_ CHAPTER XIII. OLD TIES RENEWED
It was mid-afternoon of a late June day when Steve stopped at Mr. Follet's store. He wondered if his old friend would be there. Yes, the door was open, and for a moment Steve stood on the platform in front, his tall figure erect, his head bared as he looked reverently towards the little home which had opened the world of books to him. Then Mr. Follet's high voice rang out from the dark depths where dry-goods and groceries rioted in hopeless confusion as of old.
"Hello, stranger, what's the time o' day?"
Steve stepping forward put out an eager hand, and cried:
"Mr. Follet, don't you know me?"
But the man only stared, coming forward into the light of the doorway.
"Never saw you before," he declared at last; "or if I did, can't tell where under the cano
pee 'twas."
Steve laughed with keen enjoyment at hearing the familiar old expression, and said eagerly:
"Don't you remember Steve, little Steve Langly who worked for you one summer?"
"Steve!" exclaimed Mr. Follet; "of course I do; nobody at my house has forgotten him, not by a jugful,--but this ain't Steve!"
"This
is Steve though, Mr. Follet,--the same Steve, with just as grateful a heart for you and Mrs. Follet as I had the day I left you about a dozen years ago."
"Well, this does beat me," said Mr. Follet. "We'll lock right up and go over to the house. My wife and Nancy will be powerful glad to see you if they can ever think who under the cano
pee you are." And he stepped briskly about locking up, and then the two walked over to the house.
Mrs. Follet was seated on the piazza with some light sewing when they came up, and to Mr. Follet's excited introduction of Mr. Langly she made polite but unrecognizing acknowledgment, and her husband was too impatient to delay his revelation.
"Why, ma, you don't tell me you don't know Steve," he exclaimed.
"Steve," returned Mrs. Follet bewildered.
"Why, yes! little, old, scrawny, mountain Steve," exclaimed Mr. Follet, "who did everything that was done here one summer!"
Then Mrs. Follet slowly grasped the astonishing thought that little ignorant Steve and the fine-looking young man before her were one and the same, and gave him gentle, motherly greeting.
"Where's Nancy?" went on Mr. Follet, impatiently.
"She's gone with Gyp for a gallop," returned Mrs. Follet, "but she ought to be back any minute now." And by the time they had exchanged brief accounts of the years that had passed since they last met, Nancy was seen swaying gracefully down the road upon her pony's rounded back. She waved gaily as she passed the porch not noticing the stranger who was somewhat screened by hanging vines, and then she turned into the lane which led to the stable.
Steve's eyes glistened at the vision of the girl which time had so charmingly matured, and starting up he exclaimed:
"Let me meet her at the stable where I used to help her on and off old Dobbin's back," and with a bound he was off the porch and striding towards the lane.
Nancy had slowed her pace along the shady driveway, and Steve, going noiselessly through the grass, was at her side when she was ready to dismount.
Smilingly he held out his hand for her to step upon, his glowing eyes lifted to hers. Startled she drew back, her eyes held and fascinated, however, by his intent gaze.
For a long instant they gazed, and then she breathed:
"Oh, Steve!"
Had the meeting occurred otherwise, she probably would never have taken the tall, broad-shouldered, handsome young fellow for the Steve of her childish memory, but she only saw and recognized those brown eyes lifted to hers as they used to be in the old days when he took her from Dobbin's back, with the same tender light in them.
"Yes, Nancy, it's Steve!" he exclaimed joyfully. "And you knew me after all these years!"
A smile that held something sweet and sensitive flashed assent, and then in reaction from the stir of undefined feeling, which she was not ready to acknowledge, her eyes danced with sudden humour. Keeping her saddle she glanced behind her to the pony's back, and said:
"Where are our bags of meal?"
Steve laughed in responsive gaiety, and in spite of himself let his eyes rest upon her in kindling admiration.
"Oh, I see good grist which the mill of time has ground for you," he said, and put out his palm again for her to step upon.
