The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Golden RoadThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Golden RoadAuthor: Frank Waller AllenIllustrator: George HoodRelease date: March 7, 2011 [eBook #35509]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by D Alexander, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN ROAD ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Golden RoadAuthor: Frank Waller AllenIllustrator: George HoodRelease date: March 7, 2011 [eBook #35509]Language: EnglishCredits: E-text prepared by D Alexander, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Title: The Golden Road
Author: Frank Waller AllenIllustrator: George Hood
Author: Frank Waller Allen
Illustrator: George Hood
Release date: March 7, 2011 [eBook #35509]
Language: English
Credits: E-text prepared by D Alexander, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN ROAD ***
E-text prepared by D Alexander, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci,and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team(http://www.pgdp.net)
There is night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath.
There is night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath.
—George Borrow.
"Good-night, dear Jean François," said she with gaiety."May your dreams be of your beloved roads of Picardy." She threw him an elfish kiss from her finger-tips and hastened into her airy improvised bedroom.
"Good-night, dear Jean François," said she with gaiety.
"May your dreams be of your beloved roads of Picardy." She threw him an elfish kiss from her finger-tips and hastened into her airy improvised bedroom.
NEW YORKWESSELS & BISSELL CO.1910Copyright, 1910, byWessels & Bissell Co.OctoberENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALLAll rights reservedPREMIER PRESSNEW YORK
CHAPTERPAGEIThe Happy Pedler Comes to Town3IIThe Jade and the Inquisition13IIIJean François' Vast Possessions23IVThe Misadventure of a Circus35VTimid Conquest Comes to Town48VIThe Jade, a Nonentity, becomes the Illustrious Nance57VIIA Pedler's Pack of Dreams68VIIIMonsieur l'Abbé Picot of the Brave, Outlandish Heart74IXThe Child is Father to the Man86XOn the Morning Road97XIThe Satisfactory Explanation of Nance107XIIA Hebe of the Highway117XIIIThe Night in the Greenwood129XIVVicarious Vagabonds136XV "If I were Monsieur l'Abbé Picot"146XVIHebe's Farewell to Pan155XVIIThe Day of Faith163XVIIIThe Day of Doubt171XIXThe Day of Lost Confidence176XXMonsieur l'Abbé at Home185XXI "Little St. Jacques of the Street"194XXIIMonsieur l'Abbé Lies Ill201XXIII "I would talk with some old lover's ghost, who lived before the god of love was born"210XXIVThe Priest and Faun216XXVMonsieur l'Abbé Picot Goes upon a Journey222
She threw him an elfish kiss from her finger-tips and hastened into herairy improvised bedroom.(Page 135.)Frontispiece
The Boy ceased his sobbing. After a while, looking up with a tearful,smiling face, he announced, as if to the Voice that had called him: "Now I must go to work."Facing page92
A solitary man, standing on the hilltop, turned slowly from mountain tovalley, from sky to field, seeming to eat and think and breathe—to makea part of him by some paganish transubstantiation—the very day itself.Facing page98
"'T was Pan himself had wandered here,A-strolling through the sordid city,And piping to the civic earThe prelude of some pastoral ditty!The demigod had crossed the seas—From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,And Syracusan times—to theseFar shores...."—Edmund Clarence Stedman.
"'T was Pan himself had wandered here,A-strolling through the sordid city,And piping to the civic earThe prelude of some pastoral ditty!The demigod had crossed the seas—From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,And Syracusan times—to theseFar shores...."
—Edmund Clarence Stedman.
At the close of a glad day in early June, Nance and I stood watching a horse and van, driven by a stranger of captivating appearance, turn from the down-river turnpike and halt on a grassy knoll overlooking the Ohio. The cart, which was a large two-wheeled affair with little cupboard-like boxes beneath, and a short pair of stairs for mounting stored on the top among a medley of old umbrellas, bore an adventurous, foreign aspect. At least we had seen nothing before so wonderful. Its wheels were low and broad-tired; the shafts were thick and heavy with a prop suspended from each of them, that the weight might be balanced when not supported by the ragged brown mare now pulling it. The body, held rather high above the axle by a pair of big, bowedsprings, was completely closed upon all sides like a circus wagon, though, more than anything else, this queer craft seemed a sort of private Noah's ark. The entrance was in the rear and, as we afterward discovered, could be reached by mounting a wheel, hauling the steps from the roof, and attaching them to small sockets in the door-sill. This amazing and spectacular vehicle was painted a brilliant yellow.
The man idling beside this magnificent equipage was the most picturesque being I have ever seen. He was of medium height with broad, muscular shoulders, sturdy legs like one used to walking much in the open, and a general ease and grace of movement, as if each motion were made to music, indicating a perfect health of body. His features were large and generous with penetrating quizzical gray eyes, a nose slightly Roman, and a wide mouth which seemed continuously to be struggling to suppress a smile. He wore a short bushy beard that needed brushing. His hair was red, heavy, unkempt, and a trifle long, completelycovering his ears. On his feet were stout, heavy-soled, laced boots. Thrust into their tops were well-worn corduroy trousers. His shirt was of dark blue woolen material, open at the neck, showing a corded, hairy chest. He wore no hat.
