第36章 Little Darby(2)

At first there was some debate over at Darby Stanley's place, whether they should show their contempt for the new departure of the Millses, by standing out against them, or should follow their example.It was hard for a Stanley to have to follow a Mills in anything.So they stood out for a year.As it seemed, however, that the Millses were getting something to which the Stanleys were as much entitled as they, one morning little Darby Stanley walked in at the door, and without taking his hat off, announced that he had come to go to school.He was about fifteen at the time, but he must have been nearly six feet (his sobriquet being wholly due to the fact that Big Darby was older, not taller), and though he was spare, there was something about his face as he stood in the open door, or his eye as it rested defiantly on the teacher's face, which prevented more than a general buzz of surprise.

"Take off your hat," said the teacher, and he took it off slowly.

"I suppose you can read?" was the first question.

"No."

A snicker ran round the room, and little Darby's brow clouded.

As he not only could not read, but could not even spell, and in fact did not know his letters, he was put into the alphabet class, the class of the smallest children in the school.

Little Darby walked over to the corner indicated with his head up, his hands in his pockets, and a roll in his gait full of defiance, and took his seat on the end of the bench and looked straight before him.

He could hear the titter around him, and a lowering look came into his blue eyes.He glanced sideways down the bench opposite.

It happened that the next seat to his was that of Vashti Mills, who was at that time just nine.She was not laughing, but was looking at Darby earnestly, and as he caught her eye she nodded to him, "Good-mornin'." It was the first greeting the boy had received, and though he returned it sullenly, it warmed him, and the cloud passed from his brow and presently he looked at her again.

She handed him a book.He took it and looked at it as if it were something that might explode.

He was not an apt scholar; perhaps he had begun too late; perhaps there was some other cause; but though he could swim better, climb better, and run faster than any boy in the school, or, for that matter, in the county, and knew the habits of every bird that flitted through the woods and of every animal that lived in the district, he was not good at his books.

His mind was on other things.When he had spent a week over the alphabet, he did know a letter as such, but only by the places on the page they were on, and gave up when "big A" was shown him on another page, only asking how in the dickens "big A" got over there.He pulled off his coat silently whenever ordered and took his whippings like a lamb, without a murmur and almost without flinching, but every boy in the school learned that it was dangerous to laugh at him; and though he could not learn to read fluently or to train his fingers to guide a pen, he could climb the tallest pine in the district to get a young crow for Vashti, and could fashion all sorts of curious whistles, snares, and other contrivances with his long fingers.

He did not court popularity, was rather cold and unapproachable, and Vashti Mills was about the only other scholar with whom he seemed to be on warm terms.Many a time when the tall boy stood up before the thin teacher, helpless and dumb over some question which almost anyone in the school could answer, the little girl, twisting her fingers in an ecstacy of anxiety, whispered to him the answer in the face of almost certain detection and of absolutely certain punishment.

In return, he worshipped the ground she walked on, and whichever side Vashti was on, Darby was sure to be on it too.He climbed the tallest trees to get her nuts; waded into the miriest swamps to find her more brilliant nosegays of flowers than the other girls had;spent hours to gather rarer birds' eggs than they had, and was everywhere and always her silent worshipper and faithful champion.

They soon learned that the way to secure his help in anything was to get Vashti Mills to ask it, and the little girl quickly discovered her power and used it as remorselessly over her tall slave as any other despot ever did.

They were to be seen any day trailing along the plantation paths which the school-children took from the district, the others in a clump, and the tall boy and little calico-clad girl, who seemed in summer mainly sun-bonnet and bare legs, either following or going before the others at some distance.

The death of Darby -- of old Darby, as he had begun to be called --cut off Little Darby from his "schoolin'", in the middle of his third year, and before he had learned more than to read and cipher a little and to write in a scrawly fashion; for he had been rather irregular in his attendance at all times.He now stopped altogether, giving the teacher as his reason, with characteristic brevity: "Got to work."Perhaps no one at the school mourned the long-legged boy's departure except his little friend Vashti, now a well-grown girl of twelve, very straight and slim and with big dark eyes.She gave him when he went away the little Testament she had gotten as a prize, and which was one of her most cherished possessions.Other boys found the first honor as climber, runner, rock-flinger, wrestler, swimmer, and fighter open once more to them, and were free from the silent and somewhat contemptuous gaze of him who, however they looked down on him, was a sort of silent power among them.

Vashti alone felt a void and found by its sudden absence how great a force was the steady backing of one who could always be counted on to take one's side without question.She had to bear the gibes of the school as "Miss Darby", and though her two brothers were ready enough to fight for her if boys pushed her too hardly, they could do nothing against girls, and the girls were her worst tormentors.

The name was fastened on her, and it clung to her until, as time went on, she came to almost hate the poor innocent cause of it.