But she, flushing with girlish surprise at his ready gallantry, which showed how completely the little mountain boy had been lost in the cultured man, drew back once more and with equal quick wit said, laughing:
"You will certainly find it has, and in good, substantial material if you try to take my weight in your hand."
"The same mill has ground out for me an adequate amount of muscle," he declared, adding with a hint of pleading in his voice, "You must let me renew old times," and without further protest she lightly touched his hand with her foot as she sprang from the pony's back.
"Weight doesn't count with so light a touch as that," laughed Steve, and started to lead the pony into the stable, when a coloured boy stepped up to care for it.
"You see we keep a groom these days," said Nancy.
"Yes; what style the mountains are taking on," returned Steve, as Nancy gathered up the long skirt of her riding habit, and the two walked together through the grass to the porch.
"To what an astonishing height you have grown," said she with naive charm, looking up at him.
"You have done equally well," he returned, measuring with his eye her slender length; then he added with his sudden smile which held the whimsical quality of old friendship, "Please tell me,--where are the curls?"
"Oh, they are tucked snugly away out of sight," said she demurely, with a pretty gesture which straying tendrils had made habitual, and the warm colour rising again to her face.
"There should be a law against carrying curls concealed," said he.
By this time they were at the porch, and as they resumed the family exchange of items of interest from each side, Steve and Nancy sitting on the steps as in the old days, he saw the fair dream-structure of the past few weeks in the beginning of complete realization.
In the evening as Mr. and Mrs. Follet, Steve and Nancy sat again on the porch enjoying the night air after a warm day, they talked interestedly of old times and the changes which had taken place. Steve found that Crosscut, the little flag station over which Mr. Follet presided, had expanded into a small straggling town with a meeting-house, school of uncertain sessions and a thriving saloon.
As they chatted pleasantly a young man turned into the gate and came up the path with a debonair swing that proclaimed him much at home.
"Howdy everybody," he said jauntily, and Nancy rose with pleasant greeting for him. Then turning to Steve she introduced Mr. Colton to Mr. Langly.
Steve met the newcomer with quiet courtesy, while Mr. Colton responded with cordiality of the "hail-fellow-well-met" type, and immediately seated himself beside Nancy with an air of proprietorship.
Very soon Mr. Follet in the course of conversation turned and addressed Steve by his first name.
"Steve!" exclaimed the visitor. "Didn't Miss Nancy introduce you to me as Mr. Langly? Are you Steve Langly who visited Louisville with a Mr. Polk some ten or twelve years ago?"
"I am," said Steve with much surprise.
"Is that so?" returned Mr. Colton with enthusiasm. "Well, I am Raymond Colton!"
"Indeed," exclaimed Steve heartily. "Well, this is pleasant."
"I should say so," returned Raymond. "I tell you, old fellow, we never forgot that lickin' you gave us at our school--served us right and did us good." He launched into a hilarious account of that experience which everybody enjoyed, and there was a little pleasant, general conversation. Then Raymond suddenly exclaimed:
"Miss Nancy, where's your banjo?" and went at once for it.
"I tell you, Steve, she can play on the old banjo and sing as no one else ever did," he said as he returned and laid it in her lap.
Nancy turned to Steve with a quick flush which showed even in the moonlight and protested: "I really don't know a thing about it, only what father taught me when I was a little girl."
And Mr. Follet said excitedly, "You see, Steve, she was so lonesome after you left I had to get the old thing down to cheer her up. I hadn't played any on it since I was a young fellow courtin' her mother. I don't believe I'd ever got her without that banjo," he added and laughed with great good humour. "Nancy don't think much of it," he went on. "She thinks it's nothin' beside the piano, but Raymond, here, is like me, he thinks it beats the piano all hollow."
"Sing 'Robin Adair,'" put in Raymond, and Nancy began striking soft minor chords for a little prelude. Then a rich, contralto voice, low and clear, told the tender old story of Robin Adair and his love, which the banjo echoed with little improvised hints of the air. Raymond and Mr. Follet called for one song after another of the old favourites, Raymond often joining in with a fine tenor, which harmonized perfectly with Nancy's contralto. At last she sang of her own accord "The Rosary."