Upon arriving at the knoll the master of the van sat hastily upon the ground and, as if gravel had been eating into his heels, quickly removed his boots. Then he rubbed his feet slowly and sensuously over the soft cool grass as if it were a specific for drawing fever from blistered soles. Next, quite as suddenly, he arose and went about the business of unhitching the mare from the cart. Just as he was leading her from her burden we, like curious children, drew near and mumbled a bashful good evening.
"How do you do, my dears," he said, with frank good humor.
"My name," I ventured, "is Charles Reubelt King, and hers is Nance Gwyn.... This is our common," I added, with the condescending air of the smallproprietor whose vanity was touched because of not having been consulted concerning its occupancy by the daring incumbent.
"Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Charles Screwbelt Ring. Miss Nance Gwyn, I am distinctly honored.... And I," said he, with an elaborate bow in which he removed and swept the ground with an imaginary hat, while one hand pressed his heart, "am Jean François, sometimes known as the Umbrella Man, at others as the Happy Pedler.... I am pedler, poet, mender of umbrellas." Here he straightened to his full height, all the time yelling directly at me, "Umbrellas to mend! Umbrellas to mend! No?" he exclaimed with a comical shrug of his shoulders, and then continued, "I am philosopher, vagabond, musician,—a very sad gentleman you see, who am fifth cousin to Master William Shakespeare, and own brother to François Villon, one-time king of the French!" Then, again turning and addressing himself particularly to me, "I own the road, the river, the hills, thetrees, and all the blue summer sky. The stars are mine, too, and I turn 'em out to pasture o' nights."
"O, I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle," he cried to Nance, as if he had forgotten something pertaining to good breeding.
"This lady," here he turned, including in his bow the patient little brown mare waiting at his elbow for the bridle to be removed, "is my mare Rogue. She's not a pretty lass, and she lacks a sense of humor. There are none like her for a pleasant ramble down the road. She loves her sugar like a child.... Shake hands with Miss Gwyn, my dove," he added, while Nance timidly touched the extended hoof.
"Also," continuing the presentations, "Mademoiselle Columbine," and he waved a hand whimsically toward the yellow van. "She is beautiful, now, isn't she, my dears? And she's sound, serviceable, and optimistic. She holds my dreams.... What more could you ask? Yes?"
"And last of all," said he, removingwith a flourish a little, burned, villainous briar-root pipe from his mouth, "this is Pierrett. She's a dirty wench, but sweet and toothsome as parched corn. She is as philosophical as a fisherman, as independent as a church pillar, and she's my soul mate! Eh, Pierrett?"
"You see," he said, addressing me to the exclusion of Nance, as he turned Rogue onto the pasture, "I'm the lone male among all of these females. A sort of Mormon elder, I am; but, tut, man, it's only a brotherly kind of relationship which doesn't entail jealousy.... You see, son, everybody's children are mine—yes, you two's my kiddies—and I pretty much own the world; only, you see, I don't take it and use it except for traveling purposes. All I ask," said he, becoming quite serious, with a far-away expression in his splendid eyes while he pointed down the long white highway, "is a road to roam,—le long du trimard—a river now and then for variety, the sigh of my music in the greenwood, a bit of milk and cheese on a village commonat night, for I love the homely gleam of distant lights, and the stars to sing me to sleep while browsing Rogue twinkles her grass.... Um, ah, doesn't make you sleepy, son, just to hear about it? Yes?"
"Now, Mr. Charles—"
"Reubelt King," I hastened to correct him, as he hesitated with a merry twinkle in his eye.
"—Reubelt King, run along and tell me whose house that is way down yonder on the river."
"The old home of the many pillars?" I questioned. "Monsieur l'abbé Jacques Picot."
"Father Picot?... The hell—O, I beg your pardon, Rogue, Pierrett, Columbine, and your young ladyship!... You females are terribly ubiquitous at times.... No, that's not a cuss-word, Mademoiselle. It means you women are always lingering around a good, healthy, pleasant, cussful male like me.
"Where'd I come from? Just down thechemin, my dears. And if you were impolite enough to ask me where I wasgoing, that's where—down the road.... Where do I live?"
Jean François sings:
"Under the greenwood tree,Who loves to lie with me,And turn his merry noteUnto the sweet bird's throat,Come hither, come hither, come hither:Here shall you seeNo enemyBut winter and rough weather."Who doth ambition shun,And loves to live i' the sun,Seeking the food he eats,And pleased with what he gets,Come hither, come hither, come hither:Here shall he seeNo enemyBut winter and rough weather."
"Under the greenwood tree,Who loves to lie with me,And turn his merry noteUnto the sweet bird's throat,Come hither, come hither, come hither:Here shall you seeNo enemyBut winter and rough weather.
"Who doth ambition shun,And loves to live i' the sun,Seeking the food he eats,And pleased with what he gets,Come hither, come hither, come hither:Here shall he seeNo enemyBut winter and rough weather."
"Is that as you like it, my dears?... My cousin has quite a fancy for the song. He's a sort oftrimardeurwho once made plays.... He wrote 'em and acted 'em, but, son, I live 'em."
