Within this pack are pins, points, laces, and gloves.... I am poet,
pedler, and wandering troubadour. Fair ladies from their tears I
rescue. A knight errant of the pack am I!"
Jean Francois threw up his hands in strong amazement, consternation upon
every feature, and his tongue tied by surprise. A moment, that seemed to
him as a nightmare in which he struggled in vain attempt for words, and
then these expressions came with marvelous speed and versatility.
"Ventre de biche!... Sacre pig of a zebra!... By all the saints in
paradise!" he cried with a hundred imprecations. Finally, as if
exhausted, he asked rather meekly:
"From what star did you drop?... You little red-headed jade!"
Indeed it was Miss Nance Gwyn, about to cry, a little soiled and mussed,
distractingly pretty, pointing a derisive finger as a baton, and
shouting with laughter to the helpless and dumbfounded Jean Francois:
"Will you buy any tape,
Or lace for your cape,
My dainty duck, my dear-a?
Any silk, any thread,
Any toys for your head,
Of the new'st and finest, finest wear-a?
Come to the pedler,
Money's a meddler,
That doth utter all men's ware-a."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SATISFACTORY EXPLANATION OF NANCE
Columbine had been hauled to the side of the road and Rogue was allowed
to nibble blue-grass at her pleasure. A fire had been kindled, and Jean
Francois was broiling bacon speared on the end of a sharpened stick. A
coffee-pot was steaming upon a few hot embers raked aside for that
especial purpose. A great loaf of white bread lay on a cloth on the
bottom of an upturned bucket. Nance, over behind the cart, was arranging
her toilet. She had rummaged within the yellow depth of the van, filled
with much pedlers' finery, and, among other necessities, discovered a
small mirror. This she propped upon the hub against a spoke of the
wheel. With its aid she readily set herself to rights.
Just as she appeared, fresh and resplendent as the morning itself, Jean
Francois announced breakfast. He directed her to be seated on the bank
of the turnpike, placed a clean board some two feet square upon her lap,
and gave to her two slices of firm bread between which lay several
strips of crisply cooked bacon. He then brought her a heavy china cup
filled with delicious coffee. This, with sparkling cool water from a
spring near the bridge, constituted his offering for the morning meal.
After giving himself a like helping, they ate in silence. Once a farm
wagon, in which three men rode, was driven by. As they passed, they
stared very markedly. The pedler, usually so amiable, scowled furtively
at them. Nance became uneasy, for Jean Francois had scarcely spoken to
her since his torrent of French and English invectives which came so
volubly upon his surprise at finding her unexpectedly. This was very
unlike her old-time friend the umbrella man. She began to realize that
it was a very delicate problem with which she had precipitately
overwhelmed him. She wondered how he would solve it, yet was
indifferent enough not to offer any assistance.
After the meal, with his usual deliberateness, he drew Pierrett from his
pocket, filled her with an adorable mixture, and, with a brand from the
fire, proceeded to light her. As the blue smoke curled above his head,
he leaned upon his elbow, otherwise his body lay at full length upon the
earth, and, at last, looked at the petulant and unhappy Nance.
"Son," said he, without any apparent consideration of the sex implied by
the title and as if he were subtly indicating the relationship which he
wished them to assume; "son, tell me all about it."
"I ran away," exclaimed Nance in her most bewitching manner.
She had decided upon her method of procedure. She would be seductive,
helpless, and appeal to his sympathy and chivalry. A course which he
readily perceived was going to make his sexless comradeship rather
difficult.
"To be sure, sir," was the reply. And then as if a bit alarmed:
"I sincerely hope that no one will think for a moment that you have
been kidnapped!"
"I shouldn't wonder if they did," she brightened in mischievous delight.
"Wouldn't it be exceedingly funny?"
"It would," was the laconic reply, accompanied by a shrug of the
shoulders.
Jean Francois removed Pierrett from his mouth. After examining the pipe
carefully, he refilled it, and continued his smoke. Five minutes passed
without a word, and then, looking up quite seriously at his charge, he
said:
"See here, Nancy Bricktop, are you aware of the fact that you are no
longer a ten-year-old child?"
Nance flushed, a trifle embarrassed.
"Anyone but myself," he continued, "would say you were pretty much of a
grown-up woman.... My dear child--"
"Now, don't you 'my-dear-child' me," she cried tearfully. "All of them
conspire against me, and you aren't a bit better!"