There was an exquisite pathos in the beautiful, heart-breaking notes that stirred Steve deeply. What depth of feeling, as well as maidenly reserve and charm, his little Nancy had developed! The curls and pinafores were gone, it was true, but as he watched her sweet, expressive face in the moonlight and felt the fullness of her sympathy and understanding in the singing, he said to himself, "I am willing to lose them for this!"
"Miss Nancy, please don't ever sing that any more; it gives me the shivers," said Raymond and was seconded by Mr. Follet.
"It's bedtime for old folks, anyhow," the latter went on, and added, "I guess Steve's tired enough to go, too," and though Steve was not ready to admit this, Raymond gave him gay good-night and he followed his host to the little attic room where he had slept as a boy, and which Mrs. Follet had made ready for him, because he had insisted that it was just the place for him. The house was small and he knew somebody must vacate comfortable quarters if he slept elsewhere.
But once in the old bed Steve did not find fair memories crowding about as he had anticipated. Even the echoing sweet songs lost their melody. Indeed he could think of nothing but the fact that Nancy and Raymond Colton sat together on the front porch, left there by her parents as though he had special rights. A midnight thunder-storm caught up his perturbed thought with noisy energy.
"But why not!" he exclaimed sadly for the hundredth time to his rebellious heart. "You certainly have no claim."
But that lately aroused, throbbing fountain of love's pulsations replied with vehemence: "I have! I have loved her every moment since I first looked upon her as a little girl, and I love her in her sweet maturity with all my soul. She is mine!"
So the wordy war went on between his good sense and his yearning heart, banishing every dear, cherished memory and postponing sleep till the wee morning hours.
Next day after the breakfast dishes were done, Mrs. Follet proposed that Nancy take Steve for a ride with Gyp and the family horse over to the Greely woods, their old favourite haunt, and this exactly suited Steve, for, in spite of the night's disturbance, nothing could please him more than an opportunity for companionship with Nancy alone, and he was still impatient to see if his memory of that rugged ridge of woodland was correct.
He went out at once to saddle the horses. It was a crisp, cool, clear morning after the storm, and Nancy soon appeared in a trim riding habit and cap with deep visor to shade the eyes. The severe lines and dark blue of her costume made charming contrast to her softly rounded face, with its delicate colouring and the stray yellow tendrils of hair which were always slipping out from the fluffy braids which bound her head. She surely was fair to look upon, and when Steve had assisted her to mount in the old way,--holding out his hand and she stepping upon it in laughing ease,--she sat her pony with the graceful poise of the true Kentucky girl, making a picture which less partial observers than Steve could not have failed to find full of charm. They cantered off briskly down the road.
When they reached the wood Steve grew keenly reminiscent, as had become his habit the last few weeks. Forgetting Raymond completely, the past came back to him vividly; he seemed to feel again Nancy's confiding trust in him,--and he yearned to know how clearly she remembered. He looked often upon her as she rode beside him, the two horses touching noses in the narrow path, but the delicate face revealed nothing.
"Do you remember," he said at last, "what a veritable slave you made of me in this old wood?"
She laughed brightly and replied, "Why no, I haven't any such recollection."
"Well, you knew even then just how to do it," he returned with a bit of insinuation. "You would look up at the tallest, hardest tree to climb and see some high-hanging blossom which you coveted, and I immediately scaled the tree's height to lay the blossom at your feet."
She laughed again and her cheeks this time flushed a rosy hue, unaccountably disconcerting to her.
"But that, after all, was as it should have been," he went on after a moment, smiling. "We men need your bidding to send us to the heights, always."
"I do not agree with you," she said, recovering her poise instantly; and summoning a girlish perversity, she led him straightway from sentiment to the substantial. "Each one must mount up in his own strength, like these splendid old trees, without prop or help, only the light from above to draw it upward," and a very demure look crossed her ever-changing face as she finished the little speech.