Then, seated upon the grass, he spoke half jestingly, and yet with a serious note of reminiscence in his voice:
"Sometimes I'm Jacques, that melancholy cuss. Sometimes I'm Puck—merryRobin Goodfellow. You wouldn't believe it, now, would you? Sometimes, Touchstone. Often I am Ariel—
"'Where the bee sucks, there suck I:In the cowslip's bell I lie;There I crouch when owls do cry.On the bat's back I do flyAfter summer merrily:Merrily, merrily, shall I live nowUnder the blossom that hangs on the bough.'"
"'Where the bee sucks, there suck I:In the cowslip's bell I lie;There I crouch when owls do cry.On the bat's back I do flyAfter summer merrily:Merrily, merrily, shall I live nowUnder the blossom that hangs on the bough.'"
"I have been Romeo, but no more for me.... Nance, you red-headed little jade, how old are you?"
We were preparing to leave. We weren't interested. What did we care about all of this? Who were Ariel and Puck, anyhow? I could see that Nance did not like one bit being a "red-headed jade." She was always very sensitive about the color of her hair and the freckles on her nose.
"Don't go, my kiddies," he suddenly pleaded. "Look-e-here. I'm going to make a big, crackling fire in a minute. Then we'll have a bucket of water from the river. I've a kettle and some eggs aboard the Columbine.... Say, we'll have the one great time of our lives!"
It took no unusual amount of insisting to make us enter into a game like that with zest. And O, the mysteries of the interior of Mademoiselle Columbine. O, the stories of caliphs and kings and grand viziers and robbers and things. And they were friends of his, too. Personal friends!
It was unpleasantly late when we stole away home to scoldings and to bed. He told us to refer 'em to him, and he'd fix things with the grown-ups. Our parting glimpse, as we ran across the pasture, was Jean François, seated in the grass within the circle of the glowing light of the embers, talking to his pipe. Pretty soon, we knew for he told us, he'd be in bed. He used the stars, he remarked, to button the covers down, and he'd dip 'em into the river to put them out in the morning.
It is time you knew old Doctor Felix Longstreet, Nance Gwyn's Waltonian grandfather. For short, she frequently designated him as "The G. F." His chief happiness lay in the hours he stole from his practise to put in with a rod and minnows on Eagle Creek and in rearing his granddaughter, both of whose parents were dead, in the most unconventional manner possible. With him lived a maiden sister, Miss Barbara. Her gods were convention and propriety. They were the doctor's devils. Truly, Nance lived "between the devil and the deep blue sea!"
"The world of men," I once heard the old doctor remark, "is divided into two classes: those who understand that a river has a heart and those who do not care a tinker's damn if it hasn't." Upon his retiring from the room a half-hourafter this sentence was delivered, Aunt Barbara, after glancing timidly about to be sure that he had gone, ventured to Nance and me, engaged in making a small boat upon the portico, the following:
"He is right. Always right, for that matter!" she exclaimed with vehemence, nervously patting her foot upon the floor. "Now I know of no one who has so many characteristics in common with a stream as my brother Felix. He can be as full of peace and happiness and gentle little ripples to-day, then to-morrow as picturesque with whippy, foamy whitecaps and occasional squalls as the river he loves."
"Very true, Aunt Barbara," commented Nance with deliberateness, "and I know he can flow by in the most exasperatingly placid, disinterested manner possible. Also, should the occasion arise, quickly fill up with ice!"
It would be unfair, however, not to tell you that a more gentle man or true never lived than this old river god. Indeed, he is the veritable reincarnationof Izaak Walton. It is true old Izaak tended his linen-draper's shop, while Doctor Longstreet tends his pills. It was Jean François who made the remark that the chief difference lay in the fact that the one coated the body on the outside while the other coats it on the inside. Our pedler also pointed out, again, that both were very much alike in loving a friend, a pipe with a bit of philosophy, a quiet stream, and a favorite rod with which to go a-fishing.
Just how long Doctor Longstreet has practised medicine in Oldmeadow, I shall not presume to say. It seems to me as if always he has been there; always smelling delightfully of a mixture of strong tobacco smoke and carbolic acid; always riding over the countryside, or carrying through the town a pair of small leather saddle-bags or a fishing pole. Very frequently both. Nance, who was in a position to know, said that one side of these cases contained pills and the other angle worms.
At any rate, I know that seemingly a very long time ago, in comparison withmyself, he was born in Virginia. In his youth he was graduated from the University at Charlottesville, and later from the Jefferson Medical College. Upon receiving his diploma, entitling him to practise medicine, he came directly to Oldmeadow. Except for four years spent as a surgeon in the Confederate army, he has given his life to this old Kentucky town on the Ohio river. For the present this is enough of him, save to mention that other than Nance, with the sun-colored hair; the river, which embraces "goin' a-fishin'"; and General Robert E. Lee, a name symbolizing all that Virginia and the South mean to him, he loves the little town, with its old-fashioned customs and traditions, which has been the background for most of his activities.
The morning following our glorious introduction to the magnificent Jean François I was out early and bound for the commons. I scarcely expected Nance to be up. I felt that there would be something intimate and personal, perhapsundefinable, it is true, between this master of the happy caravan and myself because we were both men. I had made up my mind that he was a woman-hater. As I hurried along the street my plans were brutally shattered, for whom should I encounter but the red-headed jade herself, grinning quite wickedly, even though her hand was tightly gripped in that of her Aunt Barbara, whose serious features were drawn together in grim determination.