Jean Francois arose and placed his pipe in his pocket. He walked the
length of the cart a half dozen times. It appeared to be rather a bad
beginning.
"Nance," said he, turning and for the first time showing sympathy in his
voice and manner, "Come! Tell me all about it. Why did you run away?"
"I--I cannot tell you," she replied, dropping her head.
"O, but you must," said he. "You haven't stolen anything?"
"Perhaps," she smiled archly.
"Seriously, now little jade, forget that I have reminded you that you
are grown up, for you are not. Just think of me as the old umbrella man
of your barefoot years. I--"
"Of my barefoot years?" she exclaimed. "What do you know--"
"Of the years, my dear," he explained, "when you used to run barelegged
and barefoot along the dusty road pleading to go gipsying with me. Do
you remember?"
"That's part of why I'm here, Jean Francois," she said.
"Nance, Nance, Nance," he repeated, slightly exasperated, "go right
along and tell me why you have left Oldmeadow, Doctor Longstreet,
and--and the practise of medicine, and dropped like a lost star into my
top-o'-the-morning?"
"Charles," said she tearfully.
"Ah, I thought so.... What has he done? Eloped with your Aunt
Barbara?... Tell me, tell me!"
"Charles came home," she explained, looking into her lap, "after four or
five years of college, imbued with the idea that I was his property....
He acted as if he owned me!" she blurted indignantly.
"Well, doesn't he?" asked Jean Francois, innocently.
"Doesn't he! Doesn't he!" she flung at him. "That's just what
grandfather asked."
"And your Aunt Barbara?" he queried humorously.
"Aunt Barbara," she continued with fine sarcasm, "my precise, correct,
conventional Aunt Barbara, who will not acknowledge, Jean Francois, that
she has such vulgar things as legs; this dear, darling devotee of
propriety actually pointed to herself as a horrible example of a
too-exacting young woman!... My Aunt Barbara is a silly old ass!"
"How you do mix your genders when you become excited, my dear-a."
"You're a goose!" she exclaimed. "A darling, old adorable goose.... You
never liked my Aunt Barbara."
"But my question, Nance ... I thought things were all decided years ago.
Do tell me."
"Dr. Charles Reubelt King," she pronounced the name with withering
scorn, "was disgustingly presumptuous. He treated me as if he were
feeling the pulse of the world and was just about to administer to it
the particular pill which would cure all of its ills.... I despise
pompousness, pedantry, and unconscious condescension in a man.... As for
me--well, if he didn't say it, he acted it. I was nothing. I knew
nothing. At my best I was but a red-headed spiritualized slave--and not
always quite spiritualized!... I knew nothing!"
"It seems to hurt you pretty bad, Nance," he said mildly.
"What?... Nothing hurts me!"
"Do you, Bricktop?"
"Do I what?"
"Know anything?" asked Jean Francois.
"Certainly I do, and you know it, you horrid old pedler. Didn't I sense
the real river and the road and the happy hills long, long ago?... And
as for you, Monsieur, I know things about you of which our stupid
Charles Reubelt has never dreamed. Shall I tell you things, Jean
Francois?"
Jean Francois raised his hand in protest, shaking his head forbiddingly.
"Never mind," said he, good humoredly.
"Ah, Jean Francois," she exclaimed in a burst of tenderness, "I
preferred the road and--"
"Finish your Dr. Charles, whom you must remember is quite young and
possesses a new diploma," said he, interrupting her hastily.
"The undesirable part of it is," said she, obeying, "is that grandfather
and Aunt Barbara are on his side. They say he is such a pretty, nice
boy with such an acceptable family and promising prospects. All of
which, so far as that is concerned, is true. They thought I should have
led him to the altar accompanied by the Oldmeadow brass band, with me
dancing in front as David did before the Ark of the Covenant."
"Nance," said Jean Francois, extending his hand to her, "you are always
pretty nearly right. You might have shown more wisdom by not carrying
things so far as to run away like a spoiled child.... Here's my hand.
I'm with you.... Now tell me how you got here?"
While she entered into the details of her trip he busied himself with
hitching Rogue to the cart and turning the face of the caravan about to
the north. She had learned through a note, requiring an answer, which
Jean Francois had written to Doctor Longstreet, that he would call about
the first of June for his mail at the little town which lay behind them
in the valley. She had arrived the night before, and, after learning at
the post-office that he had not called, she, doubtless very foolishly,
but with her old-time adventurous spirit, had started out to meet him.
