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The Life Of Nancy
by
IV.
It was not very cheerful to look forward to seeing a friend of one’s youth crippled and disabled; beside, Tom Aldis always felt a nervous dread in being where people were ill and suffering. He thought once or twice how little compassion for Nancy these country neighbors expressed. Even her father seemed inclined to boast of her, rather than to pity the poor life that was so hindered. Business affairs and conference were appointed for that afternoon, so that by the middle of the morning he found himself walking up the yard to the Gales’ side door.
There was nobody within call. Mr. Aldis tapped once or twice, and then hearing a voice he went through the narrow unpainted entry into the old kitchen, a brown, comfortable place which he well remembered.
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you,” Nancy was calling from her little bedroom beyond. “Come in, come in!”
He passed the doorway, and stood with his hand on hers, which lay helpless on the blue-and-white coverlet. Nancy’s young eyes, untouched by years or pain or regret, looked up at him as frankly as a child’s from the pillow.
“Mother’s gone down into the field to pick some peas for dinner,” she said, looking and looking at Tom and smiling; but he saw at last that tears were shining, too, and making her smile all the brighter. “You see now why I couldn’t write,” she explained. “I kept thinking I should. I didn’t want anybody else to thank you for the books. Now sit right down,” she begged her guest. “Father told me all he could about last night. You danced with Addie Porter.”
“I did,” acknowledged Tom Aldis, and they both laughed. “We talked about old times between the figures, but it seemed to me that I remembered them better than she did.”
“Addie has been through with a good deal of experience since then,” explained Nancy, with a twinkle in her eyes.
“I wish I could have danced again with you,” said Tom bravely, “but I saw some scholars that did you credit.”
“I have to dance by proxy,” said Nancy; and to this there was no reply.
Tom Aldis sat in the tiny bedroom with an aching heart. Such activity and definiteness of mind, such power of loving and hunger for life, had been pent and prisoned there so many years. Nancy had made what she could of her small world of books. There was something very uncommon in her look and way of speaking; he felt like a boy beside her, he to whom the world had given its best luxury and widest opportunity. As he looked out of the small window, he saw only a ledgy pasture where sheep were straying along the slopes among the bayberry and juniper; beyond were some balsam firs and a glimpse of the sea. It was a lovely bit of landscape, but it lacked figures, and Nancy was born to be a teacher and a lover of her kind. She had only lacked opportunity, but she was equal to meeting whatever should come. One saw it in her face.
“You don’t know how many times I have thought of that cold day in Boston,” said Nancy from her pillows. “Your aunt was beautiful. I never could tell you about the rest of the day with her, could I? Why, it just gave me a measure to live by. I saw right off how small some things were that I thought were big. I told her about one or two things down here in Rodney that troubled me, and she understood all about it. ‘If we mean to be happy and useful,’ she said, ‘the only way is to be self-forgetful.’ I never forgot that!”
“The seed fell upon good ground, didn’t it?” said Mr. Aldis with a smile. He had been happy enough himself, but Nancy’s happiness appeared in that moment to have been of another sort. He could not help thinking what a wonderful perennial quality there is in friendship. Because it had once flourished and bloomed, no winter snows of Maine could bury it, no summer sunshine of foreign life could wither this single flower of a day long past. The years vanished like a May snowdrift, and because they had known each other once they found each other now.