"I want you, too, Charles Reubelt," said Miss Longstreet curtly, and with evident disapproval not only in her tone, but in the look with which she surveyed my full diminutive person.
"Yes, we want you, Charles Reubelt," Nance reiterated in close, but undetected, imitation of her Aunt Barbara.
Now while this really very charming spinster had no actual command over me, having quite tangible parents two blocks away, yet I acknowledged an assumed authority felt by every boy and girl in Oldmeadow. So, yielding,I fell in behind, marching meekly to Doctor Longstreet's office.
We entered in single file, Miss Longstreet shoving Nance unceremoniously before her. I lingered, cap in hand, near the open door.
"Felix," she began, in a voice slightly agitated by the fear of the unknown result in approaching the old doctor upon any subject, "do you know where these children were last night?"
"No, my dear Barbara," he replied with irony, looking up from a series of powders he was proportioning with his jack-knife on a piece of newspaper; "were they drowned?"
"No, but she might well have been, for all that you look after her!" she exclaimed, now leaving me out of the arraignment and giving herself solely to Nance.
After carefully lifting each powder onto a small square piece of paper, torn from his writing pad, folding them neatly, and placing all of them in an envelope which he proceeded to seal, then to write directions upon theback, he again gave his attention to his sister.
"So she has been swimming with Charles Reubelt," he said, in mock horror.
"For heaven's sake, no, Felix. Don't you dare suggest such a thing to her.... The way you do talk!"
"What has she been doing then?" he asked, looking severely over the rims of his spectacles at the offending young lady.
With slow and effective emphasis Aunt Barbara brought her accusation:
"They were out on the common until ten o'clock last night with a tramp, that's what!" You will notice that again I was included in her remarks.
"With what?... With who?" he exclaimed to Nance.
"With Jean François," came the brave reply of the jade.
"Barbara, Barbara," he exclaimed in quick, whispered hisses.
"Yes, my brother," she replied, rising to the seriousness of the occasion.
"They say that his ears are pointed! That he has legs and feet like a goat!"
"How shockingly unbecoming," and she gazed reproachfully at the culprits.
The doctor glared viciously at each of us in turn; blew his nose resonantly; shook himself like a big Newfoundland, and then, much to Miss Longstreet's chagrin and our astonishment, burst into hearty laughter.
"What!" cried he. "So you two are just discovering my friend, Jean François?... Poet, pedler, philosopher, mender of umbrellas, and player on the pipes," said he, drolly imitating our friend of the night before.
"You knew him all of the time?" I exclaimed.
"Let me see," said the doctor reminiscently; "when did I first discover the happy pedler?... O, yes, the second year after the Abbé Picot came to live in Oldmeadow. I remember now. It has been some five or six years ago.... That's what you youngsters get by going away every summer instead of remaining at home with your betters."
"Is he arealpoet?" ventured Nance, with her accustomed irrelevance.
"Certainly," came the reply. "Hasn't he said so? Besides, he knows his Shakespeare like a scholar.... Cultivate him."
"Cultivate!" cried the now fully alarmed Aunt Barbara. "Felix, you are positively indecorous.... Cultivate a tramp?"
"Barbara, my dear, I assure you, he is quite a gentleman. He likes my pills, he loves the river like a brother, and he knows his Shakespeare. That is quite enough.... What do you want, my dear unwearied sister—a frilled shirt-front? I've seen many a one bowing over you in the old days all togged out in finery who hadn't half so great a heart and half so genuine a manner.
"Now, Nance," he said, turning from the thoroughly squelched Aunt Barbara to us, "Jean François comes with his happy caravan—a name I gave his outfit the first time I saw it—every year when May or June is at her bonniest. Nobody knows just when or where he comesfrom, and no one, who loves him, cares. All of a sudden he's here, that's all. He always camps on the green, where you discovered him last night, overlooking the river. Sometimes he's here most of the summer. Sometimes it's just a week, or a month. Then, like he comes, he just goes.
"'It's a fever,' he said to me once in answer to a question as to why he was off, when I met him on the river road, bound west. 'It's a fever that you, old Saddle-bags, can't pill or cuss away.... Au revoir,' and his Columbine moved away.
"Occasionally he returns during the late September days. It is only for a week or a day, however.... I can always tell that he is coming by the wild geese flying. He is a migratory bird—this Jean François of ours."
If the doctor continued to speak of the pedler to Aunt Barbara, we never knew it. Nance and I slipped through the door into the June sunshine and hurried across the village to the common, where camped the master of the happy caravan.
Would it make you happy to know that you possessed, as your heart's own, a long, white, alluring road? A joyous, lovable, intimate road which leads over the hills through a thousand friendly trees, all sheltered beneath the wide blue sky. A road of many moods: a gentle road; a brave, true road; a morning road; a smiling, sunset road; a devil-may-care, starlit road; a lover's moon-whitened road; a road that goes and goes, never returns, yet always is homeward bound. Home to the dingle, the glen, the sheltering greenwood, the chattering little river; the camp of the gipsy. A road bordered by flower-faced fields with drowsing villages, now and then, like ancient inns with bread and cheese and milk.