"You are right," said Steve smiling and remembering Mrs. Polk's lesson from the giant beech so long ago. "And yet, after all, many things help the tree in its growth besides the light from above,--the sun. There are the winds and the rain, and"--he paused a moment,--"its mates. Don't you know a tree rarely stands alone unless man has cut down its companions. They like comradeship. I believe they are dependent upon it in ways we do not know."
"How stupid of me to forget I was talking with a professor," said Nancy archly.
"And worse still for me to forget that I was trying to enlighten the lady who initiated me into the world of books," replied he promptly, yielding to her mood.
"Oh, how lovely that graceful, clinging vine is," she exclaimed, ignoring his retort and pointing up to a vine covered tree, while Steve thrust back into the secret place of his heart all the cherished memories which the old wood held for him, realizing decidedly that Nancy was no longer a shy, timid little girl ready to place her hand in his, but a young woman who would need to be wooed before she was won,--even though there were no Raymond.
"What had he expected anyway?" he reiterated sternly. "That she would be waiting his coming, all ready for the plucking?" He straightened himself in the saddle. He had long since learned how to work and wait for things he wanted; he could do it again.
He led the conversation away from the personal. They talked of nature, each finding under the spur of companionship many new interests in the old wood; and being a devoted nature lover, Steve was pleased to find that Nancy had added to her tender interest in the feathered folk much information as to peculiar characteristics of varying species. It was an easy transition from nature to nature's interpreters, the poets, and the two found mutual interest in recalling some choice things of literature. She had spent four years at a fine old Kentucky college, graduating in June with high honours. There was still a sweet seriousness about her as in the little Nancy of old, in spite of her girlish gaiety, and while the years of study had brought her an unmistakable breadth and culture, there was also a quaint freshness of speech and manner that made her especially attractive. Steve found keen satisfaction in the conversation, for the girl understood his view-point and yet had fresh conceptions of her own which she knew how to express.
He said to himself as he studied her (which having put aside the personal he could now do), "She has the New England alertness of mind inherited from her mother without the New England reticence, and from her Kentucky father, eccentric as he is, she gets the vivacity and charm which is the Kentucky girl's birthright."
And yet in the midst of his enjoyment an insistent despair of heart returned as he recalled a certain good fellowship in her attitude towards Raymond, which was missing with him. Obtuse as lovers usually are, it never occurred to him that this was one of the best of symptoms in his favour!
They had gone in leisurely fashion through the wood, but the tall trees began to drop away at last, and they went down the slope till the old mill stood before them in soft, quaker-gray upon the bank of a turbulent, rushing mountain creek. The big, wooden wheel had fallen from its place and the old mill itself was fast dropping into complete decay, but the trees in fresh summer green still hung affectionately over it. Just beyond the mill nestled the gray log cabin with its porch across the front; and, yes, there was Tildy pacing back and forth at her spinning-wheel just as she used to do when Steve and Nancy were children. She was of the thrifty type of mountain women, always cleanly, always busy, making the most of the meagre means at hand. To the young people it was as though some magic lantern had flashed before them a scene from the past, and the two turned involuntarily to one another with a rush of something tender upon their faces.
Without speaking they rode to the door, and before Steve could dismount Nancy had sprung from the saddle, caught up her skirt, and was warmly shaking hands with the old woman, whom now she did not often see. Steve quickly followed, and with the air of an old friend also, put out his hand cordially to Tildy.
She took it doubtfully, saying:
"Howdye, stranger?"
"Why, don't you know me, Mother Greely?" Steve asked.
"I shore don't," she replied, pushing her spectacles up on her nose and peering earnestly through them. "No," she said finally, "I nuver seed ye afore; leastways I ain't no recollection of hit ef I ever did."
The old man, who with the old mill had fallen into decrepitude, then came slowly hobbling out, an inquiring look on his kind old face. Tildy turned to him, raising her voice shrilly, for he heard with difficulty and asked: "Nat, have ye ever seed this young man afore?"
"No," the old man returned after searching scrutiny.
Then Steve said: "Don't you remember an old gray horse that used to come to the mill with a little girl in white pinafore on his back, two bags of corn behind her, and a tousled, brown-haired boy of about twelve walking beside her?"
