PAGE 7
Little Darby
by
The sun had set only about a half-hour and the light was still lingering on the under edges of the clouds in the west and made a sort of glow in the little yard before him, as it did in front of the cabin on the other hill. His eye first swept the well-known horizon, taking in the thickets below him and the heavy pines on either side where it was already dusk, and then rested on the little cabin opposite. Whether he saw it or not, one could hardly have told, for his face wore a reminiscent look. Figures moved backward and forward over there, came out and went in, without his look changing. Even Vashti, faintly distinguishable in her gay dress, came out and passed down the hill alone, without his expression changing. It was, perhaps, fifteen minutes later that he seemed to awake, and after a look over his shoulder stepped from the door into the yard. His mother was cooking, and he strolled down the path across the little clearing and entered the pines. Insensibly his pace quickened–he strode along the dusky path with as firm a step as if it were broad daylight. A quarter of a mile below the path crossed the little stream and joined the path from Cove Mills’s place, which he used to take when he went to school. He crossed at the old log and turned down the path through the little clearing there. The next moment he stood face to face with Vashti Mills. Whether he was surprised or not no one could have told, for he said not a word, and his face was in the shadow, though Vashti’s was toward the clearing and the light from the sky was on it. Her hat was in her hand. He stood still, but did not stand aside to let her pass, until she made an imperious little gesture and stepped as if she would have passed around him. Then he stood aside. But she did not appear in a hurry to avail herself of the freedom offered, she simply looked at him. He took off his cap sheepishly enough, and said, “Good-evenin’.”
“Good-evenin’,” she said, and then, as the pause became embarrassing, she said, “Hear you’re agoin’ away to-morrer?”
“Yes–to-morrer mornin’.”
“When you’re acomin’ back?” she asked, after a pause in which she had been twisting the pink string of her hat.
“Don’t know–may be never.” Had he been looking at her he might have seen the change which his words brought to her face; she lifted her eyes to his face for the first time since the half defiant glance she had given him when they met, and they had a strange light in them, but at the moment he was looking at a bow on her dress which had been pulled loose. He put out his hand and touched it and said:
“You’re a-losin’ yer bow,” and as she found a pin and fastened it again, he added, “An’ I don’ know as anybody keers.”
An overpowering impulse changed her and forced her to say: “I don’t know as anybody does either; I know as I don’t.”
The look on his face smote her, and the spark died out of her eyes as he said, slowly: “No, I knowed you didn’! I don’t know as anybody does, exceptin’ my old woman. Maybe she will a little. I jist wanted to tell you that I wouldn’t a’ fit them boys if they hadn’t a’ pushed me so hard, and I wan’t afeared to fight your old man, I jist wouldn’t–that’s all.”
What answer she might have made to this was prevented by him; for he suddenly held out his hand with something in it, saying, “Here.”
She instinctively reached out to take whatever it was, and he placed in her hand a book which she recognized as the little Testament which she had won as a prize at school and had given him when they went to school together. It was the only book she had ever possessed as her very own.