Such is Jean François' great highway. All the morning he spent telling us ofle long du trimard, to use an expression frequently upon his lips. He told us of the men of the road, their dreams, their strange and adventurous lives. Often he spoke simply of amazing and unlooked-for deeds of heroism. He sang of nymphs, of dryads with wondrous beauty. He talked of marvelous, strong-limbed satyrs, of gentle fauns stealing through the wild-wood. In whispered words, with bated breath, as if he told of sacred secret things, he described to us the days of his brother, the great god Pan.
"There are those," said he, "who say that Pan is dead. They are but blind. Some day, if life is kind, I shall take you to him. When once you hear the immortal music of his oaten pipes you will have discovered the passionate note which will lead you, lead you down the road, over the hills into the far away where youth and the greater love abide, as was meant from the beginning of the world.... Long live the great Pan," cried he.
Then, as if suddenly coming back to this as from another world, his eyes losttheir preternatural expression and became wistful and kind and merry.
"And what do you think of it all, my children?" said he, with a sweep of his hand, which was meant to include all the splendid things he had been telling us. It never seemed to occur to him that he doubtless spoke of much which was utter mystery so far as we were concerned. But that was characteristic of the man. He talked to Nance and me in very much the same manner in which he spoke with Doctor Longstreet.
Nance's reply came as a surprise to me. I was glad her Aunt Barbara was not numbered among those present. With slow and serious mien she said:
"Some day, Jean François, I shall be a gipsy with you."
"Ah, my little jade," said he, with an obvious note of sympathy and gratitude in his voice, "so you have heard the call of the road?... Yes, there will come a time when we'll go hand in hand down the traffic lands. We'll roam forever and a day, forever and away.... You shall help me cry my wares."
Then, seeing in Nance's face a look which took him at his word, and upon mine questionings bordering upon alarm, he burst into hearty laughter, restoring our poise, and cried:
"You must not take too seriously, my dears, the nonsense of the happy pedler!"
"What of you?" he asked, quickly turning to me. "Have you heard it too—the call of the road? No?"
As for me, I'm distinctly of the town. So, using a phrase kin to his own, I replied:
"Oldmeadow belongs to me," and I launched into a boyish panegyric of my birthplace.
It is a quaint bit of a village, where spectacled old ladies in black lace caps poke case-knives about the roots of rose-bushes, while elderly gentlemen with canes hobble over flag-stone sidewalks to their favorite seats in the spicy, leathery, brown-papery atmosphere of the store. In some features Oldmeadow seems even older than the river, thoughI am assured by cracker-barrel historians that this is not a fact. It has been here long enough, however, to become a fixed part of the landscape, which is no more likely to change than the course of the Ohio, or the shape of the Kentucky hills away to the south. The older folk are careful not to die until they have faithfully imparted to the younger people all of their old-fashioned courtesy, gentle virtues, assorted prejudices, and cures for mumps, measles, and rheumatism.
"Oldmeadow herself—" I began, but Jean François interrupted.
"Quite right, son. 'She' is the word. She is distinctly an elderly maiden lady with old-time beauty; a sort of adorable shyness; a certain charming primness which sits upon her head like a Sunday bonnet. She takes a friendly interest in the love affairs of the young if duly governed by a proper regard for propriety. Her conventional amusements she defends from the parson with roguish pleasantry. Over the evening coffee she takes a half-frightened delight in mild gossip.... That's your aunt Oldmeadow,"concluded Jean François, with a smile.
Oldmeadow rests—I think you will agree with me that "rests" is the word—just high enough to be secure from the June rise, and very timidly peeps, as if she were fully expecting to see some naughty naked little boys in swimming, through the willows over the banks of the most beautiful river in the world. The great, lazy Ohio slowly winds into view from among the hazy hills in the east, lingers for a moment after a manner most friendly, and then, with assumed indifference, drifts away to disappear among other hazy hills in the west.... Do you remember how we used to ask the grown-ups, "Where does the river come from?"... The river is made very human, and the town, which has no railroad to this day, is kept in touch with the outside world by the big, white-collared steamboats which plow their way daily between Louisville and Cincinnati.
When you climb the high banks and get into the village the sidewalks are oflarge flat stones, with peppergrass and green old moss growing between them and about the roots of the gnarled honey-locusts which have stood for a hundred years along the primitive gutters. The houses are delightfully old-fashioned and quaint. Some are mere plain white cottages far back from the streets, where vines cover the latticed porches. In the lawns circles and crude stars are made for peonies and sweet williams. Some, however, are more pretentious, being built of stone or brick, with occasional pillars, colonial in manner, with wide old arches above the damp, moss-covered slabs of the floor.
"Your village should be very happy," remarked Jean François, after my conclusion. "Does she not have the river to sing to her; the tree-clad hills for shelter; the good blue sky to smile upon her; grave old homes with green sunny gardens to lend dignity; and the laughing loves of youth to keep warm her heart?... There's the village for a road like mine!"
Oldmeadow possesses three points of greater pride: her hospitality, which needs no encomium; the "college," of which more anon; and the Old Mansion of Many Pillars.... It was of this home that Jean François now asked the history. Every child in the village knew it, for, was it not, with its mystery, its ghosts, its inviting splendor, the heart's desire of Nance and me ever since, for us, time began?
