Frank Waller Allen

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is still a mystery to me how it was ever mounted to where it is to-day.
Now all of this was very long ago, before you knew anything about Oldmeadow and my river beside it. When we first knew the village, you will remember, all that was left of the college was the building, the bell, and the wonderful view of the most beautiful stream in the world, from its windows, or its top. Standing beside the relic of the General Litell, you may see the great Ohio wandering idly, vagabondishly, through the valley, until it looks like a silver thread losing itself in the misty distance. ”

“ Now what better could a man want? Here I was just out of college, young, untried, and bursting with hope. Was there anything of greater interest, I ask you, than my possibilities, my plans, my expectations? Nance was exceedingly wise. Immediately, and with enthusiasm, I launched into my attainments, and my dreams. With a sweet patience she sat and listened. (I am now inclined to think, Jean François, that, in imagination, she was with you and Rogue and Columbine somewhere upon the road.) ”

“ Old Doctor Felix Longstreet, her immortal grandfather, now retired from active practise, had joined the autocratic group of cracker-barrel philosophers. Daily he hobbled with rheumatic legs over the flagstones, bowing gallantly to the women whom he passed, to my office, where he still maintained a desk. There, upon the sidewalk beneath the shade of the honey-locust trees in summer, by the fireplace in winter, he gave many charming dissertations upon politics, fishing, religion, when-I-was-a-boy, and medicine. God bless him for one of the finest gentlemen I ever knew. ”

“ Come where men are brave and strong and virile like my sire, the oak. Come where the berries shall stain your mouth with gladness; the frolicsome squirrel shall call you comrade; the fairies and elves, even the goblins of hell, shall dance about you in moonlit revels; the great-limbed satyrs shall teach you their bacchanalian bouts; while with amorous-breasted dryads you will discover the delectable madness of passion.... You shall roam the wide earth—free, alive, with love and an open heart! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Very abruptly, so it seemed, Nance stood before him. There was a look of mischief in her dancing eyes, a droop of mock timidity about her mouth, and a round, flushed, dimpled cheek was held for his lips. As the other girls were always inclined to let him alone, this was a part of the game he had not anticipated. Just as a drowning man thinks in a second of every wicked act of his [Pg 55] life, so the boy thought of every worm he had ever put on her, of every pinch, every twitch of her hair, of every bit of tantalizing of which he had ever been guilty. ”

“ Beyond it becomes smoother, the yellow of the water turning a clearer green, and motionless it winds in and out among the farms and woodland until it may be followed only by the line of blue vapor between the hills. Here and there hangs the smoke of a steamboat; a forest shuts it momentarily from sight only that you may catch a glimpse of silver sheen, lake-like, smiling in the happy sunshine; a farmhouse, as a silent, contemplative fisherman, sits here and there on the bank; and over it all, as if with satisfaction the master builder were viewing his work, there broods the great mystery. ”

“ Her grandfather was already forgiven. Of course dear conventional Aunt Barbara did not count. She laughed aloud when she thought of how shocked Oldmeadow would be when she came walking along the river road with Jean François. Then, for the first time, it occurred to her to wonder what her reception would be. She dwelt secure in the knowledge that she had been born and reared in the village. To have been an actual son or daughter of Oldmeadow was a virtue which would cover unnumbered sins. The world was judged harshly, but special privileges belonged to natives. ”

“ There was a feeling of great sadness in the heart of Jean François, for he realized very surely that he must now renounce the chiefest joy of his life for the sake of the love he bore his friends. He reflected that such things had been done before by better men than he, and he dismissed the self-pity as beneath him. [Pg 152]
Nance sat and watched the old Ohio. There is an extraordinary beauty about the river with the coming of the night. The sun goes down behind the hills slowly, as if sorrowful at leaving the silent waters. ”

“ It was early evening. I sat alone by the glowing backlogs in the great fireplace of my office enjoying that delicious animal sensation which comes to one who, after having been all day in the cold, is now thoroughly warm, drowsy, and reasonably secure in the thought that one will not have to venture forth. As I sat and stared into the embers beneath the andirons my mind, released from the task of the day, naturally sought the channel of its dream-things.
Nance! ”

“ The sympathy which Jean François expected was not forthcoming.
"I've been thinking a great deal to-day," said he, "about the parson we had at camp the other evening."
"I thought that was all settled last night," she exclaimed in surprise.
"No, it is not, Nance. At least not yet.... He was right, I tell you. For him, in his work and his home lay his task and his happiness. There was the better part. He understood the road. His love of it made you his sister, me his brother. He will always be kinder, gentler, and purer of soul, Nance, because he knows the wander-longing. ”

“ You live in an alien land. Your pleasures, instead of boldly as of old, you take surreptitiously.... One day, you poor renegade, you will die and pass to the only heaven I know of—the long roads and sunlit fields of Picardy.... You haven't an heir by blood in the world. Why not an heir by love? Eh, Pierrett? I knew that you would say, 'Yes.'... I'll suggest it to the old curmudgeon."
"My dears," said he, addressing us, "I know this Monsieur l'Abbé very well. Some day I shall pay him a call and suggest how generous a thing it would be if he were to make his will in your favor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ May not old Pan with his pipes be the brother of the Man with the heart of God?" she asked.
"I have given a great deal of time to living, Nance, and little enough to thinking, but I feel that you speak the truth."
An hour later Monsieur l'Abbé, dreaming of France with her sunny fields, her morning roads, and happy village streets, discovered a boy fishing by a merry little stream.
"Do you live here?" questioned Monsieur Picot, indicating the town near by.
"Yes," returned the boy, "I live when I am here," meaning the river and the hills, "but I stay in the town. ”