"And the little girl was always on the verge of starvation, and only molasses cakes could rescue her," put in Nancy laughing.
"Nancy and Steve," exclaimed the old woman, and then with the intuition of her sex for romance, she further exclaimed: "An' ye hev done got married!"
"No," Steve hastened to say; but the old man, more accustomed to his wife's shrill voice, caught her affirmation, and failed to hear Steve's denial.
"Well, now," said he, rubbing his hands together, greatly pleased, "Tildy and me allus said ye'd marry some day; ye was jes' suited to one another."
Nancy hated herself for flushing so unreasonably again, and Steve, not daring to look towards her, was hurrying to the rescue, when the old woman with a swift, keen glance at both, broke in with:
"No, pap, no they hain't," piped shrilly into the old man's ear.
His face dropped with evident disappointment, and there was an embarrassed moment for all of them.
"Mother Greely," said Nancy gaily, determinedly recovering herself, "have you got any of those molasses cakes you used to give us when we came over?"
"Wal now, I think I hev," said the old woman, rising as quickly as her stiffened limbs would let her.
Steve looked down at Nancy as Tildy went in, smiled, and said:
"Shall we sit on the door-step, as we used to?"
Nancy's eyes did not meet his, and she turned her head to hide that provokingly rising colour as she sat down in a matter-of-fact way.
When they rode away from the mill, having made the aged couple happy with the renewal of old times, Steve again with eager yearning strained his inner vision for a glimpse into her heart, but she betrayed not the slightest consciousness of the embarrassing episode.
As the horses went leisurely back along through the wood, Steve and Nancy talked gently of the two old people with their wondrous mountain combination of barest poverty, dense ignorance, keen intelligence, simple kindliness and gentle dignity,--qualities which the young folks were now prepared to recognize.
"It is curious how like two people grow from constant association," said Steve at last, musingly. "The resemblance between the old miller and his wife is striking, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," returned Nancy; "the shape of face and type of feature is the same in both, and as for expression, each might be a mirror for the other."
"It would be interesting to know which had most influenced the other," said Steve; "whether she has conformed to his type or he to hers."
"Old Nat and Tildy certainly furnish a good opportunity for study of that problem," said Nancy, "for there has been little except the influence of each upon the other to leave its impress."
"The subject is an interesting field for the aspiring investigator," Steve went on. "I wonder that some fine-spun, scientific theory has not already been advanced,--but it only remains another formidable matrimonial hazard," he ended with his sudden smile.
"It does indeed," laughed Nancy. "Wouldn't it be dreadful to think of growing daily more and more like some people?"
"And on the other hand," promptly returned Steve, "how delightful to think of growing more and more like certain other people," turning to her with a light in his eye.
"But then there is the uncertainty,--which is most likely to influence the other," said Nancy, switching dexterously away from hinted personal application, and then with a dash of daring gaiety, adding, "When you marry a girl with a crooked nose, will yours begin to crook likewise, or will hers take on your symmetrical lines?"
"But I am not going to take one with a crooked nose," said Steve, smiling significantly in spite of himself.
"Perhaps not, but the question remains,--which is most likely to conform, a husband or a wife," said Nancy, shying back to the abstract again, with pretty positiveness. And then she called gaily, as she touched Gyp with her whip and started both horses off on a brisk canter, leaving the wood for the road, "Please let me know if you solve the problem, so I may be relieved in mind or forewarned."
As she dashed on slightly ahead of him, spirit and beauty in every line of pony and rider, Steve said to himself with a quizzical smile:
"How cleverly she manages to keep me at arm's length. Oh, little Nancy, where did you learn such tactics?" and he did not know that "such tactics" were sure forerunners of surrender.
As for Nancy, she stood a little later by her bedroom window. The trim, smart riding-habit was laid aside and a little light muslin of almost childlike simplicity had taken its place. She stood looking out at nothing through brimming tears, with flushed cheeks and quivering lips.
"I do blush so horridly when I am with him, and I'm afraid I say things I shouldn't. Oh, what makes me, when I do like him so much!" _