It stands in an ample yard, amid old pines, locust trees, and lilac bushes, overlooking the river. It is a great square house of the colonial type, with low wings to the right and left. The windows are large, deep-seated, and many-paned. The enhancing feature, however, is the big, broad portico, the roof of which is supported by noble Corinthian columns, spotted and green with moss and ivy. This house is not only the most elegant, inside and out, in Oldmeadow to-day, but in that time it possessed an atmosphere of aristocratic seclusion, amounting in the minds of the children and negroes to mystery.
Until recent years it had been the property of an old French refugee of the ancient régime. His father had fled from the court of Louis XIV to Louisiana. The son, years later, having gotten into some trouble over a woman, killing his man, which, so far as we are concerned, is another story, came into the river valley of Kentucky and at vast expense built the old mansion as it now stands. To all appearances he had wrought with the expectations of some one sharing the home with him. It was made for happiness, love, and children. At first he was a jolly, gay young fellow, seeking society. After a few years, however, he gradually withdrew from his companions, became silent, morose, and lived altogether to himself. His townspeople saw him seldom, his servant making the necessary trips for supplies. He led the life of a recluse and a student. The reason for this always remained unknown. It served for many a fireside topic on winter evenings. Old men spun gossipy anecdotes concerning it, and the old ladies, romantic tales. Youth built melodramaticlove stories for him, while children made of it the source of fantasy.
Finally, when he sickened and died, beside his servant, Doctor Felix Longstreet alone was with him. Unless the doctor knew, and no one dared question him, the secret of the old Frenchman's life passed with his soul. It was the physician, in compliance with the last commands of the dead gentleman, who corresponded with the heir designated by the will. This was Monsieur Jacques Picot, of Paris, whom he notified of his inheritance and the conditions attached thereto. These were, briefly: That he must come to America and occupy the house; that he could neither sell nor give the property away; that at his demise, however, he could bequeath the estate to whomever he chose. In case the Abbé Picot would not accept these conditions, everything was to revert to a more distant relative, Captain Martin Felon of the French army. It was said the original owner of the old home made these strange demands because of his desire to force all of his kith and kin fromtheir native country. He was an intense American, and had not forgotten that his father had been a fugitive.
"Ah," cried Jean François, nodding his head with a mysterious air, "that accounts for many things.... Some day I'll take Rogue, Columbine, and Pierrett, go down among the bayous, and discover why a gentleman of the old régime lost heart. Then, maybe, I'll tell you about it.
"Meantime, my dears, don't you think it would be pretty fine for you to grow up and live in this old home as your very own? Yes?... Monsieur l'Abbé cannot live always, I know. I happen to be slightly acquainted with him. He is very kindly disposed toward you. There's no telling what he might do.
"How would it suit you, Nance Gwyn of the sun-colored hair, to one day be mistress of the mansion?"
"I am not quite certain," said she, for the old home had quite a strong hold upon the imagination of Nance as well as all the rest of Oldmeadow's children,"but I think I should take Columbine and you and the road, first, Jean François."
"First?" exclaimed the pedler, with a humorous twinkle in his eye.
"First," came the very certain reply from the jade; "for some day I mean to have them both."
After a great deal of pleading, bringing to bear everything with which I was acquainted in the art of persuasion, I had succeeded in inducing Jean François to leave his happy caravan for a day and to become friends with our back yard. My family, be it understood, were dining in the country, leaving the premises to my undisputed control from early morning until late afternoon. Our pedler came with trepidation. He scented mischief of a kind which he did not find congenial. He had the greatest aversion to unexpectedly meeting people whom he did not know or did not like. Also he demanded room—the wide spaces of the open. To come about a house, or to enter an enclosure where escape would be fraught with embarrassment, was to him exceedingly painful. His apparent panic remindedme strongly of some timid, uncertainly tamed animal bravely trying to receive the caresses of human beings. Persistence prevailed, however, and he stole around the house, like someone bent upon a hopeless task, and seated himself upon the woodpile.
He looked about him with evident disapproval. Then, removing Pierrett from his mouth, he addressed her with elaborate politeness:
"Say, my sweet hussy, did you ever notice the personality of a crack in the fence? Have you ever given study to the sins of back yards?... Yes?... Just the other day I heard the old doctor say that you could tell the condition of a man's liver by the appearance of his back yard.... He's right about it."
In general esteem our back yard, if you choose to remember, was second only to the attic. The crack in the fence was its thorn in the flesh. Of course the kitchen opened onto it, or rather, it opened onto the kitchen, for this warm bread-scented producer of tarts is not tobe compared in point of importance with this plot sacredly set apart for make-believers. Here, however, is a fitting place to state that for an inn the kitchen suited admirably, and Betty, though black-a-visaged as a pirate, made a very respectable Mine Host.
The right side was flanked by an impassable high board fence which Grown-ups, I have since learned, built to hide their back-yard sins from their neighbors, the Greens, who possessed a similar assortment. To us, however, it was a stockade erected by no less a personage than our comrade Daniel Boone, famous for his cigars, and served to protect us from the Indians who, in reality, were the half-dozen assorted little Greens, then on the summit of the stone age. These savages weren't at all neighborly, a thing for which we never ceased to be thankful. The really splendid part about it was that at any time, without other warning than a sudden whoop, rocks were likely to be thrown over the fence at our unsuspecting heads. Though once and a while producing a scalp woundupon our side, it was altogether a very harmless play, with just enough excitement to keep it alive. Besides, in the end, all of the stones the Greenlets ever threw away always found their way back to their side of the stockade. And what matter to any of us if it caused the mothers on either side to cease speaking except in company, and the fathers to have only a mere business bow?
