, and Mr.
Appleblossom, she nodded to me quite as if she were an equal. In my
humiliation I quite forgot to walk on my hands, a feat I was holding in
reserve. Instead, off I skipped down to the river and "went-in" by
myself. I felt that the world was very unappreciative and
unsympathetic.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A PEDLER'S PACK OF DREAMS
"Jean Francois," Nance was pleased to say very earnestly, "the river and
the hills have belonged to us for so very long--I wonder when we will
own the old-fashioned home of the many pillars?"... Because of his
talking so frequently about it, we had grown to accept as a settled
thing the possibility of our one day possessing the house of our heart's
desire.
Columbine stood securely packed, the pedler was shod with newly soled
boots, the road lay wistfully before him. It was the last beautiful
night of our summer. In the early morning, Jean Francois, mender of
umbrellas, would be off, and, for us, the winter. Yet it was not an
unhappy gathering beside the September camp-fire. No one might be
unhappy with the master of the caravan.
We had cooked a genuine greenwood supper and eaten it in the twilight.
There was bacon held over the embers on a sharpened stick, bread baked
in the ashes on heated stones, eggs boiled in Jean Francois' great
kettle, and coffee, black and strong. What else, pray you, could one
have wished? Afterward, with the smoke of Pierrett curling about his
head and filling the air with the aroma of burning tobacco, he sang for
us. He told old tales of men-at-arms in France until our blood grew warm
and with him we fought great battles. Sometimes he would speak of
fairies, elves, and the people of the woods; or of ghostly visitors to
winter firesides; of far-off roads in far-away lands where the fields
were always in bloom and the sun always mellow, warm, and soft.... He
then told us how houses had souls the same as men and hungered to be
loved. It was at this time Nance asked her question about our
possessions.
As I have said before, he had frequently talked of our one day
possessing the old home, but never with the seriousness with which he
now spoke. It was evident that this time he considered the matter with
sincerity.
"So you would really like to grow up and live in the Abbe's house?" said
he, answering his questioner by a question.
"It would be the most beautiful thing in the world," was her reply.
After a moment's hesitation, as if doubtful of what she should say, she
added:
"That is, if--if you would come and live with us, Jean Francois."
"Thank you, my dear," he replied, with a singular note of tenderness in
his voice. "Thank you very much indeed, but that would be impossible.
Quite as impossible as your becoming a gipsy. And what would become of
Columbine, Rogue, and Pierrett without the dingle and _le long trimard_?
No, that would never do!... But, as for the other, why not?
"Why not, my girl?" was his comment, this time addressed to Pierrett.
His rather queer custom of consulting the little briar-root pipe as if
it were a conscious being was something to which we had long become
accustomed. It was his way of talking things over with himself. In the
same manner he held one-sided discussions with Columbine and Rogue. He
was not partial in his family, though I feel sure the shaggy,
sure-footed little mare was valued most highly.
"Why not?" he continued. "Monsieur l'Abbe, whom I know full well, illy
deserves the home.... He is doing nothing worthy of enjoying such a
charming house, is he? Eh?... Monsieur Jacques, where are your poor?
Your shabby little brothers of the Parisian street? Where are the
pinched hungry mouths with whom you once shared your crusts?... Ah,
those were the days of crusts!... Where is the little attic in la Rue
St. Jacques?... Let me see, children, is this not what He said to him
each night:
"'For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave
me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me;
I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.'
"Now, Monsieur Picot, the voices are far away. You live in an alien
land. Your pleasures, instead of boldly as of old, you take
surreptitiously.... One day, you poor renegade, you will die and pass to
the only heaven I know of--the long roads and sunlit fields of
Picardy.... You haven't an heir by blood in the world. Why not an heir
by love? Eh, Pierrett? I knew that you would say, 'Yes.'... I'll suggest
it to the old curmudgeon."
"My dears," said he, addressing us, "I know this Monsieur l'Abbe very
well. Some day I shall pay him a call and suggest how generous a thing
it would be if he were to make his will in your favor. Then, quietly,
with exceeding propriety, so as not to offend any member of your family,
pass unto his fathers.... I will say, 'Monsieur, He says that "inasmuch
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my--"'"
"Dear Jean Francois," interrupted Nance, a bit horrified, "how
disrespectfully you can talk!... I, too, know Monsieur l'Abbe--"
"But I know him much better than you, Nance." And he held his hand for
her to be silent.
"I think to-night," said he a moment later, "I shall conclude by telling
you the story of Monsieur l'Abbe Jacques Picot, of the little Rue St.
Jacques, Paris."
CHAPTER EIGHT
MONSIEUR L'ABBE PICOT OF THE BRAVE OUTLANDISH HEART
Monsieur l'Abbe Picot, in whose heart there dwelt a queer mixture out of
which to make a priest, was talking with a letter, written in a strange
foreign hand, as it lay upon his knee. The entire morning had been spent
at the beloved task of writing a sonnet. The afternoon, in the most
miserable part of Paris, he might have been found visiting the homes of
his sick and his poor, to whose ills, of body and of spirit, he deemed
himself physician. In the evening for an hour he saw that happy laughing
premiere danseuse, Mademoiselle Andree, at the gay little theater near
the corner, pirouetting care from the heavy souls of men. In the early
night he had but recently ceased to read the book which still lay open
on the floor at his side, and for uncounted joyous moments had fancied
himself strutting the streets in the company of the brave D'Artagnan,
their swords clanking in their scabbards, their eyes fierce for
adventure.
It was thus, upon a day, that his warm love of life would come calling
him for the army. At the very thought of men-at-arms his slender
nostrils would widen and his imagination sniff the pungent odor of
burning powder. There was no doubt in his mind that among his ancestors
there had been some great warrior whose passion for fighting was but
tempered by his patriotism. And his heroes, were they not Porthos, La
Fayette, D'Artagnan, Washington, and Napoleon? Could he have been born
to please his own choice of time, other than to have been the captain of
the Guards during the reign of Louis XIV--the Louis of his own Dumas,
the magnificent--he would have chosen to have fought under the Emperor.
Then those escapades of student life at Harcourt! He scarcely dared to
dream of such old brave days, now the well-beloved secrets hidden
beneath a cassock and a cowl. They were stored in a memory made all the
more sacred by the thought that such adventurous hours dare never be
lived again. Then he feared for his impulsive nature. His mind, cooled
and brought to the level of every day's simple duty, knew what was his
actual and true work in the world. But O, the mischief of his wandering
fingers, of his heart when the virile passion of life played riot in his
veins. So it was, at times he seemed to know that to lead the battle, to
cry for France, to spill one's blood for kings, that, indeed, was to be
a man.
* * * * *