第16章

"You're jealous."An accusation that invariably put him on the defensive."You think all the girls are in love with you,don't you?"These scenes I found somewhat embarrassing.Not so Nancy.After discomfiting her tormenters,or wounding and scattering them,she would return to my side....In spite of her frankly expressed preference for me she had an elusiveness that made a continual appeal to my imagination.

She was never obvious or commonplace,and long before I began to experience the discomforts and sufferings of youthful love I was fascinated by a nature eloquent with contradictions and inconsistencies.

She was a tomboy,yet her own sex was enhanced rather than overwhelmed by contact with the other:and no matter how many trees she climbed she never seemed to lose her daintiness.It was innate.

She could,at times,be surprisingly demure.These impressions of her daintiness and demureness are particularly vivid in a picture my memory has retained of our walking together,unattended,to Susan Blackwood's birthday party.She must have been about twelve years old.It was the first time I had escorted her or any other girl to a party;Mrs.Willett had smiled over the proceeding,but Nancy and I took it most seriously,as symbolic of things to come.I can see Powell Street,where Nancy lived,at four o'clock on a mild and cloudy December afternoon,the decorous,retiring houses,Nancy on one side of the pavement by the iron fences and I on the other by the tree boxes.I can't remember her dress,only the exquisite sense of her slimness and daintiness comes back to me,of her dark hair in a long braid tied with a red ribbon,of her slender legs clad in black stockings of shining silk.We felt the occasion to be somehow too significant,too eloquent for words....

In silence we climbed the flight of stone steps that led up to the Blackwood mansion,when suddenly the door was opened,letting out sounds of music and revelry.Mr.Blackwood's coloured butler,Ned,beamed at us hospitably,inviting us to enter the brightness within.The shades were drawn,the carpets were covered with festal canvas,the folding doors between the square rooms were flung back,the prisms of the big chandeliers flung their light over animated groups of matrons and children.Mrs.Watling,the mother of the Watling twins--too young to be present was directing with vivacity the game of "King William was King James's son,"and Mrs.McAlery was playing the piano.

Now choose you East,now choose you West,Now choose the one you love the best!"Tom Peters,in a velvet suit and consequently very miserable,refused to embrace Ethel Hollister;while the scornful Julia lurked in a corner:

nothing would induce her to enter such a foolish game.I experienced a novel discomfiture when Ralph kissed Nancy....Afterwards came the feast,from which Ham Durrett,in a pink paper cap with streamers,was at length forcibly removed by his mother.Thus early did he betray his love for the flesh pots....

It was not until I was sixteen that a player came and touched the keys of my soul,and it awoke,bewildered,at these first tender notes.The music quickened,tripping in ecstasy,to change by subtle phrases into themes of exquisite suffering hitherto unexperienced.I knew that Iloved Nancy.

With the advent of longer dresses that reached to her shoe tops a change had come over her.The tomboy,the willing camp-follower who loved me and was unashamed,were gone forever,and a mysterious,transfigured being,neither girl nor woman,had magically been evolved.Could it be possible that she loved me still?My complacency had vanished;suddenly I had become the aggressor,if only I had known how to "aggress";but in her presence I was seized by an accursed shyness that paralyzed my tongue,and the things I had planned to say were left unuttered.It was something--though I did not realize it--to be able to feel like that.

The time came when I could no longer keep this thing to myself.The need of an outlet,of a confidant,became imperative,and I sought out Tom Peters.It was in February;I remember because I had ventured--with incredible daring--to send Nancy an elaborate,rosy Valentine;written on the back of it in a handwriting all too thinly disguised was the following verse,the triumphant result of much hard thinking in school hours:--Should you of this the sender guess Without another sign,Would you repent,and rest content To be his Valentine I grew hot and cold by turns when I thought of its possible effects on my chances.

One of those useless,slushy afternoons,I took Tom for a walk that led us,as dusk came on,past Nancy's house.Only by painful degrees did Isucceed in overcoming my bashfulness;but Tom,when at last I had blurted out the secret,was most sympathetic,although the ailment from which Isuffered was as yet outside of the realm of his experience.I have used the word "ailment"advisedly,since he evidently put my trouble in the same category with diphtheria or scarlet fever,remarking that it was "darned hard luck."In vain I sought to explain that I did not regard it as such in the least;there was suffering,I admitted,but a degree of bliss none could comprehend who had not felt it.He refused to be envious,or at least to betray envy;yet he was curious,asking many questions,and I had reason to think before we parted that his admiration for me was increased.Was it possible that he,too,didn't love Nancy?

No,it was funny,but he didn't.He failed to see much in girls:his tone remained commiserating,yet he began to take an interest in the progress of my suit.