In our back yard was the stable, two parts of which are worthy of mention. There was the hay-loft, reached by a steep and rickety ladder through a hole in the floor, a fine old place in which to hide from visiting dressed-up small boys whose presence was, on general principles, undesirable. Then there were great billows of hay, with sweet, breezy odors, on which one might be cast away on a pitchfork raft for days and days. Above, on the rafters, were drab-colored nests of mud-daubing martins, which easily became gulls, albatross, or distant sails, as the moment might demand.
The very best place of all, as you will hereinafter discover, was our buggyshed. The floor was nothing more than the good, hard earth. Here and there were little wallowing nests of dust made by some cheerful hen while engaged in an indolent sun-bath. On one side hung the harness, which might be pressed into service for circus purposes. Along the braces lay the monkey-wrench, hammer, nails, and delectable boxes of fascinating axle grease. The rancid smell of this yellowish-black article of lubrication is indissolubly associated with heaven-sent memories of the happiest days. True I never tried it, though I believe you once did with painful results; I always wanted to spread it on a white slice of bread and eat it. The axle grease was a cause for sin. More anon.
In the center stood our phaeton, which served from a coach and four to a low-raking revenue cutter. Behind it was the jolt wagon—so named because of a lack of springs. This caused very delightful sensations to those playing train within, when the vehicle was being driven at a trot over a rough road. Now one of the privileges to be bought, often at ahigh price, from the hired man, was the unalloyed joy of putting great daubs of grease upon the axles of the aforesaid phaeton and farm wagon. I have often done without my second piece of chocolate pie, gladly thrusting it surreptitiously down the throat of this previously mentioned man of many virtues, just to get to help at this task. Something second unto it was being allowed to spin the recently attended wheel before removing the jack from beneath it. All of this that you may know the charms of axle grease.... O, the memories of that day of many sins!
Nance, who lived just back of me, with an alley between, had a habit which was good or bad as it suited my purpose. It was to come through a gate in her back fence, which mine did not possess, and enter my domain through a crack in the fence. This entrance, which had been made long ago by the removal of a board, was a constant source of annoyance to me. Since her first appearance years ago, the crack had been worn smooth and glossy by much passing of girl frocks.She insisted upon being played with and the pity of her possessing neither father, mother, sisters, or brothers of her own was all that saved the crack being securely nailed. It was only when she attempted to force dolls upon me that I sternly rebelled. Of course it was only in the back yard and upon the common that she was allowed my comradeship. When we were fishing or swimming she could not come, though she shed many tears and entered various protests.
Now of all times this was one when a visit from her was not wanted. Jean François acted like she would be welcome, it is true. Just why he so fancied her was then a mystery to me. I'll leave it to you. I had prepared for a really wicked, good time all alone with the happy pedler. In the morning, after playing Indian with the Greens, I hoped we should be buccaneers in the hay until Aunt Bet began to get dinner. Then we were to slip into the house and slide down the banisters until time to eat. The whole afternoon was to be spent greasing the phaeton and the jolt wagon. There wasa new box of axle grease, and a splendid pine paddle with which to apply it.... Suppose you had all of such a great day planned and a red-headed little jade, with a very white frock, taking her welcome for granted, squeezed through the crack of your fence.... Jean François says you can always count upon a woman making her appearance just when you are off on a particularly masculine jaunt.
Well, the Indians had to be postponed. She had once taken a rather awkward left-handed part in a battle and had gone bellowing through the fence, a most unbecoming woman. She wasn't any heroine. The scar, which her Aunt Barbara feels very sure will disappear, may be found in that blessed red hair to this day. So politeness forbade warfare. The hay proved better. It is true I noticed her eyes grow a bit wide with fear as she arose on the rickety ladder. This was fostered by Jean François following closely behind, playing sailor. We made believe that she was a respectable merchantman, while I was a pirate, and the pedler the man-of-war. I swooped downupon her only to be chased and hard put by the shot and shell of the larger vessel. I feel sure she got the worst of the fight. Then, in the storm, we covered her with hay until her weak little protest from somewhere beneath the billows made me uneasy for her ever again reaching port.
It was the banisters where she surprised all of us.
"I do it all the time at home," she informed us proudly. Just then I ceased to sympathize with her lack of a mother. I, too, wished for a G. F. who domineered a maiden aunt.
"You see," said she, "I never walk down stairs unless Aunt Barbara is around."
Then she illustrated her ability for us, to almost knocking the newel post from its dignified position at the bottom of the stair. We stood watching with awe and a trifle of envy. It was an unfortunate thing in some respects to have parents. Here, however, our joy was interrupted by a call demanding Nance to report for dinner. She departed, and I was left to dissipate on an old-fashionedcircular baluster. Jean François became a spectator, saying that he drew the line at such amusements.