“ Money's a meddler,
That doth utter all men's ware-a."
As you rode that day, my friend, had you indeed been passing upon the highway, you, too, would have felt the spirit of grief. It would have seemed as if a cloud had for the moment obscured the sun.
They were within a half of a mile of Oldmeadow when Jean François called a halt to his happy caravan. They drew up beneath a tree by the roadside. Whether Nance realized it or not, the pedler knew it to be the end. ”

“ Sometime the Faun fled to his greenwood; often the Priest to his people. Rarely, as if they would effect a compromise, did they go together: the Priest gladly to the hills; the Faun with terror into town. And to-day they yet wrangle. [Pg 220]
"I have wondered in my heart, Nance, which one of them would win."
"It is when they go together, first to the dingle, then to the street, that I like them best. That comes nearest to the way of solution," she said, with a smile as comprehending as it was sympathetic.
"The Priest must come to nature; the Faun, at least occasionally, to town. ”

“ Yes?"
"I have been thinking all evening of babies," she replied with charming candor. [Pg 134]
"What ever made you think of babies?" he asked quickly.
"Did you notice that dear dimpled little red one at the house where we bought the milk?" was her reply.
"I must confess that I did not see the little Indian," he answered.
"Just like a man," said Nance, ignoring his levity, a trifle of scorn in her voice.
"Little babies in the utterly helpless stage," was Jean François' remark, "have always been just without the limit of my appreciation."
"That's because you are a man," she explained. ”

“ But when the earth lived again and became a mother with a thousand wombs, giving birth each beautiful moment to every green and blossoming thing; when he turned his eyes, made world-weary by looking on the suffering his people needs must bear, unto the blue of the warm skies, where it seemed that the very heavens were renewing, with some mysterious pigments, their blue and the white clouds afloat therein ”

“ 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 François 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. ”

“ Ah, it is at the top of the magic stairway where old Jacques finds his forest of Arden.... Some day you shall know.... There are the merry ghosts of two happy children in the very heydey of youth. There is the spook of an old vagabond who sleeps in dingles in phantom greenwoods. There, my children, are a thousand dreams of mine: the ghosts of yesterday; there the little narrow streets of old Paris—St. Jacques, Rue de l'Abbé de l'Epee, the Rue de la Fouarre; there, gentle Amiens and her great cathedral; a long, white road—le trimard—through Picardy ”

“ As for Jean François, of course he never [Pg 190] came near us at all in winter. Some more gentle climate claimed his blessed presence with his happy caravan. Upon his return with Nance in June he had not remained in town more than a week. Just where he spent the remainder of the months he was accustomed to give to Oldmeadow common was another thing of which we were ignorant.
Thus while I sat dreaming of my heart's desire, there came a crunching of the snow, a hearty bursting open of the door, and Nance came stamping into the room followed by Doctor Longstreet puffing like a porpoise. ”

“ I love it and I have chosen it. The road is my religion," here she looked up with a suggestion of defiance in her eyes as if anticipating his disapproval, but, upon seeing nothing save interest upon his face, she continued, "My camp-fires at night are a flaming offering upon his altar, the earth, to Pan.... Why don't you take the road?"
Nance was unconsciously posing a trifle.
"It calls me strongly sometimes," he replied, and his eyes became tender and sought the soft shadowy highway through the growing night. The wander-longing was in his face.... ”

“ It's many a joyous, irresponsible, nomadic journey he made over the countryside. He loved the poor, the common people, the oppressed, the struggler—all save the struggler at the needle's eye—and the happy sunny hills of Arcady."
"I know, my friend," was the reply.
"I also know your point of view, comrade," said Jean François, suddenly melting into sympathy. "You are right. It could not be done. At least in America. You would have to either give up your walk or your talk. The people'd make you.... Let's see—they would call it a sort of highway heresy.... ”

“ Then, withal, to bless the hand with the art of expressing the things seen of his heart so others, reading in passing, might know His wonders too, was of a surety to be markedly favored of destiny. Thus it was that our good Abbé made sonnets and madrigals with his master Pierre Ronsard, ballades after the manner of that charming rogue François Villon, and songs quite as exquisite as those of the amorous troubadour, Bernard de Ventadour, whom he admired more for the structure of his verses than the sentiment expressed therein. ”

“ Jean François came and sat beside her.
"Well, Nance?" said he.
"You asked me, my dear Jean François, what I would do were I Monsieur [Pg 153] l'Abbé Picot and heard the call of Pan?"
"Yes."
"A call to the beautiful, the wholesome, the healthful for body and mind and soul, where I might meet my fellows and become their friend? Where I could and would at times bring gentleness and love into their lives? Where I should meet children and make them see? Women and teach them the value of life?... ”

“ Like a brother to Pan, he belonged to it all, and the impulse to make himself felt, as the other forces abroad, was strong within him.... No wonder the entire earth was happy: there had been born that dawn, full-grown like Athena sprung from the head of Zeus, the spirit of June.
A solitary man standing on the hilltop turned slowly from mountain to valley, from sky to field, seeming to eat and think and breathe—to make a part of him by some paganish transubstantiation—the very day itself.
[Pg 99]
A few moments later the eyes of this lone son of the morning sought the distant village. ”