"Come, let's be going," said he. And he helped her onto a little
apron-like seat which projected over the shafts and had for a back the
front of the body of the van.
"All right, Rogue," said Jean Francois for the second time that morning,
and they were off.
Then it was Nance seemed to discover that they had turned and were going
back up the hill from which he had descended only two hours before.
"Where are we going, Jean Francois?" she asked with slight alarm.
"Back to Dr. Charles Reubelt King," he smiled, "to teach him how not to
be a fool!"
Nance frowned for a moment, but saw the old friendly strength restored
to the face of the man walking at Rogue's flank, and with a contented
little sigh she sank back into the comfortable cushions of Columbine.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A HEBE OF THE HIGHWAY
Jean Francois was right when he called himself poet. Not that he was a
maker of verse, for, if it were so, no one had ever seen a single rhyme.
But that was his which was far better, perhaps, than writing. He
possessed all of the wondrous, painful gifts of the builder of dreams.
His was the sympathetic eye for beauty in her subtlest forms. Most men
see only the outward and more materialistic things: he saw the deeper,
truer meaning which lay at the heart of life. He found mysterious
kinship in every living thing from the simplest wayside wild blossom to
the complicated soul of man. He could clasp hands with an oak and feel
the fine yet strong pulsations of unknown forces which gave personality
to a hospitable greenwood. Every little scurrying animal that flew from
his path he felt was a part of the great life, and, in a manner, a
brother to men. He was a mystic; a lover of ancient lore and the tales
of once-upon-a-time; a friend of elves, gnomes, fairies, fays, goblins,
and children; and, with all of his knowledge of the world, was
exceedingly childlike.
His year had been varied. At times he had worked at bitter tasks and
known much of sorrow, despair, hunger, suffering, hardship. He had
shared with the poor and loved them. Yet, withal, he had gone through
life playing. Without needing a specific reason, he had entered into
some of the most whimsical adventures imaginable. His fiftieth birthday
found him still a child, making of some of the most serious problems a
thing for play. And pray, why not? He filled his place, bore his
burdens, but with the graciousness of buoyant youth unlearned in
hopelessness and pessimism. He laughed along the way, and the gods,
loving him, took care of him and made him happy. Is it any wonder that
the elves, the fairies, the children came and ministered unto him? Do
you think it anything strange that the fays should light his fire by
night, that the pixies should dance before him in the white moonlight,
or that Puck should seal his eyes with magic juice of flower and send
him laughing and joyous into the delectable land of dreams?... As I have
said, Jean Francois was right when he called himself a poet.
All of this to help you understand something of the day Nance had as
they loafed along the highway, through green sweet-smelling woodlands,
by pasture, meadow, field, and plowman, over limpid swelling streams,
all in the gentle welcome sunshine of early June. It was always to be
remembered as the most wonderful day of all of her life.
For an hour or more after the start, being fatigued by her journey and
the strain of her interview with Jean Francois, she slept. He walked
quietly beside the van, now and then directing Rogue by a word, at times
lost in thought, unconsciously gazing at the road at his feet; again,
with sweeping glance, scanning the beauty of some purple valley watered
by a silver thread of a river. Once, some ladies driving by in an old
phaeton became all agog upon seeing the sleeping girl upon the seat.
They stopped the pedler and insisted upon his showing them his wares. He
did this grudgingly, turning the rear of the cart toward them,
apparently to make his goods more accessible, but in reality to hide
Nance from their curious gaze. As they drove on, the more bold of them
remarked:
"Your daughter is quite beautiful, sir."
"Thank you.... All right, Rogue," said he, and once more they were on
the road.
As he walked this time, he studied Nance. She had grown very handsome,
Jean Francois thought. She possessed charm. Her face was strikingly
frank. Her hair was soft and sun-colored, with darker shadows here and
there. Her eyes, being closed, showed more plainly the long black lashes
and well-arched brows, which made her at once both blonde and brunette.