It was the afternoon which caused the telling of this story. History was made. We had the jack under the front wheel of the jolt wagon when she appeared. The umbrella man was unscrewing the nut while I worked the grease. Her frock was a new one. A trace of recent tears told of the folly of playing respectable merchantman upon a sea of hay. Here the wheel was lifted off, placed against the wall, and the glistening axle, already suffering from over attention, was liberally applied with lubricant. When we turned to replace the wheel, there was the jade sitting innocently against the hub. She stepped aside for us, only to expose a neat black ring printed upon a part of her frock which prophesied what awaited her within the immediate future. At first she was inclined to cry. Instead, upon our laughing at her, she became impudent. As each wheel came off, she promptly sat against it, regularly increasing the number of rings. Then sheinsisted on at least putting one paddle full on an axle. After that she must be allowed to attend one entire wheel by herself, of course, allowing one of us to remove it. This we did cheerfully. Were we not interested in getting her just as black as possible? Had she not grown exceedingly bold and saucy?... Next she decided to taste the grease. One little finger, on the tip of which was a bit of black tar, was stuck delicately on her outstretched tongue, while she made a face for our delectation.
Suddenly she turned upon us with the information that she was a circus.
"A whole circus?" asked Jean François derisively.
"A whole circus, and I'm going to perform," she informed us.
She then insisted that Jean François and I go away, as she was going to do her act on the horizontal bar. In fact, she commanded us to leave, but whatever we chose to do she nevertheless intended to do her trick. The pedler promptly turned his back and began the imitation of the kind of music played when theacrobats are out. As for me I stood my ground. She needed an audience, I insisted. Who ever heard of a circus without an audience? Then, quite to my astonishment, Nance proceeded to skin the cat. She sputtered something about getting even at her party—I remembered this afterward—as she heaved her legs between her hands, and a multitude of clothes obscured her features. I was somewhat awed by this bit of prowess. I respected her for it. Still, I, myself, fully intended, so soon as I became a man, to walk on the ceiling. Also I found myself wondering if the immortal Jean François numbered this among his accomplishments.
Just then the climax came, in the shape of her Aunt Barbara, who, silently and suddenly, like death, stood before us.
"Aunt Barbara," she explained as she dropped, a tearful little bundle of apologies, into the dust, "Aunt Barbara, I didn't want to do it before Charles. Really, I didn't, but I just couldn't get him to go away.... I hated to do it, really, but he simply would not leave."
Then to see her hurried through the crack in the fence with a sharp spank, as she stooped through the opening, almost convinced me that she was one thing on earth God had made without any purpose.
Jean François says there isn't any greater creative force in this world for pity than a very tearful, snuffy, turned-up, little girl-nose.
Less than a month following the events clustered about the rise and fall of the unfortunate circus, a certain tow-headed, freckled-faced boy, whom I knew once upon a time, long ago, might have been found seated on the lar-board side of the ferry float, hidden away from his fellow men, that he might contemplate. I am sure Izaak Walton knew a deal about boys, and that much of his gentle philosophy was developed into tangibility because he occasionally consulted them.
Early in the morning Jean François and Doctor Longstreet had tramped up the river seeking a favorite fishing pool. They had invited the boy to go with them, but even the all-day companionship of his two heroes could not withdraw him from the problem which now completely occupied his mind and heart.... Nancewas spending her time at home, doubtless enjoying certain triumphs of the previous night. The fellows couldn't interest him. The river—his river now—alone seemed adequate. The great stream lay at his feet, stretching away to the Indiana hills, beautiful, calm, majestic, yet sympathetic and inviting to confidences. At any rate, so it seemed to the boy in whose life something new, mysterious, wonderful was coming to birth.
On the evening previous to this thoughtful dabbling in the water there had happened in the life of this boy an event. Not such an event as it might be if you were to find the rainbow's end; more important than if you were granted three wishes by the queen of fairies. You have been expecting these rather commonplace happenings all of your life. This particular event came without the slightest warning or preparation, at least so far as he knew; like you might wake some morning and find your wings attached behind your ears instead of on your shoulder-blades, where you are really expecting to wear them. The boy, itmight be said, was made of marbles and tops and little mud puddles; of rivers and trees and all out of doors; of Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, and Kit Carson; and, of nights by the winter's fireside, of good adventurous books. For him all of the rest of the world was yet to be created. To him his mother wasn't a woman; she was just mother. Girls, like flies, were inevitable nuisances, mostly to be ignored, but occasionally shot at with a broken bit of rubber band.... He didn't even know that he was ugly. Yet he had learned early that the boys best suited for "knux," fishin', and the like had freckles, snub-noses, and cow-licks. Had not father often remonstrated with mother at too much washing, insisting that it was part of a small boy's portion to get dirty and to sniffle? Hadn't he seen through old Doctor Longstreet's derision when he would take such evident delight in saying to hovering little motherettes:
"Madame, I congratulate you upon the hideousness of your son. Thank God for ugly boys—they make men. A pretty boy, madame, is a misprint—thewrong title under the wrong picture. I congratulate you!... Ah, it reminds me of the story of—"
Never mind the doctor's story. Sufficient to say it was not about a pirate or a captain of the guards, or I'd tell it here. One thing: he was generally right about boys, angle worms, and pills.
So, in the late afternoon of yesterday, when he was informed by his mother that Nance—Jean François' 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 andstockings. 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 pausedfor 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-skinningepisode 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 hislife, 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 turnedto 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 François 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.