The nose was slender, with sensitive and expressive nostrils. Her mouth
was rather wide, with straight lips, the lower of which, like that of
Herrick's Julia, seemed bee-stung. The features taken together gave her
countenance an intellectual cast, softened and beautified by an air of
childlike candor that, when fired by her sparkling, dancing, azure eyes,
lent her a look seductive to intoxication. A certain abandon in her
sleep brought out more evidently that she was round-limbed, beautifully
shaped, and lithe, with lovely swelling breasts.
Jean Francois began to understand how Charles Reubelt might have been
surprisingly in haste. He turned his gaze to the valleys. They were
beautiful in a sheer primitive way, and, even if more awake, also
decidedly more quieting subjects for one's admiration.
A little later, upon awakening, she insisted upon being allowed to get
down beside him and walk on slightly ahead of the caravan. At last her
dream had come true. She was idling down _le long trimard_ with Jean
Francois, his Pierrett--a lady upon whom she laid no claim--Rogue, and
Columbine. She picked flowers; teased Rogue by pokes and inoffensive
jabs; tantalized the pedler by asking a thousand childish questions,
which he answered with becoming patience; ate voraciously and often; ran
and jumped the brooks and insisted upon wading until she was threatened;
smiled upon the staring, open-mouthed rustics; insisted upon showing
goods at places he wished to hurry by, and, for the sake of selling,
making outlandish bargains; and ever and anon breaking into song. At
least a half dozen times did she sing the pedler's favorite air:
"Will you buy any tape,
Or lace for your cape,
My dainty ducky, my dear-a?"
Once she caroled, much to Jean Francois' delight, an old song he had
taught her as having been sung by the debonair Henry of Navarre. It
especially pleased him because she sang in French:
"Morning bright,
Rise to sight,--
Glad am I thy face to see:
One I love,
All above,
Has ruddy cheek like thee.
"Fainter far
Roses are,
Though with morning dew-drops bright;
Ne'er was fur
Soft like her,
Milk itself is not so white.
"When she sings,
Soon she brings
Listeners out from every cot;
Pensive swains
Hush their strains,--
All their sorrows are forgot.
"She is fair
Past compare;
One small hand her waist can span.
Eyes of light--
Stars, though bright,
Match those eyes you never can.
"Hebe blest
Once the best
Food of gods before her placed:
When I sip
Her red lip,
I can still the nectar taste."
In the middle of the afternoon they rested for about two hours in a
little glade just off the road. It was here, near a branch, that Nance,
while wandering about, discovered a rather curious old arrow-head with
which she immediately ran to Jean Francois.
"That, my dear," said he, "is an elf-arrow."
"An elf-arrow?" she asked.
"Don't you know the elf people, Nance? Their dances and their songs?
"'That harp will make the elves of eve
Their dwelling in the moonlight leave,'"
he repeated.
"No," said she, "tell me of the elves."
Upon which he launched into whimsical tales concerning elfin-land and
the merry little people of the night and the greenwood. It was a new
world which he created for her. To be sure she had been reared on fairy
tales--but they were without a semblance of fact. Here were chronicles
of a real people as related by their friend. He was authority, for was
he himself not an elf-child but a few generations removed?
"Comme extrait que je suis de fee," said Jean Francois, quoting his
brother Francois Villon.
"Jean Francois," she said, when they had resumed their way, "did you
know I believe that somewhere among my ancestors there must have been a
wonderful gipsy woman? I can fancy her a slender, dark-skinned,
black-haired girl with wander-longing in her eyes, loving some
bully-rook of a young English gentleman, and, without a thought of
to-morrow, allowing herself to be carried off to his home, a sort of
stolen bride. Then," said she, "I see her later on, when he has settled
down to a very respectable ale-drinking, big-paunched squire, eating her
heart out for the roads, the camp, and the crimson sky of morning....
What do you think?"
"I think, young woman," said he, with a humorous twitching about his
mouth, "that you must be mistaken. In the first place, such a maid as
you describe could not be quite so badly fooled in her man.... In the
second place, Nance, Charles isn't really half so stupid as you are
making him out to be."
"O!" she exclaimed in hurt surprise.
For the next hour she kept well ahead of him, refusing to be inveigled
into any topic of conversation whatever. She could have done nothing
more in harmony with his mood. Jean Francois wanted a time for thought.
Night was coming on. There was a question upon his mind that made him
laugh to himself when he realized its nature. It caused him to think of
Aunt Barbara. He knew what she would have advised straightway.... What
would Nance expect? Should he stop at the next farmhouse and leave her a
victim for the spare bedroom? Heaven forbid! And yet--
He raised his eyes and with pleasure watched, as she walked with ample
stride before him, the graceful, free motions of her body. After all how
like a gipsy's were her movements. He thought of what she had just said
concerning a woman who might have been her mother. This led him to
wondering about her father and mother. He had never given her parentage
a thought before. He knew that they were dead, and that Doctor
Longstreet was certainly her grandfather. No elf-child, she. Yet there
was a strain of wild, untamed blood in her that he could scarcely
account for in the staid, conventional family of which she was a
member. For, notwithstanding his rebellion against Miss Barbara's sense
of propriety, the old physician was distinctly the product of the
civilization of the aristocratic South.
She is of herself complete, he thought, and no man's child. Then it
suddenly occurred to him that she was just such a being to whom he would
have loved to have been father. She was his child! The idea pleased him
and he smiled. So far as concerned kith and kin he was alone in the
world. Also had he not touched her sensitive mind and quickened it into
a genuine understanding of the life of the highways, the woodland, and
all of the birds therein, the river, the poetry of the starlight, the
sunshine and the moonbeams? Had he not shown to her the ways of fairies
and elf-kings?... In fact was she--the real, true, immortal she--not his
creation? Did not the dominant spirit within her bear a close likeness
to his own phantasmagoric soul? Indeed, in his own image he had
fashioned her.... She was his child!... He would have her for his
daughter. No one could prevent.... He raised his head and called her.
She, who waited for him to catch up with her, saw a gentle, tender humor
in his eyes, a sweet smile upon his lips, which bespoke confidence and
trust. With childlike faith she put her hand in his and together they
walked down the hill into the coming twilight.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NIGHT IN THE GREENWOOD
In the dusk, near a little river which came tumbling down from the
mountainside, they stopped and prepared their camp for the night. Rogue
was unharnessed, led to water, and turned to roam where the grass seemed
most toothsome. Jean Francois knew that she would be standing by the van
at morning waiting with patience for her measure of oats. After building
a crackling fire of sticks and limbs of dead trees, he went in search of
a spring. Some minutes later a great black pot, taken from a hook
beneath the cart, was swinging over the flames, the sparkling water
beginning to bubble within it.
It was then the pedler climbed upon the wheel, removed the pair of steps
from the top, adjusting them at the rear door so one might easily climb
in and out of the cart. Next he proceeded to remove many things from
the mysterious depths of Columbine. Nance stood by receiving them. Among
many things were these: a smoke-cured old ham, doubtless taken in trade
from some lusty farmer; a basket of eggs and a bucket of milk bought at
the last farmhouse on the road; a huge loaf of what the housewives term
"salt-rising" bread; a flagon of Burgundy wine; a skillet, a coffee-pot,
and a teakettle. Then came bundles, boxes, and drawers containing the
knick-knacks of the pedler's pack. These he lifted to the earth himself,
placing them softly beneath a near-by tree, covering them with a heavy
canvas. Afterward, from the front end of the almost empty small room, he
produced bedding which he spread down upon one side of the floor. Next,
from the side near the open door, he let down a table hinged to the wall
and supported by a prop. Above it he hung a mirror; upon it he laid a
brush, comb, and a basin; before it he placed an open camp-stool. He had
done his best.... Turning to Nance with a characteristically elaborate
bow, he said:
"Now, Titania, ascend the steps of your castle. To your right you will
find your dressing-room; to the left, your bed-chamber. Your supper will
be served _al fresco_.... Will you deign to share it with me?"
"With all of my heart, Robin Goodfellow," cried Nance as she walked
airily into Columbine.
Jean Francois poked the mysterious pot, fried ham, scrambled eggs, made
coffee, and toasted bread. This they ate by the light of the fire and
the stars.
After the meal the pedler filled his pipe, lighted it with an ember, and
stretched himself full length upon the earth with his ugly red head
propped by his arm. Nance sat gazing into the fire, her knees hugged
against her stooping figure, a dream upon her face. The darkness about
was intense. The light flickered in ghostly shadows upon the yellow
sides and spokes of the van. The steady munching of Rogue, the
occasional popping of the fire, the murmuring of the river with the
melancholy song of a thousand insects, now loud, now still, as the
breeze came and went, made the sleepy music of the night.